Bill Cammack

In response to The Lab Episode 02: American Pimp Randolfe wrote:

Now, this was really entertaining and very cool. I’ve always been fascinated by the world of prostitution.

Thanks. :)

Initially, I didn’t think the world of prostitution was interesting at all. It’s just not sporting… paying someone to have sex with you. It’s like how when you were a kid, in order to get candy that you liked, you had to wait for your parents to buy it for you and then you got it in the rations they allowed. Later in life, you have your own money, so you can afford to buy as much of that same candy as you want, whenever you want. The candy’s just as good, but there’s… I suppose “wonder” missing from the situation. It’s not a surprise that you’re getting it. You planned it, you went out and bought it. Same thing as buying chicks. *yawn*

Another problem with prostitution is that it takes YOU out of the game. If anybody can pay this chick do do what she does, you’ve accomplished nothing by paying her except guaranteeing that you get whatever service(s) she provides. That’s completely lame compared to getting out there and seeing what you can do. Same thing with strip clubs. Lame. Why go to a location where you can give the girls money, but not (legally) mess with them… instead of going to a regular bar or something and meeting a girl that you can do whatever you want with for free? I know the draw of the strip club is that the women are supposed to have fantastic bodies, but if you live somewhere like NYC, it’s just a numbers game. There’ll be another fantastic body coming down the street in about five minutes, depending on where you’re standing or what establishment you entered.

What became interesting to me about the situation was the “why” involved. I wanted to know WHY a chick would give her money to a pimp. I mean, I know WHY chicks “ho”… because they can make more money than they could with whatever skills they learned in school, or by NOT going to school. As long as she’s having sex with random guys anyway, she may as well get paid for it. What I didn’t understand was what was in it for the ho to give her money to a pimp, who seems to be doing nothing but shopping for himself, or misappropriating the funds to his benefit, as Brainy so properly explains. The pivotal statement about that is the part where the guy says “doctors need nurses, so hoes need pimps”. Once you realize that the pimp isn’t the leader, but rather the assistant… things start making perfect sense.

Personally, I have an unusual resume in this area. I believe I am one of the few men alive who has been a prostitute, a john and a madam at different times in my life.

That appears to me to be a relatively unique collection of titles, being that they require different motivations. It’s not tough to be a john, though. Just about everybody’s a john at one point or another, purely by definition. Everybody that’s ever bought a chick a drink with the intention of having sex with her is a john. He’s paid for sex, whether he got it or not. Everybody that took chicks out or spent any money or resources on them with the intention of eventually (and hopefully sooner rather than later) having sex with them is a john. Everybody that married a woman in order to (attempt to) lock her down from having sex with other guys is a john.

It’s tough to be a pimp (madam, as you describe it) for most guys, because nobody wants to go out with a ho. Nobody wants to date a ho. They want them around when it’s time to have sex, but that’s about it. In order to be a pimp, you’d have to accept that your girlfriend is going to be having sex with other guys….. which completely defeats the purpose of calling her your girlfriend in the first place, so cognitive dissonance usually screws that one up.

I traveled the world for four decades, off and on, with a Woodrow Wilson Scholar who spoke seven languages, was brilliant and a chronic alcoholic. We spent an inordinate amount of time drinking in Red Light Districts.

He was exclusively homosexual but loved talking to the girls, barmen, cab-drivers and patrons about their lives. I was a “situational bisexual” who’d setlle for a real girl if a feminine male couldn’t be found.

YIKES! hahaha You remind me of the discussions where people like to claim that men that have sex (intentionally) with men in jail aren’t homosexuals… BECAUSE… there weren’t any women around! HAHAHAHAHA

You understand how women came to be deemed “property” when a woman in Brazil gives you a card with her home address on it and asks you to come visit her in the afternoon (after you’ve screwed for money) because she is looking for “any man” to support her and rescue her from the life.

Well, I mean, it wasn’t until August, 1920, according to that women were allowed to vote in all states of the USA. , Page 4, “Most states adopted the English common law system which provided that a husband and wife were one person, and the one was the husband. All personal property owned or acquired by the wife became the property of the husband, and he had the absolute right to control all real property owned by the wife”. There’s tons more stuff that I don’t feel like finding right now that indicate that seeing women as NOT property in patriarchal societies such as ours is a relatively new concept.

The point being that without the ability to vote and make laws that would benefit them and without the ability to get jobs that guys just wouldn’t let them have, there’s no way a woman could own property. If she can’t own property, the only way she’s going to get it is if she marries someone, and then he leaves it to her in his will. Even under those circumstances, if she got married again, by law, her husband would have absorbed whatever she had gained from the previous marriage. There was no way for a woman to ‘get ahead’ at the time, so renting herself out permanently to a marriage or temporarily in order to make ends meet isn’t much of a stretch… and I’m talking about America, hahaha FORGET about Brazil! :D

I’d hesitate to even call women in the condition you describe “property”, since they can be had for so few $USD. There are enough sites that I’m not going to link to that have endless descriptions of what you can get in whatever country with some ridicuolus economy. You can have women all night and all the next day for what you might spend out with your friends for a night having drinks in Manhattan.

What’s so amazing about “pimping” (from my point of view) is that a pimp turns the normal straight world upside down. He has these women going out and slaving away to give him all their earnings. Meanwhile, the traditional husband goes out and slaves all day to turn all his earnings over to his wife & kids.

Well, that’s exactly what it is, a reversal. Like I mentioned earlier, it makes sense if you look at it from the point of view of the woman as the pivotal character. It’s not so much that pimps are CREATING hoes, as I originally thought. It’s more that the women are hoes ALREADY, and as such, require or look for a certain type of man to involve themselves with. The pimp appears to the ho as someone who’s worth paying for in order to procure their time and/or attention. The pimp likes the money more than the ho, and the ho likes the pimp more than the money, so it’s a fair exchange. She gets to hang out with the pimp, and he gets to go shopping with the money she makes on the corner.

In a traditional husband situation, the value is in the female. She represents his opportunity to have sex at the drop of a hat instead of going out in the street and trying to find and convince a chick to have sex with him. She also represents the opportunity for him to procreate, as well as someone to raise the kids while he’s at work. This starts all the way back at dating, like I mentioned before. The guy gets used to buying her drinks and paying for her to eat or go to the movies, and it’s only a natural continuation that he continues to go to work to ‘bring home the bacon’.

The potential consequence for NOT utilizing money to maintain the relationship is infidelity, which could lead to his ONE girlfriend or wife or whatever leaving him (thus taking the immediate availability of sex with her), or much worse than that….. He might end up on the Maury show with seven other guys who might be the father of “his” new baby. :O

The way prostitutes toss around money when they have it is puzzling. Some believe it is an “easy-come and easy-go” mentality. Several prostitutes, male and female, have told me that they will go out clubbing and blow most of all their night’s earnings on partying and drugs “because you have to do something to relax after all that you’ve gone through to make the money”.

That’s interesting. I have nothing to add to that because I don’t know any actual hoes. I mean, I know “easy” chicks, but not actual professional get-paid-to-have-sex chicks. The easy chicks either have sex just because they enjoy having sex or because they feel it’s an indication that SOMEBODY likes them. Either way, since they don’t make any money from that, I’ve never heard of what you just mentioned.

I always tell people that “working Hollywood Blvd for one summer in the late 1950s” was the best 3-months of life education I ever received. Indeed, it enabled me to get up and go to a 9 to 5 job for the rest of my life with no regrets.

Another concept I don’t have an educated opinion on, due to no experience whatsoever with prostitutes. I would guess however that the randomness and potential danger of the situation would point out how easy it is to get on a subway every morning, spend all of one’s daylight hours in a job, having regurgitated conversations at the water cooler, then coming home, eating dinner, watching some completely biased news and then some form of find-the-criminals-by-science show and then going to sleep only to wake up and do the exact same thing again when you wake up. It’s like even though you’re only making minimum wage, at least you’re guaranteed a certain amount of money at the end of a two-week period. Fringe benefits being stuff like it’s incredibly unlikely that someone’s going to toss you out of a moving car while you’re working “fries” at the fast food restaurant.

Actually, the pimps profiled in the clips here remind me of “pitch men” of sorts. I think their ’sharp’ manner of talking and ‘being operators’ resembled Bill’s persona. Now, I’m not advising Bill to become a pimp (if given the opportunity). Nor am I advising him to decline the opportunity should it arise :-).

hahaha Nope! Not my style. Too much work. :) The ROI is incredibly low. Not only that, but the fact of the matter is that you’re depending on someone else (or several chicks) to give you money. If something happens to that chick, you’re DONE! :D It’s like gambling… like trying to make a living playing the lottery every week. Besides that, I’d be skeeved out that some chick was messing with several guys all day, then wanted to come hang out with ME! hahaha YEESH! :) Pimping is for guys that like money more than chicks…. I’m not one of those guys.

Having said that, I’m not advocating spending money ON chicks. That’s trickin’, like I mentioned before. I’m just saying… Given the option between wasting 8 hours doing some job to get money and hanging out all day with a chick I enjoy… you’ll find me in Belmar sipping Maragaritas. :D

For sure, he’d be perfect to play the role of a “slick pimp” in some future blockbuster movie. However, he’ll probably do just as well pimping some new “techie thing” instead of some new “titty thing” :-).

I rarely receive such intelligent (and somewhat flattering) responses to my thoughtful postings on vlogs. But I felt my insights were greatly appreciated last time around so I thought I’d chance sharing them once more.

Obviously, you have some unique viewpoints. You might need to start your own “street life” blog. :)

Bill, here’s looking forward to seeing you at the Oscars! :-)

I’ll let you know when someone offers me a project that I think might go. ;)

Spent between 3 and 4 hours last night sifting through the hour’s worth of dialogue footage I shot. I probably got 2/3rds of the way through it or maybe 3/4ths.

I went through the music at the end first to see if it was useable audio-wise or video-wise. I’ll probably end up doing that over, since there’s no visual representation of the guitar. I’ll also probably do it in a different setup, because there’s no decent way to do it with my dialogue setup, unless I stand up.

Next, I went through the last takes I did… the ones that were closer to the camera. That’s because by that time, I had the “script” in my mind from deciding along the way which storyline I intended to keep. After I got that together in a basic timeline, I went back to the beginning and started looking for duplicate shots farther from the camera as well as lines that I just thought worked well and wanted to see if I could work into the piece. There were A LOT OF PAUSES in the front, and it was actually pretty funny watching it, because I remembered what I was thinking when I was sitting there. I was watching myself make my way through the dialogue like a swamp. :)

I’m back in action now, and about to deal with the remaining raw footage. I already had the movie scenes loaded, so once I get this done, I’m ready to start building the radio edit (= Making the show work as far as audio and timing is concerned. The next pass makes the VIDEO work with the selected audio).

Probable project time elapsed at this point (past concept development and set creation):
Preparing to shoot: 30 minutes (getting the set ready, getting myself ready)
Shooting: 1 hour (since I didn’t have a script, and therefore nothing to practice, which will NEVER happen again! :D)
Coming Down from shooting: 1 hour (since I wasn’t prepared for the toll it takes to do EVERYTHING at the same time)
Editing: 3 hours (Not really editing, more like logging the good takes so I can do what I need to do today)
TOTAL: ~6 hours

WOWWWWW!!!

OK… So I just spent an hour recording my lines for my first episode of “The Lab”. I’m an editor, not an actor. I had the incorrect notion that what I was about to do was more like talking than acting. It was really something I’ve never experienced before……

That was an amazing trip. I wanted to blog it now, while I’m still feeling it.

There’s a journey that you take when you try to record something quasi-theatrical. I’m even more sensitive to it since I’m an editor. I’m more aware of what I can and can’t use.

What I mean by record is when YOU’RE the on-air talent. There’s so much to think about, but then you can’t actually afford to think about it because you have to deliver the lines… that is… IF you scripted your lines ahead of time, and preferably studied them. I did neither, since I’m not an actor. I had no idea it was going to be so hard to pull at least three directions together and then do the right thing with what you receive to deliver the goods. I have no idea whether I have a show or not. If I don’t, that’s fine. I’ve slated my release of episode 1 of “The Lab” for Friday. I still have tonight and all of tomorrow to do it over if I don’t have what I need.

The first thing I noticed was that I had to stop myself from wanting to deliver the lines in a stoic fashion, just to get them out. Then, I realized things would have been way better if I had scripted the lines and practiced them instead of trying to make stuff up on the fly. I had a couple of cues that I had figured out, but the problem was that by the time I was on the spot, doing the do… I had seen the scenes so many times that I wasn’t naturally affected anymore by watching them, and there was no natural launch into what I wanted to say about the section. I had to fake the launch and then make sure I wasn’t stiff delivering the actual lines that I had just decided upon and hadn’t practiced, ever. :/

The obvious question is why not pause the process until I made something up? :D The problem with that is that I needed to shoot the whole thing in one session so there was no chance of the camera moving from where it was. I decided to run the video from the monitors live instead of greenscreening them or matting out the screens and shrinking and distorting the video. I knew I was in it for the long haul as soon as I pressed the button, so I went for it and now I have whatever I have… if anything! :D

I can’t really feel the effects from the journey at this point, but I remember hearing the click that indicated that the camera had shut off and that there wasn’t anything more I could do about getting the show on tape. I remember this feeling of… ?relief? and a return to ?reality?… I’ll definitely be doing way more pre-production for my next episode, but this time, I was so glad to get the set done that I just had to try to make it happen. Actually, when I was completely ready, I wasn’t INTERESTED in filming the show right then. That was the first battle… actually getting myself to start in the first place. It was only after I was in the process that I realized how important a script is that you’ve practiced over and over.

There’s more to being on-air-talent than meets the eye… I mean if you’re going to do a decent job at it… and I’m not saying that *I* did a decent job! :D It’s that there are things you have to remember, and while you’re remembering them, you have to forget them so you can seem authentic or natural. You have to internalize them and then live with them and “act as if”. I guess this is why some actors *coughnicholascagecough* always seem to be portraying the exact same character. Their expression is the same in different movies, so you get the same effect when you watch the actor’s performance.

Another thing that’s tough is that you’re not talking to anybody! :D I mean, you know the audience is “inside” that little lens, but there’s really nobody there, so you have to pretend you’re talking to someone. Depending on the person or people that you imagine yourself talking to, you’re going to deliver differently. You’re going to sound different. You’re going to use different words. I’m sure my performance suffered from “identity crisis”, but I’ll just fix that in the edit. :D

Just about the only thing that I learned along the way that helped me was in order to get over the fact that I was no longer highly amused by the scenes, having seen them multiple times while I was selecting them, what I DID find amusing was how ‘lost’ I was and unable to recreate my surprise and interest in the shot. Fortunately… I found that realization so funny, that I ended up laughing at how ridiculous it was and realize that that was my out. Whenever I needed a laugh, I got a laugh off of the fact that I couldn’t laugh because the scene wasn’t funny to me anymore. :D WHAT LUCK! :D

So, yes… More scripting… More practicing (more like ANY practicing, since I didn’t practice at all, having no script, just some outline notes). I didn’t want to script it, but that’s because I didn’t know there were so many other things to worry about when you’re trying to make it happen from in front of the camera instead of behind it. About 1/3 of the way through, I decided to get over the fact that I was talking to a lens. :D It wasn’t so tough after that, but that was only one of several ‘issues’ that I was having.

I decided I was going to play some music to see if I wanted to use any of it to get me in or out of the piece. Unfortunately, the way the camera was set up, I had the choices of holding the guitar at a ridiculous angle to play it or play naturally, and the guitar wasn’t in the shot at all. Since I decided on using a single shot for the whole episode, I just had to miss out on the appearance of the guitar. I’ll have to see if anything can be done with that in post.

I was very glad when I heard the click indicating it was all over. It was a weight off, for sure. I learned A LOT about the process, and I’ll be ready for it next time. I’ll also be habituated to certain elements, so those won’t be issues for me. Depending on how it works, I might have to rethink my shooting style as well, or maybe shoot it twice.. once as a practice so I can see how everything works together and then a second time as the real deal. Another issue was that I was sitting in approximately the same place the whole time, so I said approximately the same thing again, closer to the camera…. that is, from what I could remember that I said, since I had no script! :/

Anyway… anyone preparing to do this for the first time, beware! hahahaha :D This is one of those situations where you have to learn by on-the-job training, because you’re not going to feel like this in any normal situation. Even having a normal conversation and having someone tape you isn’t the same as trying to deliver lines that you HOPE are going to connect scene A to scene B, while relating to the audience in an effective and preferably consistent manner. It doesn’t prepare you for talking to a lens and convincing yourself you’re talking to a person or people. It’s not as easy as it looks! :D

Actually, I started doing better (IMO) when I stopped caring if it was good or not. :)

Reader “Justice” writes:

Ladies I have to be completely honest with you. I’m sure some of you understand and know what I’m about to say. But, I’m going to put it out there anyway.

I know a lot of you still think that you are somewhat old fashion. But come on! In this day and age how many of you are really old fashion? OK, do you know what I’m getting at yet? Alright, here is my point.

Last night I was at a bar with some friends just having a good time and chilling at our table. I was admiring and checking out the woman and yes, believe it or not, there were a decent amount of good looking women in this place. I will be going back there! But back to the discussion. While I was sitting there having a good time with my friends a pretty young lady comes up to our table and just starts up a convo and asks me to dance. I gladly accepted. We danced and had fun and that was it. No dirty dancing or talking shit to each other. She said she loved to dance and I told her if she wanted to dance again she knew where I was sitting. Well about 15 minutes later she came back for another dance. We danced two songs and then she went back to her friends and I went back to mine. We didn’t talk for the rest of the evening. At the end of the night as I made my last pit stop I stopped to say goodbye and that it was nice to meet her. She proceeded to ask if I came here much and would I be coming back. I told her it was my first time there but I think I will come back. She told me, point blank, that she liked to dance and would love to go out dancing with me sometime. I said that would be great and she said, “Here, let me give you my number.” I took her number and we took a picture together, set up a date for next week and said our goodbyes. All in all a very good night.

Now, let me stress the point here that this was not some slutty, ugly, crazy ass girl. She was very pretty, well dressed, well spoken and very sweet. OK, Ladies do you know what I am about to say?

The actions that this girl took last night made my week!!!! She knew what she wanted and took the initiative to make it known. I didn’t ask her for her number, ask her to go out, approach her or anything like that. There were no games! I HATE GAMES!!!!! Ladies, it is ok to be agressive sometimes. Don’t make us guys have to make that move all the time. You know why? Because in those kinds of games you could be losing out on something very good! In my case, I am a shy man. Don’t get me wrong, once the initial contact is made and the convo gets started I’m fine. My weakness is that I am shy about approaching and starting that convo with a lady that catches my eye. Unfortunately, some woman say that I seem kind of unapproachable at times. I don’t understand that because I’m about the friendliest person you will ever meet. But, my shyness does inhibit me a little.

Look, I don’t know where this chance meeting from last night will go. But, I can tell you that I have the utmost respect for this woman for making that move. So, ladies, drop the act that you are too good to make that move. If you like a guy and you want to meet him… don’t stand there and act like you are too good to strike up a conversation. If you do you may miss out on a really good guy. Here is a hint for you. You may like bad boys, but you will almost always regret getting involved with one. Most of the good guys are too shy to just walk up to you and start talking shit. In my case I’m a good guy but I can also be a very bad boy once you break me out of that shell.

So once again I say be aggressive and take a chance ladies! Chances are you won’t regret it!

A lot of people video blog just because they feel like it. What IS a video blog? or a videoblog or a vlog or…. don’t ask! :D There are as many definitions for a video blog as there are _names_ for video blogs. Some people consider any video that’s placed on the internet eligible for the title “video blog”. Most simply, Steve Garfield would say “A video blog is video on a blog”. :D So expand your idea of what a blog is to include a video… ANY video, and there you have it.

Does that make someone that has a blog with videos on it a videoblogger? Again, don’t ask! There’s the issue of what kind of videos are on the blog. Is it video of kids falling off of skateboards? A cat playing with a ball of string? A scripted, weekly comedy show? Citizen journalism from the streets? Someone sitting alone in their room talking to their iSight as if it were a real person they were having a conversation with? Is it made by individuals? Is it made by companies that were formed and funded with the sole object of delivering video content on the internet? is it made by a television studio as an afterthought or addition to their actual television shows? Do all of those count equally as “video blogs”, assuming they meet the base qualification of being “video on a blog”?

What about production values? Does the audio have to be good? Does the video have to be steady? Does the editing (if there is any) have to be decent? Does the video have to show something about you or your environment? Does it have to mean something to anyone? Who’s watching it? Friends? Family? People you don’t know that live in other cities, states or countries? What’s your responsibility to your viewers? Do you make videos with the viewer in mind or only yourself, and if they don’t want to watch, they can “change the channel” by clicking on a different link?

See what I mean? :) Don’t ask. Let’s just assume that there’s something called a video blog, and lets assume that it’s “video on a blog” like Steve said.

Now, lets assume that someone has this video blog and they want to make some money from it. They have a few options. They could get sponsored by some group, in which case they are paid to put their show on regardless of how many views/hits/clicks/whatever they get. They could sell advertising themselves and include the ad in their actual video. They could have advertising on their web page and not on the video at all. They could place their video on a hosting site that features revenue-sharing.

If you post video to a revenue-sharing host, the basic deal is that the host makes arrangements with advertisers to pay them to place ads on their site or on their videos. The “sharing” part comes in when the host offers content creators (the people actually uploading the videos) a percentage of the money that the host gets from the advertisers which happened to be generated by a video that that creator uploaded. There are wikis on the technical aspects of this, including “cost per impression” (cpi), “cost per action” (cpa) and “cost per click” (cpc). You might get paid if the advertiser’s ad is seen. You might only get paid if the ad is clicked on by whomever views your video. You _might_ only get paid if someone clicks through AND buys something from the advertiser. Even then, “getting paid” depends on you getting enough credits to get over a certain amount of currency, say $20, because it doesn’t make sense for companies to send out individual checks for 15 cents each to thousands of people.

Once you’ve decided on a host, you need to decide (assuming you GET to decide) how ads are run on your videos. There are several options for this, the basic ones being pre-roll, post-roll and mid-roll.

Pre-roll means that the advertisement comes on before your video plays. You will hope that this video is really short, because people are going to tune out if they decide they aren’t willing to wait through advertisements they didn’t ask to see when they clicked on your video. Then again, that might not matter if you get paid just for showing their ad. Since it’s in the front of the video, the viewer already saw it, so you get paid, right? Well… maybe. It depends on what the host considers a “view”. If “view” means that someone started your video, then you’re good. If “view” means someone COMPLETED your video, and they tuned out because of your pre-roll ad, you lose. :)

Post-roll means the ad comes on after your video has played all the way through. The risk there is that the viewer won’t watch all the way through. Once they get to the end, either you get paid when the ad shows up, or you get paid if they click through or you get paid if they click through and buy something.

Mid-roll means the advertisement comes on while your video is still playing. Mid-roll can be absolutely ridiculous, depending on how it’s implemented. I saw a mid-roll ad that took up the whole screen of the video AND replaced the audio like a regular commercial that comes on television. When the ad came back, the video had been running the whole time, and whatever was said during the time was completely lost. It happened to be on an interview show where the accomplishements of the interviewee were being listed. That kind of mid-roll doesn’t work, because they just throw the ad in anywhere. If you don’t care about your content, however, it doesn’t matter. If you weren’t telling a story anyway, and it doesn’t matter to you when sections of your piece are obscured, then it’s fine. As an editor, I can tell you that A LOT OF ATTENTION is paid to where we go to commercial, how many times we go to commercial, how we go to commercial and how we come back to the program from commercial. Throwing up full-video-sized advertisements just anywhere is completely horrible and ruins immersion.

There are other forms of advertising while your video’s being played. There might be visual advertisements that don’t take up the whole screen and don’t obscure audio at all. There might be ads that don’t run on your video but next to your video the whole time it’s playing. These ads might be animated or change every few seconds. I find these types of ads REALLY annoying, because the motion pulls your eye from the video content and ruins immersion. Once again, this choice is good for people that don’t really care if someone’s watching their video or not. If they’re using the video to get your eyes on their advertisements… mission accomplished.

Personally, I’m a sponsorship fan. There’s too much business involved with monetizing video for it to be worth ANY of my time to deal with it. The more time you spend trying to advertise your videos, the less time you spend MAKING those videos. :) I’d rather leave it to the hosting site, set it and forget it. Also, unless you know A LOT of kids that fall off of A LOT of skateboards, you’re not going to be creating consistent viral video…. well… unless you’re one of these video thieves that steal other people’s content and re-post it… but that’s another issue entirely.

Bill Cammack | New York City | Freelance Video Editor | alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack