Latest / The Media Odyssey / THE NEW PRODUCTION PLAYBOOK
Transcript
- Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] And you've stripped away a lot of the overhead that creates the risk, therefore you can increase the speed, therefore you can get to market and to Luisa's point, either fail or succeed much more quickly, but at least you're making shit. Welcome back to The Media Odyssey Podcast. That is Marion Ranchet. Marion Ranchet: And that is Evan Shapiro. Evan Shapiro: And we've got a really interesting episode of The Media Odyssey Podcast this week. We've got something that's focused in a sector that we've talked about recently, which is kids entertainment, also in animation, and coming at both of these genres and these formats from a completely new way, or a new point of view and a new experience, and finding ways to make kids content [00:01:00] profitable in this day and age, something that I've written about lately and we've talked about. Should we jump right in? Marion Ranchet: Yeah, absolutely. Can't wait to hear about that new playbook in production. Evan Shapiro: Okay. Without further ado, let's bring our guests to the stage from Toonstar, the great new animation studio, John Attanasio and Luisa Huang. And you're both escapees from the corporate media world. Is that an accurate reading? John Attanasio: Allegedly, yes. Yes. Evan Shapiro: And so what was the origin story of Toonstar? John Attanasio: Yeah. So the origin story is we, so Luisa and I, Warner, we're on the digital media team, so we actually, we're part of the team. So Time Warner is one of the first investors in a company called Makers Studio, which is like one of the, like one of the OG MCNs. And post-investment, Luisa and I were on this team that we were trying to figure out how to integrate it into the kind of broader operations of the studio, [00:02:00] which was a really interesting process. The people that follow the story probably know where Maker ended up going to Disney for a pretty good exit. But for us it was great 'cause it really gave us, early access to YouTube and the creator economy. And, the true story, we were on the team running on Warner Brothers saying, "Hey," and, to be fair, at the time, YouTube was maybe, five years old. But we were on the team running around the studio saying, "Hey, YouTube's, a real thing. This, direct to audience, community-building has, real potential." And, so that, it was great and really gave us, We became big believers in that from that experience. The other part of it is, we're just, I'll, date myself. I'm a, Gen X-er. I grew up with Saturday morning cartoons. My brother's a comic book artist. And, both Luisa and I, by virtue of the studios we've worked [00:03:00] for, have had the opportunity to work on some of the biggest animated franchises. And so it was just, it was weird to us that more people couldn't get animation made. And the reason is that, if you know animation historically, it just takes a very long time to produce and it's very expensive. And so we kinda put those two things together, one of them being disruptions being fundamentally disrupted by things like YouTube and social media. And then we thought, if we could come up with a way to really change the way production is done and enable animation that gets produced in a way that is built for YouTube and social platforms, meaning it's fast, and it's capital efficient, and it's scalable. We put those two things together and the idea was like, hey, could, could we, just could we go build really a next gen animation studio? And that was the inspiration for launching Toonstar, and we Evan, to your point, we got the courage to leave the corporate nest [00:04:00] and we launched a studio. Marion Ranchet: And so how do you guys actually produce content? You've hinted to it, in terms of making it cost-effective, but what is your MO when it comes to production? Luisa Huang: Yeah. So we, we spent quite a bit of time after leaving the studio kind of focusing on how do you utilize and build technology to be, to enable this, to enable two things, right? So in order to be successful on the direct-to-audience platforms, they really function on two things. It's really most importantly is speed, and, throughput, right? You need to have a lot of content consistent and it needs to come quickly. And really, and, also a function of the speed is to be able to, really [00:05:00] be able to address, the content that is a little bit of a back and forth with the audience, right? You need to react to the audience tastes at the speed in which they're really used to. Because in the creator universe, they're used to creators really being like, okay, reading the comments, understanding the trends of what the audience is responding to. So we've built, a technology, it's called Ink and Pixel, which is a combination of machine learning, and we also started incorporating generative AI, about five years ago. And all of that, and that entire infrastructure is really built with the intention of exactly that, is enabling the production to be able to move at the speed of the direct-to-digital distribution platforms. Marion Ranchet: Wow, I did not see that coming, I have to say. 'Cause I [00:06:00] thought you were using Alpha Production, but you built your own technology. It's amazing. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, and this, is, and it's proprietary. No one else has access to it. In fact, I've asked John previously if he ever intends to white label it, and he says, "I don't think so." And you've got this, great, you've got a hit show. This is not theoretical. This is not just some idea that you had. You went out there, you greenlit yourself. This is the second, guest we have on this episode who greenlit themselves. So you greenlit your- thems- yourself into, this show called Steven and Parker, which is a massive hit, yes? Tell us about the show, how many, how long it's been in operation. You're in hundreds of episodes now, right? John Attanasio: Yeah. So hundreds of episodes. And yeah, so Steven and Parker, quick background on that, and that really does speak to our thesis and it's, to the, one of the first questions around, like, why'd we start [00:07:00] Toonstar. And one of the main reasons we started Toonstar is that we felt like this digital, YouTube and this digital-first ecosystem is really gonna be the birthplace and the springboard to this next generation of like hit animated franchises and franchise IP. And so that was, that's what Toonstar was really built to try to support. And, so Stephen A. Parker's it's, it's a great example of that. And so we, partnered with, his name's, Parker James. He's, he's a, he started out as a TikToker, and he had probably, around nine, 9 million followers on TikTok. And he was doing this really cute character. It wasn't animated, but it was, he was using, a Snapchat, voice, voice changer and face filter. And we got connected to him, and the more we talked to him, we were like, wow, he just, he had such a great vision for this character that's really about this, these two brothers, and the younger [00:08:00] brother's got this, it's, I think it's fair to say he's obsessed with dinosaurs. And it's, what we call it it's like Dennis the Menace meets, meets Calvin and Hobbes. And but he had such a great vision for this world, and the more we talked to him, we're like, wow, we could really see adapting this into animation. And, so we, greenlit a pilot season. We tested it on his TikTok channel. This is where, Luisa mentioned, we also have distribution technology. It's called Spot. And because we've been around for about a decade, we've got a lot of data from all the digital platforms, YouTube, social platforms. And so we get real-time feedback from the audience. And so the signals came back and they were off the chart, and we're like, "Wow, this is, really working well." And then so we green lit a brand new channel on YouTube, and within the space of about a year, it just, it completely exploded and in a positive way. It like, [00:09:00] fast-forward now, it's, we just crossed 10 billion lifetime views. Evan Shapiro: Billion right? John Attanasio: With, a B. Yeah, yeah. To be, yes, to be clear, it's with a B. So 10 billion lifetime views. It's in five different languages. The viewership gets- Evan Shapiro: 200 plus episodes, right? John Attanasio: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: And, it is a bit of a machine, but to your point, Luisa, from earlier, it is a mix of human capital, AI, machine learning, that you're putting together here. You do really marry human art and AI production. Talk about that. What is the process? John, when we talked about this originally, you said there's no way we would've made this show without AI. But there's also no way that you would make it without humans. What is the combination and the collaboration between the two? Luisa Huang: Yeah. When it comes down to it, like any story and any sort of creator- [00:10:00] creative endeavor, it's, really about the point of view and the voice of the writers and the creators. And, that really is the start of everything, right? So you have people telling the stories, and you have people really driving the stories and the creative, right? Even the visual look of that show, that was really driven as a collaboration between Parker and also actual artists. And, they sat in a room and they talked about what kinds of characters and how he envisioned, how he envisioned the artwork, what he's inspired by, what kind of cartoons he grew up watching and what he, what he really loves himself. And so all of that is the Steven and Parker show is a manifestation of the tastes and the vision and [00:11:00] the direction of artists and storytellers. And so all of that is people. Now, where machines do come in is, you can't deny the power of technology in being able to accelerate a lot of these processes, right? And, this is true across, really, animation from a historical standpoint, right? You dial it all the way back. I grew up watching Disney, professionally grew up being in Disney, working at Disney, and you know the history of, they invented the multiplane camera. They invented all of these tools and technology because people simply could not keep pace with the demand and the throughput needed for what, where the art form was going. And I, and we see this as exactly that, is in order to be able to take it to [00:12:00] the next generation of the golden age of animation, or the reinvention of the golden age of animation, you have to take and take advantage of the technology that's available in order to accelerate and facilitate storytelling and storytellers. And that is the combination, is that storytellers need these tools to be able to accelerate across the board on every function, right? It really is equipping every single function of the animation process with a technological module partner to take them from being able to only create five seconds a day to Two minutes a day, right? That's the kind of, through-put change that these technologies help. Marion Ranchet: At the top, you mentioned something about the volume, the cadence. So Evan mentioned 200 episodes. What's the cadence right now [00:13:00] of that show specifically? Are you pushing one new episode a week, more? Luisa Huang: Yeah. It's a great question. It's actually a little bit of a moving target. And that is, that is also like probably blows everyone's minds. In the traditional system, they're like- Evan Shapiro: There's no plot. Luisa Huang: "Okay, we're gonna do-" Yeah. "We're gonna do 11 minutes." John Attanasio: Exactly. Luisa Huang: "We're gonna do 26 episodes. We're gonna map out the season, break the episodes, do all of that." Here it's no, we do not have a fixed blueprint of what needs to happen on a weekly basis, and the reason for that is this. We have Spot, and Spot really kinda tells us like how the consumer is moving in and out of the channel, and that is really important to help us understand the behavior. So early on in the channel, what we knew about the audience [00:14:00] was they were consuming short snippets at a time. Most of it was happening on a mobile phone. And so you had to push a lot more content that was in that sub one-minute mark so that it really was this stream. I call it like the Costco sampling, right? People walk by, you gotta have really great stuff for them to be able to sample, and then they're like, "This is great. I'm gonna, buy the 25-pack of this." So, during that time when we were in the growth phase of getting that started, you really had to, say, "All right, this week you gotta have three, five episodes of shorts," and that was the volume. And then as you start to see the, audience move from being samplers into, "Okay, I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna have like return trips," you start lengthening those episodes to give them now more context, [00:15:00] more story, more of a, more of the world. And then that moved it into, "All right, we gotta have five-minute episodes, like four to five-minute episodes on a biweekly basis." And then you start to see the recurring patterns, and then you, and then we started seeing the, we started seeing the audience come back multiple times a week rewatching the longer episodes, and that told us like we need to extend those episodes, really start building out even more serialized content that would then keep them coming back for like even longer, even, like even longer sessions at a time. And then so that's really the thing is like we look at this data on a weekly basis to say, "Where's our audience base at? Do we have people aging out? Are we grabbing new audiences? Where are they in the life cycle? Are they watching it on a television screen? How much of the population's watching it on a television screen versus on a mobile phone?"[00:16:00] And that really dictates, okay, maybe this week we need to shift a little bit more on the sampling side to be able to draw more people in so that we can move them into the cycle and, move them into, like return trips, versus the fandom. So it's really dynamic. And you know, as a whole, I can say that we're producing content on a weekly basis, multiple episodes a week. Now, the format of it is really gonna depend on where the audience base is shifting. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. It's, it's much more of a parasocial relationship than it is IP and audience-based. And this idea that you're gonna change the clock and cadence of your show, the length and the ca- and the premiere dates of it based on immediate feedback of your audience is so antithetical to the way traditional tele- it is a reinvention of the whole concept of television itself. But [00:17:00] I'm fascinated on something, which is you, say, you wanna encourage the use of these new tools by these artists and the marriage of these new technologies with the creators themselves. But in two cases, Ink and Pixel and Spot, you're talking about two pieces of technology that you created yourself, two pieces of proprietary technology. And Spot, it sounds is a audience listening and measurement and community measurement tool. Who, Did you build those things both in-house? Luisa Huang: Yes. So those have been built in-house. Ink and Pixel came first, and then we started building Spot, a couple years afterwards because we really started to see the need to be able to do exactly as I described. It's like you need to shift with what was, like the audience is telling you such really important [00:18:00] information, and so to not take advantage and not build something that can really help the storytellers and the people in the rooms developing the actual creative, it just felt like such a miss. And so we started going down the path of identifying what are, what is the critical information? What does help development folks versus okay, this is just information about the speed of social click-through rates and like stuff like that is really more marketing centric. And so we started distilling like, what information really drives and helps storytelling versus what information is about marketing. And then that really moved us into building, building something that was more storyteller centric because a lot of the information that if you look at the standard traditional analytics that come from YouTube, it's very marketing centric, right? So [00:19:00] there's like a lot of click-through rates, like how is the thumbnail performing? That's all really important information, but that doesn't really help from like a scripting standpoint. John Attanasio: It's a really interesting question and I think at, what, we're doing is linking, and we talk about this a fair amount, we're linking production to performance. And, Evan, to your point, I think that really is a new way to look at it and like when we talk about like Ink and Pixel and Spot, and you put those two things together, we called an, we called an agile production loop, which is just that's a fancy way of saying, now all of a sudden we can do like rapid iterative animation, which is an unlock because historically you just couldn't do animation that fast, or do that kind of, those kind of iterations. Evan Shapiro: Not without hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure anyway. John Attanasio: Exactly. Exactly. So, the, cost to do that would've been, which was, would just have been [00:20:00] prohibitive. Yeah. And, so now part of it's that unlock that allows you to do that. But I think the sort of the biggest benefit of that is like now you really are tying production to performance, and that, that's something that doesn't happen a lot in the industry. Things get made. It's all about the budget. Budgets get, sometimes budgets get inflated just because people want a bigger budget. It doesn't mean that it's gonna give you a better product, nor does it mean that a bigger budget equals a deeper connection to the audience or more engagement. And I think that's what we're really trying to do is like link and really directly tether those two things, which, we've had success with. Evan Shapiro: And in creating the economies that you have and the efficiencies they have, the speed, but also the production efficiencies, we talked about this way back when, you're making art that wouldn't have been made otherwise. So [00:21:00] you're making substantially more of it, in a quicker loop, and you're making shows that just couldn't have been produced otherwise. And now it sounds like you're about to scale this pretty astronomically. You just made a deal with Harper Collins for a series of book IP from them. One's, the first one's called The Friendship List. What's the turnaround time on a, on a new series based on IP like that, from greenlight to, to go time? When do you expect to see that, and how many more titles do you think you're gonna wind up working on with Harper Collins? Luisa Huang: Our sort of target in taking something that, is in existence, our goal is always to be able to get something lifted in and market, anywhere between 90 days to so three, three to four months is really like our target. and that's [00:22:00] really, you know, we feel like that's really important because what that also does is it captures like when you're in development, there's creative momentum that is happening, and then you're also like development is happening in a world in which they're getting like feedback of what the trends are of the time. And, especially when you're talking about content for, content for, teens, tweens, and even kids. And this is the part that I think people like forget, and it's easy to get lost in like a writer's room and in the development cycle of okay, like we're working on this creative. And then the thing that informs your creative is like your sense of who the kids are when you have in mind in the development cycle. And I laugh. I'm like, a lot of times, like when you're developing kids' content and you're like, oh, like I'm thinking [00:23:00] about this particular nine-year-old, and then you're like in the black hole of development, by the time you emerge from a development, your, that nine-year-old that you had in mind is now 12. And whatever- John Attanasio: They're 15. I was gonna say 15. Luisa Huang: So whatever you were developing, John Attanasio: They're in college. Luisa Huang: Now it's a completely new set of nine-year-olds. And, I'll tell you, it's just, they're different, right? Every year because the technology moves so quickly and the world is moving so quickly, who knows if Roblox is gonna be around in three years' time. They could be moving on to another thing. And so I, like that's the kind of stuff you're like, ooh, there's a danger in losing momentum and spending too much time like in this like bubble of like creativity. And I think that's really the important thing that we're trying to make sure that people [00:24:00] are moving quickly and going to market because you could lose, you could lose the moment, because of just not paying attention to how much time like elapses. John Attanasio: And we'll produce, it's, you do a batch of a few, just to get us out the gate, and then that gives us, probably close to a month of audience signals. And then after that batch, then we're on a weekly cadence. And so to give you a sense, we're doing, we're able to do, Luisa, what, on average, like eight-minute episodes in a week? And, so when you have, so when you have that kind of that kind of speed and you can do that kind of output, then you can really, you can see what's coming back from the audience and you can make changes to character arcs, season arcs, you know, season, arcs. We've got a whole, this is a conversation for another day, the sad fate of a family dog, [00:25:00] Rip. What was the name of the dog? Rip. What was the dog's name? Luisa Huang: Murphy. John Attanasio: Murphy. Rip Murphy. But it's things that you can change in this like near, near time, like real time production way because you're, getting those signals from the audience. Marion Ranchet: At the top, Evan mentioned that the show is, profitable. So what's the business model? Are you guys only on YouTube? Are you seeing traction in traditional media like we've seen with shows like The Amazing Digital Circus, et cetera? John Attanasio: Yeah. So, our model is, our model is we start digital first, so we launch on YouTube. And then, monetize through, initial monetizations through, through ads. Yeah. And then brand sponsorships. And then we really see, content as the flywheel. So you take, in case of Steven and Parker, it, the [00:26:00] series got to the size that Random House reached out to us, and they're like, "This is an incredible IP, and we can see this as a middle-grade, as a middle-grade book." And so we did a partnership with Random House. It's basically, it's a graphic novel series for Steven and Parker. The first one just launched. And then, we can tell you pretty confidently, Steven and Parker's coming to a streamer near you, pretty soon. So just like you mentioned, similar to Amazing Digital Circus, Hazbin Hotel, a model like that where those are digital native IP that then basically extend into, off, we call that off-platform revenue streams. But that's, really what, how we're seeing, really content as this, as, a monetization flywheel. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I love that. [00:27:00] And, so one thing that I wanna ask you, 'cause, so maybe you haven't deep dived into Evan's report on the kids' ecosystem, but it was very gloomy. And then we speak with you guys and it's fascinating 'cause you're ticking all of the boxes. You're using tech. It's very data-driven. It is fast. At the same time, it's still very creative. It taps into fandom, et cetera. So, is this the playbook? And, what would you say to others within the ecosystem who are struggling right now and who are looking for a new path, right? Not everyone will be able to do what you guys did in terms of the technology parts, but what's your tip for anyone in this space? Luisa Huang: I think the tip is just to move from, I think move from the mindset of selling and labor B2B and [00:28:00] really shifting into I am really creating and be, and taking the point of view of being the creative entrepreneur, right? It's an entrepreneurial sort of mindset, and that shift means everything because now you're making decisions around production with the point of view of "Okay, I'm gonna figure out what is the right size and what is the right sort of P&L and cost structure in order for me to put this out." Different from, "Hey, I wanna sell you my idea," and then what happens is you're in the waiting game for a really, long time, right? People hold your time, and this is gonna be the recurring theme. People are gonna hold your time hostage, right? Yeah. That is what they hold. They hold your time hostage. You pitch. They say, "Okay, cool. [00:29:00] I'm interested." And then even when they're like, "Great, I'm gonna option it," then you're in line to be in this development cycle, and that's gonna take who knows how long. And that's the thing that people don't necessarily put a thing on, how much is that time, opportunity cost worth of sure, they're writing you a check. Now my question is, is that check worth the opportunity cost of the time that they're holding hostage? Because that's literally the transaction in which people engage in versus, I get it, it's not a big fancy check up front, but the opportunity cost of time is also incredibly valuable. And I think people like, it's, just, a little bit of a different shift, or actually it's a big shift in thinking about that, in that way. But I think it's betting on yourself and believing in the thing that you want to create and saying, "I'm going to [00:30:00] do this." And those decisions become fundamentally different, right? And that's what we're here to support. We, you know, we're saying, "Come and work with us. We're here to support that path. We're here to support that infrastructure." Because you don't have to go to it alone. I think, as entrepreneurs, we talk about this from the entrepreneurial standpoint, it's launching a company by yourself is insane. You're just asking for, mental health issues, right? No. Go find yourself some co-founders. Go find yourself a team, right? And that's where we're like, creators don't have to go about it alone, and that's exactly what we're demonstrating, right? Parker, you don't have to be the marketer, the animator, the on and on down the list. No. Find yourself the co-founding, group that's going to help create and really shape this new way to go to market. and that's exactly what we [00:31:00] are equipped to do, is here's an alternative path, right? We're not here to give you brain damage in the waiting game. We're here to say, yes, this is, we're gonna go to market, and we're gonna do it quickly. Now, we're not saying it's gonna be a guaranteed success. We can't guarantee that you're gonna be the next Stephen and Parker. But here's the sell, and here's the offer. If it does- Evan Shapiro: We won't be waiting around forever. Yeah, right. Luisa Huang: Because we also believe that creators have 1,000 ideas. So get to the fail fast so that you can go deploy your next one. Evan Shapiro: And you've stripped away a lot of the overhead that creates the risk, therefore you can increase the speed, therefore you can get to market. And to Luisa's point, either fail or succeed much more quickly, but at least you're making shit. and what I love is that you've taken the hostage, the time hostage-taking-out of the process. You're, not holding anybody's time captive in the process. John Attanasio: That's right. That's right. Evan Shapiro: Really [00:32:00] great to talk to you about this stuff. It's gonna be great to see you on stage in Denver with me, John, at Stream TV, at the Media Universe Summit there, where we're gonna have you, and YouTube. We're gonna talk about the future of animation there. Thank you, guys. It really is inspirational to see what you're doing at Toonstar. There is an opportunity for people to learn from you. I hope they do. Thanks so much. Marion Ranchet: Thank you guys. John Attanasio: Thank you. Thanks for having us. Marion Ranchet: Bye. Another amazing episode with people reinventing the playbook. And have you noticed what comes up every time? Mindsets. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it is a greenlight yourself mindset. Toonstar really building themselves into an independent animation studio. Didn't wait for the greenlight from gatekeepers. Greenlit themselves, went right to an audience, tested and learned, went, did not break the bank, experimented, took the data, and grew. Very good lessons here to be taken for everybody out there. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, it was fascinating. Again, great episode. Super nice seeing you. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, you too. Marion Ranchet: And for everyone [00:33:00] who's been listening, hopefully this was interesting. I'm thinking that John and Louisa, their DMs is gonna be open because I've heard a lot about collaborating and building this community. So feel free to do that. Evan Shapiro: Their DMs will be burning. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I'm sure they will. That was another amazing episode of the Media Odyssey podcast. That is Evan Shapiro. Evan Shapiro: And that is Marion Ranchet. Marion Ranchet: We'll see you next time