I’m back

Look! It’s mikebrowne. Yes, all one word. Not Mike, not Mike Browne, it’s mikebrowne. That’s what my friends call me and so should you.

This is the place to find me blogging from now on. I needed a change. I have this awesome URL of my name so why not use it. My old blog at blog.mikebrowne.com will remain exactly as it is for the time being the only difference being I’m updating it even less frequently than I do now (read: never again).

I’ve gone through quite a bit of a transformation over the last few months. Work slowed down in the movie biz over the winter and due to the writers strike and the threat of the actors strike, which is still not resolved. As a result I was out of any regular form of work for a long time. I became seriously depressed, gained a pile of weight, hid out in my office playing World of Warcraft, leveling a Draenei Shaman named Upuaut (an Egyptian God known a the “opener of ways to the underworld“) all the way to 70 and didn’t really think about blogging at all.

I went ot a few seminars to get out and network and I kept seeing Colleen Nystedt, CEO of MovieSet.com at a number of them. I immediately thought that the idea of MovieSet was a great one. I got frustrated with the lack of work in the movie biz as the spring and summer progressed so I thought, “Why not send Colleen my résumé?” I did and was hired pretty quickly. Now I work there. I get to blog, consult on product development andam working on a number of other creative things at MovieSet to drive traffic to the site and give people some cool original content to view there. I have the pleasure of working with Patrick Sauriol of Corona’s Coming Attractions fame. A movie blog I used to read. Corona’s Coming Attractions is itself is a coming attraction and relaunching soon. I’ve seen the site and it kicks some serious movie blogging ass.

What’s MovieSet? Basically, our goal is to give fans the authentic behind the scenes experience while allowing production to retain control over how much the public sees and to integrate the process of production with promotion. We’re building free “Crew Tools” applications to streamline the production work flow by bringing it online utilizing the latest in web technology. In other words we’re building something very cool that no one else is working on.

With this new gig my balls have grown back as I feel like I’m contributing again. It’s interesting how much of my self-esteem is tied up in the amount of money I’m bringing in. How frigging cliché is that? What a fruit.

I’ve got new toys – iPhone, new laptop and some nice new glasses. I’m losing weight and starting to exercise more. I’m even feeling more social. Perhaps as well as blogging more I might actually go outside or heaven forbid hang out with people.