I experienced yet another jam packed day at this amazing festival. First
things first, when we first arrived, we went straight to the Samsung booth to
get our free phone rentals for the day. After we got our phones, we went and
got front row seats for the Lions Live seminar: YouTube: The Art Of Storytelling On YouTube, With DreamWorks Animation
And Vice Media. We heard from
DreamWorks Animation as well as Vice Media on how YouTube is one of the most
powerful tools in their arsenal in reference to engaging with their target audiences.
YouTube is an effective platform to reach an array of consumers instantaneously.
However, the main reason we went to this early session and got front
row seats was to see the next session. This session was called: A Conversation With Jared Leto and Benjamin
Palmer. Yes Jared Leto is a famous musician (lead singer of 30 seconds to
mars) and actor (Oscar winning performance for Dallas Buyers Club), but I had
no idea how intellectual this man really is. This may have been one of the
best sessions of the entire festival. Leto took the Q and A approach and let
the audience shout out unscripted questions and answered them in an
entertaining and intelligent fashion. He spoke about how being
multidisciplinary has a lot less to do with talent, luck, and opportunity and
revolves solely around hard work. “The bridge between a dream and reality is
hard work”, were his exact words. Aside from his insightful points, Leto
engaged the audience, made everyone laugh, and showed off his rock and roll
persona, seen here:
The next seminar was one I had been looking forward too all
week. The Power of Story was a Q and
A style session with award winning series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
of HBO’s Game of Thrones and Armando
Lannucci of HBO’s Veep. This session
touched on the creative freedom HBO gives to their producers. The producers
each walked the audience through scenes from their respective shows and explained how
important it is to let actors do what they do best and sometimes just go
with the flow. 90% of the time the best scenes are scenes that were improvised
at some point. Consumers crave the lifelike feel and enjoy the stories these
shows tell as the seasons unfold. After the seminar, we were lucky enough to
have a one on one session with Armando Lannucci. Lannucci touched on his background
in stand up comedy and how extensive planning, paired with on the spot
improvising, adds a unique, real life feeling to his television shows.
The last seminar I want to touch on was: Building a Billion Dollar Brand. This seminar, presented beautifully
by Executive Vice President of Global Marketing Omar Johnson and Vice President
Managing and Creative Director James Temple, was a fantastic look into their
approach to marketing. After viewing their most recent campaign, hear what you
want, I was inspired. The feelings their work gives to consumers cannot
accurately be described and is much easier to understand in person. Check it
out here:
Tomorrow I look forward to Neil Degrasse Tyson and Rob Lowe
as well as several others.
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