Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 689: Creating Revenue Streams for Filmmakers with Pat McGowan

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IFH 689: Creating Revenue Streams for Filmmakers with Pat McGowan · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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