Sweedish film director Ingmar Bergman died two years ago. He was one of my favorite film directors, and I wrote this in my old blog the next day (although I’ve updated it for 2009).
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The world of movies lost a great one, as Ingmar Bergman died yesterday.
Bergman has a special place in my heart, as he was the director that showed me how film can really be art. The quality of his work is stunning, to say the least.
I don’t want to sound like a film snob – I like prettymuch all types of movies. I’m a fan of arthouse stuff, and I also like a summer popcorn movie as much as the next guy. But there is a profound difference in “Transformers 2” (and similar) and a film like Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”.
With the summer popcorn movie (or any mainstream film), you may remember a line of witty dialog, maybe a character or two, or perhaps an action scene. You leave the theater and say “wow, that was really good”. And then you go on. Which is great – I love being entertained by a fun movie. I just bought Watchmen on BluRay the other day – it’s just a seriously ”fun” movie.
But watching something like The Seventh Seal (or The Virgin Spring, or Wild Strawberries, to name two other Bergman classics) is different. I believe films like this actually enrich your life and make you a more complete person. You come out not remembering one particular “cool” scene (although Max Von Sydow playing chess with Death in The Seventh Seal is a pretty famous scene), but with a wonderful feeling… you know you saw something profound and great, but you can’t quite put your finger on what makes it so great. I’ve never seen the real Mona Lisa, but I’m told the effect is similar.
If anyone hasn’t seen a Bergman film (or any “great” cinema for that matter) and wants to explore a little, let me give you one piece of advice that will help: carve yourself out some time to do such. You can’t watch a movie like The Seventh Seal with interruptions from kids or life or whatnot. You just can’t. You need to sit still for two hours in the dark and really watch it. And don’t expect to be “entertained” by it like you would be with some action movie, crime story, or relationship drama.
You’d be surprised how many times I’m asked to write for a new or semi-new website, and the website owner really doesn’t have a solid grasp on what he or she wants the website to do.
Oh, they know what they want the end result to be (sell products, contact for services, etc.) But they don’t know the really important factors in getting to that point.
A website is like a new business – before going into business, you need to know who your customers are going to be, where they are coming from, etc. With that in mind, here are four questions every website owner should be able to clearly answer:
1) Who will be coming to your site?
2) How/Where did they get your web address?
3) Why did they come to your site?
4) What do you want from them once they get to your site?
It’s the classic “who, what, where, how, why” (just not quite in that order). But being able to answer these four will go a long way towards the success of your website.
Someone asked me about this today, so I thought I’d pass it on:
When you are writing numbers, generally one thru ten are spelled out. The rest aren’t. So we spell “seven”, but not 17.
I break this rule often, though (it’s not really a rule, but more of a handshake agreement.) Why do I break it? Because “we handle any size job, from 3 pages to 300″ catches the eye better than “we handle any size job, from three pages to 300″ (although the second one actually looks more professional when reading – so it’s really about what you are after – scan-ability, or a professional read.)
If you are a little slow in your business right now, you aren’t alone. July is easily my slowest month of the year, especially in terms of “new” contacts and such. Just too many people in that “summer vacation” mentality.
In fact, it affects posting here too, as that’s all I have to say today
Ok, this too – we discussed this some at the small business forums. We’d be delighted for anyone to join us – a very useful forum it is.
Happy Birthday America, and happy B-day to me, too (well, I’m today, July 3 )
Anyway, in the spirit of the time of year, here’s a movie review that fits very nicely. By the way, all movies I’ll review (now and in the future – I plan to talk about movies a bit more, as I’m a real “Cinema” buff) are available on DVD.
1776
If one looks at movies as a magical multi-hour escape from reality, then the musical genre ranks near the top of the list. I mean, what could be more escapist and fantastic as ordinary people bursting into song and dance as they interact? The musical has been a big part of film history, with Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and even street gangs singing and dancing their way through the rain, on ceilings, and in almost any other imaginable scenario. It seems nothing was too ludicrous to put to music. But even knowing how full-blown and over-the-top musicals are, one could still find the concept of a musical starring the Founding Fathers a bit silly. If I didn’t like this movieso much, I’d probably join in and laugh at it, too.
The movie I refer to is 1776, and it is indeed a musical about the Second Continental Congress, which for those of you who failed history, convened in 1775-1776 and formally created America. The movie was adapted from the play of the same name, and indeed features many of the same actors who starred in the Broadway production. For those of you who are thinking a movie with a singing and dancing Ben Franklin sounds like a terrible idea, let me dispel that notion right away – as silly as it may sound, 1776 is a first-rate musical, and one of my favorite movies of all time (I have about 800 “favorite” movies). But really, I love the film, I watch it yearly (right around July 4th, of course), and I always find it fresh and fun. I have recommended it to many people – and not one person has come away disappointed.
1776 tells a story most Americans don’t really know – how the Declaration of Independence came about. Oh sure, we all know the founding fathers got together in Philadelphia and declared independence, but most people don’t know much more than that. There are many familiar names in this movie – Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, etc etc, but how many people know Dickenson? Or Hopkins? Or how important they were?
1776 shows us the whole story, in an over-the-top manner that is both fun and surprisingly accurate (well, as accurate as a musical can be.) I’m a big fan of the revolutionary period, and I can only find a few minor things to nitpick about in this movie (such as the fact that they all didn’t sign it on July 4, etc). But for the most part, the “big picture” view of the events and congressional arguments depicted prettymuch happened. What I’m saying is, you can learn something watching this movie.
And argue these men do. If you think our present congress is gridlocked, wait until you see “obnoxious and disliked” John Adams (brilliantly played by William Daniels) and John Dickenson go at it. Or Ben Franklin lecture Edward Rutledge. Trying to keep peace is Congress president John Hancock, while Thomas Jefferson just wants to get the damn Declaration written so he can go see his wife. The Declaration did not come about easily.
These are famous men, and playing them requires some degree of acting skill. I’m stunned that nobody in this film got a nomination for any acting Oscar, as many of the portrayals are really well done (especially Daniels as Adams… hey, did you know he was the voice of KITT in the 80′s version of Knight Rider?)
Also depicted very well is the famous “Dearest Friend” correspondence between Adams and his wife Abigail. Taking many of the words/feelings right from their letters, the two are presented talking to each other while not really being together in a physical sense – it’s cleverly done. The film also uses a noted “play” prop in the huge calendar that depicts the date. When it needs to be tomorrow, someone comes in and rips the date off, and it’s tomorrow (err.. today?) These small elements translated very well to the screen.
I must mention the songs themselves, as they are really memorable, and jump right out at you. From the boisterous opening number “Sit Down, John” to Adams and Abigail doing “Piddle Twiddle and Resolve” to the hilarious “But Mr. Adams”, featuring Adams, Jefferson and Franklin prancing their way to conning someone (Jefferson) into writing the historic document, the songs are amongst the most “clever” I have seen in a musical (whew – that was a long sentence.) In fact, the actors clearly have fun with the songs, occasionally breaking form and chastising the singers for singing. Very funny.
1776 is a wonderful way to spend a few hours and learn a little bit about American history as well. It’s fun, it’s fairly factual, and it depicts the colonial period very well. Highly recommended, whether you think you’ll like a musical or not.
I was having a discussion the other day on the Small Business Forum, and the topic was “landing pages”. One member seemed a bit confused as to what a landing page was and why one would need one. I posted the following as a reply, and I think it’s a succinct enough description to include here in the blog (the guy’s name was Fred, which is why it’s addressed to Fred).
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Look at it this way, Fred… say you’re a plumber. You have a ten page website. A few of those pages are for individual services (one for water heaters, one for remodels, one for new construction, etc)
Your home page, obviously, gives the birds-eye view of your business. The navigation bar will have links, and maybe the “services” link has a javascript flyout that shows the individual pages, etc. And maybe even your homepage copy has a bulleted list to a few of the services
Fairly normal so far, right? Despite that I used “plumbing” in my example, I’m really describing millions of business websites.
Now, say you run a google ad for water heaters. Instead of sending those clicks to your home page, why not send them to your water heater services page? And tweak the copy ever so slightly to “welcome” people as if this is the first page they are seeing (which to many, it now might be)
THAT’S now considered a “landing page”.
In other words, because you control the google ad and where the click ends up, why not send the people interested in water heaters to a water heaters page, and send the remodel people to the remodel page, etc etc? It falls right into the “solve the problem people came with” quite nicely.
When landing pages are discussed, the conversation is almost always talking about PPC, e-mail, or some other type of “direct” advertising. Because it’s very easy (and fast) to control who clicks. With organic, it’s nowhere near as timely – you might have to wait a year, making it impractical for testing products, strategies, etc. This isn’t to say you can’t tweak pages to welcome organic traffic, but it’s MUCH more scattershot, and usually not implied whenever landing pages are discussed in the context they usually are.
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Dan Furman at LinkedIn