Timeline Updates

While the blog and other elements have been very quiet of late, we do apologize for this, it does not mean we have been idle. In fact it is the opposite with so much in the works we have had to set deadlines for projects and new launches before time really ran away and we lost track of what is being done.

Some of the domains we own are now due for renewal and we are using that as the baseline for soft launching websites and taking down some of the older work to make things as clean as possible.

With a wedding under our belt, in what will be a two-part package, there is some really beautiful images coming from that which will showcase our creative director and founder working as well as our beautiful bride.

Lost Creatives is going to be changed dramatically as well with new galleries being worked out to match the upcoming Lost Project Media site that will be the home of our video and print work, a mix of editorial and commercial campaigns, more on this later.

James will be launching a fresh new site which as a makeup artist he wanted to be a whole set of new work all tailored to the lost identity and brand and completely different from his previous site with a focus on the commercial.

In the next week we will be doing a very interesting set of blogs piece about indie brands that popped up on our radar and will be playing a part in the working kit of our house artist. Both of which are interesting and will offer very different perspectives on a makeup kit as well as product usage and placement.

With an end goal of updating not just the websites but our other networking sites such as Vshowcards, by August we will be well on our way to the whole new look and entirely different brand identity than when we started and it is truly exciting to see how things have developed from where we began.

A New Year A New Plan

In many respects, 2020 has been a lost year for a lot of people with the world changing dramatically. For us, it has opened up doors to a whole host of new potential avenues and given us a chance to reevaluate what we have been doing and look at how we can fit ourselves into the market long-term. To do this we have broken our work into key areas that will be public and those which will be kept private to the inhouse team.

In the public sense, we have two key areas we will be focusing on in the first quarter of the year:

Editorial and print: we have been putting this on the backburner in some respect taking time to look at locations, edit work already shot, slowly build up a series of images and work that will be released over the early part of 2021 with additional planned small shoots that will be a combination of artistic and commercial. *This will include product placement in behind the scenes imaging and video with brands such as Lord and Berry, Mykitco, and Brushwork Cosmetics to start. We are open to new potential brand partners for projects contact the team to discuss.

Film and TV: something that we have been doing since the start of Lost Creatives is supporting a range of festivals including Micromania and The Nepal Cultural and Film Centers' own festival. We do have plans to partner with a European festival and will reveal details on that soon.

Our initial goal is to work on 3 projects that will be shorts, designed specifically to go to festivals and as an opening gambit for our planned digital TV shoots in the horror/thriller market (for Which we have already spoken to several distributors and have options in place including the HOD TV route which is our number 1 choice).

In the coming months, our projects will be smaller in nature to help push forward and test the waters of the market and expand out. Our ties to South Asia (Including Nepal Film Production and our key actor contacts in India), will play a heavy part in our work as we are questioning how we will be able to work in Scotland and the UK in general.

Each of the current websites: JamesC mua. Lost Project and of course Lost Creatives will be receiving overhauls and updated images across the galleries, and the welcome pages, additional sites are being planned for our film/TV work to keep the Creatives solely about marketing and the background elements we have built.

Further updates will be released over the course of the month. We are really excited about our plans for 2021 and look forward to pushing the boundaries of our work.

Editorial Makeup Submission Featuring World Fashion Media News

Frustration is really kicking in for a lot of the creative talent out there (understandably) and it is gratifying to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for those who are returning to salons and for the photographic community this also means we can push forward with plans and marketing strategies with fresh, exclusive content for the digital market. The online magazine and long-standing supporter of the Lost Concept, World Fashion Media News has been hard at work creating new avenues for creative talents and revamping the website to better showcase artistic work from catwalks to individuals. Submitting your work has become a much easier prospect in the last few years and we (like many others) are getting our work collated ready to submit, promote and showcase our inhouse creative talents such as creative director JamesC.

While we are going down the exclusive route there are options to have editorials, covers, and tears with magazine logos that can be used to create not only a stellar portfolio of work at a low cost but a chance to experiment with new ideas and stretch your artistic muscles.

Our primary focus is going to be about exclusive content and will be shown across websites and as you can imagine with our ties to the HOD TV team, Horror concepts will be played alongside some other fashion portraits and of course we will be doing a full series of images and conceptual work with exclusive to our websites in amongst this.

In our capacity as a creative team and with the support of our partners in Nepal Film Production, we are structuring this to be a wider campaign based concept with a series of long and short term goals to be met over the next 12 months.

*To learn more about submitting to World Fashion Media News Click here.

Starting The Ball rolling

The last few months have been a creative dead end for many in the arts and now we are starting to see a relaxing of the rules and feel that we can open up a little more our core UK team has begun putting together small shoots and will continue building up a whole new portfolio including videos for an upcoming new site and as a part of the current slate of Lost Media work, all headed up by creative director JamesC. At the moment we do have a small amount of work that is being edited (inhouse) being prepped for submission to a very specific selection of magazines and we are looking closely at the options for creating our own logo and branding around the Lost Concept that will expand our reach further into the future.

Naturally, we are still working with our South Asian contacts especially Nepal Film Production who has been instrumental in the most recent changes to what we are doing and helping us with details like our web presence which we are extremely grateful for.

Keeping the flow of work going has been difficult but thanks to a combination of social media like Instagram, Facebook messenger and of course Whatsapp, we have been able to continue working and the Lost Project, in particular, has been really gathering attention and support thanks to our resources and contacts in New York at the Sarah Gargano Agency, who are a fantastically professional team to work with.

Overall, the ideas that we had to set up our own small studio and continue have been shelved instead we are going to focus our energies on a more mobile version of this with our main work being done on the computer anyway from the running of the various sites and social accounts we have to the editing work for our shoots it has become more about practicality as we think of ways to minimize our footprint and give us the freedom to travel, move quickly and of course provide a service.

Keeping The Creative Flow Going

While many are rethinking their place in the industry and how to progress, ranging from selfies to blogs, we at The Lost Creatives are working hard behind the scenes and taking time to reevaluate (as you will guess by our previous blog). A complete overhaul is underway and along with our partners in Nepal, this is pushing us to think about how we want to be seen in the market.

As you can imagine, social media plays a heavy part in this and it is really exciting to see Nepal film Productions opening a new account with Instagram which is a step forward as we see the restrictions being lifted and people slowly returning to normal and business becoming a part of their thinking again.

We are also putting the social media plan into action and will be reviewing our work and creative plans, led by our creative director JamesC, with a view to pushing forward which as we have previously stated means we will be looking at investment into editorial marketing with tears and covers which we are excited about and have to admit the design process alone is worth it to help clear our collective headspace.

Our film and TV plans are on standby and we are extremely grateful that we have HOD TV on our side with their platform for horror and thriller distribution. Which we fully intend to make use of and recommend those who have projects they want to sell check the link here for submissions.

As time moves forward we are going to push to show more of a commercial stance and stay away from more theatrical styles as we just feel it doesn’t suit the working look we want to create. From the portfolio plans to the film and TV projects we have in mind our goals are strong and we are pushing forward progressively and with mutual support from our remote partners.

Creating Something Fresh: A Portfolio Journey

In the last ten years, the media industry has changed and we focus our energy on creating curated websites and social media accounts that (especially in the UK) are designed to be our portfolio and showcase our work. However, we at The Lost Creatives can see that changing and the physical portfolio book will make a comeback for those in makeup and photography in particular. There will always be a three-tier system in place when it comes to business and we have our goals and understand that we will need to go back to an earlier incarnation of how we worked.

We have been quietly discussing this in the background in our WhatsApp calls and Facebook messages as something we need to really push forward with hence our editorial plans. *Because we work primarily in-house (with thanks to creative director JamesC for his support) we can keep the team small and with the options available in the digital market it is possible for us to completely change our outlook to fit a new audience which is a major plus. We will maintain the websites as part of a larger marketing campaign but for meetings, we want to be able to show our potential clients or collaborators a book of work that will allow them to look at images which admittedly we have not done in many years and it is an exciting challenge to be in a position to create something fresh.

For this we do have a plan of action in place and have started working out exactly what we want and which magazines we will shoot for, there will be two portfolios of work focusing on key areas of the work we do and keeping them distinct and separate.

As our primary focus with any shoots will be marketing we will be starting with our fashion and beauty folio which will be geared toward tear sheets and covers (we have done some digging and can make this happen fairly easily), with a film/TV book being secondary and scripts being chosen to shoot for festivals to start and of course an array of Commercial projects that will include a showreel of the work done.

Something to consider as we move into a whole new arena of work in the coming months will be how to stand out in the market as an artist.

Choosing our Editorial Path

Editorial is often used as a means to test new styles, try new techniques and work with new people but if you are smart it can also be a way to create new business and a smart proactive tool that will draw attention to your business and bring new clients to the table. Which for us is the primary reason we are being selective about the magazines we are choosing and calculating our approach carefully and strategically to ensure we get the maximum from the work. When we look at a magazine we have certain criteria that we are looking for and markers that will put them higher on our list:

• Branded tears.

• Covers.

• Minimal costume requirements.

• Minimal image requirements.

• Cost of submission.

Starting with these factors we then spend time pouring over their content and style as part of phase two, of our plans, we prefer simplistic and clean looks with priority going to men’s magazines at a ratio of two shoots for our male models to one for our females. *The reasoning for this is simple, we have core team members who are actors and models and they are our priority in marketing as this will have a knock-on effect in the spread of our work over time with social media advertising. Our preference is for digital magazine first but we will (for certain clients) be working toward print at a later stage. The reason we prefer online is fairly straightforward: reach. A print magazine can have an overall reach of 20,000 in terms of people buying the magazine whereas digital can move into the millions of views between social feeds and website stats, which for us makes it a more profitable and farreaching prospect.

At this point we have it broken down to a total of 2 magazines that are being marked as priority for us and will be used to promote the business overall building to what will be a series of shoots with our remote team headed up by creative director JamesC.

Choosing our editorial path is in truth is 1 part art and 2 parts commercial with our team plotting out how we can maximize the potential of the work undertaken.