Project Notes

A habit our creative director JamesC picked up when living in India that we are actively pushing again, is keeping a notebook and pen to hand, ideal for writing down phone numbers or emails, sketching ideas for photos or as we know he did frequently, outlining plots for TV or film projects.

JamesC has in the last few weeks come up with ideas that will work as short films for festival entry or expanded into a much longer concept that need to be padded to suit the plans for 2023.

Festivals are going to be a very heavy focus of the work ahead, we have spent a lot of time checking options of annual, quarterly and by far our most favoured, monthly film festivals that take film and photo projects.

Of course our favourite book for filmmakers “Don’t F*ck Up Your No Budget Film” by Ivan Peric, plays a heavy part in our thinking because this insightful first hand account of low budget creation is designed to shape your work into a commercial project and works well with our own thinking and add to this the very savvy and again, first hand account of Patricia Jones book “Opening Doors for Working Class Actors” which when combined with Ivan’s book has the scope to create a great combination and open up the projects we have to fresh talent and with the right focus and marketing (kept within a budget) see a series of smaller films and Web TV projects built with a commercially viable slant that will benefit all involved.

We will be using the Vshowcards site for casting and actively encourage people to check them out not just because we think it is a fantastic network site, but for the various casting calls that are available.

Expanding notes on our plan will be slow released through the blog and we will be working hard to get this push running with the Lost Agency supporting it and of course led by our own JamesC who will be front and centre with upcoming interviews including the Behind The Scenes Podcast, amongst the other elements at play.

Stay tuned for more updates and sneak images of our notes.

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.

Marketing and the Lost Concept

While we have been a little quiet over the last few days it has not stopped the work thanks in part to Facebook and Whatsapp we were able to continue meetings and even showcase some of our past work in line with our creative director and founder JamesC. The crux of much of this has been discussing marketing strategies. Many people are unaware of the pages and sites involved in our marketing just for the Lost Concept and our core team and we are now in a place where we feel that the sites and pages (in most cases) are sufficiently “liked” enough that we are collating all the backlog of work into a folio of work and with certain magazines offering open submissions of single images (we are going for exclusive but this is not a requirement for many digital magazines) and once the lockdowns are sufficiently lifted we do have plans to do a full marketing campaign with more work built around the Lost Boys and Lost Girls concept as outlined in the Lost Project blog.

Marketing is something we are really keen on and we do work with our partners in Nepal (the Nepal Film Production team), on campaigns and this will be revised again at the end of this month in line with changes to the market as it stands.

One of the main reasons we are looking at this now is we have time, the blogs are keeping us busy along with various other elements but like many in the creative fields, we really are keen to get back to our real work. The focus of our upcoming campaigns will start with the two lost sites and then the actual artists who are working on the creative side such as actor Raj Srivastava and of course JamesC.

Expanding our Horizons With The Lost Agency

There is a number of different ways to look at the word agency which is partly why we are using it. It can be referenced to a management service or the idea of self-agency which in psychological terms is taking control of your own life, both are apt in the case of the lost agency. We wanted to have some degree of management and self-rule over our work which is overall what the lost concept is and why we are now bringing in The Lost Agency as part of our business future.

We often talk about the changes that have become part and parcel of the industry (both good and bad) and how commercial makeup, in particular, has become something of a “lost art,” instead the salon/party style is taking over and newer artists are focusing on the more personal side of the industry leaving people who want to work on the more film and TV level or commercial media side lost in the mix which we found frustrating as did some of our actors.

Focusing on the in-house staff we will be managing a small number of people and business elements as part of the ongoing work of The Lost Concept building on the creative, artistic and media work we have already done taking things forward and bringing The Lost Vision to new levels.

At the forefront of this will be our creative director JamesC who will be heading up more of the media elements and being central to the staff requirements for upcoming work taking a stronger more managerial stance and running The Lost Agency whilst simultaneously developing editorials and project work such as TV shows and photographic work for the sites portfolio and marketing needs.

What this means for the future of The Lost Creatives is we will be posting on the blog requirements for crew and looking at offering training positions on our work and tackling larger-scale projects. One of which we are close to finalizing at the moment with some fantastic brands/designers supporting the concept giving us a chance to showcase the creative work of our team.

Later in the year and into 2021, we will also be looking to put forward bids to take a team to London for off-schedule events during fashion week:

“Our plans and any work within the confines of The Lost Agency and affiliated sites/companies will be subject to agreed terms and a code of conduct. “

Stay tuned for news and updates on The Lost Agency and more in our blog.