Chris Thomas Chris Thomas

Turn The Page

Has the world healed enough for shameless self-promotion to return? The last time I volunteered my unsolicited thoughts, the world-at-large was in quite a state. It’s been quite an interesting year in the life and times of a sports and live-event producer and director. In fairness, it was quite an interesting year to be any type of person…

Has the world healed enough for shameless self-promotion to return? The last time I volunteered my unsolicited thoughts, the world-at-large was in quite a state. It’s been quite an interesting year in the life and times of a sports and live-event producer and director. In fairness, it was quite an interesting year to be any type of person. But amid a crazy, mixed-up world the very specific kind of person that is me got a TV show! Actual, hanging-over-top-of-the-bar TV, on a network and everything. I invested significant amounts of money and time on the ability to infrequently overproduce virtual meetings! I spun a feature-length, in-person/streaming hybrid event out of puns for an indifferent audience! I imposed my sense of humor on co-workers as a virtual game show host! I caught the deadly disease that killed over 2 million people! It’s good to stay busy.

Right now getting ready for the MAC Basketball Tournament now takes me back to about a year ago when I was getting ready to come in and call my first games of last year’s tourney. Then an email came postponing the session was canceled and that if I needed anything from the office, grab it now because who knows when we’ll be back.

It did, in fact, turn out to be a while. I got the sense that it might be. Though I’d prefer any other circumstance to do so, it was an unfortunate chance to work from home. Would you be surprised that an introverted only-child likes holing up in the comfort of home? And once Parsec gave our team incredible access to our workstations, it was a dream come true. Taking meetings with laundry in the wash? Afternoon workouts and homemade lunch? Eliminating my highest daily statistical probability of death by saving two freeway trips? Wearing comfy pants for the duration? Sign me up! The best part was being able to put in the extra work, either starting a bit early or coming back at it later after eating dinner, taking a nap. Even with a stressful project or fast-approaching deadline, it’s nice to be able to take weirdo, idiosyncratic breaks and decompress, and come back to things with a clear mind. Plus, the year before I was bed-ridden for the better part of several months, so I’ve already had training being trapped in the house for extended periods. At least this time I can walk! The time also allowed me to recommit to my back’s health and conditioning.

After the uncertain first couple weeks and the reality of an extended lockdown set in, the focus was clear: use the reach of our sports and entertainment platforms to help educate the public on measures to reduce transmission of COVID-19. And outside that critical mission, showing support for and celebrating frontline workers and essential staff. The first big lift was helping gather and create Monsters content for the 19 Action News telethon, helping raise funds. The whole process was an early challenge that helped everyone map out the way of production. I never heard of Zoom then all of the sudden it was the only way capture anything new! How does a team with varying levels of home technology access and move terabytes of video back and forth from arena to home and back again? Through incredible work with the Cavs IT team and from FieldHouse Creative’s Nate Klein and Matt Zronek, it all… worked. But after the initial, obvious focus, we put a bow on a season cut short by doing the yearly recap video and wringing the last drops out of Between Two Goals for now.

Then a fairly typical off-season began. With weeks of extra lead time and the need to find some kind of mooring without games and events to plan around, I took it as an opportunity to further build our random, fun inventory. For four months I requested eight producers create four fun elements that were either a game moment reaction, a crowd prompt, a pump video, or an edited dance loop. Not only does it deepen the grab bag of elements that sustain fun and energy throughout games they’re also fun little projects where you can work on a new technique and experiment. Or just be a silly doofus. I usually go the silly doofus route.

Now that games have started, it’s been awesome deploying some of these up to 10 months after they were made! When it was time to review when games rolled around, it was like seeing many again for the first time and I’m so happy with the range of stuff the team put together. 

The hopeful belief that a normal 2020-2021 season starting in October kept us working ahead and one of the best yearly projects that benefited was the look and feel. Nick Prost once again designed it, Paul Mazzoleni and Christian Merrill made it move with motion kits and template builds, and the rest of us picked apart the pieces and remixed the projects for tons of easy applications. The result is a great look and more consistent application across several interpreters and final destinations. Not only the Monsters, but the Cavs’ primary and City Edition look and feels benefited greatly, and impressive work by both our Image group and FieldHouse Creative.

On the other hand, there was a whole new virtual world of trying to take, well, everything and do it from a phone or laptop in your den. At the arena, my workstation has horsepower and I’ve got access to quality cameras, cinema glass, powerful lights, and a multi-room spread of tools to choose from. Now I’m sitting at home amongst shelves filled with a mish-mash of equipment that spans the continuum of usability, and proximity + time = setting up green screens, adding random camera sources, using OBS and a MIDI keyboard to add graphics and sounds. What started as a bit of nesting and a few overdue improvements to the home workstation, my sense of production value started blew that up into full blown investment, upgrading lights, wireless audio solutions, and finally getting a decent camera of my own. (Side note: Even after a couple of years, the GH5 is still an awesome, versatile camera. Thumbs up!)

It began as a means of making jokes during telemeetings and fostering jovial virtual happy hour atmospheres and morphed into productivity and positivity. Within our department, we surveyed FieldHouse Creative to gauge interest in spending an occasional lunch hour having a good time and some friendly competition. Encouraged by our Executive Producer Matt Eck, streamer and fellow fun-haver Rob Weems and I led the development of FHC games. FHC expanded to a few invites to friends in other departments, and eventually, we enlisted frequent guests Dana Rowan and Lindsey Speyer to create a broader marketing team to initiate The Playmakers to organize interactive team member events that blend games, prizes, and just hanging out and building relationships with teammates.

While I love the flexibility of the work-from-home lifestyle and finding ways to have fun, the whole name of the game is gathering large numbers of people in an indoor space. Up until March 2020, that’s the only mindset I’ve known! Get asses in seats and entertain the hell at out ‘em! How fast technology moved and how quickly people adapted was eye-opening and the possibilities for revolutionizing work are exciting. But my whole gig and the ultimate goal is getting back to rocking a full house again, and building confidence in/proving effective precautions and protocols to get that were the most important aspects of every project in the last year. I, amongst many dedicated people, worked incredibly hard, incredibly cautiously in pursuit of the purpose of bringing people together once again, and doing so even in the smallest and safest capacities. And in lieu of being together, doing our best to bring things that people enjoy to them in novel and innovative ways. 

But it was hard to gain a strong foothold when schedules and timelines shift swiftly and suddenly, and prospective projects or events come and go with the wind. At times, it felt like a lot of flailing, but it was flailing in a generally productive direction. With enormous amounts of care and preparation from building and security teams, the gears started to turn again. It started wide open on the bare floor of the empty arena during our street hockey clinics, and small-scale, spread-across-the-arena get-togethers with ticket members. The camps were an awesome way to get back into the building and be out and about shooting. It was also a perfect way to put that new GH5 through its paces in the workaday world I’m used to. The events were a chance to dust off all the gear and systems that it takes to make the glowy screens glow, and make sure we’re ready for the welcomed increase of activity.

The small steps forward started gaining traction, and the strides became more confident. In addition to limited events, we were looking to welcome employees back to the office. We combined this return with our yearly celebration of team members, an internal show called the Spectaculars. My stellar associate Rob Weems and worked with our human resources department and senior leadership begging teammates for enough pictures and videos for enough pictures and video to fill ninety minutes of team member generated, half virtual, half live studio audience variety show that foremost honored our hardest-working and longest-tenured teammates, but also showcased the personality and creativity of the whole company. Won’t lie though, Rob, Dave Moran, and the other usual suspects of FHC generously hewn the content into a presentable form, and Joe Frietchen’s engineering team with Dave McElhatten’s streaming expertise made it happen.

In addition to being a well-deserved feel-good event, The Spectaculars helped test the new technology and processes that would power larger streaming events for the 2020 NBA Draft Lottery and 2020 NBA Draft. And then… finally… eventually... games! Local, high school, and eventually exhibition games were being scheduled and season schedules were being hammered out powers-that-be. But games! Which also meant players returning, and attempting some form of gathering content that finally wasn’t on a damn Zoom call. I assisted game ops workhorse Tim Long along with our fearless leader AJ Johnson came up with a plan to gather a wide range of the growing content demands for diverse business needs in far less than ideal circumstances in a heavily sanitized and scrutinized manner. I mean, do you want to be the one who gets an NBA team sick and derail return-to-play? It led to a lot of groundwork being laid for a content capture day that I was in no uncertain terms not going to be a part of. This is quite fine when this operation of only 10 most necessary people is usually a practice facility humming with hundreds of various media gatherers. While making all this happen and waiting for the final word on how the NBA and NHL regular seasons were going to shake out and how those would affect the AHL season, I was part of a group tasked with an interesting but exciting sidequest.

It’s not often people just say, “If you wanna make a TV show, go ahead and have at it, hoss!” And that’s basically how Monsters OT was born. Time slots were offered and along with the inimitable Tony Brown and wily production vet Mark Zaremba, we now find time to put together pure and uncut Monsters on SportsTime Ohio. Creatively and business-wise, a television show is a powerful branding asset, and a task you take on with gusto!

At the same time this was coming together, so was the Monsters Community Foundation's plans of activating a long-planned legacy project in conjunction with the City of Cleveland’s Halloran Park. The team would be renovating a storage space into an educational resource and place that allows Cleveland families to connect with and grow the sport of hockey. No sooner than the project timeline was set, the AHL announced a target date to start the season.

Here we are again… less than 6 weeks to go until opening day. You know what that’s like, I told you here. We need an open, a television spot, and TV and in-arena shows that need quality segments. And like everything else this year, we have to do it on extra hard mode. AJ, Tim, and I ran the content capture day playbook again to over-prepare to do a simple media day in a convoluted but absolutely necessary way; fighting to get our first non-laptop-based video of these guys in over a year. Nate Klein and Dave Moran already had a perfect script in place for a spot. I tossed the keys to the open in the superbly talented hands of Kevin Libal, who tapped Christian Merrill to round the LED environment, and lighting guru Sam Brown used his skill to paint the arena. Myles Holt and I needed to cover the hell out of the renovation project and shared plenty of early mornings with the contracting crews, and taking meetings in the lobby with the Monsters front-office trying to schedule and strategize the moving pieces to pull it all off. We multiplied forces, worked nights and weekends and mixed it all together to create a series of thematically linked but individually positioned, multi-platformed videos whose production embodies the ideals they set out to convey.

The fun wasn’t over yet. We’ve yet to arrive at the pièce de résistance, welcoming fans back to the arena for Monsters hockey. While Cavs games had returned for a while, the control room protocols and extra precaution necessary hadn’t allowed my involvement, and it felt great and fell back into the groove quickly. There was a lot different about this opening weekend, but I took great satisfaction in sharing the evening with fans and working with our game day production crew again, and returning more part-time positions back to work.

Before I could relax and take a breather for the first time in months, there was one more item on the list: capstone the Halloran Park renovation with a press conference to unveil the changes to the community, and all the time hanging out gathering the incremental progress of the construction paid off in my first attempt at HGTV style makeover shots. To be safe, we couldn’t see the ultimate payoff in the kids’ reaction, but we look forward to returning for future gatherings in the future.

Ahhhhh… and now time for a deep breath! Except, not so much, as breathing deeply could spread the coronavirus which finally managed to find its way in me. I was sicker than I’ve ever gotin years, and it log jammed production we were finally getting ahead of.  It sucks. And though I was able to handle relatively well, its potential to kill still weighed on my mortal mind. There could be no better reminder that even though things are looking up, we’re not out of the woods yet and now’s not the time to let up. Let’s see this through to the end and finally leave these times in the rearview where they belong.

Like so many, I’m ready to turn the page, again. Between losing seasons to COVID and my own medical trials, whatever type of normal is left to return to, I look forward to getting back to it. But much like the previous year, the challenges overcome hopefully sculpted a better producer, and I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish despite the hurdles laid before us. And now, after a long couple of years and a decade in sports, I hope to get back to the light, fluffy subject matter this site was constructed to house. Stay tuned for some top 10’s, early milestones, and more self-conscious ramblings of your friendly neighborhood video guy.








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Chris Thomas Chris Thomas

Life is Mostly Shit: An Essay of Hope

Yep. Life is mostly shit. Like, even before the whirlwind of conspiring events have shaken the world’s consciousness, most of life is pretty shitty. Stated plainly like that, I see how it reads cynical and negativist. But maybe accepting that statement as fact, then reflecting on it, we’ll find life being mostly shit isn’t as bad as it sounds.

Yep. Life is mostly shit. Like, even before the whirlwind of conspiring events have shaken the world’s consciousness, most of life is pretty shitty. Stated plainly like that, I see how it reads cynical and negativist. But maybe accepting that statement as fact, then reflecting on it, we’ll find life being mostly shit isn’t as bad as it sounds.

First things first, let’s think about shit. Literal, stinky poo-poo shit. Excrement. Life consumes energy, consuming that energy makes waste. “Everybody Poops” presents as a kids book, but also perhaps a profound tome whose scientific accuracy and philosophical import will stand the test of time. It teaches us that your little kitty cat poops, your adorable puppy dog poops, so do you, and everyone else. We all have to eat, so, dammit, we’re going to have to shit. Even that prissy supermodel, with soft, flawless skin smelling of peaches sometimes has uncontrollable diarrhea. It’s an indisputable fact of humanity. An inescapable commonality.

Please don’t mistake that I’m trying to gather everyone holding hands, celebrating shit. I’m not a fan. Most people aren’t. Some are, and in higher numbers than I would have thought, based on my time on the internet.  I don’t think I’m going out on a limb saying most people see shit as a burden, an unpleasant necessity to deal with.  Even with indoor plumbing, silky soft 2-ply and other advancements in shit removal technology, it still sucks. You get your feet up on the Squatty Potty for full elimination, your heated bidet blasts your puckered hole pretty good, but you still have to give a quick tidy up/confidence wipe. There’s a fleck stuck on the bowl that you’ll have to scrub. Even in these primo, flush away, minimal contact conditions, any amount of shit is too much, and who wants to deal with it? 

Luckily for many of us, and overall as a species, we have gotten much better at dealing with shit. In some ways, we really have our shit together. But everyone’s shit is different. We consume different things, in different quantities.  Sure, we can classify types of pieces of shit, but your shit is uniquely you. Some people have more shit than others. It’s harder for some people to get rid of their shit. Some people keep it inside them way too long. Some people are full of it. If there’s anything people dislike more than their own shit, it’s other people’s. Gas station bathrooms are a testament to the fact that too many people spew it. Some people, despite many others’ shock and horror love their own shit, wallow in it, and love stirring it up and flinging it around. There are lots of people. There is lots of shit. And as long as life continues, there’s always more coming.

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As literal as I tried to keep the preceding passages, the obvious connections to physical shit and metaphorical shit leap out. We treat our symbolic shit a lot like we treat our physical shit. Trying to keep the amount we’re dealing with and the time spent on it to a minimum. And when we do deal with it, efforting to do so in the most effective way possible. 

I think about how far humanity had to come to get to this privileged point in time where your nasty turds get whisked far away and smell-goods cover any evidence of the dirty deed. Over the course of millennia, people all over the world have been oppressed, enslaved, and coerced. The number of people, the patch of dirt they were born on top of, their physical attributes, their thoughts, beliefs and actions have varied widely. So have their relationships to their oppressors. Despite long lineage of constantly inciting conflict,  exacting violence, destruction, and death upon our fellow humans,  the power dynamics that swirl around us called society churns forward. And we somehow progress. To the point where we no longer have to dig a hole to squat over, city streets don’t have alleyways reeking of emptied chamber pots, and using your bare hand to clean your shitty ass-crack is an impossible idea. Unfortunately, at the bottom of society’s churn that affords us such magical capability comes at the cost of an undercurrent of impoverished, downtrodden, broken, and dead. The simple act of living in modern society is still at the behest of forced labor, in poor working conditions, despite anyone’s best intentions and attempts to make it otherwise.

That’s our shitty world. Ain’t no doubt, there are many beautiful things about life, but before we enjoy those things, we’re dealing with the shit, the waste of life. Most of everything we do, even the good stuff, is full boring, tedious shit. 

For instance, work. I enjoy what I do. There’s a big rush, when the culmination of thousands of decisions and actions takes firing neurons in my brain and turns them into a thing that I can see, hear, touch, and enjoy. We can take these things and show them to thousands of people, who respond, who laugh, who give it hits, likes, and kind words. It possibly passes muster with my peers and sometimes they then hand you a statue that says, “Good shit, dude.” I can celebrate that feeling with the people I worked with to make it happen. That is glorious. But the way to glory is shit. It’s mostly typing, pointing, clicking, and dragging. Sometimes it’s saying and writing things. But mostly boring, filler, in-between bullshit. And so it goes for anything valuable that needs to be attained. 

Boo hoo, poor baby with the super hard life of working on a computer for your fun job. All-in-all, the amount of shit I deal with is quite manageable, and I sit here and write this, I’m safe and comfortable. Though, despite this and being born in the 99.999%  (could maybe add some more decimal places) best of situations,  I’ve been buried in shit, too. Hard shit. Real shit. “Do I want to keep living?” shit. Chances are likely you have, too. And if we only bore the burden of our shit and our shit alone, that’d be one thing. But we are inextricably linked to everyone else's shit, and we’re surrounded by a world of it. From little bunny pellet poops, to Jurassic Park dino dumps. At any moment, you can slip on it  and cause minor frustration. Any moment, it can come crashing down and end you. 

It’s here where we lose the thread between physical shit and the metaphorical. We are always much better dealing the real, actual, physical shit. It can’t be denied. Your biases can. “You are like this.” Nu-uh! See. Now I don’t have to deal with whatever “this” is, and whether you are right or wrong to call me that. I could possibly throw a  “No, YOU!” back at ya to really sidestep reflection and make you deal with trying to make me look inward. Or we can just go full chess playing pigeon. But you can’t spray a piece of shit with cologne and pretend it smells fine. Those shit notes will still cut through. And we as humans are dealing with metaphorical mountains of shit, who much like their geological brethren, take a long time to get stacked that high. This 10 year old, half-empty bottle of Aqua Di Gio ain’t goin’ do shit on this shit. 

Here’s some of the shit heaps we’re all dancing around. Yes, you had educators that taught you something that turned out to be untrue. Media has distorted perspective of events.  Your government lies to you. Your parents have lied to you. Scientists and researchers confidently think they have found an answer and turn out to be wrong. Your spouse, friends, family sometimes, kinda fucking hate you. And if some of those people you love knew certain things about you, they might not love you anymore. You would think differently about them if certain things came to light. Power structures have and will continue to conspire against you in ways big and small.  People promise to do one thing, and they do another.  And sometimes we invest a lot in those promises and confidently passed-down truth statements. And holy shit, the pain that comes to your ego when confronted with the fact that you! Dear sweet you, who's just trying to get along, do your best and make sense of it all were wrong. You were misled. You were a hypocrite. Ya fucked up. 

That right there is some shit.  Quite a bit for anyone to deal with. And this is, like, the standard human experience across time and peoples. And even as shit as things seem right now, even compared to the relatively recent past, it is all STILL exponentially better than the grand majority of all lives lived EVER! It’s still unbearably and unacceptably shitty at times. What are we to do with all this shit? Our metaphorical cologne can’t help us pretend the shit isn’t there. We need something simple. A tool that most everyone can have access to. For those who don’t have access, it should be abundant enough they can depend on those around them who do have it to help them out. Back from metaphor to physical.

A see a pile of shit. I think I need a shovel.

◆  ◆  ◆ 

Just like we all have our own metaphorical shit, we all have our own metaphorical shovel. Just like the quantitative and qualitative properties of our shit is different, so are our shovels. These properties affect the performance of these shovels’ purpose: shovelling shit. 

Most people have a nice ol’ standard garden shovel. You can turn some earth, but if you’ve got a decent amount of shit, it’s gonna take time and persistent effort to deal with all that shit. Some people’s shovels are broader like snow shovels, and have ergonomic designs and can move more volume, quicker and at less risk to our intrepid shit shoveler. Others, barely have a spoon. The less fortunate have nothing but their own hands to deal with all this shit, and the even less fortunate are physically incapable of any sort of shovel operation. The most fortunate have fucking earth movers. Which is understandable when you’re moving metric tons of shit for yourself or on others behalf, but some people have these monstrosities despite not having nearly as much as shit as their neighbors, and still refuse to help, even as everyone around them drowns in it. 

No matter how much shit there is, no matter the size of the shovel, the only way to get rid of it is to start shovelling. And keep at it with consistency and urgency. And this is where we spend most of our lives, in the shit, shovelling away. Commuting. Worrying about loved ones. Making the bed. Physical Therapy. Breaking up. Boiling water. Shaving. Sitting in meetings. Keepin’ shit moving. Trying to stay regular.

Despite the fact that others are going to dump a bunch of shit. Hopefully the shovelling outpaces input, and you build relationships with other shovellers to help compound your efforts and may you find moments where you’ve completely cleared a nice patch where you can enjoy a shit-free space to reap your rewards, if even only for moments before the next mudslide comes in and it’s time to grab your shovel again. And if you have more shovel than shit, I hope you use it to help dig someone out who in too deep.

Some say stop and smell the roses. I say stop and smell the shit. And let’s start digging.

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I decided to write this amidst the outpouring of response to the murder of George Floyd. As events unfolded, and every meeting I participated in turned into a discussion and outpouring of support, I didn’t add to it. Not because I didn’t share the sentiments and concern, but just because many people with much more credibility than me were saying things I thought better than I can put them. I decided to remain still, listen, observe and reflect  rather than enter the fray. As these conversations unfolded, a family emergency dumped a Denali on the Mount Everest of shit that’s already going on. A somber day of reflection on #BlackoutTuesday turned into one even moreso. As days went on and discussions with  hurting, worried and scared team members continued along parallel discussions with hurting, worried, and scared family members, the less acceptable silence became. Especially when a lot of what I heard and read were black voices asking specifically to stop being silent. 

But at the same time, the words are easy. I can type white text on a black background and easily say the obvious words that so many brands were so quick to fill social media timelines with. You can mimic styles and feign sincerity. I’m not into performative white guilt. So finding the right way for me to express how I’m feeling, and making sure it is what is wanted to be hard before breaking my silence was important.

For so long, the mindset was simply just try not to not be shitty. Don’t be a racist. Don’t be sexist. Know people by the content of their character. Recognize the advantage of opportunity you were afforded.  But you can only hear so many “I don’t see/care about [attributes]” and “I’m not [something bad]-st, my [relationship] is an [attribute]” before it starts sounding like bullshit, even if it’s true, and that list of racially diverse, LGBTQA+, and differently abled friends is a mile long. Likes and avatar changes are not enough. What I think I heard was people who look different than me want to see faces that look like mine stand up  for them on their behalf, and state plainly and simply that we hear their pain and acknowledge their feelings. and are committed to making the world more fair and equitable for all. They want to know that the words that are posted so easily on social media are more than that. They want to see our receipts. 

Quick aside, when I say “equitable for all” and using [attributes] and don’t refer to identities personal and political in my shit and shovel ramblings as a response to the Floyd outcry, I’m not trying to skirt confronting race, or doing any both sides-ing or “All Lives Matter” bullshit.  George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery. These names are important, they are kick starting the dialogue, and I unequivocally state Black Lives Matter. 

It just really sucks that we even have come to the point where we have to come out and say it. Because, at least my generation (I’m an elder-Millennial, I suppose) we all heard PSAs about all kinds of good and ethical things. I’ve made plenty myself! We were the early wave of multicultural and diversity education. Not judging based on skin color,  and our differences are less important than what binds us. We absorb it at a young age. We felt like it was unnecessary, because despite incidents on the news, or words said by friends or family members, it was all minimized. It’s just an isolated incident; Maybe there’s more to the story; I’m sure it’s just a joke, he’s not really racist; But they use that word, why can’t I? Maybe he’s kind of racist, but he’s not as racist as this more racist-er person, and what can you do? It’s family; They’re set in their ways; They grew up in a different time; We’re post-racial. That’s not ME. That’s not US.

It’s not just now, it’s not just Floyd, Taylor, and Arbery. Because, sadly, they are the most recent names in a long list. Why wasn’t it Trayvon Martin? Tamir Rice? Or Eric Garner? Or Emmit Till. It’s Jim Crow Laws. It’s The 3/5 Compromise. It’s slavery. 

But why not Orlando? Why not Sandy Hook? Why not Columbine? Why not Oklahoma City?  I mean 2 World Wars? We couldn’t even get that right the first time. Why didn’t we learn from any of the other empires that have risen and fallen? Why not the brown kids at our borders RIGHT NOW, that are caged and separated from their guardians?  Why didn’t we hear any of the numbers of messengers of peace presented to us over the ages?

Why this and why now? Cleary, Covid and its aftermath put the world in a deep state of reflection. I know I’m unoriginal in this observation. People far and wide are questioning and comparing so many things. Do our actions align with our values? Are our values correct? What are the priorities? Who can I listen to? Who can I trust?

The racial unrest is another symptom created by drinking from the poisoned well that is our current social conversation. It’s attacking the free press. It’s the militarization of the local police and treating community members as enemy combatants. It’s screaming at people working tirelessly to keep us healthy and alive that they are willing perpetrators of a world-wide hoax. It’s warping the perspective of what are rights, what are privileges, and what are responsibilities, and  where do those loyalties lie. It’s the assault on the concepts of openness, transparency. It’s bald faced lies and all the other 1984, dystopian tactics. It’s denying you said the thing we have fucking recordings of you saying, the words you wrote. Bernays, Goebbels. Hitler, Stalin. The playbooks are out there. It can happen here. It IS happening here. We must stop it.

The silent majority… a REAL silent majority... of sane people are waking up. We are tired of polarization. We are tired of pretending that “both” sides of a given issue are always worthy of equal consideration. We are tired of it being presented to us like that. We are tired of an army of Dunning-Kruger dipshits pretending they know more than people who dedicate their lives to given subjects and topics after they watch someone say something confidently on a YouTube video over ominous music. We are tired consumers being left defenseless against a barrage of bullshit and predatory business practices that lean on their bought and paid for “legality” to lie to customers, take their money, and penalize the poor for being poor. Or that take advantage of peoples desire for a better more prosperous life. No, you’re not going to become a billionaire working from your phone, copy and pasting pitches from your upline to people you haven’t talked to since high school. Statistics say, it’s overwhelmingly likely it’ll cost you not only money but friends. I’m sorry somebody made you believe that.

We are tired expectations of ceasing and never ending growth and brutalist demand on efficiency, the rewards of which we continually see less and less of. We are not machines, We are not livestock. And, by the way, we really need to look at livestock and we make our food. Because we’re tired of waste. We’re tired of being poisoned. Whiskey exists.  I’ll do that on my own. We are tired of our safety net being attacked with a chainsaw. We’re tired of thumbs on the scales.  We are tired of the majority of the people who agree on how we should take care of each other being silenced by moneyed few and their corrupt executors. We are tired of ideological purity tests. We are tired of rules that apply to us, but not the powerful. Not the ones who do the most damage. And finally, we’re being pushed. In ways both positive. And negative.  We are speaking. We are acting.

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Here is how I will act.

  • Acknowledge a reality that exists beyond my own consciousness, where objective truth exists independent of mine and other’s perception and observation of it. 

  • I also have to acknowledge that despite this external reality existing, multitudes of perspectives exist, and unfortunately, despite 1 thing being true, we’re not all going to see it that way. The good thing is, through these multitudes, we can work together to gather evidence and learn things. Lots of things. Like, with really insane accuracy. Not everything. And not perfectly. But pretty good.

  • In that vein, I would like to offer my professional media services for volunteer education and media projects that center on education. Education and knowledge will not only defeat racism, it’s the key to unlocking the answers to a lot of problems. General education, but projects that promote things like diversity & inclusion, science and media literacy, critical thinking, human behavior and psychology.  Any possible projects you might know of, hit me up!

  • Just in general, hop into volunteering again. I hit pause because of physical issues, it’s time to get back in the swing of things, specifically I previously volunteered with HandsOn.org, I did some family activity nights at the Salvation Army with families in temporary housing situations, and one I wanted to do but never got the chance is helping people trying to get back on their feet with interview prep.

  • Speaking of interviews, as a decision maker in hiring processes… we have been and will continue to make sure our interview slate has a wide array of voices. Developing relationships with educators and students to help coach our future talent pool, disseminating tools and knowledge that help people express themselves freely.

  • As a media member, being thoughtful in what I produce and how. To take the potential of what I create and how into account, thinking how it impacts others. 

  • Probably a good time to find some worthy causes to contribute to financially. Serialize some of my current ones like the Cleveland Food Bank and the United Way.

  • Extend the invitation to all my friends, but especially now my black friends, friends of other colors of the rainbow, and really, just anyone who wants to talk. Lots of faces I scroll past who I’ve bonded and created memories with. Ya know I miss ya, I’m just a bad reacher-outer. Please let me know if you’d like to reconnect.

  • Motherfucking VOTE. And not just for the top spot. Time to really engage in local government and FINALLY let them know what I REALLY think about current zoning propositions. Oh you guys are gonna get it now.

  • Keep reading. Keep listening.

It’s a modest list for now, and if it doesn’t seem like enough, I apologize. While emotions are high,  I don’t want this to be like New Year’s Resolutions, “I’m gonna lose weight, I’m going to save money, I’m going to quit smoking”. Like I said before, the words are and the goals are easy. Being constantly charged and emotionally raw is unsustainable. Emotional wind in our sails are great motivators, there will inevitably be some regression to the mean. I’ll probably make a lot of mistakes. Real change is going to  take some shovelling, and it’s not going to be as motivating and inspiring as it is right now, in this moment. It’s going to be typing, pointing, clicking, mailing, calling, boring-ass city hall meetings,  Let’s help each other make it a habit.  Help me grow it. Keep me accountable. Hope to see you out there soon.


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Chris Thomas Chris Thomas

Back On Track

Last time I talked about my journey through the wonderful world of long term disability. Nine months since I went down for the count, and ninety days after my spine was sliced up. I knew when the first surgeon refused surgery that whenever I was going to be ready to get back to work, it would be at the worst time. And I was right.

Last time I talked about my journey through the wonderful world of long term disability. Nine months since I went down for the count, and ninety days after my spine was sliced up. I knew when the first surgeon refused surgery that whenever I was going to be ready to get back to work, it would be at the worst time. And I was right. Back to work with four weeks until media day and 4.6 weeks until the home opener. In the middle of moving our offices back to and reopening an arena that has hundreds more displays,  100+ million more pixels including brand new unique immersive LED architecture. Throw a Cavs 50th season in the mix, a celebration and campaign that as an organization takes years to plan and execute. Perfect timing.

It may come as a shock, but no one else started doing my work for me. So projects that start in June aren’t rolling until September. Yikes. Lots of things, big things, and little time. On top of that, the surgeon put in place tough restrictions, including work hours. And I held them extremely strictly. For about 2 weeks before it all went flying out the window. 

Here’s the trick to doing 4 months work. Teamwork. Collaboration. Brainstorms. Green-light thinking. Storytelling. Inspirado. Take these amiable concepts and throw ‘em out the window. Not exactly, but usually more of an effort is made to fill up the idea bucket from a wider variety of sources before it’s poured over the director filter into the production funnel. Usually a couple of brainstorms, follow up wayfinding huddles, and a few blood oath ceremonies to seal our commitment to production. This time, I narrowly solicited our greater game ops and production staff individuals’ areas of expertise, and trusted their filters and decisions would get us where we needed to go. The physical process of making this stuff needed to start quickly, so as long as ideas were attainable without any obvious flaws, I rolled with it. 

In the end, the main culprits ended up doing business as usual, we just nixed some of the pomp and circumstance and cut to the chase. This time of year is always hectic, stressful, and consumes most of my waking life. Throwing that all on top of trying to figure out if I am even physically capable of working, like, at all, in any kind of capacity. Months before, SITTING was mind numbingly painful. So, to be frank, I didn’t have room in my life for running every up the flagpole, gaining group consensus, entertaining feedback, circling back, and revising. If I die soon after posting, keep in mind these shocking corporate confessions. 

At that point I’m honestly fairly frustrated and have a lot of internal conflict. I’m frustrated and resentful of the situation I’m returning to and the position it’s putting me in. I feel like I’m playing a little fast and loose with my newly attained, delicate health.  But there’s also a feeling of gratitude as without the job there’s no insurance, surgery, therapy, long term disability. There’s thankfulness that I still even have a job to come back to. Then anger at a health care system that forces such a troublesome dependency… My internal Bernie Sanders and Ayn Rand have frequent arguments.

To get my thoughts (and this blog) on the rails again, I focused on keeping it simple. Started with the look and feel. Luckily, Nick Prost and CGX mostly kept the look established in the previous season with some tweaks, so I did a similar remix to bring their design into the world of motion and time.

Most of the guts of the project are the same from the previous, except I simplified camera movement and, like the overall CGX design, moved away from the brushy elements and text. I didn’t output the same breadth of player elements and LED’s as in seasons passed, which are a nice touch, but take an additional 30+ hours of design and render time.

The pre-open projection moment was a Matty B concept, who introduced the LED torch concept. We dabbled with the idea of an interactive element to projection over the years and started down that path, but this was the first to get traction and make it on the show. I worked with animator Matt Zronek to build this cool atmospheric moment that builds to a focused attention moment on our main marketing and branding theme for the season. It also gave us the flexibility to be less heavy handed with the concept in the open.

The open idea was the simplest concept of the bunch. Since the 2018-2019 open, we renovated our studio and used other CapEx spending to make upgrades to cameras and lenses.  Basically, the thought process was we got a bunch of cool new lights…. with a bunch of cool color options and presets (Arri SkyPanels, some Quazars… “Light The Land” + lights = THEME!), new cameras (A7ii, C300), new lenses, a Ronin-M…. Let’s use them! 

Part of my restrictions was to stay off the ice, so that made the decision to shoot in the locker room easy. Which is better than waiting for practice to be over, then scrambling on to the ice to get your setup in place before the players start getting impatient. We were able to do a rough setup the night before, some time in the morning, and by the time the players were ready to come through, we had the atmosphere going and were able to grab 3 different looks in the 5 minutes max we had with each guy. In terms of direction, we went with eminently achievable, tried and true “look at the camera somewhat menacingly” angle. 

This was a week-of turn around, so I was trying to keep the demands on post low. Flashy, punchy lights, fades and cuts to dark black just give you a lot of inherent rhythm to work with that fit into a timeline easily and only need basic color adjustments. Give Kevin Libal a Ronin and an A7, turn him loose, you’ll get good stuff back. Nate Klein got a lot of great detail shots from the C300. Mark Zaremba craftily kept the shoot moving as we moved from look to look and station to station, helping us all look like pros.

Outside the open shoot, we setup a bubble hockey table that formed the basis of Power Playin’, a new series this season. Tim Long and Matt Zronek took the lead on making this station happen with our new project manager Kelsey Vorgert helping out and adding some set production skills to her repertoire.

The green screen room to media day veterans and legends Matty B and Matt Eck, with Myles Holt and Robert Weems shooting and producing, and as always a great job done collecting the back bone of in-arena content for the season.

There’s always an afterglow once opening weekend is over and accompanying sense of pride and accomplishment. The best part is the end result is these videos, which between frames contain for me memories of the times and people that made them. For the good and the bad, these videos and this work will have a significance to me far deeper than than the superficial content suggests.





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Chris Thomas Chris Thomas

To Hell and Back

EDITORS NOTE: Written in early March 2020 before quarantine, but funny how it came back around in a new way…

So my last post over a year and a half a go talks about how bad I am at maintaining this blog. The time between posts would suggest that is still the case. It is. But if you haven't checked in during that time, there is a reason other than being busy or being lazy.

EDITORS NOTE: Written in early March 2020 before quarantine, but funny how it came back around in a new way…

My last post over a year and a half a go talks about how bad I am at maintaining this blog. The time between posts would suggest that is still the case. It is. But if you haven't checked in during that time, there is a reason other than being busy or being lazy. After nearly a year and half of trying to treat chronic lower back pain, on Janaury 19th, 2019 I was taken to the ER after all the muscles along my sciatic nerve below waist seized and left me completely bed-ridden, was unable to sit, stand, or walk. This started 9 months of medical leave in which I tried to find out why this happened and how to fix it. Months of mostly lying in bed, therapy, surgery, more therapy and trying to catch up to the fast moving train that is my work environment long after I had to hop off.

One quick laminectomy, discectomy, and spinal fusion combo and I'm back at it! Sure, in between there was plenty of time to clack out a blog, but honestly, the whole ordeal sucked and anything I wrote would have had a lot of anger, frustration, fear, and anxiety. Not exactly the right stuff for a self-promotional tool such as this. Some heavy and interesting stuff for sure, but we're trying to keep things light here! I mean, I did organize a lot of my videos, re-uploaded everything to Vimeo, added more videos to the site, organized things a little better, and starting added the other credits in the videos other than my own, but I just didn't feel like pouring myself out on here with tales of woe and sorrow.

So yeah, lots of laying. Good opportunity to catch up on some movies and TV, but you can only watch so many mid-day episodes of Bar Rescue without getting a little bored. Though I wasn't able to lead Monsters production, I still kept myself busy and tried to contribute where I could. I did some late request, CR Night graphic type things to keep stuff off others' full plates, and I used our stock media sites’ libraries to whip up some random, fun game ops inventory...

created the game look elements for Monster's Moon Landing Night...

and remixed our game look to get ready for a play off run.

Before I went down for the count, I had some fun with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Night late December…

But eventually the season ended, the building changed its name from Quicken Loans Arena to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, the arena transformation project added new LED displays and millions of more pixels to make dance, and preparations to debut a completely face-lifted and modernized facility and efforts to get asses in their seats went on full-steam as I focused on getting surgery and habs both pre- and re-. Well... kinda. Doc gave 90 days post surgery, which put my full-time return date September 14th. Read this post<link to other post> to see why a month to prepare for the season as a less than ideal situation. Next blog, I'll share how I got 3 months worth of work done in 1. And hopefully now that the 2019-2020 season is coming to a close, I can hopefully better maintain the site without a season or life altering injuries to contend with (EDITORS NOTE MAY 2020: Or a viral pandemic). I didn't write much, but I did come up with plenty of possible features to share I hope someone out there enjoys! Farewell until then!

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Chris Thomas Chris Thomas

Get Your Pump On

When I started at The Q, I felt I kind of sucked at open videos and pump videos, but in Akron, they were kind of the same thing. Just kind of highlight videos. Over the years I was able to take on now what I consider opens and have made some strides. While I was doing that, my pump game never really developed. So this year I thought I’d work on that a bit…

When I started at The Q, I felt I kind of sucked at open videos and pump videos, but in Akron, they were kind of the same thing. Just kind of highlight videos. Over the years I was able to take on now what I consider opens and have made some strides. While I was doing that, my pump game never really developed. So this year I thought I’d work on that a bit.

Now, a lot of pumps are serious and motivational. Those are not my kind of pumps. You want those, you go to my boy Kevin Libal. I do the weird shit.

Exhibit A: The Pencil Case Pump

I was scrolling through Reddit one day last week when I saw this short video going around. Probably an attempt at viral marketing for a new pencil case product, but hell… the damn thing’s screaming. That’s about 90% of game ops is telling people to scream. It made sense to make it into something. Especially because of that song. Had to track it down to get better audio, then I just accentuated the beats and filled the rest of the screen to make it work on our big ass Humongotron. The letters flying out aren’t perfect, but I could also argue the fact they’re flying by so fast fits the bombast of the lyrical performance. I like this type of stuff where you can see something current, make some time to add on to it in a way that fits the show, and bring something fresh in to it. This premiered right before overtime in a wild game and I think this’ll become a go-to, hopefully for all Q teams.

To the other side of the spectrum from New and Current, “Calm Like a Pump” was inspired skipping around randomly on Spotify. Exhibit B (I mean, used the exhibit motif earlier, so it feels weird to not come back to it):

I always enjoyed the bass line, and the whiplash shift into the rest of the song works great for the pump genre of “Lull Into Silence”. Making people read also quiets them up pretty quick. The quiet works well as a signpost for the crowd that something different is about to happen, especially after whatever wackiness we were up to earlier in the timeout.

While relatively simple, there were some tricky aspects to this. De La Rocha’s use of the word “funk” throughout Rage’s track made me want to avoid it. Despite the popularity of “Uptown Funk”, I try to stay away from it in-arena because, uh, ya know… it sounds like “fuck”. So I tried to find an instrumental. But there isn’t a legit one, there’s panned or Audition-tricked version that I use in the back end. Which is why the drums sound like ass. Because I was also being sensitive about the recent mail-bombings, so a song that yells “bomb” a lot seemed like a bad idea. Back what I was trying to say, even those versions during the opening bass line have whispery repetition of “bring the funk back.” So I tried to find bassists covering it on YouTube, because this is such primo “Look What I Can Play” line for kids learning their instrument. And there were plenty. But they all did it along with original track. Except for one stringy, shirtless teen aged boy I found pages deep. I mean, usually when I’m watching that sort of thing, I’m good with whatever’s on the front page, finish in a few minutes, and then fall asleep. And, hey! He recorded it clean! It was performed…. okayly! But I had to “tune” his bass for him and clean up his tempo, along with helping the low end on his crispy tone.

Other than that, a little typing, zippin’ that star around, toss some echo on it, change the background color e’ry now n’ again, then slather grunge all over everything and screw around with leaks, blend modes and adjustment layers. That’s a basic ingredient list for a noise graphic. It’s like Mexican food. Tortillas, meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato, beans, peppers, sauce. That’s basically every dish. The specifics make the difference between tacos, burritos, and chimichangas. Hard to mess up, too.

These ain’t technical masterpieces, but the more of this kind of stuff you can keep in your inventory, the better. There’s a lot of games, a lot of time outs, and even if not for the fans, you don’t want to watch the same four videos over and over again. Keep building that bench of content. Opens are cool and all, but they’re only 1-2 minutes of the show. It’s these videos the keep the energy up and sustain a whole game.

I got all kinds of weird ideas this summer, some simple like this, some more involved. More to share soon.

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Their Ideas Are The Best

The biggest challenges in doing player videos are having them trust you to, at the minimum, not make them look bad, and making them care. There’s a lot of folks with a lot of ideas on what words and actions we ask these people to have recorded, and often times put on the internet forever. And a high percentage of these things these are things these fellas don’t have much interest or enthusiasm in saying or doing…

The biggest challenges in doing player videos are having them trust you to, at the minimum, not make them look bad, and making them care. There’s a lot of folks with a lot of ideas on what words and actions we ask these people to have recorded, and often times put on the internet forever. And a high percentage of these things these are things these fellas don’t have much interest or enthusiasm in saying or doing. And the feeling is mostly mutual. It’s often perfunctory. It’s part of the gig for them and for us. They’re mostly focused on being good at their job, and the rest is a distraction. But unfortunately for them, there’s a lot of marketing and content beasts that need to be fed.

The stiff, un-enthused player in a local commercial with equally awkward production quality is a common trope that’s so tropey even the lampshading of it is a trope. But at least with a local car dealer commercial, there’s a check that comes with it. Even though we’re the in-house team and we’re trying to make them as look as best as possible, it’s asking a lot from these guys. You’re asking non-trained performance talent to be reflective and nostalgic one moment, chill and responsive the next, and then follow that up with feats of paragraph memorization with the comedic chops and timing of seasoned improvisers. And do this dance in 12 minutes for a season’s worth of videos. Even in these strained conditions, the resulting content is most demanded by our bosses and the most viewed and positively responded to by our fans.

So when a player comes to us with something along the lines of “I have an idea,” it is an equally rare and joyous event. Rare because even if you have the right personality, it’s outside their job description, and their job takes up a lot of time and is physically draining. Their average day is most people’s week of workouts. It’s joyous because the player has obvious buy-in and also a better sense of control of things. Instead of asking them to do things that are way outside of their personality and skill set, the performance is more natural and sincere. Plus, you become temporary teammates for the project, and there’s something about an athlete’s teammate instinct and drive to win that fits in well on a set. As opposed to us saying “Here’s the stuff we need to extract from you,” and them in “Get this over with and let me be on my way” mode.

We recently had such a pleasure with the Monsters’ Zac Dalpe. Zac knows Monsters play-by-play announcer Tony Brown plays guitar and Zac himself has performed at a Monsters event. They get to talking early in training camp about music. That turns into a “We should do something,”and during the media day they toss the idea out to me, and I’m in. I have to give it a little support push because of the way our workload is in early October, but know it’s worth it because not only are the videos the most popular among viewers and bosses, but they often turn out to be my favorite videos, too.

I’m pretty excited to get this thing done and do it well. I mentioned earlier about the players trusting you to make them not look bad, I hope if we do this right, word gets around that if they work with us they’re in good hands, so if we come around asking for something they know they’ll be all right.

So of course the day of the shoot is a Murphy’s Law day. Everything went wrong. Just 2 people on this shoot, me and Mark Zaremba. Our department vehicle got ganked out from under us, so we had to bring all our equipment in a sedan. I brought a mixer that we were gonna run right into the camera, but the power supply was busted. So, our shoot goes from 4 mics down to 2. And the Tascam recorder has 2 inputs. But the XLR output on boom pole is busted. Well, luckily we brought extra wireless kits! We’ll put the butt right on the mic! But the receivers output XLR was missing. At least it had 1/16” output that could convert to 1/4”, and it’s got both inputs! Then it turned out the Tascam could only do one kind of input… either the XLR’s or the line in, but not both. And, oh yeah, for this audio focused shoot we forgot headphones. Personal gripe, I have an old man back, and the furthest path from equipment to where it had to go is of course the route we had to take. Final bitch, the set isn’t the most picturesque place I’ve ever been either. Shit. So how we ended up doing it is Tony had a personal recorder. We put one mic into each and hoped for the best, One camera was just set wide and rolling non-stop will Zambo tried listening to two different audio devices at once while I tried to make 2 cameras look like 3. Despite the challenges, we wound up with an interview that comes from a real personal place and a song performance that reflects that.

BORING TECHNICAL SPECIFICS FOR THE NICHE AUDIENCE OF THE NICHE AUDIENCE:

Audio was the most important ingredient on this shoot, which makes the style of the technical issues we had that much more frustrating. We lav’d up Zac so he sounded good, and his voice really sat on top of his track allowing me to EQ and treat the vocals a little bit. The boom we pointed at Tony, and gives the “wide” track a sense of space while not being too muddy, allowing Tony’s lead playing to cut through juuuusssst enough. There was a slight one-frame drift somewhere in the middle that sounded like intentional layering and it sounded kind of all right.

The cameras used were two Canon 5D Mark III’sm Canon glass. Wide shot: 50mm. Close up/roaming shots on a 70-200mm. We only did two takes, and I only made 2 cuts to comp the audio track. And I stayed true visually to both takes. There’s only one shot that is not in sync with the video’s audio take. It’s pretty obvious if you break down the physical logistics of the shoot, but it matches really well and not obvious to the casual viewer.

/END BORING SPECIFICS

My first experience with a player-born idea was when I was with Aeros pitcher Cole Cook, and it turned into a nice little series. The best iteration was with Justin Toole. Cole had a great base idea, he sent the word through his boy Cory O’Connor, and this thing went from text, to production, to final product in 12 hours. We had some time before a Saturday game, I grabbed a mic and a camera, met these guys on the field and made it happen.

We just picked a place to start, and we just improvised our way shot-to-shot until the end. Even the final DH joke was an after thought we were walking off the field after we thought we wrapped. It was a blast to do and I still have fun watching it. After moving on from baseball, Cole has since worked in the entertainment biz, and that talent runs in his family. This was the closest thing in my professional career to the spirit of my friends and I making videos in high school for the hell it.

BURYING THE LEDE

Putting my cards on the table here… at this point in this blog and website’s history, this is practice. I’m trying to get reps curating content that promotes my knowledge and expertise of in-house creative and live show production for professional sports teams. And I’m in the midst of recognizing a mistake. So, I’m about to transition into a video I made with current MLB All-Star Francisco Lindor. This sites’s main purpose is to bolster my credibility as a sports video person, right? And I’m waiting nearly 1,500 words to introduce my callabo with a current top-tier talent and MVP candidate?

But yeah, like Cole, Francisco reached out. He got in touch through Adam Liberman, the Ducks PR guy. At the time, Francisco was the #1 prospect in the organization and one of the tops in the MLB. The hype was huge! Yeah, it’s a minor league team and these guys are just passing through, So the general rule is to avoid marketing players, But when you got a Lindor, you got to strike while the iron is hot.

Ronnie Rodriguez (currently with the Tigers) got in on the act, RubberDucks manager at the time Dave Wallace was cool with a video where the idea is these guys are skipping work to goof off. We shot the part in the manager’s office And the cool thing about this video was Francisco brought his… either nephew or cousin. It’s been a while, can’t remember. So we scrapped the script, and rewrote it with him as the star. It was very cool for these guys to let the kid be the star, as well diminish themselves and their abilities for the sake of the joke.

And they’re cool with it because they sparked the idea, they had input, and they had approval. They were more open to direction and suggestion because we were working on the same level. And because of that, we had a good time shooting, and created fun, unique content that helped showcase these guys and their personalities, which is exactly what we set out to do.



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A New Season Begins

Being bad at updating in August was slightly unexpected, but as anyone who works in a basketball/hockey arena can tell you (probably most of your social circle), September is where the action is. All the shit you talk about getting things done in June, July, and August- September is when you have to actually make things happen.

Over the summer, I had a little more of this thing called “time” than I usually have. I actually took vacation days. Out of character stuff. I had this “time” and got all sorts of ideas. Updating and maintaining a website, regularly blogging… Seems silly in hindsight. Being bad at updating in August was slightly unexpected, but as anyone who works in a basketball/hockey arena can tell you (probably most of your social circle), September is where the action is. All the shit you talk about getting things done in June, July, and August- September is when you have to actually make things happen.

And how I tried, people. How I tried. As your tight social network of basketball/hockey arena insiders have probably informed you, you never have the time you think you have, and September is a bitch. But by hell or high water, the home opener is coming October 5th.

And there’s a lot to get done. And I try to get as much as I can get done in August. I gave myself a big plate. The final in-arena look and feel, which extends to player assets, matchup assets, etc. You try to stay enough ahead of so that you can be a little in the clear when the turn of the calendar happens. October 1st is our game ops day and opening night is the 5th. From Monday to Friday, you have to get most of your player assets for the year and get them turned around in a form that’s acceptable.

Based on Nick Prost’s look and feel assets and a motion graphics kit prepared from those assets by Matt Zronek and myself. I’m reasonably satisfied with this effort. Plenty to tweak, but to design for 15 different in-arena sign dimensions, 12 teams, and 25 players, spit out about 400 exported deliverable files with enough time to check and fix major mistakes is a pretty daunting task. I try to find the balance between complexity but keeping render time reasonable. Oh, and you’re doing that while also producing, shooting, editing, animating, and sound editing the main video centerpiece of the season, the show open.

The good thing about working on everything at the same time is creating consistency. When you’re futzin’ around and try something in one place, if it clicks, it clicks every where else throughout the body. Which is quite helpful with the tight turn around between shoot and final open video, every moment you can save is crucial. Especially because sometimes you want to do things like eat, sleep, and just not work.

But it’s a big video that’s gotta get done. And this one is pretty okay in my book. The budget is silly low, and I didn’t have what I hoped for lighting wise. I couldn’t source another large green screen so we shot it on blue which added a lot of effort to get a solid key. You have an hour to shoot what you need. And visual effects and animating just take an ass-load of tedious time. But cohorts Mark Zaremba and Josh Sabo put together a incredibly strong track list to choose from, and Papa Roach’s “Born For Greatness” was a clear favorite. And yeah, we were all kind surprised about that Papa Roach. And as many times I’ve had to hear it over the last month, I don’t hate it yet. We were able to decide on a song quicker than I’ve ever had, and I was able to get the highlights cut and visuals timed out ahead of the shoot. While look and feel element designs ate in to what I hoped to devote to the open, I was still able to keep in front of it.

What I’m satisfied with is that given all the constraints, I mostly did what I set out to do with the video. Of course, I’m not so satisfied that I’m not gonna sink a bunch of hours into improving it for November and on. But the most satisfying thing is making it out the other end of another opening weekend, set up for what is hopefully another successful season entertaining crowds at The Q.

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August Quickly Proves Me Bad At Maintaining A Blog

August is a weird month with hockey and basketball looming. It’s late in the summer, you’re trying get things rolling, but the tough part is you have to figure out what those things even are while a revolving door of key players (self included) try to soak up the final days of freedom.

August is a weird month with hockey and basketball looming. It’s late in the summer, you’re trying get things rolling, but the tough part is you have to figure out what those things even are while a revolving door of key players (self included) try to soak up the final days of freedom. Then September hits and things get real.

Whatever the sport, the month before opening night you’re sprinting a marathon. So the month before two opening nights is sprinting a marathon while juggling. But the month before that month is sneakily time consuming. For every hour put in during September, there’s probably an hour of August planning behind it.

It’s one of my favorite months of the season though. Partly because the true reality of the hike ahead hasn’t quite set in yet, but mostly because the process of coming up with ideas with a swell group of people is fun. I get to hang out, crack wise, and work with people I like to make stuff that people enjoy.

It is a still a pretty bad time to start a personal project that needs regular tending. I don’t get the luxury of a bunch of minds in a room brainstorming for me on this one. But an effort is being made.

In the spirit of the posts earlier sentiments about the crew I work with, a high priority here is creating a credits page for all projects. Before I put a concerted effort to get actual eyeballs here, it’s only proper that folks who made it happen with me get those eyeballs, too.

The transition from a half-assed portfolio to a living site is creepin’ and maybe someday it can even turn into something entertaining, evening.

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Well, I pay for this website…

Hey reader person. Welcome to Chris Thomas | Media, and my blog specifically. So, why does this site and blog exist? The bad answer is I had to buy a domain and hosting for college courses and I kept paying the invoices. Might as well get some mileage out of it instead of paying for an unused husk of a website for years on end. A better answer is…

Hey reader person. Welcome to Chris Thomas | Media, and my blog specifically. So, why does this site and blog exist? The bad answer is I had to buy a domain and hosting for college courses and I kept paying the invoices. Might as well get some mileage out of it instead of paying for an unused husk of a website for years on end. A better answer is I’m not good at explaining what I do to people, so maybe showing them is easier. The site is mostly a portfolio, but I’ll also share things I see across sports that I think are cool, write about projects I’ve worked on, or whatever comes to mind relating to sports, video production, and game presentation.

There’s lots of work to do here. Videos to add, credits to give, info to update, tags and metadata to apply. Check back for progress! Thanks for reading, and I hope you find something of interest here.

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CT | MEDIA Blog

Keep up to date on what I'm working on, what I see around sports and entertainment, and whatever else comes along.