Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 339: Creating Revenue Streams for Filmmakers with Pat McGowan

Transcript

BPS 339: Creating Revenue Streams for Filmmakers with Pat McGowan · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

• 0:03
  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
• 0:08
  podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast,
• 0:14
  Episode number three thirty nine. Cinema is a matter of what's in the
• 0:18
  frame and what's out. Now, more than ever, we need to talk
• 0:23
  to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the
• 0:27
  world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this. Martin Scorsese broadcasting
• 0:33
  from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working on
• 0:36
  that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and
• 0:42
  business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's
• 0:46
  your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof
• 0:52
  Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Now, today's
• 0:56
  show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage. Now, unlike other script coverage services,
• 1:03
  Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are and the
• 1:07
  goals of the project you are, So we actually break it down by three
• 1:11
  categories. Micro budget, indie, film market and studio film. There's no
• 1:15
  reason to get coverage from a reader that's used to reading temp pole movies when
• 1:19
  your movie is going to be done for one hundred thousand dollars, and we
• 1:22
  wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof Script Coverage, our readers have worked
• 1:26
  with Marvel Studios, CIA, WME, NBC, HBO, Disney, Scott
• 1:32
  Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more. So if
• 1:34
  you need your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers, head on over
• 1:41
  to covermiscreenplay dot Com. Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis. My
• 1:49
  next guest is a film and videographer from Ottawa, Canada. He has been
• 1:53
  in the business for years making different wildlife videos and he and I are going
• 1:57
  to talk a lot about videography, doing interviews even like this. You know
• 2:00
  what happens when somebody, you know, you know, a project and somebody
• 2:04
  says, hey, I can get my kid to make this for cheaper.
• 2:07
  Why am I paying you ten thousand dollars or five thousand dollars. I can
• 2:09
  get my kid to do it with an iPhone. We talk all about that
• 2:12
  stuff, which happens a lot nowadays. Which is one of the reasons why
• 2:15
  I don't do it anymore, because it just got it just got such to
• 2:19
  be a paying the ass, because if you kid can do it, why
• 2:21
  the hell you even talking to me? And I tell a little bit of
• 2:23
  some stories in this too, about some of the things that I've encountered,
• 2:27
  and we're gonna talk about Black Box, which is what my next guest decided
• 2:30
  to make, and it's a really really cool venture. So without further ado,
• 2:34
  Pat McGowan, I was always a kid that was interested in a lot
• 2:38
  of different things, and I think I was pretty visual, but I was
• 2:42
  more on the audio side. I was a musician. I was interested in
• 2:46
  the music business. I worked as a musician for a long time. But
• 2:50
  I also had my scientific side, so I ended up doing like pre meds
• 2:54
  and biology and psychology at college. And I was a photographer when I was
• 3:00
  a kid. So it's just kind of this mesh mash mixed up kid didn't
• 3:04
  know what I wanted to do, but I had an opportunity when I was
• 3:08
  at college to join a rock band and do some studio work. And when
• 3:15
  I walked into the actual recording studio, it was a sixteen track recording studio
• 3:19
  in Toronto, and I'll never forget the feeling that I was home. So
• 3:23
  I was really I was a studio guy, and that led me into film
• 3:29
  as a composer and as an audio post guy, and then led me into
• 3:32
  more as a director. And you know, it's kind of the best of
• 3:38
  all world for me. So, but you know, the people, all
• 3:40
  those very interests, they usually end up making the most interesting people. Well,
• 3:46
  I'm not going to say that. Maybe you can at the end of
• 3:50
  the interview. Let's see what you say then, all right, all right,
• 3:53
  now, now now the pressure's on that. Now it has to be
• 3:55
  interesting. So basically, when you were going to college, you know,
• 3:59
  and you were just doing all these different things, that kind of sounds like
• 4:01
  my route too, because you know, when I was going to college,
• 4:04
  I was doing ten thousand different things, but I was always the one thing
• 4:08
  I was steady was screenwriting and stuff like that. And I till I was
• 4:12
  ready to graduate, I was like, I don't want to do this one
• 4:14
  thing anymore, which was business. I was like, I don't want to
• 4:15
  go in that anymore. I'm about to get a degree in it. So
• 4:18
  it's like, what the hell I hear you, man. Absolutely, We're
• 4:24
  really lucky to do what we do, you know, because we get to
• 4:27
  be involved in so many different things and so many different aspects of life.
• 4:31
  We get to travel, we get to meet a lot of people, you
• 4:35
  know. In my corporate and government and film production life, I was on
• 4:43
  a new subject matter every week or two, you know, and you had
• 4:46
  to become an instant expert, and you had to be able to hold your
• 4:48
  own, especially if you were interviewing people like you do. And you know,
• 4:55
  it's just to be a wonderful ride. Yeah, interviewing people, I
• 5:00
  you know, just as a side of this podcast has really helped me in
• 5:02
  other ways too. It's only made me like a better conversationalist. But it's
• 5:08
  just you know, you can you can pretty much not talk to anybody.
• 5:10
  I mean I was always pretty good before at networking, but I think this
• 5:14
  is maybe from like good to like great, because now you can just you
• 5:16
  have the confidence just to go up and strike a conversation about anything. Yeah,
• 5:20
  for sure, man, You just have to ask two or three questions
• 5:23
  and and know people people love to talk about themselves and what they do,
• 5:29
  and if you just get out of their way, normally. Normally you'll get
• 5:31
  some goal. Yeah, very very true. That's why I tend to let
• 5:34
  people just sort of they let the guests take of the take over the conversation,
• 5:40
  because a lot of times they might my guess will say, oh my
• 5:43
  god, I just was talking and talking and talking. And I said,
• 5:45
  well, that's a good thing because people could because I'm here every week.
• 5:47
  You know, I go. The guest is only here for the one time,
• 5:50
  so I might as well, you know, showcase them. Well,
• 5:54
  once you get me going, you're not going to shut me up that easily.
• 5:58
  I always say, feel free to talk is much as you want,
• 6:00
  and I won't edit it and make it look bad or anything. All right,
• 6:03
  sounds good to me. Man. So, Pat, when you're going
• 6:08
  out there and you're doing like freelance video videography work and stuff like that,
• 6:13
  and you're doing commercial work, et cetera, what are some of the things
• 6:15
  that you've learned or some of the tips that you could like give because I
• 6:18
  you know, I had a friend of mine, for instance, he always
• 6:20
  would go into like different stores, like like mom and pop stores and pizza
• 6:25
  places and stuff, and you'd always you know, say to the owner,
• 6:27
  hey, this is a really cool place. You know, this is a
• 6:29
  really cool blah blah blah. And he always would try to, you know,
• 6:31
  different locations. He always would keep in the back of his mind in
• 6:34
  case you ever had to film there for whatever reason. You know, have
• 6:39
  you ever, you know, do you have any tips like that about how
• 6:41
  you you know, maybe got you know, maybe met different people in different
• 6:44
  places. Yeah, no question about that, especially because of some of the
• 6:50
  work that I do, and a lot of the work that I ended up
• 6:53
  doing had to do with filming, you know, b roll on stock footage.
• 6:58
  So you're always on the lookout for friendly people that can give you access.
• 7:03
  You're always on the lookout for great locations that you can return to you
• 7:08
  later. So yeah, you just really keep your eyes peeled and you know,
• 7:13
  figure it out and if you end up doing, you know, a
• 7:15
  TV series or whatever, you kind of got you know. In my case,
• 7:19
  I'm Canadian and I've got Canada mapped. I've been all over the country.
• 7:24
  I've been all in every single province. I've been in every single city,
• 7:28
  and we know a lot of people and you know the thing is is
• 7:30
  that we're all kind of connected now. So once you make those relationships and
• 7:34
  you understand the mapping, then it's so much easier to go back and the
• 7:39
  next time you're there, you kind of know where you are. And yeah,
• 7:43
  so you just kind of keep your eyes peeled and develop the relationships as
• 7:46
  you move along. Yeah, building relationships. That is the key part of
• 7:50
  this, my friend, building relationships. It's all about people, no question,
• 7:55
  and it's getting more and more about people every day. In spite of
• 7:59
  the fact that we've been I think we've been kind of trained with social media
• 8:05
  and so on that we can, you know, live in our hobbit holes
• 8:07
  and still be connected, which is true, but actually sitting down and talking
• 8:13
  to people and getting to know them and being with them is the only way
• 8:16
  to really connect. And I think we have an opportunity now, you know,
• 8:20
  to do that more and more on a lobal level. Also, we
• 8:24
  kind of put it all together and say we've got all these platforms now,
• 8:26
  then well when you go there and just the relationships to the world is getting
• 8:33
  smaller and smaller and smaller. And it's not a virtual world. It's a
• 8:37
  virtual and a real world and you have to live in both. Yeah.
• 8:41
  Yeah, and you know, I'm guilty of that. Too, where I
• 8:45
  try to just well I did, I consciously made that decision. You know,
• 8:48
  I don't know about you, Pat, but I got burned down from
• 8:52
  going to networking events. I mean I got burned out. I used to
• 8:54
  be mister networking event too, and eventually I stopped because I said, you
• 8:58
  know what, Eventually you start to realize, you know, half these people
• 9:03
  are never going to they don't they're not going to make anything because they really
• 9:05
  don't want to make anything. They want to go somewhere and be seen and
• 9:09
  take photos and stuff like that. And your goals aren't the same thing as
• 9:13
  them, you know what I mean. Yeah, I don't really know how
• 9:18
  to respond to that, Dave, because I do a fair bit of networking
• 9:24
  and I usually end up meeting at least one or two people at you know,
• 9:28
  whatever the event is where you end up actually getting a good forged relationship.
• 9:33
  But you know, I think you're right. I think a lot of
• 9:35
  people are just going to party a drink or whatever their thing is, and
• 9:41
  you know, you kind of have to be able to wead that out.
• 9:43
  We did a network event networking event in Toronto about a month ago, and
• 9:48
  yeah, there were a lot of people there that were just for the there
• 9:50
  for the beer, but a number of people I ended up developing, you
• 9:56
  know, some really good contacts with and relationships. We'll be right back after
• 10:03
  a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show, because,
• 10:11
  as we'll get into a little bit later, we are actually trying to grow
• 10:15
  a global movement. So that means that we we have to find the people
• 10:20
  that are interested in having that connection and then reaching out and having that global
• 10:24
  network so that you know, creators like us actually have a safer place to
• 10:30
  operate. So yeah, I know what you mean though, like some of
• 10:33
  the networking events that there's a lot of posing and posturing and a lot of
• 10:37
  bullshit, but you do, you know, there's usually some pretty good people
• 10:43
  at most of these things. Yeah, And I always feel free to always
• 10:46
  disagree with me, you know, most people do. It's always and it's
• 10:50
  always good too to hear. Here are two different opinions on the podcast,
• 10:52
  you know, and so let's just say, you know, going to these
• 10:56
  networking events, you know, whether they're in Canada like you are, or
• 10:58
  they're in the you know, United States seket like I am, wherever they
• 11:03
  might be listening to this, you know, what are some of the tips
• 11:05
  that you have for networking? You know, just like going out there and
• 11:07
  meeting people and and some of the things that you maybe even like warning signs
• 11:11
  that you kind of see if people to stay away from. Well, I
• 11:16
  think the main thing is just to be open and honest and transparent. And
• 11:20
  you know, again, you know, it comes down to some people skills
• 11:24
  too. Being able to walk up to somebody and say, hey, my
• 11:26
  name is, what's your name? What do you do? Tell me?
• 11:31
  More, be able to ask those three or four questions that are going to
• 11:33
  get them comfortable so that they can you know, actually participate in a conversation
• 11:39
  with you, or if they're cagey, you know, you kind of break
• 11:43
  down their defenses a little bit and you know, so that you can actually
• 11:46
  have a one on one conversation. Uh. The thing I always watch for
• 11:52
  is eye contact. Actually, if people are not going to engage you with
• 11:56
  eye contact, then it's going to be tough for work. Or if they're
• 12:00
  kind of you know, looking around to see if there's a better person to
• 12:01
  talk to. Maybe they think you're not worth it or you've got nothing for
• 12:07
  them. I also really kind of watch out for people that don't ask questions
• 12:11
  back because that means that they're not engaged in the conversation. And if you
• 12:16
  got a prod and prod and prod, I say, just cut it off,
• 12:20
  say thanks a lot, and move on, go talk to somebody else.
• 12:22
  And you know what, I like that two PAC because I think that
• 12:26
  works for you know, even you know, virtual meetings, like you know,
• 12:28
  if you meet somebody online, maybe it's either Facebook or something or the
• 12:33
  Twitter or whatever. I you know, I found that people who just kind
• 12:37
  of you have to keep prodding them, whether it be like hey, this
• 12:39
  or the you know about this or that, or where you know they they
• 12:43
  don't want to ask you about what you do or whatever. Those are the
• 12:48
  generally the people where you're kind of like, all right, they're not in
• 12:50
  this meeting, and you know what they're what is waste each other's time at
• 12:52
  this point. Yeah, I would totally agree with that. But again,
• 12:56
  you know, like we got kind of get back to this whole idea of
• 13:00
  what we do professionally too. And I interview a lot of people. I
• 13:03
  mean I've actually, if I had to count the interviews I've done, I've
• 13:07
  done thousands in my career. And you know, I kind of conduct myself
• 13:11
  as if I'm doing an interview. I would like to ask a lot of
• 13:15
  questions. So if I'm trying to engage somebody, even on Facebook, they
• 13:20
  all ask them what do you do? You know, what's your specialty,
• 13:22
  what are you up to, what kind of projects are you working on?
• 13:26
  What's pissing you off? You know, like what barriers do you have in
• 13:30
  your in your life right now that you know you could do better with?
• 13:33
  And I find that, you know, I'd say I'd say that probably seven
• 13:39
  out of ten people are willing to have the conversation once they realize. The
• 13:45
  big thing these days is no one wants to be sold to, so they're
• 13:48
  always they're always on a guard about you know, what do you want from
• 13:52
  me? Right? So if you can kind of break through that, it's
• 13:56
  it's easier to get a more meaningful discussion going. And yeah, hey man,
• 14:01
  I'm not gonna lie sometimes I am selling. Sometimes I do want you
• 14:03
  to get involved in what we're doing. But if you go right in with
• 14:09
  that pitch hard at the beginning, your chances are going to go down.
• 14:13
  So you know, you've got to really get get human, you know,
• 14:18
  have a human conversation, be sincere, be honest, and like I said,
• 14:24
  I think seven out of ten people will generally engage and the other three
• 14:28
  well, you know what, so be it, no big deal, no
• 14:31
  problem, or maybe they'll come back later, who knows. So you know,
• 14:37
  you mentioned doing thousands of thousands of interviews, you know, so let's
• 14:41
  just you know, go back to that and how you sort of got started
• 14:43
  doing that, you know, back to to actually going around and just you
• 14:48
  know, talking to all these different people. So how did that whole journey
• 14:50
  start? Were you just going around interviewing all these people? Well, I
• 14:56
  usually interview people when I'm on assignment. So if we're producing a video where
• 15:01
  we need to collect interviews or we're doing a doc, that's my job.
• 15:05
  So I'm the guy that sits in the chair and directs the shoot and does
• 15:09
  the interviewing. And you know, I've learned a whole lot doing it,
• 15:13
  and I learned a lot about psychology, a lot about people. But yeah,
• 15:16
  so it all starts with a project. And you know, typically I
• 15:22
  love to go in cold. I don't do a lot of research when I
• 15:26
  do interviews. I want to explore the information along the path of the interview
• 15:31
  rather than walking in with thirty nine questions and just running through the questions.
• 15:37
  We want to find out what people are passionate about, so you've got to
• 15:41
  read their body language. Like interviewing is a really interesting thing. You're usually
• 15:45
  working at at least two levels, and usual and probably three. So you've
• 15:50
  got your physical situation where you've got to engage with body language that allows the
• 15:56
  person to feel a comfortable but be also then you want them to know that
• 16:02
  you're interested in. Body language has an awful lot to do with that.
• 16:06
  You can turn people off so easily with the wrong body language, so you've
• 16:10
  got to be really well versed in how that works. And you also have
• 16:12
  to be able to read body language to know where you're going to go with
• 16:17
  this thing. The other level you're working at is at the intellectual level,
• 16:21
  so you're gonna you know, I always say, you know when I'm recording,
• 16:25
  when I'm doing interviews, my brain is actually recording the interview so that
• 16:29
  I know where all the contextual points are. I know where the pickups and
• 16:33
  drop offs are. I know how to correct people, I know how to
• 16:38
  redirect them. So as I'm sitting there, you know, nodding and smiling
• 16:44
  and using body language. My brain is just furiously processing what they're saying.
• 16:49
  So you have to listen and actually process it and embed it and store it
• 16:56
  so that later in the interview you can come back and make a make a
• 17:00
  what I call a contextual link to what was said before. And that is
• 17:04
  often when you get the best stuff. And then you've got the other the
• 17:08
  other level, which is the conversation level, because now I've got to respond
• 17:12
  in a conversational way that's actually reasonably intelligent. And you know, unless people
• 17:18
  know that I care about what they're saying, I understand what they're saying,
• 17:22
  and I know enough about what they're saying to actually have them feel validated and
• 17:27
  engaged. So it's a really really interesting process and you and you end up
• 17:33
  exhausted at the end of them. You know, some interviews you've just burned
• 17:37
  so much brain energy that I mean, you need it. You need it
• 17:41
  to go for lunch, like right away. So it's an amazing process actually,
• 17:48
  and you know a lot of people, you know, I see some
• 17:51
  young folks coming out, and the biggest caution that I would say is don't
• 17:53
  just run the questions right don't just run the questions, get yourself into that
• 17:59
  conversation, be interested in what people are saying, and you'd be amazed at
• 18:03
  what you're going to get. And one tip I always use with a lot
• 18:08
  of the people I interview is I don't respond to them as soon as they
• 18:11
  stop talking, because sometimes if you leave a five second pregnant pause in the
• 18:17
  conversation, they're going to say what they really need, right because a lot
• 18:22
  of people get very nervous and they're vetting what they're saying. And you know,
• 18:27
  we've had people in the chair crying because they couldn't do the interview because
• 18:32
  they were so nervous. But if you just let them sit, you know,
• 18:36
  just let it go and don't stop the camera and don't cut, sometimes
• 18:41
  that's when the best stuff happens. I was giving you the pregnant pause there,
• 18:51
  But you know it's a friend of mine once gave me this piece of
• 18:55
  advice and he said, he said to me that whenever he's negotiating, he
• 19:00
  always puts in that pregnant pause on purpose because he always says, the first
• 19:03
  person that talks loses. You know what, As on the business side,
• 19:11
  if you talk too much, you lose the deal. That's all there is
• 19:14
  to it. You got to learn how to sit. Yeah, and he's
• 19:19
  a fellow Canadian too, bat oh yeah, where's he from. I believe
• 19:23
  he's from Toronto, Okay, because that's that's where all the sharks live in
• 19:29
  Canada. All he does is talk about the housing market there. But that's
• 19:36
  a whole nother podcast. Uh especially now, Yeah, he all he does
• 19:41
  is talk about the housing market and and he just like about the insanity of
• 19:45
  it. But but again, that's that's a whole other whole thing. Well,
• 19:49
  you know, maybe it's interesting, maybe some of he's accusing some some
• 19:52
  people of like Chinese millionaires and billionaires. We'll be right back after a word
• 20:00
  from our sponsor, and now back to the show of using these houses as
• 20:07
  sort of like a money laundering scam. I don't know if that's sure or
• 20:11
  not, but you know, hey, you know, anything's possible. Well,
• 20:17
  you know, man, I think that happens in London, New York,
• 20:19
  Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver, certainly West Coast. Definitely there's a
• 20:26
  lot of Chinese money on the move. I don't know if it's dirty money
• 20:29
  or not. I have no opinion about that. But I know, you
• 20:32
  know, Vancouver. Vancouver is ridiculous, and it's actually more ridiculous than Toronto.
• 20:40
  But there's a big correction about to happen, so I wouldn't be buying
• 20:42
  any high priced real estate in Toronto just right now, I think I walk
• 20:47
  away from that. Yeah, it's I heard about that too, about that
• 20:52
  correction. But you know, just to get you know, back to to
• 20:53
  what we're talking about with interviewing, you know, I wanted to ask you
• 20:56
  a question and I'll and i'll you know, I'll tell you my funny story.
• 21:00
  First, I wanted to ask you about one of the worst interviews you've
• 21:03
  ever done, because again, we always learn more from our mistakes than from
• 21:07
  our successes. And so so what happened was, when I was working in
• 21:11
  Higher ed they had asked me, so I I to do this. This
• 21:15
  probably is the worst one, but it's the funniest one. So they asked
• 21:18
  me to do this, this interview segment with the girls volleyball team, and
• 21:22
  the coach who you know, who was a part time coach, showed up
• 21:26
  late and he has all these questions just hands, you know, scribbled on
• 21:30
  a piece of paper. It's all, you know, cut up. He
• 21:33
  just ripped it out of a notebook, and he's asking these questions, Well,
• 21:37
  these girls are talking about stuff that I could never ever use in a
• 21:41
  school setting. They're talking about doing drugs, they're talking about there, they're
• 21:45
  yeah, they're they're they're trash talking their teammates. They're doing this and that,
• 21:48
  and and the coach was reading the same questions teach each girl because we
• 21:53
  told him to. And and then he would be, you know, asking
• 21:56
  a couple of different questions here and there. And finally when he asked me,
• 22:00
  he could if I put this together, and I said, you don't
• 22:03
  want me to use any of that. I said, you know except for
• 22:04
  one girl. And those girls were you know, do you know, trash
• 22:07
  talking girls, shit talking this and that. And he yeah, I guess,
• 22:12
  well you can just put something together. So I put this thing together
• 22:15
  and and bat, let me tell you, his face dropped and he goes,
• 22:18
  he goes, you're right, I could never use any of this.
• 22:22
  He goes, it was it was, It was. It was so hilarious
• 22:25
  because what I would do is I kind of gave it like the MTV styalve
• 22:27
  editing where I was like, here you go here's what they think of this,
• 22:30
  this and this, and it was like, you know, they they
• 22:33
  thought, oh, what do you think of this thing? Oh it's terrible,
• 22:36
  it sucks, blah blah. I'm like, you can't use any of
• 22:38
  that, you can't have to school promote this. But it was just it
• 22:41
  was just hilarious just because of how ridiculous it was so beat I want to
• 22:45
  throw the question to you. You know what, what was one of the
• 22:48
  worst, you know times you've had, you know, doing an interview segment.
• 22:52
  Well, I was telling you a few minutes ago, I had this
• 22:56
  this poor woman who was so upset that she couldn't perform. So, you
• 23:02
  know, this is one of the things that we tell people, do not
• 23:04
  try to memorize what you're going to say in the interview, like don't take
• 23:08
  our quest Like a lot of a lot of the institutional or government types or
• 23:11
  you know, bureaucratic types, they want you to send them the questions in
• 23:15
  advance so they can prepare so you know, then they end up writing,
• 23:19
  you know, writing ben hur so that they can answer these questions. And
• 23:26
  it's just ridiculous. They come in with you know, like pages and pages
• 23:30
  and pages and just again, I'm going you can't possibly, like, there's
• 23:33
  no way you're going to be able to do that. And this lady that
• 23:37
  I was working with, and it was a very serious subject matter, and
• 23:41
  she was like the CEO, and she was brilliant, really intelligent person,
• 23:45
  very you know, beautiful woman, clearly very professional. But the boy,
• 23:52
  she was nervous and I could tell as soon as she walked in the room
• 23:56
  it was going to be trouble. So we got her in the chair.
• 23:59
  Wasn't the studio set, you know, everything's controlled environment, And we got
• 24:03
  her in the chair and she could not just could not do it, could
• 24:07
  not do it. And I think she had like a tiny little nervous breakdown.
• 24:11
  Anyways, we had her in the chair for two hours because she wouldn't
• 24:15
  quit either, her cap telling her, you know, you need to take
• 24:18
  a break, you know, don't worry about it, and we were being
• 24:22
  really really kind, you know, and accommodating, and she was in this
• 24:29
  chair for two hours and I thought she was just gonna snap. It was.
• 24:33
  It was a horrible experience. It was. It was painful actually for
• 24:37
  everybody in the room, even at the camera guy and producer was in the
• 24:41
  room. Her colleagues were in the room, and everybody just felt so bad.
• 24:45
  So that's you know, I know, that's not like you know,
• 24:48
  talking to a bunch of teenage girls trash talking each other to really have that
• 24:53
  experience, but you know, that was probably the worst one. It's just
• 24:56
  terrible when you get people who are so upset that they're judging themselves so harshly
• 25:03
  when all they have to do is just talk like we're having coffee, right,
• 25:07
  And I've got like a zillion techniques that I use to get people to
• 25:11
  settle down and to relax and stop being so freaked out, but sometimes they
• 25:17
  just don't work. You know, they just don't work. And you know,
• 25:22
  some of the worst ones we do are actually when the client, you
• 25:25
  know, tells us, well, we don't have travel budget to send you
• 25:29
  to locations, so you know, we're going to hire a camera guy locally
• 25:33
  and can you direct by skype? And those are really really hard to do
• 25:37
  because you don't have the personal connection, you can't do eye contact properly,
• 25:42
  and if you get somebody who's tough to deal with in that situation, you
• 25:48
  know, sometimes the client's grinding on you because well, why couldn't you get
• 25:52
  it. What's so hard about this? And I going, well, you
• 25:53
  know, I guess you haven't done several thousand interviews, so it's going to
• 25:56
  be hard for me to explain this to you. But they sucked, So
• 26:02
  what do you want me to do? I can't force these people to give
• 26:07
  a good interview basically, So yeah, I mean there's a lot of pressure
• 26:11
  and uh, you know, there's money on the line and everything. So
• 26:15
  my attitude is always the same, and I always ask myself this question.
• 26:22
  In all production situations, it's basically like who's going to die here? Like
• 26:26
  what are the stakes? Okay, so nobody's gonna die. Everybody relax.
• 26:30
  Let's just let's just do our jobs. And we're do our good jobs.
• 26:33
  We're all professional. Let's just get this done. But you know, we
• 26:38
  don't need stress and pressure in production situations. It's just it's just a completely
• 26:44
  ridiculous waste of time when you do that. Yes, I could not agree
• 26:48
  more man, And I've been a part of both of both productions like that
• 26:52
  where it's been you know, sort of more loose, and then others where
• 26:56
  it was just you know, you walk on set and you could just feel
• 27:00
  the tension you know where the director doesn't like the DP, the DV doesn't
• 27:03
  like the producer, the producers of the director, and you're just kind of
• 27:07
  like, wow, you know, who the hell needs this stuff? It's
• 27:10
  just bullshit. Yeah, So, you know, I came to a point
• 27:12
  in my career where I just said, I'm not doing bullshit anymore. I'm
• 27:18
  not I'm just not doing it. It's not worth it. So now I
• 27:22
  hunt situations with my startup black Box, where it's a no bullshit deal.
• 27:29
  And even when I do some freelance work or I'm doing contract work, I
• 27:33
  just I try to work it so that there's there's no bullshit and it's all
• 27:37
  about the work and doing good work and you know, making sure they have
• 27:42
  a pleasant experience and you end up with a good product and that's the bottom
• 27:45
  line, because there's just no need for that. Yeah, you know,
• 27:49
  that's so true. And I also like that phrase. You know, there's
• 27:52
  no more bullshit products but projects. I'm sorry. And was there a point,
• 27:57
  by the way, Pat where you you know, what was it?
• 28:00
  Was there a project in particular that finally to set you over the edge.
• 28:06
  Well, you know that's a big question. So the answer is yes,
• 28:12
  and No, I had a huge project that we had won that was a
• 28:18
  museum job, and it was a million dollar contract. It was a big,
• 28:21
  big contract, and there were a number of players involved, design agency
• 28:26
  out of the States, and a lot of curators and a lot of experts,
• 28:33
  and it was a very very difficult project. The product at the end
• 28:37
  was absolutely wonderful, but there were so many human imposed turf defending types of
• 28:48
  interactions during the process that it really became a very unpleasant project and it could
• 28:53
  have been, you know, really rewarding to do. So it was just
• 28:57
  basically people being people, you know, defending their turf and you know,
• 29:02
  whatever was going on. And really it was during that project that I said
• 29:07
  to myself, Okay, I've been in this business a long time. I've
• 29:11
  had a great career. I think I'm ready to move away from doing this
• 29:15
  type of work because the bureaucracy and the layers of crap were sucked the soul
• 29:26
  right out of your chest and then you couldn't even be creative anymore because they
• 29:32
  took all the fun out of it. And you know, I don't want
• 29:34
  to be cynical or anything, but there's a lot of that going on these
• 29:37
  days. Right where. It's just there's so much bureaucracy, there's so much
• 29:42
  political correctness, there's so much business pressure that honestly a lot of these jobs
• 29:51
  just aren't fun to do anymore. We'll be right back after a word from
• 29:55
  our sponsor, and now back to the show. Yes, and that's what
• 30:03
  happened to me too when I got burned out, not even just doing freelance
• 30:07
  work, but like other other work in general, you know, and just
• 30:11
  you know, here's another story for you. I when I was doing freelance
• 30:15
  work, somebody asked me to come do this very so. They said,
• 30:19
  it's just an interview. They said, it's just an interview. We're going
• 30:22
  over all this stuff, et cetera, et cetera. And I get there
• 30:25
  and it's a completely it's a whole one eighty from what they told me it
• 30:29
  was going to be. Instead, it's a company. It was just a
• 30:33
  competition about who could use like who could you know, use this soul the
• 30:40
  fastest or whatever. And it was like this whole sort of convention. And
• 30:44
  I said to the guy, I said, wait a minute, this is
• 30:45
  completely different than what you said it was going to be. And I mean
• 30:49
  he was like, well, for any you know, always the kicker was
• 30:52
  too bad. I showed up there and he had no idea who I was,
• 30:55
  and I said, aren't you and I won't use his name, and
• 30:56
  I said aren't you blank and he goes yeah, and I said, well,
• 31:00
  Dave, I the videographer. He goes videographer for what? And I
• 31:02
  said, well, you're doing some interview thing today or something, and he
• 31:04
  goes, I don't know what you're talking about. So I go outside.
• 31:07
  I look at the business and I'm like, wait, yeah, this is
• 31:10
  it. This is the place. And I call my friend who had introduced
• 31:15
  us, and she comes out and she goes, oh, yeah, that's
• 31:15
  him. And I go back in there and I look at him and I
• 31:18
  say, hey, you know, I'm Dave. We've been talking back and
• 31:21
  forth like a month now. He goes, oh yeah, I forgot you
• 31:23
  were coming. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, this is And it just
• 31:26
  went downhill from there. Pat Well, you know what, you know,
• 31:32
  I don't want to get on my on a negative soapbox or anything, because
• 31:34
  you know, things have changed, that's for sure. But this is just
• 31:38
  an example of how I think. I think the perceptions of what we do
• 31:45
  in the industry have changed a lot over the past five years, let's say,
• 31:49
  so, I think the perception of you know, how professional we are,
• 31:55
  how well trained and experienced we are. I think some people people think
• 32:00
  that we are a bit of a commodity, right, you know, it's
• 32:06
  just a video guy. Oh yeah, whatever, right, but they still
• 32:10
  want it done perfectly, but they don't even know what that entails. So
• 32:15
  you know, like I said, I don't want to get down on it
• 32:16
  too much because I'm going to sound like a grumpy old man. But you
• 32:22
  know, things have changed, and the perception of what a professional does in
• 32:27
  our industry and who they are has has changed a lot. And you know,
• 32:32
  quite frankly, I think in a lot of instances, we're seeing a
• 32:37
  lot of bad work being done, you know, in that context, and
• 32:42
  the clients don't even know that it's bad work anymore because the wrong person on
• 32:46
  their team is actually handling it. So, you know, we got this
• 32:51
  weird thing going on right now where you know it's and it's always been that
• 32:55
  way. I mean, we always had what we call the bottom feeders in
• 32:58
  the industry that just shitty work, but everyone know who they were, and
• 33:04
  so on and they you know, they got hired on certain gigs, but
• 33:07
  usually not. And those of us that were kind of working the higher end
• 33:12
  of the market, we knew, we knew who was who. But these
• 33:15
  days it's like, you know, if I didn't tell a client, if
• 33:20
  I have a client telling me one more time in the meeting, well,
• 33:22
  you know, you guys are just super overprist because you know, actually,
• 33:28
  my son is taking film studies and he's going to do it for us for
• 33:31
  a hundred bucks. And you know, I just got hired to have those
• 33:36
  meetings, honestly, And these days, you know, the question, the
• 33:39
  one question I get asked by my clients in meetings is can you do it
• 33:45
  cheaper? Consistently? So it's time to say, actually, no, I
• 33:53
  can't do it cheaper. And if you want done cheaper, you can get
• 33:58
  it done by somebody else, no problem. But you know, at the
• 34:01
  same time, the work is a little more scarce than it was let's say
• 34:06
  ten years ago, and the prices of the higher priced jobs are actually coming
• 34:10
  down. So we're looking at a situation where our market is becoming uncommoditized.
• 34:16
  As I say, you know, we are less of a custom valued service
• 34:23
  than we were, we're now expected to do work for the same rate that
• 34:28
  we're working for hey man, twenty years ago. Think about it. The
• 34:34
  rates haven't changed really very much, if at all, and now they're going
• 34:37
  down again for the contract work that we do in video and film. So
• 34:45
  so what point, you know, again, when I read your bio,
• 34:49
  you know, you mentioned that you know, you realize you woke up one
• 34:51
  day and you realize you have been disrupted, you know, And I think
• 34:54
  that's a big part of it, because what you said there is with with
• 34:58
  you know, hey, I'm just going to have my undo it. I
• 35:00
  actually, let me tell you, I've had other people say that too,
• 35:04
  and you know, or I'm going to have my son edit this or whatever
• 35:07
  else, and you know, it's like, hey, we're pe to you
• 35:10
  if you think that you know your son can do it. You know,
• 35:14
  it's just one of those things. But so, at what point did you
• 35:16
  then create you know, black Box? Well, it's I created black Box
• 35:22
  where I didn't create it three years ago. I dated it three years ago.
• 35:27
  So I I was sitting in my boardroom realizing that I had built,
• 35:32
  you know, a beautiful company. I had forty employees, I had offices
• 35:36
  in two cities, had a really great team, and I realized that the
• 35:43
  market had changed. So I realized a couple of things. First of all,
• 35:46
  we were involved in some broadcast work here in Canada, and I mean,
• 35:52
  you're familiar with the cutting the cord phenomenon, But what happens in markets
• 35:57
  like Canada is when the cord gets cut, the cable fees that people were
• 36:00
  paying are no longer allocated for broadcast production by the broadcasters because that's how they
• 36:07
  get their money. And then in our market, the Canadian government has you
• 36:13
  know, some fun matching programs and so on, tax credits that are all
• 36:19
  predicated on the broadcasters coming to the table. Well, the broadcasters stopped coming
• 36:22
  to the table because they were making less money because people were cutting the cord
• 36:27
  and why were they cutting the cord to go and watch content from digital platforms
• 36:31
  like Netflix and YouTube and what have you. So that's the first thing that
• 36:38
  happened. The second thing that happened at the same time is that technology became
• 36:45
  much more readily available with the advent of DSLR camera technology, So all of
• 36:52
  a sudden, the cost of acquiring equipment went down. If that's what you
• 36:58
  were going to buy. You know, it wasn't high gear. It was
• 37:00
  low end gear, but it was low in gear that was doing good looking
• 37:02
  product. And the third thing that happened is we had a lot of young
• 37:07
  people coming into the market. And people like to beat up on millennials.
• 37:10
  Personally, I don't think that's right. I know a lot of millennials and
• 37:15
  I really like these guys. But unfortunately they came into a market where they
• 37:19
  could tool themselves and were competent enough because they were doing some good work.
• 37:24
  I mean when I say that the sun could do it, the sun could
• 37:28
  really do it, but the sun should have been getting paid five hundred bucks
• 37:31
  a day rather than one hundred That's my point. So the commodification happened on
• 37:37
  the perceived value of the work, right from the client saying, well,
• 37:42
  my kid can do it for one hundred bucks rather than you doing it for
• 37:44
  five hundred bucks or whatever, or a thousand, you know, which is
• 37:47
  what we used to get. So now we've got these three factors, we've
• 37:52
  got a glut of labor willing to work at lower pricing. And why would
• 37:57
  millennials work at lower pricing, Well, a lot of them were either living
• 38:00
  in apartments or the roommates. So they don't have car payments, they don't
• 38:04
  have college funds to build. They're not building for retirement. You know,
• 38:07
  they're young and because you used see you know there were buring entry coming into
• 38:14
  the market. If you were going to be a video production company owner,
• 38:16
  you better have the ability to acquire capital, so you could buy high end
• 38:22
  cameras for one hundred thousand dollars each headed systems cost of fortune. You had
• 38:25
  to have an edit bay, you had a voiceover booth, you had to
• 38:29
  have a small studio. Well all that's gone now, like people kids are
• 38:31
  at these millennials. Sorry again I don't like the term, but younger people,
• 38:37
  you know, they're editing at Starbucks, or they're forming into collectives where
• 38:40
  they're sharing small office spaces. And that's okay with that because they can cut
• 38:45
  the video on a MacBook or a surface or whatever, and they can shoot
• 38:52
  it on a DSLR and they're not using a twenty thousand dollars sachular tripod anymore.
• 38:55
  They're using one thousand dollars you know, Vinton or whatever, or a
• 39:00
  Matt Frauto. So everything, it wasn't just that one thing commodified and disrupted.
• 39:08
  Everything changed at the same time. And then you had a lot of
• 39:13
  institutional clients like government clients or you know businesses, even bigger businesses, smaller
• 39:21
  businesses bringing somebody in house, so they would hire a young person to do
• 39:27
  it in house. And why well, because the young person had the camera,
• 39:30
  had the edit bay in their pocket, had control over and these kids
• 39:36
  are quite well trained, and they're multi faceted, like they can shoot an
• 39:39
  edit, they know how to do audio. They're not terrible at it,
• 39:43
  they're good at it. So you know, this disruption had to do with
• 39:47
  that whole change from you know, a team of three or four people doing
• 39:52
  work will be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to
• 40:00
  the show, to a team of one or two doing work that didn't have
• 40:07
  an office, probably weren't insured, you know what I mean, didn't have
• 40:12
  staff. So all of this happened at the same time. So here I
• 40:15
  am sitting there, a twenty five year veteran of the business, and yeah,
• 40:19
  we did get to disrupted. We got disrupted at three levels we have
• 40:22
  had. In nineteen or twenty fifteen, we had four I believe four broadcast
• 40:29
  projects canceled because at whatever, there were three different broadcasters involved relaying people off.
• 40:37
  So you know, they were just canceling a series, and we had
• 40:40
  four series canceled. It was a huge amount of money involved. So yeah,
• 40:45
  we got hit pretty hard. So I'm sitting in my boardroom with my
• 40:50
  wife and I'm like, Okay, we're not making money. Who's making money?
• 40:54
  What's going on here? So we sat and we did a bunch of
• 40:59
  research and we concluded that there were two ends of the spectrum that were making
• 41:04
  money. There was the YouTube crowd and that was prior to the YouTube apocalypse
• 41:10
  that happened a year or so ago, and that was before they changed the
• 41:15
  monetization. But that's another problem that we can talk about. But there were
• 41:20
  a lot of YouTubers who were making money and we found you know, we
• 41:22
  just said, let's go look at the top ten YouTubers and see who's making
• 41:24
  money and see what they're making. And you know, as a kind of
• 41:30
  a trained experienced filmmaker, it was pretty shocking because I hadn't paid much attention
• 41:36
  to YouTube. Stupid me, and you kind of look at it, going,
• 41:39
  wow, this stuff is popular. Why, Well, you know,
• 41:43
  we kind of figured with a couple of things. It was probably because a
• 41:45
  four year old sitting in the back of mommy's suv hitting the iPad again and
• 41:50
  again and again, and people were making millions of dollars. There is this
• 41:52
  one channel we found called Disney Collector, and this is an Hispanic woman with
• 41:59
  really nice blame any fingernails, in a really sweet sounding voice, who shows
• 42:02
  you how to use Plato right, Disney character Plato shit. And the woman
• 42:10
  has now got two hundred and fifty million views on one of her videos or
• 42:16
  more, and she's purported to make twelve million dollars a year or more from
• 42:22
  her YouTube box. Okay, so that's just a why an eye opener.
• 42:28
  And then I looked at the other end of the spectrum with Netflix, and
• 42:30
  Netflix had not even started to I mean, I don't even think Orange's New
• 42:36
  Black had been produced twenty fifteen. Yeah, maybe it was. I guess
• 42:40
  they're going into season four at any rates. And we started thinking, Okay,
• 42:45
  well, we've got this distribution platform that's actually starting to create content.
• 42:50
  So what they're doing is they're aggregating the rights to intellectual property at the top
• 42:57
  of their organization, and producers who used to make shows, own shows,
• 43:02
  and license shows to broadcasters are not going to be able to do that for
• 43:07
  very long. So it made me kind of think. You know, the
• 43:12
  term that I believe came to me at the time was user generated content.
• 43:17
  So you've got YouTubers making user generated content, and you've got Netflix making user
• 43:22
  generated content, but we're creators and all of that. Well, in the
• 43:27
  YouTube case, you've got one or two people making this stuff. There aren't
• 43:30
  very many teams of trained people doing it, although there's lots of cool stuff
• 43:34
  going on in YouTube right now. But in the in the Netflix example,
• 43:39
  basically creators were turned into workers. So and that's not bad when the rates
• 43:45
  are good and everything, but as I understand it, you know, the
• 43:49
  rates are dropping, and the people that I know in markets where you know,
• 43:53
  big platforms are making a lot of content, the rates are static,
• 43:59
  they're still installed, and even studio owners and equipment rental houses are getting really
• 44:05
  really pushed down a rate. So basically, you know, everybody's making money
• 44:10
  except Netflix, and people who want a gig in this industry, you know,
• 44:15
  they're really just looking for work and they're being forced to take longer hour
• 44:21
  days for less money and I'm not saying that's happening everywhere. Lots of people
• 44:27
  are gonna say, hey man, that's not true where I am or whatever,
• 44:30
  but it is true where a lot of people are. Because through our
• 44:34
  platform, I hear these people, I know them, and they want a
• 44:38
  better deal. So I decided to create a platform that was all about creators
• 44:46
  being able to do user generated content alone or in groups and gain access to
• 44:53
  global markets, not have to sell themselves as workers, but convert to being
• 44:59
  owned of the content that they make, and take advantage of all the licensing
• 45:04
  fees, long tail revenue, or residuals, they're all the terms apply uh
• 45:10
  and do better in their lives. And we want to do that on a
• 45:14
  global context where every creator all over the world actually has the same access because
• 45:20
  they have the same access to technology and tools, but they don't have the
• 45:23
  same access to markets and business systems. So what we designed as a platform
• 45:29
  that is really has really captured and automated all of the things that creators need
• 45:36
  in order to work together to make content, to co own the content,
• 45:39
  and to share in the revenue streams of it develop through these new digital platforms.
• 45:45
  So we think it's really revolutionary. So it's uh, you know,
• 45:51
  you touched on YouTube and you know I had friends who were creators who saw
• 45:54
  their their you know, their monestization, cut down some channels hell, or
• 46:00
  even gotten into trouble with all the new rules. You know. I have
• 46:02
  another friend who's just getting back into it and he has one of the top
• 46:06
  YouTube channels ever, which is crazy. But just going back to black Box,
• 46:12
  you know, it's you know, it's allowing. So basically it's it's
• 46:19
  cutting out the middleman essentially, you know what I mean. It's you can
• 46:22
  actually you know, go on there and actually don't have to worry about you
• 46:27
  know, selling. You don't trying to say you basically could have the movement.
• 46:30
  Yeah, but I think that can help you understand a little bit.
• 46:34
  But we're not cutting anybody out because they're already cut out. Okay. Being
• 46:38
  a producer is a much harder gain because you have actually been turned into a
• 46:43
  worker again. Now there are people who are who are developing product as producers
• 46:47
  and selling it to Netflix or licensing to Netlex and that hasn't died, but
• 46:52
  a lot of that business has gone away. So what's happened is like people
• 46:57
  that used to be producers, like actual producers have become service producers. So
• 47:01
  they're getting paid, you know, by whoever their client is and they could
• 47:06
  be ABC, NBC, it could be Hulu, it could be Netflix,
• 47:08
  could be anybody. They're getting paid to manufacture the project for those companies,
• 47:15
  not with them, right, So that's really changed. So everybody all the
• 47:19
  way down the line is now a worker, and that would be fine as
• 47:23
  long as as as the you know, the disruption wasn't happening where the rates
• 47:30
  were dropping. So, I mean, it's bad enough that the business model
• 47:35
  changed to the point where people, you know, couldn't own their own content,
• 47:38
  but the rates are going down. So what does that mean for the
• 47:43
  future, Well, you know, it means we're going to have a commodified
• 47:45
  labor market. Look at what happened in visual effects, right. Visual effects.
• 47:51
  It used to go to LA and you go down by Santa Monica Pier
• 47:53
  and there are all these nice two three story buildings that were full of visual
• 47:57
  effects asses. Well they're all gone now. And there's a saying in Hollywood
• 48:02
  amongst certain executive producers that goes like this, if you haven't put a VFX
• 48:08
  companies a company out of business, on your film. You're not doing your
• 48:10
  job right. So what's happening with VFX companies? I mean when you go
• 48:16
  and see blockbuster movies, now you used to see like ILM would be in
• 48:22
  there or whoever. Right, Well, now you see look at the end
• 48:25
  credits. There are hundreds and hundreds of people who employ in the VFX game,
• 48:31
  but they're working for fifty companies, right, So instead of seeing ILM
• 48:37
  crew of two hundred people on the end credit that, now you're seeing fifty
• 48:40
  companies with ten to fifteen people. So what's happened there is that the VFX
• 48:46
  companies have been divided and conquered into smaller and smaller units. So now the
• 48:51
  producers, the big guys can actually go in and hammer them on price a
• 48:57
  little more effectively because they're playing them all against each other. And I know
• 49:00
  this sounds horribly cynical, and you know, if there's a Netflix Exact listening,
• 49:07
  you know, Hey, I'm just coming from the creator perspective right where
• 49:10
  I think that there's a better deal for creators. The creators should and can
• 49:15
  now have the ability to have their piece of the pie and to have better
• 49:22
  lives as a result of that, and to be able to do the work
• 49:25
  they do with a lot more freedom. You know, I created black Box
• 49:30
  to have more freedom for me and for my creator colleagues because we are special
• 49:38
  people. You know. I call it the creator class actually, and so
• 49:43
  the creator class for me are people who are talented, generous, kind,
• 49:50
  hard working, resourceful, honest people. We'll be right back after a word
• 49:58
  from our sponsor, and now back to the show. And I would say
• 50:06
  ninety nine percent of the people that I know there are creators fall into those
• 50:10
  categories. So that means we're going to get beat up as business people,
• 50:15
  plain and simple. So what we do is kind of give We create a
• 50:20
  platform that's a safe haven that allows creators to actually not worry about all that
• 50:25
  business stuff because just like so many other businesses, we want to automate a
• 50:30
  lot of it so that there's not a lot of backroom deals going on there.
• 50:35
  The sharks can't play. You know. Basically, we've been a product
• 50:39
  and we move it through a market, just like any other industry. Look
• 50:43
  at the auto manufacturing industry, right They've got this think called the supply chain.
• 50:46
  And the supply chain means that all these parts are created by all these
• 50:50
  suppliers and brought together the assembly plant. And it has to be it has
• 50:57
  to be all coordinated properly. Well, you know what make movies no different
• 51:00
  than building a car. It's a supply chain. You had to bring all
• 51:04
  these resources together. They had to happen at the right time. Budgets have
• 51:07
  to be respected, and and then you deliver to the customer. So what
• 51:13
  I've done is created a platform that allows creators to be part of the supply
• 51:17
  chain and to own the end product as they're moving along. So it's a
• 51:24
  really it's a really big shift in terms of an economic reality. We liken
• 51:31
  it dave to a return to the guild system. Uh, you know prior
• 51:37
  to the Industrial Revolution, where guilds actually had these inherent protections in place.
• 51:45
  You know, if you were building a cathedral and you need a stonework done,
• 51:49
  you went to the Stonemasons. And if you needed a bunch of pews
• 51:52
  done and woodwork done in the church, you went to the carpenter's Guild.
• 51:57
  And so what we are is a creator's guild, and we're global, and
• 52:00
  we're digital, and we are going to change the face of the industry.
• 52:07
  And I know exactly where you're coming from by the way, about the VX.
• 52:08
  About the VX situation, I actually have a friend, I've actually had
• 52:14
  friends who've worked in the industry, and they were describing, you know,
• 52:16
  pretty much what you just described as well. But you know, black box
• 52:20
  looks awesome. I'm all in favor of anything that allows you know, creators,
• 52:25
  good creators, to you know, to share their stuff and to actually
• 52:30
  get seen because you know, like I've said before this podcast, the idea
• 52:34
  of just uploading something to YouTube now and saying, hey, it'll go viral
• 52:37
  is like a one in a million shot, and you can't rest anything on
• 52:42
  that. That's not a business plan for sure. Man. Well, you
• 52:45
  know, that's just that standard fragmentation. But we're working within a global context
• 52:50
  and we're working within a digital platform context. Nobody's done this before, so
• 52:54
  no one really knows the rules. But we do know that there is an
• 52:59
  awful lot of money being aggregated at the top of these multinational corporations. And
• 53:05
  then you have to bring in the idea that they are some of them are
• 53:08
  publicly traded corporations, so that whole dynamic is very different too. So who
• 53:14
  end up who ends up getting caught in Avice are the individual creators because in
• 53:19
  fact, as these companies blew apart, you know, big company with forty
• 53:23
  people, right, and that company is pretty much gone now. So the
• 53:29
  protections that were afforded to the workers within that relationship they had with me as
• 53:35
  their boss, they're on their own now, right. So what we're doing
• 53:40
  is we're actually saying, look, we don't want to aggregate these people back
• 53:44
  into a company again, but we want to have a platform that performs those
• 53:47
  functions for them, that allows them to have a little more predictability and security
• 53:52
  in their life. So, and I should tell you that we analyzed the
• 53:58
  market and we said, look, ultimately, we want black boxers, we
• 54:02
  call them black boxers, to be able to do the work they love to
• 54:07
  do. So if they are they want to work on feature films and they're
• 54:12
  a gaffer, we want them and they love being a gaffer, Who want
• 54:14
  them to be able to be a gaffer on a great feature film on regular
• 54:19
  work. And if they're an actress, who want them to be an actress.
• 54:22
  And if they're a musician, we want them to be a composer.
• 54:23
  We want them to be able to do what they love to do. So
• 54:28
  what we allow them to do is come together into groups of like minded creators
• 54:32
  and make the project they want to make. That is that has a lot
• 54:37
  more creative freedom for everybody. Now, not a lot of not most,
• 54:43
  sorry, not most. A lot of people they just want the gig and
• 54:45
  they want to get paid, and they want to go home, and they
• 54:47
  want to be safe, and they want to make money, and they want
• 54:50
  to take care of their families. And that's that's never going to end.
• 54:52
  But we offer an alternative to people who, you know, kind of feel
• 54:57
  that desire to really be involved in something that takes a lot of craft,
• 55:00
  a lot of love, and ends up being a very valuable product. So
• 55:05
  I'm going to give you an example. Moonlight won the Academy Award two years
• 55:09
  ago. And Moonlight was made for reputedly one hundred and fifty dollars, sorry,
• 55:15
  one point five million bucks, and then there was a big marketing budget,
• 55:20
  well not big five million, probably the one against it. So Moonlight
• 55:24
  ends up getting a theatrical run that did well, and then they ended up
• 55:29
  doing very well on vod and cable and they won an Academy Award. But
• 55:35
  I have to wonder, Okay, this movie is going to make one hundred
• 55:38
  and fifty million dollars after production net. Who's getting that money? Is it
• 55:44
  the people that sacrificed their rate, showed up, did the extra hours,
• 55:47
  put the love into it, and made the movie, or is it somebody
• 55:52
  else? Well, I think we all know the answer. Is it somebody
• 55:57
  else? So what if My question is, what if a group of filmmakers
• 56:02
  could come together make a product like Moonlight and now the budget is not going
• 56:09
  to be one point five million because no one's getting paid. You're doing it
• 56:13
  in kind for ownership in the movie. And then if you've got some fixed
• 56:17
  costs. But we can bring everybody into this scenario. Studio owners that are
• 56:21
  getting squeezed can actually let us use the studio for a piece of the movie.
• 56:25
  Camera department. Maybe they've got two year old cameras that aren't being rented
• 56:30
  for full price anymore that they'll put on the movie, for a piece of
• 56:32
  the action craft, anybody, anybody involved, location owners, transport the works,
• 56:40
  and you're still gonna have some fixed costs. So now you can make
• 56:44
  the movie for a really good movie for two or three hundred thousand dollars or
• 56:49
  less. It all depends on what your consumables are. So now you make
• 56:53
  the movie great and it's owned by the people that made it. Okay,
• 56:59
  this is a key thing. Now, if that movie goes out and it
• 57:01
  makes one hundred and fifty million dollars net after distribution or whatever, okay,
• 57:07
  And you can even bring a marketing team in to be part of your group,
• 57:10
  so you don't have to go pay for marketing. You can find a
• 57:14
  marketing group and say, do you want to be part of this? Right?
• 57:16
  Anybody can be part of it. The distribution people can be part of
• 57:20
  it. So you create this wonderful waterfall saying, okay, all these dollars
• 57:24
  that come in, they're all going pro rata to the people that own the
• 57:28
  property. And by my math, on a one point five million dollar feature
• 57:36
  that does one hundred and fifty million dollars net after distribution over a period of
• 57:39
  time, because it's longtail money and that's how money gets made on distribution platforms.
• 57:45
  Now everyone would get paid one hundred times the rate. Good. Bad?
• 57:50
  What do you think that sounds a good trade off? Yeah? Man,
• 57:54
  So where we started is saying we're going to dream big right at black
• 57:59
  Box. We're in a dream big. We're gonna say we want to make
• 58:01
  blockbuster feature films. We would love to be able to make a Black Panther
• 58:07
  in five years and have all the people that made the movie get a really
• 58:13
  nice paycheck, right because they deserve it. We love these people. They
• 58:16
  need they need this opportunity because right now it's just it's not working out so
• 58:22
  good. Right, So that's our dream, but we couldn't start there,
• 58:28
  so we decided to build our platform in a smaller, more highly defined marketing
• 58:34
  nuts this stock foot market. So currently our platform servance is start footage.
• 58:40
  So what you can do is you can take your camera right now, like
• 58:44
  you're a camera guy, right dad? Yeah? Okay, do you own
• 58:47
  your own gear? Yeah? I have it right here. Actually it's actually
• 58:51
  right behind me. You can't see it because it's a podcast, but yeah,
• 58:52
  it's right about it. So what kind of camera you're on? I
• 58:55
  have a canon rebel. I think it's the was it sixty to seventy?
• 59:00
  Okay, So let's say you've got a sixty You could probably walk out of
• 59:06
  where you are right now, and it's not daylight there anymore. So let's
• 59:09
  say you get up in the morning and go for a walk and you see
• 59:14
  something beautiful that you want to capture, so you do it, and then
• 59:17
  you see something else that you want to capture maybe you know whatever. And
• 59:22
  this is a very simple example, mind you. So but you can then
• 59:27
  go home and you can actually curate that into five very nice clips. You
• 59:32
  can put them up to our platform. We'll take them out to all the
• 59:36
  big stock agencies, and when the money comes, it returns to black Box
• 59:42
  and then we take fifteen percent of the net sale and we deliver the rest
• 59:45
  to you. So basically, it's an upload once get to many scheme.
• 59:51
  Now, let's say you go back to your house and you say, oh,
• 59:54
  I don't really don't want to edit this, pat We'll be right back
• 1:00:00
  after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. You
• 1:00:07
  want to edit this, and you call me up and say you want to
• 1:00:09
  edit my clips. I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll do it for
• 1:00:13
  thirty percent and you go, okay, deal thirty percent. So now you
• 1:00:16
  can upload those clips to black Box or send me sorry, send me the
• 1:00:22
  raw, and I will actually edit them, upload them, tag them and
• 1:00:25
  do the metadata and then when and then when the money comes, black Box
• 1:00:31
  auto automatically pays me my share, and you automatically get paid your share.
• 1:00:35
  You don't touch my money. I don't touch your money. Or another option
• 1:00:38
  is you want to edit, but you hate doing the metadata, you hate
• 1:00:42
  doing the keywords and the descriptions and all that. So you can actually edit
• 1:00:45
  them, upload them and then hand off to me and I'll do the metadata
• 1:00:50
  and I'll do it for fifteen percent. So that's what we built and it
• 1:00:54
  actually works. So we've got thousands of people all over the world doing this.
• 1:00:59
  I just project go through where a guy in South Africa had seven hundred
• 1:01:02
  clips. He put him up on the platform and he assigned the curation to
• 1:01:07
  metadata curation to a woman here in Ottawa where I live actually, who's a
• 1:01:13
  very good editor. So now we've got this international collaboration going and it all
• 1:01:21
  happens within our platform. So that's where we started. And our next move
• 1:01:24
  is into short form and long form and you can do YouTube videos this way.
• 1:01:30
  So, like I said earlier, a lot of YouTubers they want to
• 1:01:32
  do everything themselves because they want to keep the money right like, and they
• 1:01:36
  don't know what they're going to make, and it's like it's all freaking everybody
• 1:01:38
  out. Well what have you said? Well, why don't we do this
• 1:01:42
  as a team. Why don't we actually do some produced content where we actually
• 1:01:46
  use real writer, real director, real you know, real, real,
• 1:01:50
  real and everybody worse together and make some product that's watchable and then you put
• 1:01:57
  it to black Box and we manage the whole process of getting into audience and
• 1:02:01
  then dividing a revenue. And it works. I mean, that's all I
• 1:02:07
  have to say. It works, It works really really well. And then
• 1:02:10
  as we grow, we're going to take on bigger projects indie films. Right
• 1:02:16
  now, if there are indie filmmakers that have had no luck distributing their film,
• 1:02:22
  you can contact me and I will find a way to get your film
• 1:02:27
  onto our platform. You will have to go back and figure out who did
• 1:02:30
  what on the movie, so you can make sure that everybody gets compensated when
• 1:02:34
  the money comes. And then we will, through our developing relationships with distribution
• 1:02:39
  and VOD, will have a good chance of getting your movie seen. So
• 1:02:45
  this is what we're trying to do. And you know, I think that's
• 1:02:50
  great. Too bad, I mean, you mentioned you mentioned Black Panther.
• 1:02:53
  I'm always in favor of the movies like Black Moonlight Where or movies like obviously
• 1:02:59
  The Blair which or Paranormal Activity. You know, those movies that come out
• 1:03:02
  of left field that just you know, go they go ape shit. You
• 1:03:06
  know, My big fat Greek Wedding. You know these movies that are shot
• 1:03:08
  for like twenty thousand dollars and they have a pretty good return, you know.
• 1:03:14
  And you know, just just as we talk about, you know,
• 1:03:15
  gear and producers and stuff. You know, I went at a friend of
• 1:03:19
  mine who was going to make a movie for ten grand and this this person
• 1:03:23
  who owned a rental house got a hold of them and he came back heck
• 1:03:27
  to tell me. He goes, Dave, I can't do it for ten
• 1:03:30
  thousand anymore. I need a quarter of a million. And I said,
• 1:03:34
  well, I said, no, you don't. I said, love of
• 1:03:37
  God, you don't need a co I've read a script. He did not
• 1:03:38
  need a quarter of a million dollars. He could have done it for ten
• 1:03:42
  thousand dollars at the max because it only took place in one room. There
• 1:03:46
  was no stunts or explosives. There's no squibs, there's nothing. There's no
• 1:03:52
  famous people that were needed or we're going to be in it. So I
• 1:03:54
  was like, man, just just don't even worry about that stuff. Well,
• 1:03:59
  you know, the whole point here is that making a good Like you
• 1:04:02
  can make a movie. Anybody can make a movie. I got an iPhone,
• 1:04:04
  I can make a movie right now, Like, no problem, right,
• 1:04:09
  But are you going to make a movie that's going to be compelling that
• 1:04:11
  someone's going to want to watch? And yeah, you can bank on having
• 1:04:15
  the next Blair Witch or whatever. But I believe that for the same reasons
• 1:04:19
  that our labor market have disrupted, we have an army of young filmmakers who
• 1:04:26
  are actually quite talented and capable who are coming along. But the problem is
• 1:04:30
  they're trying to do it all themselves, Like they're trying to self produce,
• 1:04:36
  self make, and self distribute movies. And I think that that's a missed
• 1:04:42
  opportunity because when we put together, when we put groups of talented people together,
• 1:04:47
  it makes for better product. And when we work together and we try
• 1:04:50
  to develop platforms like black Box that help people do the business end, which
• 1:04:55
  is often where things fall apart. Right Like for example, you know,
• 1:04:59
  I make a movie for ten grand and I call in all the favors in
• 1:05:01
  town. Right, Well, if that movie ends up going viral and I
• 1:05:06
  make I don't know two and a half million dollars on it, how much
• 1:05:11
  that money is going to go back to the people that helped me. There
• 1:05:13
  are no deals in place, there's no structure, there's no system, and
• 1:05:17
  it's very likely that those people aren't going to get paid because they did it
• 1:05:21
  as a favor. Right, So what black Box does is eliminates the favors.
• 1:05:27
  We don't do favors, and we don't do deferrals. No one ever
• 1:05:31
  gets paid on deferral. You know anyone that's ever been paid on deferral.
• 1:05:34
  It's a big joke, true. I know Hollywood actors, you know who
• 1:05:40
  I talked to, Like, I was talking to a guy named Martin Cove
• 1:05:44
  who was the Sin Say and the Karate Kid, and Martin's a great guy,
• 1:05:48
  and I said, hey, Martin, how many deferrals have you ever
• 1:05:50
  been paid on? He just laughed, he laughed, He said, no,
• 1:05:55
  people don't get paid on deferrals. And he's bullish on black Box act
• 1:06:00
  Like, there's a lot of actors in Hollywood that'll do this because it's not
• 1:06:02
  a deferral and it's not a favor. And it's not a rate reduction either.
• 1:06:08
  It's a fair share of the movie that you make. So if it
• 1:06:13
  makes money, and when it makes money, you get paid your share.
• 1:06:16
  Our system is guaranteed to pay you. So, guy that wants to do
• 1:06:20
  a ten thousand dollars movie, I would say, make a million dollar movie,
• 1:06:26
  but make sure it's all in kind, and then your fixed costs will
• 1:06:29
  only be ten thousand dollars if you happen to have to buy some squibs.
• 1:06:33
  So bring the rental house in as a partner, bring the studio in as
• 1:06:38
  a partner, Bring the locations in as a partner, Bring the actors in,
• 1:06:41
  bring the crew in, bring everybody in as a partner. I mean,
• 1:06:45
  even to the point where you're making an Indian you say, you know,
• 1:06:46
  well, we're not catering is bring your own lunch, right, and
• 1:06:51
  make a great movie and capture the passion of all those people, and get
• 1:06:55
  the best people involved, right, Like, don't get your cousin to hold
• 1:07:00
  the boom, get a sound guy to do it, get somebody who's really
• 1:07:03
  good at it to do it. And then guess what you're going to have
• 1:07:08
  usable audio and post right, and your movie is not going to sound like
• 1:07:12
  crap, and you can get yourself a decent composer. And you know,
• 1:07:15
  it just goes on and on and on and on and on. And we
• 1:07:18
  learned all of this through the stock footage thing, because you know, what
• 1:07:21
  we see. We see people who are learning faster, doing better work,
• 1:07:26
  and making more money. We've got people actually on our platform right now who
• 1:07:30
  are getting ready to quit their jobs and they're not taking gigs anymore because they're
• 1:07:34
  making enough money off of their stock footage portfolio to float their boat. And
• 1:07:40
  now what they're doing is they're saying, great, I'm floating my boat from
• 1:07:43
  my stock work, so I'm going to go make my movie now, and
• 1:07:46
  they're going to make it using a black box or at the black box platform.
• 1:07:51
  I know, it's a big idea, Like a lot of people are
• 1:07:54
  sitting out there in your audience right going, what the hell is Pat talking
• 1:07:57
  about? If I don't get this at all? Right, But because it
• 1:08:00
  is a huge, huge shift, it's an absolute it's a paradigm shift.
• 1:08:04
  Like it's revolutionary. And I'm not saying that because you know, hey,
• 1:08:09
  you know Pats and smart guy, he did a revolutionary thing. I actually
• 1:08:12
  did this so that I could have a better life facing a disruptive market.
• 1:08:17
  And I did it so that my peeps, the creators who I know,
• 1:08:24
  could have a better life too. And we did it as well so that
• 1:08:28
  the guy living in Nairobi, which is a bad place to be right now
• 1:08:31
  with all the flooding, but the guy living in Nairobi could go out and
• 1:08:35
  capture images of all the wonderful natural beauty in Nairobi are in Kenya, as
• 1:08:44
  opposed to having a bund of white guys flying in on a plane with an
• 1:08:46
  area alexa and leave with all the imagery and all the guy got was in
• 1:08:53
  his porter feet. So we could actually go in and train that guy and
• 1:08:58
  maybe even helping get a quick so that he can be the content creator because
• 1:09:01
  he's possibly very talented. So we're going to liberate a lot of creators using
• 1:09:08
  this platform, and we're gonna flatten out the world, and we're gonna make
• 1:09:13
  it a fair deal. Yeah. And when you were talking about everyone getting
• 1:09:16
  paid deferrals and stuff like that, it always reminds me of what they call
• 1:09:21
  the Hollywood accounting side of things, where you know, uh, you know,
• 1:09:25
  people get points in the movie never terms of profits, so you never
• 1:09:29
  see those points. But when you were you were talking about black Box,
• 1:09:31
  Pat, I, you know, all of this, you know makes sense
• 1:09:34
  to me. It sounds like a really really really cool platform where people can
• 1:09:39
  actually collectively get together. And if you do decide to hire this DP or
• 1:09:43
  hire this person or hire this whatever, you know, people will get you
• 1:09:45
  know, people now are bounded to to to get paid rather than deferrals or
• 1:09:50
  like you know, you promises or you know whatever. We'll be right back
• 1:09:57
  after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show which I I
• 1:10:05
  which sometimes by the way, you know, I just want to mention I've
• 1:10:10
  seen that getting people into a lot of trouble before it too. Deferrals.
• 1:10:13
  Uh, you know, I actually had a project that that that I saw,
• 1:10:16
  I wasn't involved in, and feelings were let out on Facebook, and
• 1:10:21
  you know how what happens then patted just snowballs, and all of a sudden
• 1:10:25
  you have people young at each other on social media. Exactly. It just
• 1:10:29
  gets ugly, exactly. You know. Well, you know the one the
• 1:10:34
  one point I would like to leave people people with is that you can work
• 1:10:39
  or you can earn. Okay, So black Box allows people to earn.
• 1:10:45
  It converts you from being a worker into an earner and an owner of the
• 1:10:50
  content that you make. It's like, it's like, you know, there's
• 1:10:55
  lots of good analogies out there. I think farming is a good analogy.
• 1:10:59
  Do you want to be a paid farm worker getting a low rate or do
• 1:11:02
  you want to be a sharecropper and own part of the product that goes out?
• 1:11:08
  You know. And so what we're creating is an environment where you have
• 1:11:11
  that choice because nobody works in black Box there. It's not a job,
• 1:11:16
  it's not a gig, not at all. Actually, it's very different.
• 1:11:21
  And just so everybody knows, the website is www Dot black box, dot
• 1:11:26
  global. It's not a dot com, it's a dot global. So www
• 1:11:30
  dot blackbox, dot global. I had to throw that in there. Date
• 1:11:34
  and you know, come to the website, check it out. See what
• 1:11:36
  you think. It doesn't cost anything to join this. If you do join,
• 1:11:43
  you know, we want to see you get active and we're going to
• 1:11:45
  try to help you do that. But it's not free candy. Like you
• 1:11:48
  got to work. You got to do the work, and you know there's
• 1:11:54
  stuff that you have to do. You got to make content. You got
• 1:11:56
  to edit it, you got to curate it, you got to upload it.
• 1:11:59
  But if you're trying to go to five stock footage libraries right now,
• 1:12:02
  you've got to upload five times and it is not fun work. So we
• 1:12:08
  take that whole adgro out for you. And then if you're trying to share
• 1:12:12
  revenue with a collaborator, you know, like, for instance, if you
• 1:12:16
  want to do a shoot tomorrow with three models in a cafe, you could
• 1:12:20
  actually instead of having to pay the cafe and the models, you could say
• 1:12:25
  to the model in the cafe and find people who are willing to do this
• 1:12:28
  to take a share of the revenue or the footage. Awesome. And we
• 1:12:31
  got a lot of people doing this. We have a member that did a
• 1:12:34
  cool shoot in a hospital and did a whole bunch of medical stuff and everybody
• 1:12:42
  is getting paid on a share basis. So you see these little micro transactions
• 1:12:45
  going through, but it adds up. It really does. Like a lot
• 1:12:49
  of the stuff that I've done, I've been lucky. You know, I'm
• 1:12:54
  not a genius cinematographer or anything, but i know what I'm doing and I've
• 1:12:59
  done a lot and lots of shoots where I go out for a week and
• 1:13:02
  do wildlife stuff where I would have gotten paid anywhere from six to ten thousand
• 1:13:08
  dollars for the week if I was working for a network, and my projection
• 1:13:14
  on some of those shoots is one hundred thousand dollars to me because the market
• 1:13:18
  is so the market demand is so high for that type of footage, So
• 1:13:25
  like you can make your day rate over a period of years using black Box,
• 1:13:30
  or you can make five to ten times your day rate or more.
• 1:13:33
  And we've got lots of examples of that, some really spectacular examples of people
• 1:13:40
  making a lot more money doing this than they would get on a game.
• 1:13:45
  So it's it's looking really really promising. We're really excited, and we really
• 1:13:49
  want to help them as many creators in I mean dative. I'm going to
• 1:13:54
  invite you to join budd to go to the website and register, and maybe
• 1:13:58
  you got a bunch of clotes you want to throw up there and h and
• 1:14:00
  be part of the community. And that's another thing about this. We've got
• 1:14:04
  We've got a great community. Feel like we have a Facebook group for members
• 1:14:08
  where it's the least toxic Facebook group I've ever seen. It's almost too nice.
• 1:14:14
  And everybody is so cooperative and supportive and is getting into the spirit of
• 1:14:19
  what we're trying to do because it's black Box is not a doggy dog world.
• 1:14:24
  It's a place where we're all in it together. And when we when
• 1:14:28
  when one person succeeds, everybody succeeds, you know. And I'm going to
• 1:14:32
  link to all that in the show notes everybody, and I'm going to check
• 1:14:34
  it out. I'm dead serious, Pat. I also want to check out
• 1:14:38
  this non toxic Facebook group because I have one myself and I keep it.
• 1:14:43
  I'm the moderator, so it's always kept non toxic. But I've never seen
• 1:14:46
  anybody else have a non toxic Facebook Facebook group because usually it the voids into
• 1:14:50
  something. And funny enough, it's usually screenwriting Facebook groups that go bed fans
• 1:14:56
  and I've seen the fights and I've seen everything else. Man, But you
• 1:15:00
  know, I was going to ask you where if you'll find you out online,
• 1:15:03
  but you you know, you know I will make sure to link to
• 1:15:06
  that. You you already gave the r L. But I'm going to link
• 1:15:10
  to that and everything else we talked about everyone in the show notes at Dave
• 1:15:14
  Bullis dot com. Pat, I want to say thank you so much for
• 1:15:17
  coming on. Man, it's been a real pleasure. No, you're a
• 1:15:21
  great interviewer, so thanks for that. Well, thank you, Matt,
• 1:15:25
  you know, thanks for letting me talk about black Box. Oh my pleasure.
• 1:15:29
  Pat, and you know, let's talk again real soon. You got
• 1:15:31
  it, brother, Thanks a million. I want to thank Dave so much
• 1:15:35
  for doing such a great job on this episode. If you want to get
• 1:15:38
  links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show
• 1:15:41
  notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Forward slash three thirty nine. Thank you
• 1:15:45
  so much for listening to guys. As always, keep on writing no matter
• 1:15:48
  what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting
• 1:15:53
  podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.