Work with the Controller you need, not the one you were given. Simply build it on the screen with lines, polygons, circles and faders. Size, color, orientation and 3-Dimensional location are all yours to choose.
Use the full potential of the iPad touchscreen: tapping is still possible with Beatsurfing, but its power relies on the ability to surf on the iPad surface, creating interactions that are not possible with physical hardware.
Dj, VJ, production softwares, hardware devices, and even iPad apps: you can route BEATSURFING to anything that understands the MIDI language. The Quantize module (v1.2) also allows you to connect to other musicians on a rhythmic level.
Each object of your controller can be set to control the others. It creates a system of objects that allow you to add much more to a controller than what meets the eye.
Forget about separated editing software, lenghty changes and whatnot. You can swap between the EDIT and PLAY modes at the tap of a finger and seamlessly edit or play with your controller.


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How to watch 'Real Housewives Porsha's Family Matters': Premiere date, time, channel, trailer
Updated: Nov. 28, 2021, 4:00 p.m. | Published: Nov. 28, 2021, 4:00 p.m.
"The Real Housewives of Atlanta: Porsha's Family Matters" premieres on Bravo November 28, 2021. (Bravo/ YouTube)
By Victoria Priola, eCommerce writer
"The Real Housewives of Atlanta: Porsha's Family Matters" premieres on Bravo on Sunday, Nov. 28, at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT). It's also available to stream on FuboTV, Sling, and Hulu + Live TV (free trial).
This season, "Real Housewives" star Porsha Williams is on a retreat with her family that was meant to be relaxing and ends up in chaos. Throughout the season, a whirlwind romance and a stunning engagement heat up. Porsha's extended family become heavily involved in her personal drama and, once tensions rise, a physical altercation breaks out and leaves everyone shaken.
What channel is Bravo on?
You can find which channel it is by using the channel finders here: Verizon Fios, AT&T U-verse, Comcast Xfinity, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice, DIRECTV and Dish.
Where can I watch 'Porsha's Family Matters' if I don't have Bravo?
It's available to stream on FuboTV ($64.99/month) offers you access to your favorite TV shows, live sports events and much more. There's a 7-day free trial when you sign up. You can also stream the show on Sling with their Blue package, and on Hulu + Live TV (free trial).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Blue Fusion Digital is a digital marketing optimization company that specializes in online reputation management services and online reputation marketing.
Reputation Management is the process of burying or deleting harmful or derogatory information about either an individual or a business on the search engines. A great example would be if a rival competitor wrote a harmful review on Yelp, Rip Off Report or any other review website that clearly isn't true. This one review can escalate into a variety of different issues, first issue is everyone on the web can see it! Why is that especially impactful? If you are a business that gets a lot of referrals, people are going to look you up whether it is for driving directions, what to expect, etc. well, guess what they see when they search for your business name? A bad review or low star rating! Harvard, Neilsen Group and Pepperdine have all done studies that show a consumer is 80% likely to trust a business with a 4 star rating or higher but only 14% likely to trust a business if it is a 3 star or lower!


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Sling TV: Channels, packages, and how to sign up
By Alex Smith
Sling Tv On Fire Stick (Image credit: Keegan Prosser / Android Central)
How much does Sling TV cost?
Channels on Sling TV
What devices support Sling TV?
Sling TV deals
As one of the most popular live TV streaming services, Sling brings the best of cable to your screens while keeping the price more affordable than competitors like YouTube TV and Hulu with Live TV. When it comes to cutting the cord and replacing your cable bill with something a bit less pricey, Sling TV should be the first service you try.
Streamer's paradise
(opens in new tab)at Sling TV (opens in new tab)
Your hub for live channels, movies, and more
Sign up for Sling TV today with plans starting as low as $35 per month! Sling TV keeps prices affordable by letting you add on extra channels at your leisure. While there's no free trial available currently, Sling does have several great deals available for new subscribers right now.
Sling TV subscriptions start at just $35 per month and ensure that you'll never have to miss another episode of your favorite shows. Not at home? Not a problem. Sling is available as an app on Android and iOS phones and tablets, Xbox game consoles, and streaming devices like the Fire TV Stick, Roku streaming sticks, and Apple TV.
Thanks to services like Sling, cable is less restrictive than ever before — there's not even a contract to worry about when signing up. There's just one catch: Sling TV is currently only available in the United States and Puerto Rico.
Source: Keegan Prosser / Android Central (Image credit: Source: Keegan Prosser / Android Central)
With Sling TV, there's never any contract or additional fees to worry about, as you might see with a cable bill. Sling TV's two main packages are Sling Orange and Sling Blue, which cost $35 per month and vary in which channels they provide.
Sling Orange unlocks 32 live channels, including the likes of ESPN and Disney Channel. In comparison, Sling Blue gives you access to 43 channels, which includes an expanded collection of entertainment-focused networks. Both plans also provide you with access to 50 hours of cloud DVR storage, but the Orange plan allows you to stream on only one device, while the Blue plan allows you to stream on up to three devices simultaneously. A third plan, Sling Orange + Blue, combines all the channels from both packages into one package for just $50 per month.
When you're signing up for Sling, you'll also have the option of adding movie channel bundles and premium channels to your monthly subscription for an additional fee. Showtime, MTV, Comedy Central, and Disney Junior are among the premium channels you can add to your subscription at your leisure.
What channels are on Sling TV?
Source: Sling TV (Image credit: Source: Sling TV)
Though it doesn't offer quite as many channels as its competitors, Sling keeps its price low by focusing on only the best and most popular channels for kids and adults alike. From ESPN and Disney Channel to NFL Network and HGTV, there's no shortage of shows to watch when you're a Sling subscriber.
While Sling offers local channels like FOX and NBC, access to these may vary based on which regions you live in within the United States. In addition, using Sling with an AirTV device lets you unlock even more local channels like ABC and CBS on your channel guide with a free Locast account.
It's also worth pointing out that, because Sling TV has two base plans to choose from, the channels available via each plan also vary a bit in which channels they offer. So with that in mind, here's which channels you'll have access to on Sling Orange vs. Sling Blue.
Channels on Sling Orange
AXS TV
EPIX Drive In
Tribeca Shortlist
Channels on Sling Blue
EPIX Drive-In
NBC Select Markets
NBC Sports Network
Premium add-ons on Sling TV
Like YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV gives subscribers the option to add channel bundles for a small additional fee each month. These include the Sports Extra for $11 per month or the NBA League Pass for an extra $29 per month, which are available to subscribers of both the Orange and Blue plans. Sling TV's other bundle options are the Comedy Extra, Kids Extra, News Extra, Lifestyle Extra, Hollywood Extra, and Heartland Extra, which start at an additional $6 per month.
Free channels on Sling TV
Though Sling TV doesn't currently offer a free trial available currently, there is still a way to access this streaming service for free. The Sling Free section (opens in new tab) allows you to watch a selection of on-demand shows, movies, and even a few live TV channels for free — you don't even need to enter your billing information! This is an excellent way to see how Sling works without signing up for a membership.
There are over 30 channels you can watch on Sling Free without even entering your billing information! Of course, though most of these channels aren't well-known, they still air some excellent shows and movies. You can find free-to-stream channels like AMC Presents, Buzzr, Shout TV, The Film Detective, Bon Appétit, Law & Crime Rewind, Ryan & Friends, Live x Live, and more.
While one of the easiest ways to start streaming is to download Sling TV on a Fire Stick, Roku, or Apple TV device, thanks to modern technology, you can watch Sling on more than just your TV at home. In fact, Sling TV is also available as an app on iOS and Android mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, and select Xbox game consoles. Here's a complete list of devices that currently support Sling TV:
Android phones/tablets ✔
Android TV ✔
Chromecast ✔
Google Nest ✔
iOS & iPadOS ✔
Apple TV ✔
Fire tablets ✔
FireTV devices ✔
Roku (select models) ✔
Xbox One/One S ✔
PlayStation 4/5 ❌
Oculus Go ✔
Portal TV ✔
TiVo Stream 4K ✔
Nintendo Switch ❌
Smart TVs Samsung (select models)
LG (select models)
Select smart TVs by Samsung and LG have access to the app, too, or you could use Chromecast, an AirTV Mini, or an Oculus Quest VR headset. Watching with your computer is also an option, with Sling TV accessible via Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Safari.
Are there any Sling TV deals?
New members will definitely want to take a moment before signing up. There are always a few great deals available directly from Sling, from discounts on your first month of service to free streaming devices when you pre-pay for a few months of service while joining. The most current deal available is usually featured right at the top of Sling's homepage, though you could also visit the Deals on Sling (opens in new tab) page on its website to find more offers for new subscribers.
Right now, the best Sling TV deal is taking $25 off your first month of service, dropping its price down to just $10. So far, that's the most affordable way to join Sling TV we've seen all year. Just note that the offer is only available to new customers upon account activation. It's also worth pointing out that Sling TV has a deal that lets you score a free AirTV Mini device (opens in new tab) when you prepay for two months of service.
Affordable live streaming
Live TV without the cable fees
Sling TV's Orange or Blue subscriptions offer a ton of live and on-demand programming with the option to personalize your plans. Find out which channel package and add-ons best fit your needs.
Alex is a graduate from the University of North Florida with a background in sales and merchandising. When he's not hunting down the next great deals to post on Thrifter, he can be found making music and working on his eBay business.
This seems more like an advertisement than informational. There is no information on the number of simultaneous streams or the DVR features of the service. Couple that with the fact you are only getting 50 or so channels for $50 bucks and without most local channels, and YouTube TV with over 90 channels, including local channels for $65, with 3 simultaneous streams, and basically unlimited DVR, seems to make YouTube TV a no brainer by comparison. Now I sound like an advertisement...
Sling was great at $20-25. Now WAY overpriced.
Definitely a paid advertisement. Is the author bold enough to say it isn't, if true?
No question, this is mostly an advertisement; but that's common with a lot of the articles on this site. If you note on most posts, the last line says "We may earn a commission for purchases using our links." The more articles like this that they publish, the more likely they'll get that commission through their links.
No comment like that here or most of their fake news stories. Dishonesty
The biggest problem for me is some notable channel omissions. Specifically, in my case, the omission of Nickelodeon has stopped me from giving it much of a look. The kids watch that channel too much for me to drop it. It's a shame, because I do like the fact that they've integrated Locast channels into their guide.


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Ouberg Pass (alternatively Oude Berg Pass, in part to distinguish it from Ouberg Pass in the Western Cape), is situated in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, on the regional road R63, between Graaff-Reinet and Murraysburg.

Mountain passes of the Eastern Cape

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


I, Christopher Drew Holland, Senior Sergeant of Police, for, and on behalf of the Commissioner of Police, exercise the authority delegated by the Minister of Transport under Section 11 Road Traffic Act, and make the following order under Section 33 of the Act.
I declare that the '2018 Pichi Richi Marathon' is an event to which this section applies and that the following roads be closed to vehicle traffic between the times indicated on Sunday 24 June 2018.
Within 'The Flinders Ranges Council' area.
· Flinders Ranges Way between the intersections of West Terrace and Arden Vale Road, Quorn through to the intersection of Flinders Ranges Way and Woolundunga Avenue, Stirling North.
· Park Terrace between Arden Vale Road and Oval Road, Quorn to all North West bound traffic.
I direct that persons taking part in the '2018 Pichi Richi Marathon' on the above roads be exempted from all Australian Road Rules relating to pedestrian behaviour.
I make the following order under Section 17 (3) of the Act.
I declare that the 'Pichi Richi Marathon to be conducted between Port Augusta and Quorn on Sunday 24 June 2018 is a 'temporary purpose' to which this section applies.
· Flinders Ranges Way between the intersection of Flinders Ranges Way, Woolundunga Road Stirling North and the intersection of Flinders Ranges Way and West Terrace, Arden Vale Road, Quorn.
I authorise work zone traffic management trained personnel to install and remove the 60 km/h and 25 km/h speed restrictions, and any other traffic control devices as required.


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CCB mandates six for rights issue
Sources say Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley will be involved in the rights issue which may raise up to $11 billion.
Anette Jönsson
China Construction Bank (CCB) has, according to sources, mandated six banks to help arrange a rights issue that it has earlier said could raise up to Rmb75 billion ($11 billion) as the cash calls by the Chinese banks gather pace.
The selection of banks comes after Agricultural Bank of China successfully raised $19.2 billion from its initial public offering and Bank of China announced earlier this month that its up to Rmb60 billion ($8.8 billion) rights issue will be launched after a general meeting on August 20 -- assuming it gets shareholder approval to proceed.
The sources said the international banks involved in the CCB rights issue will be Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley. They will be joined by domestic banks CCB International, China International Capital Corp (CICC) and Citic Securities.
There was no information which banks will arrange the H-share tranche and which will arrange the significantly smaller A-share tranche. However, the sources said CCB has indicated that Morgan Stanley, CCBI and CICC will take a leading role on the deal, although it wasn't clear whether that would mean that they will also formerly be named global coordinators.
It seems likely that there may be more banks involved in the H-share tranche, since it will account for 96.15% of the total deal -- as per the split between the outstanding A- and H-shares. Also, the H-share tranche will be fully underwritten by the arranging banks, while the A-share will not be underwritten.
In June, CCB said that its largest shareholder, state-owned holding company Central Huijin Investments, which owns 48.23%, will take up its entitlement in full, thus reducing the amount of shares that the banks will have to underwrite.
The international banks that have been chosen are no great surprise. Morgan Stanley has a long relationship with CCB, having jointly set up CICC as the first Sino-foreign investment bank back in 1995. CCB's stake in CICC has since been transferred to China Jianyin Investment, which is wholly owned by Huijin Investment. Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse were also both involved in CCB's IPO in 2005, while BAML has a relationship with CCB through its ownership of 25.6 billion of CCB's H-shares, or 11.4% of the H-share capital. The investment dates back to before CCB's IPO and was originally made by Bank of America.
Meanwhile, CICC and Citic Securities are two of the largest domestic Chinese brokerages that are frequently called upon for large deals. And CCBI is of course the bank's own internationally focused investment banking arm.
There have been concerns that the massive capital-raising exercises among the Chinese banks this year would hamper the market -- including Agricultural Bank's massive IPO, their combined fund raising in the second half of 2010 could total as much as $50 billion -- and indeed the largest banks did underperform in the first half, while the Shanghai stockmarket is one of the worst performing markets in the world year-to-date. However, the fact that Bank of China (BOC) and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) have both decided to do a rights issue instead of a follow-on sale targeted at the wider investment community, have calmed most of those fears and allowed the bank stocks to recover some lost ground in the past six weeks. The shift towards rights issues is said to be prompted by the fact that the Chinese government doesn't want its shareholdings to be diluted.
Also, the rights issues completed already by China Merchants Bank and Bank of Communications (BoCom) have both attracted a lot of interest. BoCom said last Friday that the H-share portion of its $4.8 billion rights issue was 99.3% subscribed and attracted excess subscriptions for three times as many shares as were on offer. And in early April, China Merchants Bank received excess subscriptions for 3.3 times the amount of H-shares available through its $3.2 billion rights issue.
One banker said the steep discounts offered are likely the key reason for investor interest and said existing shareholders are likely putting in extra orders in the hope of increasing their shareholding at a good price. BoCom offered its rights shares at a 34.0% discount to the theoretical ex-rights price (Terp) and China Merchants Bank offered as much as a 46.1% discount to Terp for the H-share tranche.
Whether CCB will come at a similarly attractive discount remains to be seen, but the bank has already said that the price will be no more than Rmb4.50, or roughly HK$5.15. This compares with a current share price in Hong Kong of HK$6.26.
The bank will offer 0.7 rights share for every 10 existing A- and H-shares, according to a stock exchange filing in late April. Under the plan, approximately 16.36 billion new shares will be issued, of which 15.7 billion will be Hong Kong-listed H-shares directed to overseas investors. Only 630 million are Shanghai-listed A-shares earmarked for mainland investors. Shareholders approved the proposal in June.
Like its peers, CCB is raising money to shore up its balance sheet after it made Rmb239.8 billion ($35.3 billion) of new loans last year.
Analysts have said that the share sale will help CCB meet regulatory requirements of an 11.5% capital adequacy ratio for the next two to three years. At the end of the first quarter, CCB's CAR slid to 11.44% from 11.7% three months earlier even though its net profit rose 34% from a year ago on the back of robust growth in net fees and net income as well as a decrease in asset impairment losses.
The timing of CCB's upcoming sale is not yet known, and bankers say it will depend to a large extent on when the regulatory approvals come through. With so many planned issues, the authorities are likely to try to stagger them. Based on how much information has been made public so far, it seems Bank of China may come first, followed by CCB and then ICBC, although that is far from certain.
BOC has mandated Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BOC International, CCBI, Credit Suisse and ICBC International for the H-share portion of its rights issue. It is planning to offer 1.1 rights shares for every 10 existing shares and based on the number of outstanding shares, the A-share portion will account for about 70% of the offering, while the H-share portion will make up the remaining 30%. Huijin Investments owns 67.53% of the bank but has not yet said whether it will take up its entitlement in full.
Meanwhile, ICBC has mandated BNP Paribas, BOCI, UBS and its own investment banking arm, ICBC International, for the H-share portion of its offering. The bank has provided no further details about the sale so far, except to say that it will equal as much as 20% of its outstanding share capital. Huijin owns 35.41% of ICBC.
#rights issue
#followon
#banks
#china construction bank


I am soo in love with this pelamin.
If I have a lot of money to waste, I probably do it like this. Ouh..sangat cantik. I love the photography. Second option after Shahrinaziz.
Why oh why I just dont love dnora je. As for now I love their baju. My friend just suggest about their pelamin. Well, that's the best choices so far at my place.


The thundering of hooves across wet sand and the cheering of the crowd... that's the sound of the Castlepoint Beach Races, an annual Wairarapa Event usually held in March, but dependent on beach conditions and tides.
The beach races date back to 1872 when local farmhands would race each other for bottles of rum and stray coins. Today, thoroughbreds have replaced farm hacks and the day is as much about picnicing and family as it is about horses. Betting is allowed but you'll be allocated a horse at random, for a ticket price of $2.


Well known for her successful blog Girl a la Mode, featuring her long hair and simple but stylish clothes, London based graduate Charlie May has more recently launched her own label as a young British designer and is now working on expanding her label. Her blog started in 2008 and has since become one of the UK's top fashion blogs, being featured in magazines such as Elle, Company, Grazia Italia amongst others. Charlie also contributes bimonthly editorials to AOL's My Daily. Charlie's own fashion label is now represented by HPR LONDON.
After working on Louise Goldin's 2012 S/S collection and working for Thomas Tait, what finally made you think the time was right to start your own label?
I always thought that I would work my way up through a company and then start my own label once my name was already out there, but it was after interning I realised how much I wanted to be my own boss and do my own thing. I'm sure it was the best decision I've ever made!
Both! I really love blogging and I can't see myself giving it up, no matter how busy I get. I think it would be really great to offer such a unique inside view on the design industry.
Do you think you'll continue to blog as your label expands?
I imagine the pace will change a bit, right now it's very personal and shares everything from outfits to new found hang outs, I would love to share more of the behind the scenes of my label which I'm working on, I imagine as my label expands I will have more and more to share.
I love the English countryside, I take a lot of inspiration from the feeling it gives me. My collections don't really have themes, I prefer to work on my aesthetic, bringing in new ideas on what I would love to be wearing. I love to travel and when I'm not traveling I'm on online (Pinterest!), searching through photos for colour palette inspirations.
If you could describe your current collection in three words, what would they be?
Where do you see your fashion label in 10 years? Do you see yourself always being based in London?
I love London, I can't imagine uprooting myself or taking my shows to Paris. In 10 years I would love to be showing on schedule at London Fashion Week and selling worldwide.
Where can we get our hands on your beautiful designs?
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2012 at 8:07 am and is filed under Fashion, Uncategorized.


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Desire – Television Pilot
June 1, 2012 abepeTelevision
I was recently offered the role of Robin in the TV pilot "DESIRE". "DESIRE" is a scripted one-hour TV pilot about a female rock band (Desire) reuniting a decade after huge success followed by a huge breakup. Ten years have passed and the members of Desire the band still have some old scores to settle, even as they try to capture some of their past glory. The pilot, produced byRamona Schindelheim (Managing Editor, Fox 11 News), is in pre-production.
About a week ago from Heather O'Scanlon's Twitter via Twitter for iPhone
About 2 weeks ago from Heather O'Scanlon's Twitter via Twitter for iPhone


Strategy: During Early stages, try to Earth Shield the whole team (especially the Warrior of course). Firestorm regularly, especially when Centaur Spearthrowers, or any big monsters show up, or when there are too many tier one monsters: Eventually they'll target the archers and cleric etc and the situation gets out of hand). Firestorm is about 250 hp per monsters, so it's best to make sure that only 1 enemy survives (Firestorm aggros very much so everyone will target the wizard immediately), and I only have 1 warrior with taunt on my team).
Other than that, it's just standard tactics, aim for archers, spiders, and slugs (can be killed quickly).
Any other suggestions, or other team layouts?
I like using a druid and swordsmen, keep the swordsmen with thorn shield on him and have him taunt all the enemies so they are attacking him and damaging them self. Need to have a cleric or two to keep him from dieing though.
so..one druid and one swordmaster? Or more? How does the rest of your setup look like?
How many rounds do you survive?
Wizards are very powerful and will get you the farthest in destiny mode for sure. It is fun to try without wizards though. I normal do one or two swordsmen/druids combo and then the rest of the gold I spend on a couple healers and archers for added firepower and taking out the goblin bombers.


kleelee的好友 - Beautylife HK - Powered by Discuz!
想參加blind test試用維他命E保濕cream的快把email inbox我﹐deadline jan 31!!
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Get your face and body skin tight and unblemished with the Mommy Makeover package! Tailor-mode for you based on your personal needs. At Isya Aesthetics you will get a consultation where we will understand your personal concerns. Then based on your requirements and your skin type, we will personalize your Mommy Makeover package!
Book an appointment at Isya Aesthetics today to get your Mommy Makeover!


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Breakthrough Helps Narrow the Search for Intelligent Life in the Milky Way
A collaborative research team at the University of Mancheser has been able to dramatically expand the search for intelligent life from 1,400 stars to 280,000. (Image: via The University of Manchester)
An analytical breakthrough that could significantly improve our chances of finding intelligent life in our galaxy has been discovered by a team at The University of Manchester. In new research published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers demonstrate a reanalysis of existing data that represents a new milestone in the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
The analysis, say, researchers, can only locate technically advanced and intelligent life that uses radio waves as a form of communication — they could not, for example, detect "simple" life or non-technical civilizations. The team is made up of the Masters' student Bart Wlodarczyk-Sroka and his advisor Professor Michael Garrett at The University of Manchester in the UK, collaborating with Dr. Andrew Siemion, Director of the Breakthrough Listen Initiative, who have placed the best limits ever on the prevalence of artificial radio transmitters, dubbed techno-signatures, in the Milky Way.
The ESA's Gaia spacecraft is looking for planets that may have signs of intelligent life
Combing through the catalog produced by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia spacecraft, which measured the distances to over a billion stars, the researchers recalculated limits on the prevalence of transmitters around additional stars within the radio telescope's fields of view. By selecting stars out to much larger distances (up to about 33,000 light-years) than the original sample of nearby stars, they were able to expand the number of stars studied from 1,327 to 288,315.
Combing through the catalog produced by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia spacecraft, the researchers recalculated limits on the prevalence of transmitters around additional stars within the radio telescope's fields of view. (Image: via ESA)
"Knowing the locations and distances to these additional sources," he says, "greatly improves our ability to constrain the prevalence of extra-terrestrial intelligence in our own galaxy and beyond. We expect future SETI surveys to also make good use of this approach".
Wlodarczyk-Sroka said:
"Our results help to put meaningful limits on the prevalence of transmitters comparable to what we ourselves can build using twenty first century technology. We now know that fewer than one in 1600 stars closer than about 330 light years host transmitters just a few times more powerful than the strongest radar we have here on Earth. Inhabited worlds with much more powerful transmitters than we can currently produce must be rarer still."
The sheer number of stars studied enabled Wlodarczyk-Sroka to place some of the most stringent limits to date on the prevalence of powerful radio transmitters in this region of our Galaxy. In addition, for the first time, the team has been able to do this as a function of stellar type — the extended sample includes not only a wide range of main-sequence stars, but also numerous giant stars and white dwarfs.
Troy Oakes
Troy was born and raised in Australia and has always wanted to know why and how things work, which led him to his love for science. He is a professional photographer and enjoys taking pictures of Australia's beautiful landscapes. He is also a professional storm chaser where he currently lives in Hervey Bay, Australia.


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Guest Post: WHAT EVERY HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER NEEDS TO KNOW: FILM MARKETING 101
[via Mike Kuciak, from The New Yorker]
Tim Palen wants his core audience to feel that a film is theirs, one marketer says: "He gives them content that feels bloggy and street."
Letter from California
Inside a movie marketer's playbook.
by Tad Friend
One night in mid-October, as the movie executive Tim Palen looked on with panoramic vigilance, a roar from jostling photographers seemed to freeze Josh Brolin's grin in place. Brolin plays George W. Bush in Oliver Stone's "W.," a Lionsgate film that was having its première, and he was making such halting progress down the red carpet outside Manhattan's Ziegfeld Theatre that he seemed to be still in character. Palen, who is Lionsgate's co-president of theatrical marketing—the studio's resident promotional genius—had been working for months to make people care about "W.," a film that didn't have an obvious audience; indeed, the film's subject, in the intense focus on the Presidential election and the economic crash, had all but disappeared. This evening would be a kind of sardonic resurrection: a few yards away on the red carpet, James Cromwell (who plays George H. W. Bush) was slyly telling an interviewer, "I play Dennis Kucinich," and Richard Dreyfuss (Dick Cheney) was posing in a green velvet jacket that made clear he was no Republican.
When Brolin spotted Palen, his fixed grin became a real smile. He mimed opening a magazine with an expression of amazement, then rushed over and gave the marketer a hug. Brolin and Oliver Stone had taped an appearance on "Charlie Rose" earlier that day, and Rose had surprised the actor with a photograph that showed him yawning, flamboyantly, across a full page of the latest Newsweek. Palen, an accomplished photographer, had taken the picture in a session that also produced the film's posters. Newsweek ran a lengthy essay about "W.," which concluded that the film was, "surprisingly, more or less fair." This had been Oliver Stone's goal—and was now Tim Palen's problem. His job was not to encapsulate the film's artistry but, rather, to insist to a busy, jaded, and suspicious audience that "W." would really stir them up. As Tom Ortenberg, Lionsgate's president of theatrical films, told me, he had said at a marketing meeting, "Who wants to see an evenhanded editorial think piece from Oliver Stone?"
Publicity is selling what you have: the film's stars and sometimes its director. Marketing, very often, is selling what you don't have; it's the art of the tease. A première lets the marketing and publicity teams join in a final effort to "eventize" a film, to move it to the top of the nation's long to-do list. Many premières feel slack and dutiful, but this one had the fizz of a genuine event. Lionsgate, which, together with "W." 's other investors, spent about three hundred thousand dollars on the début—three times its usual outlay—later reckoned that coverage on "Entertainment Tonight" and "Access Hollywood" and in dozens of other outlets was worth more than a million dollars in advertising.
Palen, in silence, watched the parade of stars until Thandie Newton, the British actress who plays Condoleezza Rice, came by and he reached out to clasp her hand. "I'm such a groupie," Palen sheepishly acknowledged after Newton glided on. "I'm a fourteen-year-old girl. But having a girl's viewing habits"—he is devoted to "The Hills" and "Project Runway"—"actually comes in very handy."
Palen, who is forty-seven, has a shaved head, a graying beard, and the bulging, tattooed arms of a steamfitter. Usually he wears jeans and a hoodie, but this evening he was in a black Prada suit, a black Prada shirt, and black Prada shoes: his première outfit. His uncommon mixture of traits—he is warm, incisive, competitive, loyal, and catty—makes him fun to be around, even at premières, where he often feels anxious and out of place. When Michael Pitt, an actor who was in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," ambled past in a ratty military jacket, Palen said, "I see he got dressed up. Headache and the Angry Itch."
You have to have some of that spitballer's attitude to do Palen's job; you have to love a ruckus. Even as movie attendance has dropped nineteen per cent from its peak of 1.6 billion theatregoers, in 2002, the number of films released each year since then has increased by thirty per cent. A dozen new films—three of them big studio releases—now vie for attention on any given weekend. To cut through the ambient noise, major studios spend an average of thirty-six million dollars to market one of their films. "Most of a movie's opening gross is about marketing," Clint Culpepper, the president of Sony Screen Gems, says. "You can have the most terrific movie in the world, and if you can't convey that fact in fifteen- and thirty-second TV ads it's like having bad speakers on a great stereo." At Sony, executives ask, "Can we make this seem 'babysitter-worthy'? Will it get them out of the house?"
Lionsgate, smaller, scrappier, and stingier than the six major studios, has released such distinguished films as "Crash," "Monster's Ball," and "Away from Her," but it has made its reputation with edgy, low-budget action and horror movies, particularly the five "Saw" films. In August, the company opened a new production division to make a broader range of films, including romantic comedies. The studio has also declared itself willing to make an occasional big-budget "tent pole"; it has cautiously begun to take on the big studios.
These changes will place a greater burden on Palen, not so much of additional work—the line in Lionsgate's marketing division is that every job already includes "D.F.E.," or "Do Fucking Everything"—as of adapting his sensibility to new audiences, and of curbing his instinct, usually couched behind a restless politeness, that he knows best. Many Hollywood marketers construct their campaigns in slow-motion groupthink; Palen strikes so quickly that one of his regular poster venders calls him "the Cobra." He believes that if you express a strong opinion, fast, others will fall in line. But he also has a pitiless eye. At another Lionsgate première, for "Saw V," in Las Vegas, he glanced at the romantic-kiss photo on the Paris Hotel's marquee and remarked, "I don't like that fingernail." It became impossible to look at the marquee and see anything but the woman's lurid white-tipped nail against the man's neck, glowing like the evidence of a murder.
Palen's campaigns, which have won many of the movie industry's Key Art and Golden Trailer awards, are witty and pugnacious, particularly the ones that are borderline pornographic. For the gory 2006 hit "Hostel," Palen created a poster from his own photo of a giant chainsaw springing out of a nearly naked man's lap. For his "Rambo" poster, last year, Palen chose a dripping stencil of Sylvester Stallone's face which called to mind the famous Che Guevara image. "A lot of people wouldn't have had the nerve to do a piece of street art that subliminally sampled the Che poster," Stallone told me. "Studios usually crowd everything in, hoping to reach you with something—I've had posters with nine overlapping images. But Tim's was a piece of art."
Paul Haggis, the writer-director of the 2005 film "Crash," says, "I came in thinking Tim was doing everything wrong. He made the poster Michael Peña screaming over his daughter, rather than selling Brendan Fraser or Matt Dillon or Sandra Bullock. I worried that the trailer, a mood piece about how people have to crash into each other to feel alive, was going to seem like overly significant claptrap. Then Tim and Sarah"—Sarah Greenberg, Palen's co-president, who handles publicity—"came to me and said, 'We're going to go for an Academy campaign.' I really, really thought they were crazy: this was a little six-million-dollar film." For the cost of three full-page ads in the Times, about two hundred thousand dollars, Lionsgate sent more than a hundred thousand DVDs of the film to every member of the Screen Actors Guild—pioneering a now common saturation technique. In a huge upset, "Crash" beat "Brokeback Mountain" and "Munich" to win Best Picture.
"W.," an earnest drama that punctuates George Bush's struggle to emerge from his father's shadow with satiric sequences set in the Situation Room, was rejected by several of the larger studios before Lionsgate agreed to make it. "We took 'W.' because of Oliver Stone, pedigree, and built-in controversy—controversy leads to marketing," Michael Burns, Lionsgate's vice-chairman, told me. Palen said, "I don't know if everyone here loved the concept of 'W.,' but we felt we could kick some ass on it."
Stone, in an early meeting to discuss the film's marketing, told Palen, "I know you're good with 'Saw,' but this isn't 'Saw.' "
Palen replied, "It's also not 'Crash,' and it's not '3:10 to Yuma' "—two of the studio's hits. "It's its own movie, and we'll treat it as such."
Marketers and filmmakers are often quietly at war. "The most common comment you hear from filmmakers after we've done our work is 'This is not my movie,' " Terry Press, a consultant who used to run marketing at Dreamworks SKG, says. "I'd always say, 'You're right—this is the movie America wants to see.' "
To reëngage moviegoers with a dormant President, Palen spent twenty-three million dollars trying to tie the film to the long-awaited end of Bush's term and to tap the same appetite for political ridicule that feasted on Tina Fey's impersonations of Sarah Palin. Most of the movie's trailers and TV spots were in the rollicking spirit of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which the studio also distributed: they featured Bush driving drunk, mouthing malapropisms, and looking confounded. At the close, Palen wanted to run a new banner ad on Internet ticketing sites and political blogs: "Sitting President," a photo that he'd taken of Brolin as Bush on the toilet, posed like Rodin's "The Thinker." Stone vetoed it: he was concerned that Palen's materials made his film seem giddy and trifling. "Josh on the toilet, that one I didn't go for," the director told me.
"I sympathize," Palen told me. "Oliver Stone has the President taking a shit—how disrespectful. But from the marketing perspective we needed some teeth. Moritz Borman"—one of the film's producers—"told me, 'I don't want to know about "Sitting President," and if Oliver finds out and yells, I'm going to yell at you, too. But you have to do it.' " So Palen did. And Stone didn't find out. (Borman says that he didn't authorize the ad.)
Yet a number of Hollywood observers believed that no amount of marketing could save "W." from being a "feathered fish"—a film whose target audience thinks it's for someone else. "They made the movie look like 'Animal House,' a Judd Apatow film, and that audience won't be going because they know it's about Bush and politics," one film-marketing consultant told me. "When the reviews reveal that it's shockingly fair, the 'Fahrenheit 9/11' crowd will stay away. And the people who like Bush are out once they hear it's Oliver Stone. I think the film opens at five million"—disaster.
When Palen saw Stone on the red carpet, the men smiled and tapped each other on the wrists. Then Stone mischievously stuck out his tongue. "These are the duties," Palen murmured as he watched the filmmaker move on. "We say 'Hey!' " In effect, Palen had now passed the baton back. His work in selling what the studio didn't quite have—a brisk, playful romp—would now begin to give way to what the movie really was. But not before the verdict on Palen's marketing became clear, three days later, when the film opened.
One afternoon in June of 2001, Andrew Fogelson, a longtime Hollywood executive who had run marketing divisions at Columbia and Warner Bros., was driving down Olympic Boulevard in Santa Monica when he saw a billboard advertising "The Fast and the Furious," a forthcoming film about street racers. The billboard showed only a streaking yellow sports car. Recognizing it as a Universal Pictures film, Fogelson picked up his cell phone and called his son, Adam, then Universal's senior vice-president of creative marketing, at his office. "Adam," he said, "what the fuck is this car movie, and why would anyone go see a movie about hubcaps?"
"That's why I'm here, and you're on Olympic Boulevard," Adam Fogelson replied.
"What are you hoping for?" his father asked.
"Twenty million."
"Lifetime?"
"No, opening."
"If that opens at twenty million," Andrew Fogelson said, "I'll eat it." The picture opened at forty million. "My father saw a car, and not a particularly special car, at an angle on a billboard," Adam Fogelson, who now runs Universal's marketing department, says. "And he thought, How would that motivate? For us, that image was simply a graphic, readable reminder—an exclamation point—on a very expensive campaign of trailers and TV ads that had already got our target audience excited. If you're my dad and you say, 'What the hell is that?,' it wasn't for you in the first place."
"In 1970, when I started," Andrew Fogelson told me, "marketing was called 'advertising and publicity,' and it was a totally unrefined art that consisted of making posters that tried to capture the essence of the movie and said 'Starts Tomorrow.' "
The business began to change in 1973, when "Billy Jack," about a rebellious ex-Green Beret, was reissued by its writer and star, Tom Laughlin, after a Warner Bros. release fizzled. Laughlin's company, Taylor-Laughlin Distribution, saturated the airwaves with television spots aimed at twelve different demographics—"carefully calculated overkill," as one Taylor-Laughlin executive put it. When the film grossed a then enormous seventy-five million dollars, the studios suddenly understood that television ads really work. And if you're going to spend a lot of money on advertising, they realized, you need to be in more theatres to amortize the cost. "Jaws" opened "wide" in 1975, on four hundred and nine screens, at the time a large number; big studio films now open everywhere on more than four thousand. And if you're in that many theatres you need huge audiences as soon as a film opens—so you need a movie that sells itself. And then you need to sell the hell out of it.
One of the oldest jokes in the business is that when a studio head takes over he's given three envelopes, the first of which contains the advice "Fire the head of marketing." Nowadays, though, former marketers, such as Oren Aviv, at Disney, and Marc Shmuger, at Universal, often run the studios. "Studios now are pimples on the ass of giant conglomerates," one studio's president of production says. "So at green-light meetings it's a bunch of marketing and sales guys giving you educated guesses about what a property might gross. No one is saying, 'This director was born to make this movie.' "
A studio film costs an average of a hundred and seven million dollars to make and sell, so merely having the germ of a brilliant movie is by no means enough to get a green light. The producer Brian Grazer, whose films include "Frost/Nixon" and "A Beautiful Mind," mentioned a potential remake of a James Dean film: "I have the book 'East of Eden' and a script by Paul Attanasio"—an A-list screenwriter—"but I don't know how I'd ever make it, because I don't know how I'd sell it. With this material, I can't reach you emotionally, tell the story, or be visually transcendent in a thirty-second TV spot. And there's no 'Holy shit!' moment for the trailer." (Grazer is continuing to develop the project, with a new writer.)
Marketing considerations shape not only the kind of films studios make but who's in them—gone are lavish adult dramas with no stars, like the 1982 "Gandhi." Such considerations account for a big role being written for Shia LaBeouf in the most recent "Indiana Jones" (to attract youthful viewers as well as Harrison Ford's aging fans). They also account for the virtual absence from the screen of children between the ages of newborn (when they appear briefly, to puke on the star for the trailer) and that of the Macauley Culkin character in "Home Alone." Why have a four-year-old character, when one who is ten will prompt ten-year-olds to find him "relatable," and four-to-nine-year-olds to look up to him? "If we weren't making decisions based on marketability, John Malkovich would be in every movie," a top studio marketer says. "Great actor, but not someone you want to see half-naked in the sheets next to Angelina Jolie."
Modern campaigns have three acts: a year or more before the film débuts, you introduce it with ninety-second teaser trailers and viral Internet "leaks" of gossip or early footage, in preparation for the main trailer, which appears four months before the release; five weeks before the film opens, you start saturating with a "flight" of thirty-second TV spots; and, at the end, you remind with fifteen-second spots, newspaper ads, and billboards. Studios typically spend about ten million dollars on the "basics" (cutting trailers and designing posters, conducting market research, flying the film's talent to the junket and the première, and the première itself) and thirty million on the media buy. Between seventy and eighty per cent of that is spent on television advertising (enough so that viewers should see the ads an average of fifteen times), eight or nine per cent on Internet ads, and the remainder on newspaper and outdoor advertising. The hope is that a potential viewer will be prodded just enough to make him decide to see what all the fuss is about. It's the "belt and suspenders and corset and parachute harness" approach.
"What I'm doing now is a totally different activity from what my father did," Universal's Adam Fogelson says. "We have to yell loud and long enough to perfectly inflate the balloon on the day of release—and yet not so loud that we pop it."
It is often said in Hollywood that no one sets out to make a bad movie, but the truth is that people cheerfully set out to make bad movies all the time. It is more accurate to say that no one sets out to make a movie without having a particular audience in mind. Many studio executives argue that films can't objectively be categorized as "good" or "bad": either they appeal to a given demographic—and make the studio at least a ten-per-cent profit—or they don't. "Most critics are not the target audience for most of the films being made today, so they're not going to respond to them," Sony Screen Gems' Clint Culpepper says. "How a fifty-six-year-old man feels about a movie aimed at teen-age girls is irrelevant."
An unexpected corollary of the modern marketing-and-distribution model is that films no longer have time to find their audience; that audience has to be identified and solicited well in advance. Marketers segment the audience in a variety of ways, but the most common form of partition is the four quadrants: men under twenty-five; older men; women under twenty-five; older women. A studio rarely makes a film that it doesn't expect will succeed with at least two quadrants, and a film's budget is usually directly related to the number of quadrants it is anticipated to reach. The most expensive tent-pole movies, such as the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, are aimed at all four quadrants.
The collective wisdom is that young males like explosions, blood, cars flying through the air, pratfalls, poop jokes, "you're so gay" banter, and sex—but not romance. Young women like friendship, pop music, fashion, sarcasm, sensitive boys who think with their hearts, and romance—but not sex (though they like to hear the naughty girl telling her friends about it). They go to horror films as much as young men, but they hate gore; you lure them by having the ingénue take her time walking down the dark hall.
Older women like feel-good films and Nicholas Sparks-style weepies: they are the core audience for stories of doomed love and triumphs of the human spirit. They enjoy seeing an older woman having her pick of men; they hate seeing a child in danger. Particularly once they reach thirty, these women are the most "review-sensitive": a chorus of critical praise for a movie aimed at older women can increase the opening weekend's gross by five million dollars. In other words, older women are discriminating, which is why so few films are made for them.
Older men like darker films, classic genres such as Westerns and war movies, men protecting their homes, and men behaving like idiots. Older men are easy to please, particularly if a film stars Clint Eastwood and is about guys just like them, but they're hard to motivate. "Guys only get off their couches twice a year, to go to 'Wild Hogs' or '3:10 to Yuma,' " the marketing consultant Terry Press says. "If all you have is older males, it's time to take a pill."
Studio marketers have a few rules for making their films seem broadly "relatable":
Can't we all get along? In "Stomp the Yard," which was about an urban street dancer who goes to college, the poster showed the African-American hero with his back turned, leaving his race indeterminate. The campaign for "Bring It On" portrayed the story as a rivalry between white and black cheerleading squads, even though more than eighty per cent of the film was about the white squad. The first marketing materials for Fox's X-Men franchise showed only an "X." Why exclude half your audience?
If the poster shows a poster child, the movie is for kids. Posters are intended to tell you the film's genre at a glance, then make you look more closely. Horror posters, for instance, have dark backgrounds; comedies have white backgrounds with the title and copy line in red. Because stars are supposed to open the film, and because they have contractual approval of how they appear on the poster, the final image is often a so-called "big head" or "floating head" of the star. Every poster for a Will Smith movie features his head, and for good reason: he is the only true movie star left, the only one who could open even a film about beekeeping monks.
Everybody's a comedian. Any drama with at least three funny moments in it will be portrayed, in the trailer and TV spots, as a comedy. The trailer for the 2005 film "The Squid and the Whale" conveyed a measure of the film's delicate unease, but it was basically a series of wry exchanges. A joke, particularly a pratfall, is self-contained, whereas a sad or anxious moment is hard to convey briefly and out of context.
If it's called "The Squid and the Whale," it's somebody else's problem. That movie was produced by Samuel Goldwyn Films, an independent studio, and grossed seven million dollars—quite good for a small film, but not for a studio release. If a movie's title and stars don't tell you almost everything you need to know about a film—"Get Smart," starring Steve Carell, say—marketers worry. Fox had to spend a little extra to sell "The Devil Wears Prada," because casual moviegoers wondered what Meryl Streep was doing in a horror film. When a movie underperforms, an awkward title is often seen as the culprit.
Always cheat death. People die in movies; they almost never die in trailers. They are courageous ("The Express") or missing ("Changeling") or profoundly alive ("Revolutionary Road"). "If a movie is completely, one hundred per cent about death, then it's also about life, right?" Fox's co-head of marketing, Tony Sella, told me. The only thing marketers can't pull off, Sella acknowledged, is "selling old to young"—persuading kids to see a movie like "Driving Miss Daisy." "You can try with"—he adopted a baritone voice-over—" 'You don't know where you're going, but here's what it's going to look like when you arrive.' But they usually say, 'Screw you, I'll wait.' "
T wo days after the "W." première, Tim Palen and Sarah Greenberg were sitting in a theatre in Sherman Oaks, California, thumbing their BlackBerrys before a test screening for "Chilled in Miami," when they were visited by Paul Brooks, the film's producer. A romantic comedy starring Renée Zellweger, "Chilled in Miami" was to be released in late January. Zellweger plays an eager executive in a Miami-based conglomerate who flies to a small town in Minnesota to figure out whom to fire at the local plant. An earlier screening had had mixed results. "We made all the changes the last screening suggested," Brooks said, "so if the film tests for shit, it's NRG's fault." (Nielsen NRG, which conducts test screenings, is one of Hollywood's leading research companies.)
Everyone smiled, a little carefully. Palen had explained the film to me earlier by saying, "Did you see 'Baby Boom'? It's that. It's that without the baby." He had been working to make a compelling trailer, using David Schneiderman, at Seismic Productions, who cut trailers for "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Sex and the City." Paul Brooks wanted the trailer to be primarily comedic, but Palen felt that it needed an emotional through-line, "the stuff that tugs on the ovary." Schneiderman says that Palen's reaction to his first pass "was the worst: 'Where's the Mary Tyler Moore?' He said, 'This girl goes to this little town in Minnesota and she's a cold person, and they warm her up, right? More warmth, more style, more "Devil Wears Prada." ' And I said, 'I don't know where that is in the movie.' And he said, 'Create it.' "
Palen often uses a jokey shorthand to convey the sort of campaign he wants; his internal name for "Chilled in Miami" was "The Devil Wears Patagonia." He referred to "Good Luck Chuck," a critically lambasted R-rated comedy starring Jessica Alba, as "There's Something About Jessica," and cut the TV spots to emphasize Alba's tumbles and mishaps. "We cheated it and got the film open, which was kind of a feat," he says. "America likes cheese." (When I e-mailed Palen to tell him that I'd watched the film, he replied, "Can you get workman's comp?")
Each maneuver and ad buy in Palen's campaigns is detailed in a confidential playbook. For marketers, much of the science of marketing is determining which old movie your new movie is most like, so you can turn to that movie's playbook as a rough guide. Much of the art of marketing is developing a campaign that reassures moviegoers that the new film is very similar to (or at least "from the director of") another one they liked. The top-ten-grossing movies of the last decade were all "pre-awareness" titles: movies like "Spider-Man" whose stories the audience already knew from another medium, or sequels. Familiarity breeds comfort until it suddenly breeds contempt. "Will Ferrell did great doing the same sports comedy over and over," a leading marketing consultant observes. "And then 'Semi- Pro' was one movie too far. Unfortunately, you only learn that afterward."
The big studios' average marketing budget of thirty-six million dollars is one-third the total cost of making a film; Lionsgate's average marketing budget is twenty-two million dollars, about two-thirds of the film's total cost. In other words, Lionsgate is making much cheaper films that rely disproportionately on their marketing. "Fox probably spent fifteen million dollars more marketing 'Transporter 2' than Lionsgate spent marketing 'Transporter 3,' " one of the action-film franchise's producers, Steven Chasman, says. "But Lionsgate did just as good a job, because they take more care in lasering in on their targets." "Transporter 2" grossed forty-three million; "Transporter 3" grossed thirty-two million but—when DVD sales and other ancillary revenues are factored in—will ultimately net Lionsgate about ten million.
Thrifty campaigns epitomize the studio's abiding financial caution: it often sells off foreign rights and defrays production and marketing costs by teaming up with outside investors. As a result, Lionsgate, which has been in business for twelve years, has never lost more than ten million dollars on a film. (It has also built a thriving business producing such television shows as "Weeds" and "Mad Men.") But its biggest earners, "Monster's Ball" and the first "Saw" film, each netted a relatively modest forty to fifty million dollars, and its distribution deal for Tyler Perry's comic melodramas—sizable hits, all six of them—has made the studio only about a hundred and twenty million dollars in all. The larger studios can lose more than a hundred million dollars on a film fairly easily, yet their occasional tent-pole blockbusters can generate six hundred to eight hundred million dollars in profits. And tent poles spawn sequels that give the studio some assurance of profitability in years to come.
Lionsgate's vice-chairman, Michael Burns, acknowledges that the studio will have to refashion its marketing hooks as it begins fishing in bigger, murkier waters. "The wider the potential audience, the more difficult it is to find the comfort zone for how we're going to market it," he says. "I think we can do well with 'Chilled,' but it's not in our historical sweet spot." Some at the studio worried that the film, while funny and pleasant, wasn't distinctive enough to establish Lionsgate as the new home of the "rom com." No one could quite agree on a title that would improve upon the gloomy "Chilled in Miami." And though some of Palen's favorite films are comedies about strong women—"Working Girl" and "The Women" (the 1939 version)—he had no playbook for a PG-13 romantic comedy about a strong woman.
After the October test screening, Joe Drake, the head of Lionsgate's motion-picture group, said to Palen and Greenberg, "Is it just me, or did that play really well in the room?" The scores seemed to bear Drake out: the percentage who thought the film excellent or very good, the so-called "top two boxes," went from sixty-five at the earlier screening to seventy-four—in other words, from worrisome to respectable. (Studios love to see scores in the eighties.)
Yet testing is fraught: it rewards comedy, narrative, and familiar stars or plot elements, and often undervalues the new. Executives' testing stories take divergent paths to the same punch line. Either they decided not to tamper with a "Pulp Fiction," despite testing results invariably described as "the lowest scores in the studio's history," or they were confounded when an "Akeelah and the Bee" faltered commercially despite "the highest scores in the studio's history." In both scenarios, the numbers lied. "Testing is a sham," one marketing consultant says. "All you've learned is what people thought of a movie they didn't have to pay for. It does not mean they're going to go pay for it."
After the screening, Palen listened carefully to the focus group. Then, on the escalator down from the theatre, he said, "They weren't talking about Renée Zellweger, but she was the reason they came, because she's a movie star. So if we're out on Super Bowl weekend as counter-programming—trying to get women—the trailer has to be about her and be all shellacked and lacquered. Though I wonder if 'Fargo' meets 'Baby Boom' might be more relatable, with the downsizing everyone's experiencing." I mentioned that Blanche (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), Zellweger's administrative assistant at the plant, had got many of the biggest laughs. "Droll and folksy reads as quaint, reads as art house," Palen said. "I love Blanche, but I can't sell her."
Like most comedies, "Chilled" lacked a huge trailer moment: the fabled five seconds that can open a film, such as the head of the Statue of Liberty bouncing down the street, in "Cloverfield." So its trailer would be a standard three-act journey: where the Zellweger character has been, the world she's in now, and where she's going—all in two and a half minutes. The voice-over star Don LaFontaine, who died in September, was revered for his ability to quickly situate the audience with such trademark phrases as "In a world where . . ." and "From the bedroom to the boardroom." Current trailers often achieve the same narrative shorthand with two-second establishing shots separated by dips to black accompanied by whooshes of sound. Of course, rapid cuts can create unease: what are they hiding? So a way to signal genuine quality is to "stop the trailer down" and let a scene play out for ten or fifteen seconds.
The marketing advantage that studios have over other industries is that they can give out free samples of a movie as advertising—promotional material that feels like content. But filmmakers object when a trailer reveals too much of the story, or their best fireball, or their funniest joke. Tony Sella, the Fox marketer, wanted to end his trailer for "The Simpsons Movie" with Homer walking his pet Spider-Pig upside down across the ceiling and singing his Spider-Pig song. "The writers told me, 'Absolutely not, you can't use it,' " Sella recalls. "I said, 'O.K., we can not use Spider-Pig, and the theatres will be three-quarters full, and the audience will be tremendously amused when they see it. Or you can have lines around the block, and half the people will be saying, 'Wait till you see Spider-Pig!' to the other half." Spider-Pig stayed in.
Another problem with free samples is: what if the product isn't particularly remarkable? "How many great movies are there each year?" the trailer cutter David Schneiderman says. "We're in the business of cheating, let's face it. We fix voice-overs, create dialogue to clear up a story, use stock footage. We give pushup bras to flat-chested girls, take people's eyes and put them where we want them. And sometimes it works."
P alen grew up in Northglenn, Colorado, not far from Boulder, where his father ran a Texaco station and his mother was an administrative assistant for a cheese manufacturer. He was the middle child in a churchgoing Catholic family, bracketed by two sets of sisters, all of whom ended up married and living within thirty miles of their parents. Palen knew by age five that he was attracted to boys and even before then that his future lay elsewhere. "I always felt like a fish out of water in northern Colorado," he says. "Uncle Jim had been Clark Gable's stunt double on 'The Misfits,' and I wanted to be on that plan—to get out."
He left college before graduating and wound up in Los Angeles, where he met his partner of the last twenty-one years, an entrepreneur named Abel Villareal, and began work as a marketer for Sony and then for Destination Films. He came to Lionsgate in 2001, and his first campaign there was for "Monster's Ball," which won Halle Berry an Oscar. But, like many marketers, he discovered that his skills are most needed on less accomplished films. The week after "W." opened, Lionsgate released "Saw V." The "Saw" series, refreshed every Halloween with an increasingly thin yet convoluted story line, would with this installment become the highest-grossing horror franchise ever. At its heart is a soft-voiced madman, Jigsaw, played by Tobin Bell, who kidnaps bad people and forces them to "play a game," according to the videotaped instructions of his Jigsaw doll, that usually ends in their messy dismemberment.
Palen has showcased the films' torture porn with inventive zeal, developing a "Saw" blood drive featuring S & M nurses, and putting a clip of one of the first film's head-smashing "traps" online, with the tagline "How Fucked Up Is That?" For "Saw IV," he slipped five-second "blink" ads into a pod of commercials on MTV: the screen filled with static, and then the creepy Jigsaw doll suddenly appeared, scaring the bejeezus out of viewers. "Tim recognized that you want the core audience to feel, for a while, that the film is theirs," John Shea, the head of integrated marketing at MTV Networks, says. "So he gives them content that feels bloggy and street—like they're behind the curtain. Then they become barkers for your film."
Palen has always believed in being polarizing, always been willing to alienate much of the audience in order to motivate his core. Other studios thought, not without reason, that Lionsgate was sometimes flouting industry rules. For "Saw II," Palen made the "II" a pair of severed fingers, then released the poster without seeking the approval of the Motion Picture Association of America, which forbids ads that show "dismemberments, mutations, or mutilations of bodies," along with such objectionable elements as "people or animals on fire" and "sacrilege." (To qualify the film for an M.P.A.A. rating, Palen later recast the poster so you couldn't see the fingers' nubs.) "Horror posters are usually a girl with big boobs running from a guy with an axe, and Tim has a beautifully composed image of freaking severed fingers," Michael Kahane, who produces some of Palen's trailers and posters, says. "We all thought, How did he get away with that?"
"Saw V," buoyed by Palen's poster—a haunting image of a brooding man wearing the severed face of Tobin Bell, attached by metal clips, atop his own—opened that weekend at thirty million dollars, bested only by Disney's "High School Musical 3." (Palen promptly took out ads on ticketing sites declaring "High School is for pussies.") Yet the quick-and-dirty series has constrained Lionsgate's reputation in the industry. Jeremy Zimmer, a board member at United Talent Agency, says, "You can't grow without spending real money on movies. Eventually, you have to look into the eyes of a relatively untested filmmaker like Zack Snyder and say, 'Fuck it, let's do it—let's make "300." ' You have to take the Big Gulp."
"We now have a rule, as a department, that we don't mention 'Saw' to other filmmakers," Palen told me. "It's self-aggrandizing, it minimizes the movie we're working together on now, and it makes us look old."
On October 17th, "W." opened on two thousand and thirty screens. Opening Fridays are always tense: at Fox, they used to call the long hours "the Vigil," and Universal's Adam Fogelson says that openings are "an exciting, nauseating thrill ride best enjoyed with a piña colada far away." If a film doesn't find its audience the first weekend, exhibitors pull it from their best theatres, and eventual television-licensing fees and DVD sales fall correspondingly. Lionsgate's movie executives spent the day at their headquarters, a bland, red-brick building in Santa Monica, anxiously awaiting updates on the grosses. During the wait, Oliver Stone called to thank Palen for his work; Palen said that it was one of the nicest calls he'd ever received from a filmmaker. "I'm only disappointed Oliver never threw something at me," he added afterward. "I was hoping for that, almost, just to get to see a piece of the legend."
The reviews were generally pretty good, which always helps "prestige" films, but Lionsgate's hopes really rose when NRG's tracking for "W." jumped after the film's première. Marketers pay particular attention to how many people volunteer knowledge of their film—if the numbers are low a few weeks out, they will tweak the campaign—and "W." 's "unaided awareness" had risen from two per cent that Monday to a healthy eight per cent on Thursday. The three main research companies use their tracking data to predict the opening weekend's gross, and their predictions for "W." were in the eight-to-nine-million-dollar range. These forecasts can be astonishingly accurate—or way off. Palen has found that the tracking for Lionsgate's hits routinely underestimates their audience: people who are slightly outside the mainstream. (At the studio, they call these party crashers "the freak factor.") NRG predicted that Tyler Perry's first film for Lionsgate, "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," would open at four to six million dollars, and it opened at $21.9 million. Tracking studies are conducted among people who've seen at least six movies in the past year, but Perry's films have proved to be wildly popular with churchgoing African-American women. Other hidden pockets of interest made "The Passion of the Christ" and "Sex and the City" even bigger hits.
Kevin Goetz, president of the worldwide motion-picture group at the research firm OTX, says that his company, knowing it can't track all of Perry's audience, simply inflates the "unknown variable" segment of its predictive model by twenty to twenty-five per cent for his films. Often, then, the algorithm of box-office estimation, which is itself the algorithm of marketing efficacy, is actually the algorithm of the informed hunch.
At 5:30 P.M. Friday, Lionsgate's distribution department sent an e-mail estimating that, based on strong early attendance in the East, "W." would open at about twelve million dollars. Palen hates to make box-office predictions, but at the end of the afternoon he murmured, "If the number doesn't have a 'teen' in it, I'll be disappointed." On Saturday, he e-mailed me to say that he hoped the film would stay in second place, behind "Max Payne," so "I can break out the Bush on the toilet for next week with a huge 'WE'RE NUMBER TWO!' message (kidding . . . sorta)." When the film wound up a close fourth for the weekend, at $10.5 million, he pronounced himself "relieved and a little depressed."
Given the industry-standard multiplier for ultimate box-office—two and a half times the opening weekend's gross—this meant that the film was expected to gross about twenty-six million dollars. (It wound up at $25.5 million.) By late afternoon Friday, then, the entire success of the filmmakers' years of work on "W." was clear, and Lionsgate knew to a fair degree of certainty that it would ultimately net between three and five million dollars. For a tricky film, this was a satisfying result.
That Monday, Palen was back at work on the four other films the studio would open before the end of the year. He was particularly taken with "The Spirit," the studio's first wide release at Christmas and its first to have a thirty-million-dollar marketing budget. "The Spirit," based on an obscure Will Eisner comic strip from the nineteen-forties, was Lionsgate's attempt to build a tent-pole franchise. Frank Miller, the celebrated comic-book author, had written and directed a moody, snowy, sumptuous film about a masked charmer with a self-healing body who lives to protect his city. Palen produced a crescendo of three trailers, and everything from "Spirit" trading cards to snow globes to iPhone applications.
In November, Palen and his team met with the film's producer, Deborah Del Prete, and her team to discuss his outdoor campaign. Del Prete enthusiastically seconded all of Palen's plans; in this case, the producer and the studio were equally excited about the film's prospects (and they were equally crushed when the film got swamped in the crowded holiday season, grossing only eighteen million dollars in the first two weeks). Often, however, such meetings are the final collision between the mutually aggrieved marketers, who feel the studio has been handed a worse film than they were originally sold, and the filmmakers, who suspect they're being sold a cheaper campaign than they were led to expect. "Basically, the code is this," a prominent agent says. " 'We will show you thirty pumped-up people, so you will go do the junket and go on "Letterman" and fucking perform with a sense of enthusiasm.' It's the same meeting we were having five years ago, except now there's a girl in a sweater who does the Internet."
The marketers go around the table, describing the campaign in a salmagundi of "rating points against the target," and "owning fifty per cent of voice on Yahoo," and "MySpace reskins." The producer Brian Grazer admits, "I can't say I one hundred per cent understand what the media buy really means. Though I might not say 'What?' in front of thirty people." Another prominent agent says, "If you say the creative is no good, they say, 'We love it and the testing supports it.' If you say the release date is bad, they say, 'No, it's good,' and show you that a bunch of similar films did well on similar dates. So the only thing that's discussable is how much money they're spending—which they totally lie to you about."
"I can take a puny media buy and make it sound like the Second Coming," Andrew Fogelson, the former head of marketing at Warner Bros. and Columbia, says. "I'll say, 'We're going to own the two weeks leading up to your movie: we've got thirties here, fifteens there—you're not going to be able to turn around and not see your movie.' If you know enough, you then say, 'What about the four weeks before that?' And I then reply, 'We feel this movie is really going to benefit from an ultra-concentrated effort at the end.' The alternative is to say, 'Joe, you made a shitty movie. And I work for a public company, and I want to keep my job. So we're dumping your film.' "
The Renée Zellweger comedy wound up being called "New in Town," a title no one actively disliked. And Palen wound up with a different campaign from the one he'd initially sought. Dissatisfied with his working poster—Zellweger shivering against a backdrop of townsfolk—he finally flew the star to Los Angeles one weekend and photographed her himself. Now she sits atop a Vuitton suitcase in the snow, wearing a knowing smile (and the red "Devil Wears Prada" shoes). "Renée was super dreamy," Palen says, "and she agreed that having her shivering and miserable seemed less appealing than having her strong."
As for the trailer, he told me, "Now it's more fish out of water: it includes the little moment where she says 'Kay?' to the workers after her heel catches in the factory grating, and her running into a door, so she's klutzy, out of her element, more relatable." He deleted a joke about a barfing cat, and the moment when Zellweger's character points out that her co-star, Harry Connick, Jr., has beer in his beard—the testing audience didn't like them. In the end, Palen took out everything polarizing, and a voice-over supplied the warmth that he was looking for: "She may not be where she expected . . . but she's warming up to the possibilities." The trailer, in fact, became what Paul Brooks had originally suggested: a graceful string of jokes. When it was tested in "mall intercepts" of shoppers, it scored a seventy among young women and a seventy-five among older women—very good numbers. The new trailer made me want to see the movie, even though I'd already seen it. It looked like fun.
Yet Palen remained uncertain. The first two of his end-of-the-year films had done as well as he could have hoped; the second two had bombed. A campaign is only as good as the box-office proves it is—yet so much remains beyond a marketer's control. "If you want to be depressed," one marketing consultant says, "go stand in front of a multiplex on a Friday night, and watch all the people who come by to look at what's playing, and then walk away. Look at all the empty seats at a wedding, where people told you they were coming and knew you were spending three hundred dollars on them."
Many film marketers grow disillusioned with their jobs, with the lying and the cheating. But when I asked Palen whether the job had affected his understanding of our primary levers—of the human eagerness to give way to laughter, fear, sorrow, and passion—he looked at me sharply and said, "I hope not. Because owning the secrets of cattle mentality is not aspirational. I love my job, I love being a part of all this, of staying fresh and young." He was thinking aloud, not his favorite mode of self-presentation. "I mean . . . my mom still listens to Patsy Cline. I have this—not a fear—but she stopped at a certain age, and I don't want to stop, to get old."
The last test screening I saw with Palen, on a perfect Southern California night in the Valley, was "Game." Made by the same directing team that shot "Crank," a low-budget adrenaline ride that turned a modest profit for Lionsgate, "Game" stars Gerard Butler as a death-row prisoner in the near-future who becomes a real-life avatar in a first-person-slayer video game to the death. His goal is to escape and find his wife, a hooker avatar in another game. The film struck me as brutal, occasionally vivid, and wildly incoherent. Palen, usually chatty after a screening, was stroking his beard. Yet th
e focus group, most of them youthful gamers, seemed genuinely excited by it. This made me feel old.
One of the film's directors, Brian Taylor, a restless-seeming man with a shaved head, caught up to Palen in the hall and said, "So, I think it played pretty well in the room."
"Yeah, it's always great to see it that way," Palen said.
"There's a lot of candy for the trailer," Taylor continued, with more assurance. "So many action sequences, man. Should be easy. So, what I was thinking is, this guy named Doobie cut together the battles and the battle-in-the-rave scene, and he's, like, scary—sick fast, cuts it in two days with sound design. Like, he's just off. And so we'd like him to take a pass at the trailer?"
"We can definitely
talk about that when we meet," Palen said, agreeably. "Cool."
He shook hands and moved on. When one of his colleagues asked how he was doing, he said, "I'm managing my stress that they want a guy named Doobie to cut the trailer." (When Taylor followed up by e-mail,
a few days later, Palen assured him that he was already "deep into a cut.") Outside, in a nearly empty parking lot, Palen said, "All the Doobieness is totally not the way you want to go with the trailer, which is more accessible, more 'He was; she was; together, they were . . .'—straight out of the America-loves-cheese playbook." Still, he said, brightening, "It has all the raw materials for a great action trailer. I think it'll be easy to sell."
Labels: entertainment, films, Hollywood, screenwriters, writers
MDesig 53 said...
Very interesting information!! Thanks for the share!!
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Chief Executive Officer, Mike Pruitt will be presenting on December 5 at 5:30 PM PST / 8:30 PM EST and meeting with investors throughout the event. For more information about the conference or to schedule a one-on-one meeting with management, please contact David Scher at david@ldmicro.com.
LD Micro was founded in 2006 with the sole purpose of being an independent resource in the microcap space. What started out as a newsletter highlighting unique companies has transformed into several influential events annually (Invitational, Summit, and Main Event). In 2015, LDM launched the first pure microcap index (the LDMi) to exclusively provide intraday information on the entire sector. LD will continue to provide valuable tools for the benefit of everyone in the small and micro-cap universe. For those interested in attending, please contact David Scher at david@ldmicro.com or visit www.ldmicro.comfor more information.
Any statements that are not historical facts contained in this release are " forward-looking statements" as that term is defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PSLRA), which statements may be identified by words such as "expects,""plans,""projects,""will,""may,"" anticipates,""believes,""should,""intends,""estimates," and other words of similar meaning. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, involve known and unknown risks, a reliance on third parties for information, transactions or orders that may be cancelled, and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or developments in our industry, to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results include risks and uncertainties related to the fluctuation of global economic conditions, the performance of management and our employees, our ability to obtain financing or required licenses, competition, general economic conditions and other factors that are detailed in our periodic reports and on documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date the statements were made, and the companies do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements. We intend that all forward-looking statements be subject to the safe-harbor provisions of the PSLRA.


text:
National Irish Sign Language (ISL) Day 2022
Celebrate the 5th Anniversary of National ISL Day on the 14th of December 2022.
On the 14th of December 2017, the Irish Sign Language (ISL) Act was passed by the Dáil. This date was a momentous day as it followed years of hard work and campaigning by the Deaf community, led by the Irish Deaf Society and supported by Senator Mark Daly. The Act recognises Irish Sign Language (ISL) as the native language of Deaf people and as the language used by the Deaf community. The State have a responsibility to provide ISL access to ensure that Deaf people can participate in society.
To commemorate this milestone for Deaf people in Ireland, the Deaf community now celebrates National ISL Day every year on the 14th of December. This celebration is essential to the Deaf community and allows us to promote ISL and celebrate our achievements as we campaign for changes in law, policy, and attitudes in Ireland.
One visual way we mark these important dates is by using blue. We ask people to wear blue and state organisations to light up landmarks in blue for these occasions. For instance, Trinity College Dublin and Cork City Hall have committed to lighting up their buildings in blue on the evening of National ISL Day, and we hope many other buildings and landmarks will follow suit. Blue is the colour of the IDS and symbolises Sign Language and also represents how Deaf communities cherish their language. For more information on this topic – you can check out this link: https://www.irishdeafsociety.ie/about/blue/
The ISL Act says that the State must report on the implementation of the Act. The National Disability Authority (NDA) worked with Deaf Community organisations and representatives to develop the first report which was completed in December 2021. However, one year after the report was finished, it remains unpublished with no clear justification for the delay. The report will show how the State has not met its obligations and the delay in publication is resulting in an unnecessary delay in making progress to address these shortcomings.
The ISL Act sets out responsibilities for public bodies to provide ISL interpretation for services. Article 9 describes an obligation for the State to provide a Voucher Scheme for Deaf ISL users to access free ISL/English interpreting for social, educational, and cultural events and services. Despite a pilot scheme running for this service for three months in 2021, there is still no sign of this scheme being implemented permanently with no explanation and limited consultation, completely at odds with the principles and the duty of the Government under the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD). Five years on from the passing of the ISL Act, it is disappointing to see so many elements of the Act not implemented and with no clear plan or consultation with the Deaf community about it.
The Irish Deaf Society is a Disabled Persons Organisation (DPO) under UN CRPD and as such the State has a clear responsibility to ensure meaningful engagement in relation to the ISL Act and all services provided to Deaf people. We call on the Government to publish the ISL Act report on National ISL Day 14th December.
Full details of the Irish Sign Language Act 2017 can be found at http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2017/act/40/enacted/en/html
The Irish Deaf Society is a national Deaf led, rights based, DPO (disabled persons' organisation) and a member of the World Federation of the Deaf and the European Union of the Deaf.
IDS is the organising member of the ISL Act Cross Community Group which co-ordinates activities relating to the implementation of the Act with other National organisations.
Contact: John Sherwin CEO – 089 427 8663
ceo@irishdeafsociety.ie


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The slim band is hand formed, then hammered to bring out the natural glint of metal. Made to be stacked or can be worn solo for a dainty pop.


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text:
Q: Taking user input from a form, showing it on a website in an array, and replacing variety of the strings with different words First time here, and I am lost. Hoping for some help with this.
I want to take a user number in a form and output in HTML as an array. Then take that array and slice different strings based on the number. Similar to the fizz bzz, but a few more steps.
This is in javascript but I am so lost and I have been working on it for a week.
Please help.

function robotSpeaks(number) {
  let output = [];
  for (i = 0; i <=number; i++){
    //pseudo code - 1 - need to push out an array of numbers
    // 2 Splice out the numbers
    // 3 return the code with beep, boop, wont you be my neighbor
    output.push(i);

  }
}

$(document).ready(function(){
  $("#numberInput").submit(function(event){
    event.preventDefault();
    let numberInput = $("#numberInput").val();
    let output =robotSpeaks(number);
    output.forEach(function(element){
      $("#robotSpoke").append("
" + element + "
");
    });
  });
});

Mr. Roboger's Neighborhood

        <form id='robogerForm'>
          Enter a number, I am a robot... Beep! Boop!
          <input type="number" id="numberInput">

          <input type="button" type="submit" value="Compute to Robot Speak"></button>
        </form>

Here is my current code -
jsfiddle.net/wattsjmichael/wtfnua4j/1

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Lately, due to the rise of the melee physical solo laner (Hercules, Vamana, Loki etc) I tried Neith as a counter. Surprisingly, she works pretty well as you can stack early penetration against some of the more naturally tanky gods and with her easy (but mana hungry) lane clear she keeps up really well in Solo.
Starter - As a hunter you would normally start with a stacking item, but I tried this and it seems to really put you behind in terms of mobility and poke against enemy gods. Starting with Tier 2 boots means you are able to be more mobile and force the enemy to back before you, sometimes twice as you can sustain her really well with the mana pots, mana buff and meditation. Her enravel is a great source of damage and also heal sustain. I would normally be ale to stay in lane for about 3-3.5k gold before having to back.
First Back - Essential to finish Warrior tabi on your first back for the penetration. With the lack of stacking items, I rush Asi as soon as possible, the lifesteal, penetration and attack speed, means you can clear waves more efficiently, and provides excellent poke against any physical gods who wont have built much, if any, melee defence at this point. Greater meditation at this stage means you can be aggressive with you mana, and the life regen is useful if you are in trouble. I would now stay in lane for as long as possible, and try to force the enemy god back as often as possible.
As possible - Qin Sai's is a great solo lane item for Neith, expensive but very worth the damage potential it gives her as I would now start looking for kills and poke to force backs. Jotunn's is arguable here, I like it for the passive cooldown reduction and penetration but Titans bane/Brawlers could probably work here. Next Rage, is essential for you kill secure potential, as you will probably be rotating with teamfights at this point. Finally, Deathbringer wrecks late game, and you almost maxed out penetrations and attack speed means you can burst down tanky targets and towers very effectively.
Standard build order as you would in Duo Lane.
If you are at your tower, backflip and spirit arrow combo is very effective at full clear. Otherwise try to use Spirit arrow and Basic Attacks to clear safely. Enravel for enemy god poke and heal is what makes her an effective solo laner in my opinion.
Enravel reduces the enemy attack speed, and provides heal from upto 3 targets.
World Weaver is an excellent skill for a solo laner, as you can effect teamfights and secure kills without leaving your lane.
So, stay in lane for as long as possible with your mana sustain, whilst forcing enemy to back as often as possible. Effect teamfights without leaving your lane, and wreck late game tanks and towers with max penetration and attack speed.
Cons - Ganks as you will be staying in lane often without wards.
This build does not work well on Neith. Even in the solo lane, hunters still need sustain from either lifesteal ( Devourer's Gauntlet) or high a mana pool ( Transcendence). You might want to revise this one.
Sorry but I cant upvote this.
83353 _angrytoast This build does not work well on [[Neith]]. Even in the solo lane, hunters still need sustain from either lifesteal ([[Devourer's Gauntlet]]) or high a mana pool ([[Transcendence]]). You might want to revise this one. Also, for BB coding go here: http://www.smitefire.com/smite/guide/code-blue-bbcoding-for-beginners-4537 Sorry but I cant upvote this.


How many times have you "been on a diet"? I have done it plenty of times! It ain't bad my lovies. Diets have gotten bad reps for a while now. For example, diets are a quick fix? Clearly, this word needs some clearing up.
Do you know what it takes to compete as a bodybuilder? You go on a restrictive diet for 14 weeks to lean out and help your muscle definition show. Yup, diet. It shocks the body and complements the heavy weightlifting and cardio.
So you hit a plateau? Can't shake off the last 5 pounds. That's because the remaining fat cells in you body are stuck, so to speak, like the cheeto in the couch. You must change your eating habits, eh hem (go on a diet), to help your body dig deep to find the energy, aka fat cells, to continue your daily activities.
Going on a diet doesn't mean eating less. Not at all! It means eating differently for a set amount of time until you reach your goal. Then once you create a new goal you'll start a different diet. Your diet can consist of more calories, less carbs, more fats, or more protein.
I recently took a paleo diet (Click Here to learn more) as a challenge and I came out on top! I had a flatter tummy and have some ab definition. Which was MY goal. I love rice and beans,but I learned that I don't need it on a daily basis and upping my vegetable game was key component.
Whatever lifestyle, eating habit or diet you choose to follow, you just do you!