TraceTV – Film – Music – Social Media

Hav­ing worked in “tra­di­tional” media (tele­vi­sion) for more than 20 years, I have been astounded at the growth of social media and it’s impact on how we do busi­ness as free­lance media pro­fes­sion­als. It’s also appar­ent to me that many of my col­leagues in tele­vi­sion and music pro­duc­tion are not tak­ing part in this rev­o­lu­tion, often because of a lack of under­stand­ing of how it all works.
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“Skat­ing away on the thin ice of the new day…” — Ian Ander­son, Jethro Tull

Greet­ings Friends,
I have been work­ing for some time to upgrade our blog site. Now I am excited to launch: TraceTV — Film — Music — Social Media at TraceTV.tv I hope you’ll visit soon.
At the start up, I am re-posting some of the most pop­u­lar items from our pre­vi­ous wordpress.com blog, and I invite you to take a spin around the site, kick the tires and give me some feed­back. It is def­i­nitely a work in progress.
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South Texas Soul: The San Anto­nio Sound – Augie Mey­ers, Doug Sahm and the his­tory and influ­ence of South Texas on pop­u­lar music of today. Doc­u­men­tary film­maker Tracy Ready exam­ines the influ­ence of Ger­man, Pol­ish and Irish immi­grants in South Texas on pop­u­lar music styles includ­ing Coun­try, Tejano, Blues and Rock and Roll, from a unique perspective.

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Orig­i­nally posted on Feb. 16, 2009: The Aquar­ium Con­cept
If you like these ideas please fol­low The Aquar­ium Con­cept on Twit­ter
This dude has one awe­some “real” aquarium »

The Aquar­ium Concept.

Pretty sight, isn’t it? It’s not mine, in fact, I have never had suc­cess tak­ing care of trop­i­cal fish. It’s just not my “thing”, even though I enjoy scenes like this. I do have an “aquar­ium” of sorts, but it has no glass, rock or water, only thoughts and dreams. My aquar­ium was a total mess for a long time, until I came to terms with this:

In order for things to flour­ish, they must have a good envi­ron­ment. This goes for peo­ple and fish and ideas too. You can have an aquar­ium, with some beau­ti­ful young fish but if you don’t take care of them (as I found out at age 10) soon algae grows in the tank, the fish start look­ing sickly, and then die off. Sounds sim­ple, and it is, but look­ing at your life and your goals this way takes a lit­tle prac­tice. It’s the same with ideas, projects, art, poetry, music, film, video, job search, fam­ily rela­tions; what­ever the pas­sion, the aquar­ium con­cept holds true.
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Austin, Texas
March 4, 2009


An over­cast sky gave way to a beau­ti­ful day in Austin as hun­dreds of peo­ple in the mov­ing image indus­tries (film, video, gam­ing) con­verged on the Texas State Capi­tol show­ing sup­port for leg­is­la­tion which, if passed, will help repair the severely dam­aged indus­try in our state. It was an eye-opening expe­ri­ence for me, a Direc­tor of Pho­tog­ra­phy, as I spend most of my time work­ing on small crew pro­duc­tions, with lit­tle inter­ac­tion with oth­ers in my indus­try. So, to be on the steps of the Capi­tol with a nice crowd who all have sim­i­lar inter­ests helped me under­stand the scope of the indus­try and how each of us play a part in a vital eco­nomic engine of the state.
This is an impor­tant cause, which has rip­ple effects to a mul­ti­tude of sup­port busi­nesses, includ­ing hotels, restau­rants, rental car com­pa­nies, and on and on. Sta­tis­tics show that we have lost more than $500 mil­lion in rev­enue and more than 7000 jobs across the state in recent years. Why? Because other states, most notably Louisiana and New Mex­ico, insti­tuted major tax incen­tives to lure big bud­get projects to their states, and it has worked. Many of our fel­low Tex­ans have had to move out of state or com­mute back and forth to these neigh­bor­ing states in order to stay in busi­ness. Given our long his­tory with film pro­duc­tion in Texas, this is a cry­ing shame.
See Films Shot in Texas since 1910

The Texas Motion Pic­ture Alliance is a statewide grass roots orga­ni­za­tion that I am proud to be a part of, and it is only through their tire­less efforts that this leg­is­la­tion exists and has a chance at revers­ing the trend of jobs and rev­enue related to mov­ing image indus­tries shift­ing to other states.

This is an effort which should con­cern ALL Tex­ans, not just those of us work­ing directly in the indus­try, because tele­vi­sion, film and gam­ing pro­duc­tion in the state brings more jobs in var­i­ous related indus­tries, and because we at one time were con­sid­ered “the third coast” for film pro­duc­tion, and we have seen it seep away. There are many projects where Texas would be the first choice for pro­duc­tion, because of the great loca­tions avail­able, and well trained, well equipped crews, but we are los­ing out because of the incen­tives offered by our neigh­bor­ing states, and oth­ers around the coun­try. Once this busi­ness is com­pletely gone, it will be hard to bring it back.
Please sup­port HB 873 and SB 605. It’s impor­tant to all of us.

Get involved! Join Texas Motion Pic­ture Alliance
Read the story from Asso­ci­ated Press

From Don Stokes, Pres­i­dent of Texas Motion Pic­ture Alliance:

“Our lob­by­ing effort is a com­mu­nity affair. It will take the efforts of all of us in the indus­try to make the enhanced incen­tive pro­gram a real­ity. Lobby Day 2009 was a phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess and cer­tainly raised indus­try aware­ness among the leg­is­la­tors. It is my honor as Pres­i­dent of TXMPA to be part of this immense team.

We par­tic­i­pated in the ini­tial hear­ing on HB 873 on Wednes­day, March 4 dur­ing our Lobby Day efforts. The wit­nesses that spoke on our behalf did so pas­sion­ately and from the heart. Their tes­ti­monies spoke to the prob­lems fac­ing our indus­try in Texas and to the solu­tions for bring the busi­ness back. The com­mit­tee mem­bers lis­tened and I believe under­stood our mes­sage. I think we will make it out of com­mit­tee and look for­ward to the place­ment of our bill on the House Cal­en­dar. At this junc­ture I feel good about our leg­is­la­tion pass­ing but I know there will be chal­lenges ahead espe­cially on the appro­pri­a­tion front.

I would like to thank every­one for their efforts. With­out all of you we wouldn’t stand a chance.

Don Stokes
Pres­i­dent TXMPA

From David Friedman:

“Through­out TXMPA Lobby Day 2009, it became evi­dent that leg­is­la­tors from across Texas were gain­ing a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how the mov­ing pic­ture indus­try impacts the econ­omy. Many leg­is­la­tors were already onboard; whereas, some leg­is­la­tors were early in their under­stand­ing. The force of every­one pulling in the same direc­tion, start­ing with Gov­er­nor Rick Perry and the 700+ con­stituents at the Capi­tol, was felt by all the leg­is­la­tors. It was hard to miss on the Sen­ate floor, the House floor, and on the front lawn of the Capi­tol. It was a great day for the state of Texas and our econ­omy will be bet­ter off for it. The bot­tom line; is, cre­at­ing and retain­ing jobs in Texas. Our col­lec­tive efforts on TXMPA Lobby Day 2009 con­tributed to the bot­tom line in a sig­nif­i­cant way. Many thanks to all who attended in per­son and to those that were there with us in spirit.”

David S. Fried­man, TXMPA, North Texas Regional Representative

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Tracy Ready is an inde­pen­dent Writer / Pro­ducer / Direc­tor of Pho­tog­ra­phy based in Dal­las, Texas
See: www.tracetv.tv

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