How Actors Should Use Technology – Evernote

Posted on February 11th, 2010 | For Actors, Technology

One of the most common issues amongst my clients is organization. It’s understandable given the grueling travel responsibilities and shooting schedules. Unfortunately, poor organization is a gateway drug of sorts for many. It starts small with an electric bill or two that didn’t get paid. Then the service disconnection notice goes missing. And of course the very cliche parking ticket that doubled, then tripled…the next thing you know you have no electricity and your car is impounded!

I’ve been using Evernote with clients to improve their organization so I thought I’d share some real, honest-to-goodness ways you can use the software to improve your life as an actor. Evernote is free software used to capture information via text, pictures, audio and the internet. It simultaneously syncs the information on your desktop, smart phone and your internet account. And no, I am not affiliated with Evernote (or Jott) in any way.

Please note that not all of the features mentioned here will work without a fairly new OS.  Additionally, the sharing functions are limited unless you purchase the premium version ($45/yr).

1. Do you use a whiteboard in the writer’s room? Take a picture of the board before it — and your memory — gets erased. Not only will you have a picture of the notes on the board, the handwritten text becomes searchable from anywhere. That’s right, all text, including the text in a picture, is searchable in Evernote. You only need remember one word from the idea to find it.

2. Real-time collaboration. Need to share information with your writing partner, agent or business manager? You can set permissions to share certain notebooks with other people. I have clients who have a receipt notebook that is set up to be shared with me. Anytime they get a receipt, they take a picture of it, tag it (e.g., “The Ivy” “George Clooney”) and shred the hard copy. I now have every receipt scanned and sorted for them and the accountant come tax time. Done.

3. Have a great idea but no writing utensil? A joke, a character or a gift idea for your financial consultant? You can record audio notes from your computer or phone and have them automatically saved and synced for later. If you want them transcribed, you can combine Evernote with Jott and all your audio notes will become searchable text that is shared and archived with your writing partner moments later.

4. For people like me who hate business cards. When someone presents you with their card, kindly accept it, take a picture of it and save it to your contacts notebook. You can then return to them their card, save a tree and add a few digital notes about them. Never again will you look at a card 3 months later confused.

5. Job information. This is a big one. Say you are shooting a one day commercial. You get your lines and a call sheet. You can drop them both into a note so that you can create a job database, take notes about the experience, add photos and learn your lines from wherever you are. And since it’s all searchable, you only have to remember the first name of the casting director to keep in touch.

6. Using the browser tool, you can take a snapshot of any web page, or just a piece of a web page, and read it later on your phone. This allows you to browse at home where it’s convenient and read it later in the green room when browsing is difficult.

7. Wine. If you are like most people I know, you can never remember the name of that great bottle of wine your friend bought at Silver Lake Wine. Now you can start a wine notebook, share it with your friends and have a whole file on your phone with the pictures of the labels from the best of the best. You’ll even look like you know what you are doing at checkout.

8. Shopping. You and your husband could share a notebook on Evernote with pictures of each ingredient so that when you send him to the store he actually comes home with the right stuff.

9. Never lose your car again. When leaving the airport parking lot for a long shoot, take a picture of your car as you stroll away. By referencing the picture you should be able to find it upon your return no matter how long you are gone…and if you can’t, use Evernote’s GPS system to give you step by step directions back to the location where the picture was taken. Now that’s cool. Also works in malls and at Dodger Stadium.

10. Another travel tip – take pictures of your Driver’s License and Passport so that if they are lost or stolen, you can combine Evernote with the charm you use to win over your audiences to convince the Passport Control in Costa Rica to let you through (ok, maybe not, but it’s still good to have for ID).

Bonus – Save your tweets. You can create a Twitter notebook and set up your Evernote account to store all of your tweets for lifetime archiving. Just put @myEN anywhere in your tweet, and it will be sent to Evernote.

How will you use Evernote?  Please share your thoughts in the comments section and feel free to contact me with any questions.

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Comments

  1. John Doe

    Feb 11th, 2010

    I’m incredibly reliant on my blackberry. That’s all fine and good, but
    there are a few things that give me some concern and I’m wondering if
    this software can allay my anxiety. I’ve got every contact for every
    person I know saved in Outlook — 555 in all. I also use the notes
    function in Outlook (which is linked to the MemoPad on my bb) to save
    lists of things (like movies I want to see or books to read) and
    important information (like my bar numbers and bank account info), so
    I’ve got it all at my fingertips. What concerns me is that something
    could happen to our server here or I could get fired, and I would lose
    all of this information. Do you think this program would offer some
    kind of solution, or do you know of anything else out there that
    might? I was able to solve the problem for my calendar because google
    has a syncing function with Outlook, where it automatically backs up
    your calendar every 15 minutes. There is no equivalent in google (as
    far as I can tell) for these other functions.

  2. Jeff Ullrich

    Feb 11th, 2010

    Regarding your Outlook contacts, you can do a manual download of the file (csv) every so often (week or month) and upload the contacts into Gmail for personal storage. Unfortunately, I am not aware at this time of a syncing-type function that does that automatically. As for the notes, Evernote will serve your needs much better than the Outlook/MemoPad combo. First of all, you are not limited to text. Secondly, your data will be owned only by you, not your employer and will live within the safety of Evernote servers, not a phone that could die or be left in the back of a cab.

  3. Art Lover

    Mar 5th, 2010

    Hello Art–

    Big fan of the blog, your writing is truly divine. Anyway, I downloaded Evernote and now I have no idea how to capture a web page from it, which was my primary goal. Do I have to get snag it or the like to get screenshots, or is there something built into Evernote? Sadly, the program isn’t quite as intuitive as I hoped.

    Thanks.

  4. Jeff Ullrich

    Mar 6th, 2010

    Thanks for the kind words.

    I’m sorry you aren’t finding Evernote as easy to use as you hoped. Regarding your question, it’s hard to answer without looking at your computer. I can tell you, that with the Evernote for Mac software I run, the screenshot functionality is on my menu bar next to the time machine icon, and also a button in my browser (Firefox).

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