Dave Patten's University of Entertainment

Looking Looking Looking for Help

I'm looking for a young person who is hungry.  I need someone who knows what their skills are and have worked (and yes, that means outside of class...) on them.  Someone who reads ahead in the textbook -- who loves what they do and wants to prove to the world that they're awesome at it.

That's my mentality.  Thus, that is the type of person I want to work with.

I have my team, but our hands are tied.  We need to expand.  And by expand I mean we need 1 to 2 extraordinary individuals to join us.  To ride and fly out with us everywhere we go.  It's our own Taylor Gang if you will.

If you want to join because you just want to meet Meek Mill, Young Chris or DeSean Jackson or Lou Williams or Gillie da Kid or anyone else we work with, you need not contact me.  If you are a film student in film school, but don't have a portfolio of videos I can look at, you need not contact me.  If you don't have a resume already saved as a word document somewhere on your computer, that is a SURE SIGN that you are not fit for this job lol...

On the other hand, if you have great people skills, please contact me.  If you find it extremely easy to talk to girls, or to get what you want (vice versa for women), please contact me I'll put you on the sales team haha I need you!!  I don't want another director -- that's my job, idiot.  I'm looking more for PR and Marketing and Tour Management positions.  If you love business, making money and facilitating then you're probably exactly the person I want to talk to haha so shoot me an email!!

Things are really about to take off.  I'm setting up a legitimate East Coast tour for the spring.  I'm going to be with Meek Mill and Rick Ross and Wale out in LA and down in Miami at least twice before March.  I'm out to LA this weekend to meet with Master P.  Meek and I are about to drop a complete album together.  I'm telling you, it's gametime haha and yeah I know I just name dropped mad people but I'm trying to prove a point.  With success comes scumbags and sheisters out the woodwork.  I don't want to give some established manager 10% of my cash flow, I want to give it to someone I'm friends with, who's been part of the team for the past few years building with me = YOU!!!!!!

Seriously, I do a lot but I can't do it all.  Ricks does a ton but he can't do it all.  Who else is out there looking to team up?

Send me an email, and make sure you mention this blog post so I know.  South9entertainment@gmail.com.  Yes, I read them all.

Team Meeting and Beers

You always have to have your team meetings with a few accompanying beers.  I'm meeting tonight with Ricks and Josh West to talk about a few projects and the business in general.

We're starting up a new documentary project with Meek Mill, we'll be out of the country for a few weeks at the end of January on a shoot and on the music side of things I'm finishing up the music video for "Believe Me" which is going to be possibly the greatest music video I've done to date haha.  I feel like if any of my videos ever hit 1 million views it'll be this one, so I'm pretty pumped.

But there's nothing more important than your team, and you have to be extremely careful when building it.  You need people you can trust.  People willing to invest their time before any money ever comes to the table.  They're the ones that will always be there.  When success comes, people creep out of the woodwork like you wouldn't believe... and a rule of thumb is never trust them, they're out to get your money and that's 100% where it ends.

The Budget Is In!!

Ricks and I were approached to shoot a pilot for a reality TV show for the end of January 2011.  It's one of the biggest project's we've had the pleasure of working on thus far, and it's going to do a lot of great things for everyone involved when completed.  We're shooting it down in the Dominican Republic -- it's going to be amazing to be down there for a few weeks instead of up here in freezing cold Philly!!

Yesterday we received the budget money, so we can start with hiring out the necessary crew, talent and rent the appropriate equipment to make this show happen!!  It was an epic moment for the South9 Entertainment team haha.

The Meek Release Strategy

On my forthcoming album, Exposure, Meek Mill raps on one of my songs called "How Good".  I finished the song a few days before South9 Entertainment (my film & music video production company) was flown down to Miami for a video shoot.

In Miami it rained for two straight days, so we couldn't film anything we wanted to for the job I was down there for.  So Ricks and I trapesed out in search of some cool locations to shoot when the weather cleared, and landed upon an abandoned mansion.  We hopped the fence and set up shop, which you can see in the video when it debuts.  Click here to see the behind the scenes footage for now.

When I returned from Miami I called up Meek and met up with him down at Batcave studios.  I debuted the track there (click here to see the behind the scenes footage).  October 9th, 2010 to be exact.

I shot footage of Meek while he was recording, which I incorporated into the video.  So the video is complete!!!!

I've been playing it around for everyone, and the bottom line is they love it.  So I'm pretty hype to release it.  BUT, I want to be smart about it.  Nowadays tracks blow up and die out in as little as a day lol.  Meek released his "Black and Yellow" Freestyle the other day -- there were about 4000 tweets about it that day, about 10 the next...

The day I release the video:

I'm going to give the track away for free

I'm going to give away a club remix of the track for free (via DJ MDot)

I'm going to have the track available on iTunes for those who want to support!!

I'm putting out a press release the same day it goes live

I'll tweet and facebook about it, ask Meek to do the same

Wait and see what happens!!!!

I already have a ton more songs I'm working on with Meek, and I'll shoot more videos no problem, so this is just the first of many to come.  Testing the waters.  Leggoooooooooooooo!!!!!!!

"Back" Part of the MTV Network

Received the email this morning from one of the producers at the MTV Network who program music videos -- "Back" has been selected!!  I sent it in about two weeks ago.  AWESOME!

Actually it's kind of ironic, I was talking with my pops last night about how I highly doubted "Back" would get accepted because it's a 6 minute video lol MTV is usually looking to fill slots under 3 mins, not double that.  Just goes to show.

So I was scrambling all afternoon rendering files, pro-res comps, finding slate information, printing lyrics and talking with the Closed Captioning guy in Jersey.  Well ok I'm lying Ricks was talking to him setting it up, I just put the package together.  Sent it out at 3:58pm today.  It'll be transfered to Digibeta and CC'd then sent to MTV to do with as they please.  Preferably program it.

MORE TO COME!!!!  It def does not stop here.  I have 3 brand new videos done right now awaiting release... "Wait Jenny", "Beautiful", and "How Good ft. Meek Mill"... prepare yourselves :)

 

 

Meek Mill PowerHouse Video

Shot an intro video last night for Meek Mill's PowerHouse performance Friday night at the Wells Fargo Center.  He brought out the bikes (shout out to Lou Racing) and the crew and we took over the stadiums in South Philly.  It was fun as hell.  Well, it's always fun with bikes haha

With Ricks on the producing tip it's no wonder the footage looks so crazy!!

Check out some screenshots

Miami Day 2

Let me start off by saying this is the first day I have gone in a few years without coffee and it was STRUGGLINNGGGGGGGGGG yes caffeine is indeed my drug of choice.

It's also gaming up to monsoon down here all day tomorrow, so our filming schedule is getting kinda messed up.  Rumors are spreading that we may need to stay another day, but I've got my fingers crossed that we can get everything shot on Thursday.  We were planning on heading out on the boat anyway so we'll only have to get up earlier and shoot more in the morning to compensate.  Plus, we will have all day tomorrow to prep and map out the schedule.

Ricks, Status and I drove around for a few hours this afternoon looking for locations and found a couple great ones.  Shot some footage, a little for Ace Angelo's video and a little for my next DP Video.  It started raining halfway through and wouldn't stop lol so we had a tough time filming.  Down here storms come in and it showers for about 5 minutes, stops for another 10 then comes down as a monsoon haha.

Behind the Scenes - Miami Video Shoot from Dave Patten on Vimeo.

Grabbed a fresh hoagie from the deli for dinner and have been playing around with footage since.  About to go play some cards and call it a night!

 

Miami!!!

Alright this blog is going to be my memior for the week haha so I don't forget this stuff.  Ricks and I are down in Miami filming a music video for Ace Angelo's "Bout Money" track.  Track is crazy get ready for it!!

Everyone was late getting to the airport lol so we missed our flight and hit up a 12pm line down to Fort Lauderdale.  Ricks and I shot some footage for the music video I'm shooting on the side (gotta take advantage of the rediculously awesome opportunity of being in Miami) in the airport during the downtime we had before the next flight.

Angelo rented an SUV when we got into FL.  Our equipment bag was 87lbs haha so the SUV was a good look.  We met up with Status and the girls (Bonita and Diana) at their spot a little north of Miami.

From there it was Ocean Blvd for dinner -- Mojitos and seafood like none other!!  Saw a guy walking around with a lemur on his shoulder, about 10 lamborguinis and another 15 corvettes haha.

Wet Willies bar was right next door so naturally we went there immediately after dinner... had a few of their famous "Superman"'s and then went swimming in the ocean.  It was one of the most fun nights I've ever had.  I'm pretty sure all Status said for a straight two hours was "I'm in Miami bitch!!!!!!!"

Everyone had a bit of a rough morning but we're out and off to grab some food and get to work!  Check in with you tomorrow.

 

The Blue Room

This is "Studio A" we shot in the other night for "Wait Jenny" music video.  We were exploring the area and took some video to portray the size of the studio.  It's huge!

Blue Room from Dave Patten on Vimeo.

However, they have already re-painted it back to all white haha

"Wait Jenny" Behind the Shoot 1

Props to Makeshift Circuit (the band that came out for the shoot) and their manager Renee for capturing this footage during the shoot!

For those of you who missed the live stream, check it out: