Last Bride Standing finale met with cheers!

SunTV reality series draws to a dramatic close.

After 13 weeks of dramatic happenings on the first-ever Last Bride Standing show has lead to a finale that is worthy of tears, cheers and contemplation. Created by Carlo Parentela of Le Jardin Conference and Event Center and Directed by Humble Howard Glassman of RedFish Studios, the show garnered more and more viewers each week until finally we saw the winning bride walk away with wedding worth over $60,000!

The final episode aired quite coincidentally on Valentines day which is quite suiting as the last show was a fine example of what love can actually accomplish.

The final twists and turns highlighted the final four girls on the wall and how they handled the stress of a final challenge to see who would win the big prize. After five days and nights holding a wall, what happens in the last 5 minutes of the show is absolutely stunning! It will renew your faith in humanity even if just for a moment.

Without giving away the ending (which will naturally air again soon) the winning bride in many ways owed her win to more than just her stamina. She was actually aided by at least one competing bride who simply felt that she did not need the wedding like the bride she seemingly let take the prize. A true act of kindness and humanity. Nice to see on TV. Rare to see on TV.

Congrats go out to Carlo and Howard who made the show a brilliant success. Huge Kudos go to the editing and audio creative post that was handled by Angela Schermaul and Andrew Newton for is outstanding work as Director of Production on the series. Well done. Let's make more!

Mike Wixson

Executive Producer

RedFish Studios

Last Bride Standing finale met with cheers!

The Zen Pragmatist - Tarik Pirbhai is the real boss.

Tarik Pirhbai is truly a great guy. He is a truly loving husband and father. He is a good friend.

He is the RedFish honcho in charge of...in charge of...well he is pretty much the Prime Minister of RedFish. That is he is what we wish the Prime Minister of our country could be. Tarik is the President (actually he may be the CEO...I never get that junk right). The guy who makes things happen on all matters of business. He the yin to my business yang. And god knows, I can yang a business like no one you know. Tarik is the balance. While I spin wildly for clients and broadcasters, he navigates the waters I churn making sure we get back to our loved ones safely at the end of the day.

He is pragmatist. But not to a fault. I have heard him dream aloud. He is goal-oriented and is keenly demanding of everyone on our crew - most of all himself. He has a zen-like quality to him and I often refer to him not-so-jokingly as Deepa Chopra. Calm. Calm. Calm.

It is important to take a minute once in a while to note that Tarik is there. He is quiet and thoughtful. He is caring and kind. He will let you know exactly how he feels and make no bones about how much of the load is yours to carry alongside everyone else. I love that about him. The truth is, I love everything about him.

I have never...ever...even once, seen him lose his cool. One of his great friends at work is Humble Howard. To throw down the laughs with a pro stand up comic can be a challenge, but Tarik sometimes let Howard get the last laugh. He is business up front and smart-ass through and through.

He will outsmart you and just as easily learn from you. He is a terrible floor hockey player. I mean he looks entirely out of sorts with a hockey stick . That's what growing up in Scotland gets you. Just so he doesn't feel bad if he reads this: Tarik makes a mean Banoffee Pie. It is seriously great. So he has that going for him.

On the business front: During times of financial disarray on a global scale, Tarik has helped to make a company grow. That is to be commended. He is constantly on the prowl for market opportunities, expansion of the company and creating the right partnerships to do what we need to as a company to make a legacy for ourselves, our partners and our clients. He is savvy and arms himself with the best team of professionals out there. To handle his meticulous attention to detail requires skill.

If you read this and you know Tarik. Send him a nice note. He is the kind of person who will really enjoy that. That is just the kind of guy he is.

Thank you so much, partner.

Those words aren't enough.

Mike Wixson

Executive Producer

RedFish Entertainment

Crafting a National Commercial under $30k? Writing. Writing. Writing.

This blog is a shout out to the creative minds out there who really think through what a brand should be able to accomplish for the least amount of money. They are the creative directors and writers out there who make the themes, characters, and script become a moment in time for a brand.

Sure there are commercials out there that amaze us with super-expensive seconds of high-impact effects and outrageous staging, but the truth is that I have seen many commercials with incredibly inexpensive production means make the same impact if not greater because the themes were clever. Not cheeky. Clever.

So, can a commercial be produced cheap? Cheap ones can...you know "I'm the Cash Man" (the look awful and feel awful and work locally) and then there are commercials that work with budgets which need to be extended through the only means available: creative.

It is possible to write a low-budget, effective commercial for TV, cinema and web. We have done it. Peel Region Public Health Unit and Fingerprint Communications brought us a commercial that was so clever that the budget was invisible to the viewer. The spot won an international award of excellence and a year and a half later, I am still seeing it in my local cinema. Here is that commercial. It has almost 30,000 views on YouTube, as well. Not a costly commercial, but a very clever, one. I have noticed teens snickering in the cinema and at one showing I saw of it, it got more laughs than any other commercial - one of them for Pepsi using a major sports celebrity.

The message here is this: Only You Can Prevent Big Budgets (I am Woodsey the Production Owl, I guess). Creative can be written to be really effective and make your brand stand out without spending more than $20 or $30k. Sometimes even less.

Using Social Media Along with Traditional TV

Look how much information we get that starts with a social media tipping us off. The blog, TMZ is a great example. In fact the more accurate this information is, the more likely we are to "follow" that information provider, 'tweeter' or 'facebookie'.

Now celebrities tell us about their every bowel movement and we are able to use newsfeeds and IM to update each other instantly.

How do we apply this to the world of television programming? Well it seems obvious, but a little planning goes a long way.

Thinking about what information you will use your show or commercial to push is important. It has to be good to get an audience and keep it.

It has to offer more than your show or spot does-added value if you will- or it has to provide linkage to information in the show. If you provide good info, promoting your show has value, too.

You have to be ready to operate your social adjacent media. Will you update it weekly, daily...hourly...as it happens? Make sure you have someone who will manage the updates you have planned.

Social media is a great promotional tool. After all, what is better than personal ensorsement in a social scene?

Find out how we can plan your social media adjacent production.

www.theredfish.ca

Hey, Conan! Any offers so far? Prime Time Debacle Dept.

Let me start by stating that Jay Leno is a total idiot.

Thank you.

What his ego has done (with the help of NBC executives) to prime time TV is disgusting. NBC Affiliates across North America are quivering with hunger pains from the one/two punch they got with the vaporization of the economy followed by a devastating blow to the abdominal region when Jay Leno moved into prime time with an almost-show that has driven audiences to fill their evenings with anything but his show....or TV in general. Families are reuniting. Renovations are getting done around the house. Volunteerism is up 71%! Well maybe not, but he did change the landscape of TV- for the worse.

Meanwhile, Conan O'Brien is being tossed around like a chihuahua in a Kansas dirt devil. His ownership of The Tonight Show has gone from triumphant to worthless in a matter of half a year. Reunited with his old time side-kick, Andy Richter (some are blaming Andy for carrying bad juju from cancelled show to cancelled show), Conan seemed to have a lead on funny over the Jay Leno show in a big way. Leno was sure to fail. Conan should surely do well. The numbers did not end up looking like that at all. Both were doing miserably by ad revenue and audience totals. The affiliates were left with no one watching their news. That is their main source of revenue and so at every level, prime time TV began to crumble on basic cable across North America.

Was it Jay that brought down new Tonight Show numbers? Was Conan doing that bad? It seems that with a lack of general interest in Prime Time TV as this experiment took place viewers were simply finding other options outside of regular network TV.

Now NBC scrambles to put everything back as it was (what tools!) and find an audience that has already subscribed to and committed their viewing time to second and third tier specialty cable avails. Looks like cooking shows and reality shows are going to continue to have an audience for a while thanks to Jay Leno....who is a selfish, self-centered, unfunny man.

What will Conan do? Seems he will cut his losses. He has already listed The Tonight Show on craigslist.com as a "slightly-used late night talk show".

Here is the link to his listing: click here

I will be amazed if NBC comes away in the lead over their competition anytime soon. I would imagine Conan will land at FOX, and we will see a whole host of make-do programming in prime time until the next big drama series takes hold. They are going to have to spend a massive amount of money getting back to mediocre. Good on ya, NBC.

Mike Wixson

Executive Producer

RedFish Studios

mike@redfishentertainment.com

RedFish has focus on International Markets

There comes a time in the life of every production company that makes TV shows when the content you have made has reached critical mass and is ready to hit the road in search of other markets.

RedFish Studios is in that very era of it's existence. After three years of production, the company has entered into several distribution arrangements to capitalize on the programming that is already in the can.

In preparation of this timeline marker, about a year ago we began to brainstorm about what content we have that would be good for the rest of the world. We talked about TV distribution and mobile content, web content, streaming content. All of these options became interesting in their own right so we began to develop our content to hit all points of distribution while still building in sponsorship opportunities and localized ad revenue models.

So, after thinking through as many options for content as possible, our discovery is that we have created a more full package for almost any content distribution means available. We have web content that is backed by TV programs. TV programs that resolve themselves on the web, and interactive informative programming that calls on mobile technology to access more information than is available on the show...the circle of content has begun to oscillate sending us in new directions in search of the next show, webcast, or mobile project.

RedFish showed up in the production field at the right time and place. Our theories about content are realities now and I am glad we took the time to figure out where content was needed most before we began distribution. Now we have more to offer than most producers in the market today.