Cleaning House

The new year has been flying in, with our favourite fashion week event The House of iKons February show now done and the September showcase organization underway, along with a host of new interviews lined up with filmmakers and artists, Lost Creatives has been cleaning house in between to tidy up not just the physical space we use but our online presence.

In terms of our websites we have cleaned up some of the FAQs and changed the layouts to give a more polished look and really focus in on what we want to do in the future, which in turn has opened up conversations with artists and filmmakers across the world who will be part of the ongoing dialogue of the blog.

JamesC, is returning to work as a makeup artist and the new site is ready to go from a design perspective with a very exciting set of projects lined up with Sons of Adonis men’s grooming line that will be a real focus of our future and become integral to the launch of additional elements to the business this year along with artist Stewart Nicol Soutar, whose abstract work will be integrated into editorials and still image work as part of our future designs, an homage to a stellar artist and friend.

What we wanted to do was ensure that all the t’s were crossed and i’s dotted and the work was done with brands and people that fitted with the ethos and plans of the Lost concept.

Conceptually we will release details of our plans and images (editorial and advertorial) that are to be managed by Lost Agency, an arm of the business that is being designed and deployed to support the marketing of the business and offer a higher level of control over how the work is promoted and put the spotlight on the key elements of work chosen.

With so much in the works, we are slow to update the site but that will be changing soon as we launch new sites, projects and additional lines to the Lost Concept. So stay tuned for more news.

The Lost Creatives Christmas

In the last few weeks of 2022 (where has the time gone!!??) The Lost Creatives has gone from strength to strength, don’t get me wrong there have been pitfalls, but overall we have been able to create a network of people that is amazing, offer PR and other forms of support to fellow creatives that was after all the goal of the site.

Christmas for us, will be a time of relaxation with a heavy focus on what will be done in the new year, with commercial work and PR for clients having been the heaviest part of our workload, our creative director JamesC, will be returning to work as a makeup artist on a more open basis and taking on smaller projects to bolster the public side of his work and spending time on some personal projects that will be featured not just here on the Lost Creative but his own site and our partner site The Lost Agency who will be taking a heavier hand in our own marketing and internal affairs. *This means we will be returning to Instagram soon!

We have had some disappointments lately, with meetings and reaching out to potential collaborators falling through mainly due to scheduling issues which as you can imagine as a freelancer, has been a pain, however that will not stop us from pushing forward and with our ties to HOD TV, we will be focusing on that for the future and tackling things in a much more hard-line manner.

Our passion for the arts is not waning, far from it, we have collated magazines, festivals and other information that we intend to make full use of for ourselves, up until now we have put a vast amount of time into clients and not been able to put the lost concept at the forefront but, we are incredibly proud of the fact people have trusted the team.

In the next few weeks we will be releasing our goals and a schedule for this through the site along with a few snippets of art projects to test the waters.

For the moment we are going to allow ourselves a little breathing space for the festive season and release more information soon and options to get involved.

Revamping The Lost Sites

We are going to be working on the Lost sites over the next two weeks allowing us to decide what is and isn’t working, change out images, and update affiliate links and partnerships, we are incredibly lucky to have some amazing brands supporting us already and we have projects that have been completed (but shelved due to other aspects of work underway) that will be used to update the sites.

From a professional stance, in particular to the makeup side, our creative director and head of makeup JamesC’s website has already been reworked to make it cleaner and simpler to navigate, he has chosen several brands to work with including Mykitco (check out the pro discount program for eligibility), Illamasqua Pro will become a featured brand soon, and of course Sons of Adonis (JamesC personally consulted with the owner of the range and the brush).

Two small projects for the festival circuit are being written and developed with a view to expanding into a full-scale TV series, an idea we have wanted to really push forward with for a long time, with the festival path we can tailor our choices to suit garnering awards for the team including the makeup, actors, and director to help with promotion.

*This means we will add to the roster very soon to help with the creation of projects, and a new TV production site will be a part of this planning.

We are really pleased that our main site, The Lost Project, is gathering attention (organically) and continues to be a source of information on the consumer side, the book reviews and makeup stories are proving to be popular which is something we are incredibly proud of.

More changes are coming and it is truly exciting to be working on the lost group expansion. Stay tuned for more updates and news.

Finding Solutions

Finding solutions is a big part of the work we do, from our creative consultation work with the Sons of Adonis brand to blogging about shows, The Lost Creatives was built around that concept and we are truly grateful to the people around us, in the last few days our dear friend Keziah Nyam-jim who has been bringing her immense talents in the business world to the table and supporting our changes with some advice, gentle nudges, and more than a few laughs in the process, she has been talking us through options that we would otherwise have missed.

What this means, is we have a much clearer end goal and thanks to Keziah, a timetable to work to, and someone outside of the creative world we live in who is going to give us a critical eye that is much needed looking over the work and plans. Something that we highly recommend.

There are also updates we know are coming to the vshowcards site which will make a huge impact on how we work, and open up doors to projects for many people in the arts and media that will be a gamechanger. Our creative director JamesC, will be amending and changing his own profile with vshowcards and adding the link directly to the website to make promotion a little easier overall.

More updates will be available soon so stay tuned.

Christmas Consultations and Other Business

The Christmas season (and by extension New Year) is always interesting for the Lost Creatives team. Our creative director JamesC has been working with a few regular faces pre-show in a private capacity to plan out makeup for the stellar talent Alex Robertson, currently appearing as Dame at the Falkirk Town Hall, alongside his usual work with brands.

As an old friend of the company Alex Robertson has been a supporter and a real boost to our morale, and to have him come to JamesC for advice was a genuine pleasure, he is not only an exceptional talent on stage but a respected character actor for a wide range of TV shows, indie films, and much more, so to be able to support him was a real pleasure and in truth a running laugh as he is a comical person to be around with self-deprecating humor that always makes us laugh out loud. For further information on the show, Beauty and the Beast, click here.

On top of this, we have been doing other types of consult work from PR advice to script work breaking down the financials (in basic form) to help a few indie projects that were stuck with a few minor details. We are incredibly proud of the work we do and appreciate that people see us as a viable source of information and of course promotion for their projects.

In the New Year, we are going to be taking some calculated risks and going public with our work which till now has been for clients and we have had to sign waivers preventing us from showcasing the work, frustrating but nonetheless important for our growth as a team and a company.

While we finish off some of the background work we have before we close for a few days of well-earned rest, we wish all our followers and everyone in the media industry a Merry Christmas, we look forward to coming back in the New Year with more news and updates.

Hitting Deadlines

Working from home and doing multiple blogs, consulting with production companies, and doing costings for projects has been fantastic, it has allowed us to be a part of the creative field and opened up conversations with potential collaborators for the next year. What it also means is we have been able to set deadlines for work and give ourselves flexibility on the stock we have with a view to curating and adding what is needed for the near future.

As you can imagine we are now close to one of the deadlines for an in-house project, small, but nonetheless important. So within the next 10 days, we have to complete a minimum of 3 shoots that will be submitted for a competition we have had our collective eye on for a while now.

It also has been a good time to work on a marketing plan for the new year, which is scarily close and our creative director and head of makeup JamesC has now got a profile with the fantastic vshowcards which is in need of some small updates but is officially live!

Something we have discussed at length is websites, JamesC will revert to his old website soon with some much-needed changes as we have a huge amount of his work saved on the old site, we felt it made more sense just to edit and relaunch versus a rebuild.

Another option we are reviewing and giving serious thought to is an electronic notebook to reduce our paper use or at least a tablet with a good note keeper app, with so much in the market changing we are working to keep on top of this and be as practical about our work as possible.

Stay tuned for updates and further information.

Creating a Story and Building the Brand

When Lost Creatives was first started it was about a journey and finding a path, in that time we have covered a wide range of people’s stories and given a voice to some amazing filmmakers who have helped bring our creative narrative as well as their own, to the public domain.

Over the next few months we plan to add to the stories in a more visual sense, with so much of our work having to be held due to publication terms, it will be fun to finally be able to showcase the work that has been done in the background by our creative director and head of makeup JamesC. Some new portfolio pieces are being finalized with the JamesC portfolio site (frustratingly) taken longer than planned we will be reverting back and reworking the current site with the new content and bringing in a much more cohesive workflow across the sites we already have with the additions of showcasing his work as a photographer into the bargain.

When it comes to production, there is some light at the end of a long tunnel, we have chosen two TV shows to produce along with two short films that we will use as entry back into the market, and with our work with some Amazingly talented filmmakers when it comes to cost, we have been able to work the angles and find additional avenues of marketing, sales, and of course open up our team to different potential projects outside of horror and thriller.

Naturally, we will be working with vshowcards who have been fantastic and are rapidly gaining ground in the production realm and have even got Bollywood on their side which is an amazing coup for the team.

In the next few weeks, we will be making a return to social media with the Lost Creatives and Lost Agency Instagram being updated with new work and some experimental shots we have been playing around with as part of a planned concept.

More news and updates on The Lost coming soon.

Whouknow a New Marketing Tool

We were really intrigued by the idea of the site Whouknow for marketing targetting the creative side of the world and opening up doors to new and interesting prospects with both clients and collaborators. The site itself is straightforward to set up and our creative director JamesC has already thrown his cap into the ring and created a profile.

“There's no such thing as buyers and sellers in creative communities, which is why Whouknow works the way you do. We've also thrown in a bunch of other features that'll make your life a whole lot easier.”

Whouknow offers the option to set a base budget and offer your services to projects on other terms such as barter, it has real scope for marketing and has gathered some interesting talents to the table who are open to opportunities and marketing their skills through the site.

Naturally, we plan to use this as a part of our upcoming projects and where possible source additional team members to the fold for this. In fact, with our 3 shorts and a small-scale commercial/showreel project in the works, this could be something positive and give us access to a host of new faces to work with which is a real boost to our goals both short and longterm.

We recommend you go check out the site and see the potential for yourself:

Whouknow website.

Whouknow Instagram.

Whouknow Facebook.

Whouknow Twitter.

Lost Beauty in Derelict Spaces

As summer is in full bloom, The Lost Team is restocking, rethinking, and getting our camera gear prepped to shoot specifically for ourselves over the next two weeks. Our goal will be to create content for the various existing lost sites and the upcoming photography site, showcasing Lost Beauty in Derelict Spaces.

With an aesthetic goal in mind that will fit with future TV project plans, we are looking at simple clean beauty for our Lost Girls and Lost Boys. Thankfully we have the Sons of Adonis brush (and soon concealer) to help with this and with our pro accounts all up to date, we can create something fresh and test run products before we go for the really big projects that will focus on darker elements and more chills than beauty.

Our plan is to bring some new talent into the mix and open the door to creative opportunities as we progress lead by our creative director JamesC, we are going to be announcing further collaborations and partnerships officially as we finetune the scripts and ideas fully.

Stay tuned for more news and updates.

Updates From The Creative Sphere

Over at the Lost Creatives home office, we have been plugging away at our work and will have some project announcements and cast/crew requirements going live very soon. While this is being worked out, we have some announcements that as a team we are really excited about and wanted to share.

As creative director and head of makeup, JamesC, has been instrumental in the development of his new site and working on a consultation basis, for Sons of Adonis makeup (it will be added to his working kit), as part o this a limited edition brush was created featuring his logo and the brand: available from the Sons of Adonis site.

In terms of production and editorial, we have decided to add to our site holdings and will be launching a separate photography site that will feature the work of JamesC both his commercial work and the behind-the-scenes stills on film and TV shoots. The reasoning for this is to allow an expanded sense of his creative work and offer a different perspective on the work of a makeup artist.

Lost Agency is being formed and set around the needs of the main business and will handle the overall marketing, banking, and other elements of our work as an umbrella creating an in-house and full-spectrum setup that is own, controlled, and managed for the needs of the Lost team.

Over the next few weeks, we will be releasing additional details on what is happening and casting/crew opportunities for smaller festival entry projects.