From time to time, we at MOO
Hit the road to meet with you.
We've travelled from Birmingham over to Boston
Passed through London and on to Austin.
We thought you might like to find out more
so join us as we go on tour.
We put on our special white gloves to handle
Products that normally live on the mantle.
We put up the walls that become our stand
As Designer Alex gets the lay of the land.
The boys make sure all is secure and still
Remember they have a 'License to Drill.'
As Alicia vinyls, Alex looks aghast
But after hours of work, the booth's ready at last.
People pop by to say hi to the Crew
But someone's stuck! What are we to do?
It's Simon G! Phew! He's free
Look for us next time...who knows where we'll be...
Some of the UK MOO Crew have just got back from visiting our office in Providence, Rhode Island. It was so nice to meet up with our new American colleagues - and more than a little sad to come back with out them. They're doing a great job over there though, and it was nice to see the office doesn't look quite as bare as we'd imagined it, from our numerous video conferences.
We were also happy to see certain MOO traditions making it across the ocean - like Friday lunch for example. Sure enough, when Friday arrived, our fantastic new US Head of Operations, Dan, passed around the menus and got us all together for food and a chat. It's always a good way to see what everyone's been up to, and how everyone's getting along. This week we discussed extremely important topics - like how to get sand out of a clam, for example. (Soak them in salted water with a little cornmeal - the clam will take in the meal and spit out the sand, or, soak the clams in fresh water. As they breathe, the water is filtered, so the clam will push the sand and salt water out together.)
Dan's got a great team together, and we're planning a blog-interview with him soon, so he can tell you more about them. (We might also uncover the mystery of why we all call him 'Dan Cakes'.)
Of course, the other reason we were in Providence this week was the MOO Party! Thanks so much to everyone who came and made us feel so very welcome.
We spoke to lots of interesting people, including John Maeda and the Mayor of Providence! The latter took time out of his busy schedule to honour us with a special citation - which you can see Brian proudly displaying here:
We had a mix of UK and Rhode Island snacks, like mini shepherd's pie and clam chowder. The weather was also a mix of both, I think, starting off a bit cloudy (Rhode Island?) and ending up with rain (London!). Luckily we were well covered - as you can see in this shot, by Megan
All in all the week went by far too quickly - we had time for just two local delicacies - 'Cawfee milk' (nice!) and NY weiners. For the uninitiated, RI's NY weiners come with meat sauce - which is literally, sauce, made of meat. We didn't understand it either, but can confirm that it tastes pretty good!
The one thing we didn't have was Del's lemonade - but in a way, we're quite happy about this. It seems like a very good reason to go back soon.
We wanted to share one of the first entries made in to MOO's MOOvie Mania Competition because it really spoke to us. It's entitled: Life as a Graphic Designer by Marina. Given we have a few graphic designers on the team and a few of us have worked in agencies in the past, we particularly related to this tell-it-like-it-is account of a day in the life of a graphic designer. You'll note the nod to MOO's MiniCards at about 2 min 24sec in. The logo created by the client is worth highlighting. Don't you agree, it's just brilliant?
If you are submitting a MOOvie, don't forget to include the tags "moovie mania" and "business cards" when you post your video to either YouTube, Flickr or Dailymotion. That'll help us group them together later on. If you need them, all the rules (written in plain English) can be found here.
Adding Music to Your MOOvie
As we all know movies can be 100x better with music and sound effects. Think of Jaws without the famous Na-Na. Na-Na. Na-Na. But, where do you find all those great effects and music? We have few suggestions that might come in handy. If you have more, please leave in the comments.
Our friends at iStockphoto have an entire library of royalty-free music and every sort of sound effect submitted by their contributors. They are an inexpensive source and have offered any MOOvie Maker a 15% discount on 26 credits or more until the end of July. Just include the the code MOOvie on checkout for your discount.
There’s also lots of great music available with a Creative Commons license that won't get you in trouble for copyright infringement. If you do use background music, per CC licensing requirements, you'll need to attribute the music you use by mentioning and linking to the artist, or the CC page you found it on.
Here are some online resources (thanks to ccmixter
Or an original piece is always nice. Happy Composing!
