July 15, 2025 • 57 mins
This week, I’m joined by the brilliant Carlo Cavagna Vice President of U.S. Operations at Two Daughters Entertainment and a key force behind the global writing programme PageCraft 🎬🌍
Carlo has worked across the creative industries for over two decades from helping launch Lionsgate’s early VOD platform to leading global trade initiatives for the UK Government. These days, he’s focused on helping stories (and storytellers) reach their full potential while navigating the realities of an industry in flux.
We chatted about:
🌍 The differences between the UK and U.S. creative industries
🎬 Why production budgets have gotten out of control
🧠 Helping writers get “unstuck” and crack story structure
🎨 Balancing the worlds of creativity and business
📉 Why the creative industries are becoming more unequal and what needs to change
🎞️ What the rest of the screen sector can learn from animation
💡 Carlo’s biggest lessons from a career spanning storytelling, leadership, and global media
A wide-ranging chat with someone who knows the industry inside out and a reminder that no matter what changes, the world will always need good stories.
Links:
✍️ Page Craft: https://www.pagecraftwriting.com
Two Daughters Entertainment: https://twodaughtersentertainment.com
🌍 Visit our website: https://linktr.ee/Justgetarealjobpodcast
💙 Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/justgetarealjob
📲 Follow us on:
X (formerly Twitter)
🎧 Listen on:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Hello and welcome back to just get a real job with me, Jamie
McKinley. How's it going?
It's been a bit of time. I didn't expect to be away from
the podcast for a month, but sometimes life gets in the way.
So nice to be back. Just I guess a brief update on
everything that's been going on,I guess.
So I think I mentioned in the last episode we put out with the
(00:25):
brilliant Cat MacLeod that I wasmoving flat, I was moving house.
Then of course, we had live podcast with and friends and cat
and it was a brilliant afternoon, brilliant panel and
filmmaking. And thank you everyone that in
Glasgow that came down to that. But that was of course very busy
to organize as well. And I suppose lastly, the other
thing that's been keeping me away from doing the podcast this
last couple of weeks is I was upfor a really good opportunity, a
(00:48):
really what would have been quite a cool job.
Unfortunately, I just fell a bitshort, but it's quite a long
process and quite a full on interview process.
So it was keeping me busy. But, you know, we learned from
failure and rejection. And, you know, I try to, on this
podcast, be as honest and open about the reality of what it's
like working in the creative industries.
And yeah, this is sometimes unfortunately what it's like.
(01:09):
It can be quite a competitive, quite a tricky industry to work
in sometimes. But anyway, I'm thrilled to be
back with the podcast now. And yeah, just catching you up
on what's been going on. But joining us on the podcast
this week is the brilliant CarloCavania.
And Carlo is currently the Vice president of US operations at
Two Daughter Entertainment, and he's also one of the key people
(01:30):
behind the global writing program, which is called Page
Craft. Carlos had a really interesting
career which spans both the creative and business side of
the industry. And from developing VOD
platforms at Lionsgate to working in global trade for the
UK government, all the way through to coaching writers on
story structure. Carlos had a really, really
(01:51):
interesting career and it was a joy to have him on the show.
We recorded this one back in March, so been sitting on this
episode for a while and some about time it goes out, but it
was a really interesting conversation.
Really enjoyed chatting to Carloabout his experiences across his
quite varied career, but also asking him stuff about, you
know, the differences between the UK and the US, what's been
going on with the sort of TV andfilm industry, why the screen
(02:12):
industries may have been struggling so much.
Spoke a bit about bloated budgets and AI and stuff like
that, but some really interesting chats.
He has had a lot to say on social mobility and why class is
quite a big barrier in the creative industries as well.
So it was a joy to have him on the show and appreciate him
giving us his time as well, especially with the time
difference with him being over in LA.
(02:33):
But yeah, thank you to Carlo forhis time.
Hope you enjoy this week's episode.
We've got lots of exciting stuffcoming up on the show in the run
up to the Edinburgh Fringe as well.
And hoping to get over to Edinburgh in August and do some
sort of behind the scenes stuff like we did last year as well
for I know we did a few people asking.
So yeah, that is the plan. And yeah, thank you for your
continued support. Thank you for coming back to the
podcast and yeah, enjoy this week's episode.
(03:09):
Thank you very. Much for coming on.
Just get a real job. It's evening where I am in the
UK, but I believe that you're it's still morning over in LA,
isn't it? So good morning to you.
Good morning. Thank you.
Good morning. Good evening.
It's still just about morning. It's 11.
It's just after 11:00 here. Yeah, it's been it's interesting
(03:30):
trying to work the time difference out.
I thought to start off, I wantedto ask, just introduce yourself,
tell us about by your background, you currently work
for Two Daughters Entertainment in the animations space.
You do a lot of work with and scripted and in the American
market and you also sort of usedto work for the British
government in America as well. So you just sort of introduce
(03:50):
yourself, give us a brief overview into who you are and
your career and stuff. I'll do my best.
It's not the most intuitive path.
My my training is is in international affairs and
international relations. That's what I have a degree in.
That's what I went to school for.
My first job was in Washington DC working for the US government
(04:14):
and international trade policy. I was always sort of pulled to
the creative industries though on the side.
Started out managing a band and I found a founded a film
criticism website and eventuallydecided to make the move out to
Los Angeles to get a full time job in the creative industries.
Which I did for a time in the video on demand space with a
(04:36):
company called Cinema now doing business development.
They were a startup majority owned by Lionsgate
Entertainment. In fact that's where our office
was. The problem was that this was
about 7 or 8 years before Netflix blew up.
Netflix did already exist as a sort of a DVD by mail service,
but we were very early stage. Like 1/4 of our audience was
(05:00):
streaming films on 56 K dial up modem.
So you can imagine that that wasn't the best user experience.
That being said, the company didOK, but you know, they had to
make cuts as as companies often do on the side.
I went through the UCLA screen writing program and eventually
(05:20):
all this culminated together into a job at the British
Consulate creating and building a new portfolio of work which
was focusing on the creative andmedia industries.
So essentially it was business development for Britain.
So I did that for many years of running the US strategy for
North for, for the for the UK, supporting UK exporters and
(05:41):
doing business in the United States, attracting investment
into the UK. And after some years, I manage
the entire business development team, which took me a little bit
further away from the creative industries because we were
already already also doing, excuse me, also doing life
sciences and engineering and what have you, but still with
the creative industries as an important focus because this is
(06:04):
a global hub for them. There were cuts at the
consulate, layoffs. Again, layoffs are a constant
here in LA and last year I left the consulate and after a few
months found myself working for Two Daughters Entertainment as
their VP of the US operations and that's been a lot of fun.
(06:27):
I haven't been there for very, very long, but it's been a lot
of fun working for an animation studio and helping them to
develop business in the United States.
I think someone we'll talk a lotabout it tonight.
Thank you for sharing your careers because I know it's
we're covering a lot of things very succinctly.
But someone I kind of want to talk to you a lot about it
(06:47):
tonight is business and how it ties in with the creative arts.
Because I mean, there's a big push at the moment that a lot of
creative people keep getting told you need to be more
entrepreneurial, you need to be more business minded to make it
as an artist. Firstly, what is your opinion on
that? Do you sometimes think we should
let the creative just be creative or do you think it's
quite useful to be business minded if you're creative?
(07:07):
Because I think a lot of our listeners will kind of, I've
heard a lot of this recently. Yeah, I do have some thoughts
about that. I'll attempt to present them
coherently. I I do think that it's an
important subject that you bringup.
I don't think that you can be successful in the creative
(07:29):
industries as a creative if you don't at least have some cursory
understanding of business drivers and motivations.
Similarly, I think on the business side of the creative
industries, sometimes they fall into a trap of considering the
creative is just another ingredient or step in the
production process, which is nothow creativity works.
(07:51):
I think we all know. I'm sure most of your listeners
would agree. It's not something you can
quantify. It's not something you can de
risk. It is.
There's an art to it, There's a magic to it.
Whether something works or not is something you know, there's
algorithms that can predict whether or not, you know, the
latest Transformer movie will befinancially successful, but
there's not an algorithm I thinkthat can tell you, can help you
(08:16):
make a judgement call about the quality of the script or a pitch
in terms of its potential, actually connect with audiences.
And maybe there were people thatwould disagree with me, but I
think that ultimately you have to hold space for that and you
have to understand creativity and not to work with it.
(08:36):
So it's an important subject that you bring up if, if you
want to talk about what creatives need to understand or
need to do to better work with the business side of things.
The first thing that I would sayis that, you know, you have to
know how to talk about what you do.
(08:58):
It's the same thing if you're, if you're creating a piece of
content, if you're writing something or directing
something, you want to connect with an audience, right?
And so you, you know, you tell astory that you think will will
do that. And you know, when something
isn't landing and you know, you read pages of a screenplay and
you can tell if you know there isn't something that an audience
(09:18):
can hook onto and, and you work on those things.
Well, it's the same thing on thebusiness side.
You have to be able to pitch yourself.
You have to be able to pitch your story, pitch your project,
pitch your talents, whatever it might be.
You have to be able to talk about them succinctly in a way
that people connect with and in a way that they can understand.
(09:39):
And you always have to bear in mind, you know, why should they
care? And the answer to that isn't
simply because I'm passionate about it, although passion does
translate when you're pitching anything, right?
But it can't just be I love it. So I'm just going to tell you
how much I love it. You, you have to you have to
(10:00):
think about what it is that they're motivating.
Were motivated by struggling with what drivers might factor
into whether or not they're going to make time for you and,
and pitch to that. And that sounds difficult and it
is. But you know, if you have a
story or a project, you're the person who know it best, knows
(10:21):
it best. And if you can't summarize it
distinctly in 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 2 minutes,
compellingly, then that's a gap.So that's important.
I think knowing how to talk about your your project is
important. For sure.
I think as an interest, it just seems to be quite a common thing
(10:42):
that's coming up a lot at the moment.
And I'm here in and, you know, just online or around the
creative industries. Is that because of the way that
the world is changing and the way that social media is
changing and stuff, it's kind ofdisrupted a lot of the way
creatives maybe would work or the careers that they would have
in the past. Where is now much more non
linear than it ever was. And that often creative people
(11:04):
have to completely transition into a different type of, you
know, say you're a writer, you maybe have to move into a
slightly different space or whatever it is.
And it's having that sort of business mindset that may be
quite useful. And I think, you know, pension's
obviously a big part of that, but it's, yeah, it's
complicated. And I suppose it's always been
on linear as well. I think that's right.
I think well, I mentioned earlier about the business side
(11:28):
of things is always trying to derisk the the gambles that they
take on on creative projects, right.
So when you're talking about content, you know, film, music,
television, whatever it might be, one of the things that they
look for in their efforts to de risk the gamble's they take is a
(11:50):
built in audience. So you I'm sure that you've
heard all about, you know, existing IPS, sequels, remakes,
things based on a best selling book that already exists and so
forth. And so now downstream of that,
that's always that's, that's tended to be translated into,
oh, I'm more interested in, I'llbe more interested in your
(12:11):
project. Your project is great, but I'll
be more interested in it. If you have a million followers
on TikTok already or there's an audio book that's done really
well already. So I think there might be a
built in audience that it gives me a hook in which to sell and
market it. So that helps get me closer to
gambling the money that you needto to to make this thing.
(12:36):
And you know, we are often timestalking about huge quantities of
money. So the effort to de risk the
gamble is something that, you know, creatives need to
understand and I guess need to factor in.
And, you know, maybe there's things that you can do even if
your idea is completely fresh and new and has nothing to do
(12:57):
with anything that's come before.
You know, if you have a novel ofit, if you have a really well
thought out pitch deck that contemplates what some of the
ancillary ways that it can exist.
You know, what a video game might look like, what the
merchandising might look like. You know all of those things
(13:18):
will help communicate the potential of your project to to
a business person. Is there anything that business
could learn from the creative industries on the flip side,
because you, you're obviously a very creative person, but you've
obviously worked a lot on the business side as well.
Do you ever, did you ever look across your colleagues
frustrated going if you were more open minded creatively this
(13:40):
would probably benefit us on thecomplete flip side of that.
You know, I have been surprised.I'm still surprised today, even
though I shouldn't be, at the amount of content that gets
bought, sold, greenlit and significantly down the road
before there's even a good script.
(14:01):
And this isn't film and television, obviously.
And you know, I through my page craft business, which we haven't
talked about yet, but I'm sure we'll get to, you know, I, I
believe firmly that without a great script, you don't have a
piece of TV or film content. So I mean, sometimes getting a
(14:24):
good script does require a financial investment.
You have to commit some money before you have that.
And you're not going to commit the money if you don't think
that the idea is good. I, I get that.
But an idea is not the same thing as having a script that
you believe in. There are plenty of ideas.
In fact, you can't even in the United States, you can't even
copyright an idea. It, it has to be more developed
(14:47):
than that and it has to exist ina, in a, in a tangible medium.
On top of that, we don't have totalk about IP law.
But I think that the reason you see a lot of mediocre content is
because the train was already inmotion before you had a script.
And by the time you have a script that doesn't work, you've
(15:10):
already committed to delivering this content to certain markets
on a certain timeline. And you know what, it's not
good, but we're going to have tofinish it and deliver it.
And that that's what happens. And that to me is, you know, I
understand why it happens, but it always feels a little bit
backwards to me. And if I could wave a magic
(15:32):
wand, that would be the one thing that would change about
the industry. Start with the script.
We spoke a little bit of this about, yeah, we spoke a little
bit about this last night actually.
We had, I mean, it's made particular maybe an interest for
listeners to talk about call we had that we're not recording,
but we were discussing some of the problems facing the TV
(15:52):
industry and the media industry both in the US and in the UK.
And one of the things we discussed was that budgets have
gotten so big that shows requireso much money to make.
And that's part of the issue, that we're not making enough
lower budget stuff as a result. And it's just costing so much
that squeezing a lot of people out, that's probably part of
that issue as well, that this, these, all these mediocre
(16:12):
scripts have to be made because it's already been paid for and
it requires these huge budgets for not actually a great return.
Yeah. I mean, once you are, if you're
making something, even a small budget, right, What's a small
budget these days? 10, even even 20 or $30 million
is considered a small budget. I mean, that's a massive amount
(16:33):
of money to anybody, right? So you nobody can afford to just
lose that amount of money. Well, maybe there's some
billionaires that can, but nobody can afford to lose that
amount of money. So that's how that's how stuff
gets completed and delivered. Even though it might not be
good, might not be ready or a year extra development would
have would have made it into something good.
There's plenty of bad content that makes is made out of great
(16:56):
scripts too. And sometimes things go wrong.
But I do agree with the idea that production budgets have, in
general, gotten too big. Right now, the the example that
everyone's talking about is The Electric State on Netflix, which
allegedly cost $320 million to make.
I don't know if that includes PNA or not.
(17:17):
Even if it doesn't, even if it does include PNA, that is a
massive, massive quantity of money to spend on a film that
I'm not going to. I'm going to reserve my personal
company. But certainly the reviews have
been dreadful. So how does a movie that cost
that amount of money with dreadful reviews, almost
universally dreadful get made? Is is you know it?
(17:39):
It's because of the dynamic thatI just talked about.
But Even so, it still feels likea bit of a mystery.
I do think production budgets are too high.
I think that incentives in various markets like the UK,
like the state of Georgia, like many of the Canadian provinces
(18:01):
and other parts of the world arehelping to support these very
large budgets because you can get 2030, even 40% of your money
back in these places. And I don't criticize these
jurisdictions for offering a taxincentives because I think there
is a cultural value and a, and a, and a value to developing
(18:21):
skills and creativity that is, is, is a hidden is a hidden
benefit of, of those incentives.But at the same time, if you
remove those incentives, I thinkthe production market would
would quickly fall apart. So, you know, I think that
productions just have to be leaner.
And I know that's an easy thing to say, but when you see what
(18:44):
some of the studio overheads areand you see what some of the
talent salaries are and you, youstart thinking about that, you
know it, it's easy to see where some cuts could be made.
And I, I don't think you know, alot of a lot of the studio heads
like the blame, but Gills for escalating costs, But I don't
(19:07):
think that's where the majority of the problem lies.
No, no, not at all. And often a lot of writers and
people in the crew are actually the ones that are probably the
being underpaid as opposed and the money's been arguably wasted
in other areas more. Yeah, but this is also where,
(19:28):
you know, creatives can help. You know, I, I think that when,
if you're writing a script, you have to write the best version
of the script possible. You don't, don't start making
production decisions before you've completed a brilliant
script. But once you've completed the
brilliant script, then you can then you can start looking at
what compromises you can make toreduce costs without
(19:49):
compromising the overall vision of the project.
And, you know, you have famous stories of directors like
Francis Ford Coppola, who, you know, have spent hundreds of
thousands of dollars to, you know, to shoot in a particular
place or to get a particular shot in exactly the way they
wanted. And, you know, those are those
are expenses that on the creative side, creatives need to
(20:12):
understand you, you just can't, you just can't do that.
And then on the business side, there's a lot of ways too, I
think. And there's lots of great
examples in film and TV, you know, in Hollywood, in the UK,
everywhere, of like great stuff that was made on a lower budget
and a leaner budget. And it's still successful and
commercially successful. So it's definitely achievable.
(20:35):
I'd agree with that. There are countless examples and
even today there are countless of examples.
And you know, sometimes those, sometimes the most successful
films are the ones that are based on completely new IP as
well, which I think you know, production decision makers need
to remember. If you only ever make sequels
(20:57):
and remakes, then you run out ofcontent pretty, pretty quickly.
At some point, you, you need the, the, the industry does need
those fresh, fresh ideas. And oftentimes, because they're
seen as bigger gambles, they aremade for lower production
budgets. Yeah, for sure.
It does feel very risk averse atthe moment.
I want to also ask you about thedifferences between the UK and
(21:19):
the US Obviously you work for the UK government and to try and
bring investment into the UK andthings like that.
And obviously you live in America, work in America.
Are there any differences in terms of opportunities in terms
of the media landscape there in positive or negative senses, or
do you think there's a lot of overlap as well?
Probably more, more similaritiesthan there are differences.
(21:39):
But if you want to talk a littlebit about the differences, I
mean look, the differences, I think they're probably fairly
obvious, but just to run throughthem really quickly, I mean
there's the scale of the marketplace obviously and the
scale of financial backing that you can get as a result of it is
a huge difference. the US marketis what is the United States
(22:01):
about five times as many people as the United Kingdom.
So that's that, that means a huge amount of difference in
terms of people competing for attention, people competing to
get their projects made and the size of audiences and the size
of money that's available. So that's obviously a huge
difference. The second thing that I would
(22:24):
say is in the United States, there's really very little place
for public money and public sector institutions in the
market. The UK still has a pretty strong
role, public sector role in the creative marketplace through the
BBC, but also through different development funds that you can
(22:48):
access, you know, skill set, thescreen agencies and, and various
countries and regions, that sortof thing.
So I, I have British friends whooften bemoan that there isn't
more of that support available, but it's certainly more than is
available in the United States from public money.
(23:09):
I forgot to mention the British Film Institute.
And then the third is how the market is segmented.
I think the US is a very, it's, it is a very segmented
marketplace in this day with, with these days with streaming,
it's even more segmented, but it's not segmented regionally.
(23:31):
It is segmented based on kind ofthe, the cultural backgrounds of
different audiences, in some cases the political background
of audiences. So it's sort of like it's, it's
a national marketplace, but it'ssegmented based on other
factors. Whereas in the UK there's still
(23:52):
regional marketplaces like Scotland, you know, there's
Welsh language content, there's Gaelic content, for example, and
you know, content that's made inparticular parts of the UK using
particular funding that exists only in those parts of the UK.
And you don't have so much of that in the United States.
(24:13):
So those are the, those are the big differences.
I think what all of that means ultimately, and this is true,
God, it's true in any industry sector, is that there's just a
lot of more competition in the United States.
And so it becomes more challenging in the United
States. And I'm not saying it isn't
challenging in the UK, because Iknow that it is, but it's more
(24:35):
challenging the United States toget noticed, to sell your
project, to meet the people thatyou need to meet.
But the principles for doing those things are the same.
You have to have quality ideas. You have to be able to
communicate those quality ideas effectively to the point about
(24:55):
pitching that I was making earlier.
And you like everything else, you know, it's relationship
based, a lot of it. And you have to, you have to
build your personal network and you have to meet the right
people. And even if you only ever meet
other writers, that's helpful because there's a great writing
(25:16):
community here in LA and a greatdirector's community of people
that just, you know, support each other.
And then we'll make introductions for one another.
And then when one of them is successful, sometimes there's a
knock on effect where they can bring some people along with
them. So having a personal network is,
is hugely important. What I, what I think also is
(25:38):
that in the United States, people have such limited
bandwidth on the business side and it can come across as rude
and off putting and unresponsive.
But if you look at it from theirperspective, these are people
who are probably getting hundreds, and I mean hundreds
unsolicited inquiries everyday from people.
(25:59):
And that's not even counting thepictures that they hear at a
cocktail reception or whatever it might be.
So they have to, they have theirown, everybody has their own
personal systems in place for how to filter that down to a
manageable amount of of noise for them to actually filter
intelligently and process. And one of the most common
(26:21):
filters that people use is a personal referral.
So that's why networks are important.
There's lots of it, yeah. So much to unpack from all that.
It's really interesting. I suppose one thing I want to
ask, and again, this could be myown stereotype, I've never been
to America and this is just something I feel like I've heard
(26:43):
quite a lot from people and guess on the point of said this,
who have been American in the past.
It does the sort of American dream and the cultural side of
it actually, that you can achieve anything because does
that help give people an advantage in America?
Because I feel like in the UK, especially when I grew up in
Scotland, there's very much thisidea of don't get ideas above
your station. The whole name of my podcast has
(27:03):
just got a real job. That's been said to me many
times in my life. Like it's not seen as like a
viable career to go and be an artist or go and work in the
creative industries. Whereas in America, maybe
there's more of a a dream or a permission to believe you can
achieve anything. Is that true, or is that just
kind of media nonsense? I mean, the American Dream is
(27:25):
part of the foundational mythology of this country,
right? So I would say it is a factor,
but, and I don't want to be too discouraging, but I'm not sure
that the reality always measuresup to to the to the ideal.
And it can feel like opportunityis difficult in the UK, but I
(27:48):
actually see a lot of things that the UK does better than the
US, For example, arts education.In the UK, there is not just an
investment in arts education at the primary and secondary school
level, or I don't know how you, I can't remember how you refer
to the school system there, but we call them primary and
secondary schools. Yeah.
(28:08):
Correct. Yeah, there's a belief, Yeah,
there's a belief in the importance of arts education
here in the public school system.
It's the first thing. It's the first funding that gets
cut. It's generally unavailable.
There's a lot of schools that don't even have them.
You only have seriously serious investment and quality arts
(28:29):
education in expensive private schools, which then starts
creating, you know, a social stratification to people who are
getting training in the arts, which is not good.
So, and then in the UK you have development pots that you can
access, you can apply to different, different bodies to
get funds to make your, your short for your first short film
(28:52):
or your, your write your first screenplay or whatever it might
be. It's not a lot of money, but if
you're making a film for for £10,000, you know, it, it's,
it's, you know, you get a one or2000 LB grant.
It could be the difference, right.
So those pots of money don't really, there are some private
sector organizations, some competition, some fellowships
that you can get in the United States, but you don't really
(29:14):
have public money in that. So the fact that the UK has
public money behind those sorts of things, it may not be a lot,
but it's more than we have in the United States.
Those sorts of programs are programs that help create
equality of opportunity in the creative industries.
If, if you don't have those programs, you, you, you have a
(29:36):
situation where basically only the people who can afford to
take risks with their life or afford to send their kids to
expensive private schools that have really quality arts
education or people who are sortof born into creative families.
You know, those are the people who tend to get access to the
(29:58):
opportunities. And I'm not saying that they're
untalented. They're, they're hugely talented
people, many of them, but there's also hugely talented
people that never get those opportunities because they
didn't come from, you know, a family that had the money to
(30:20):
kind of create that for, create that opportunity for them.
And so this isn't universally true.
And of course, there are plenty of examples that you can cite of
people who came up from the working classes, let's say, and
had a successful creative industries career, but I don't
(30:42):
think it's the norm. No, no, for sure.
I think it's an at the moment itwas an exception.
And I think it's really interesting you said about
quality, about the, you know, quality of opportunity and, and,
and chance for, for equal opportunity.
It's obviously while the UK doeshave access to those public
(31:02):
funding, as you acknowledge this, it's crazy to think that
America doesn't have that at allactually, because it's something
that has been squeezed and squeezed and squeezed here and
is not in in reality now workingin the way it should.
It's still better than nothing. But it's so interesting how
similar both countries sound at the moment in terms of it's now
getting to a point where if you don't come from a privileged
background and you can't even pay the rent.
(31:23):
That's the big one of the big things to do.
If like so many people in the arts the moment can't afford to
pay the rent, they can't take the risks to go and forge a
career and be a full time creative and it's not a
sustainable career anymore. And I do worry we're at a point
now where obviously, as you mentioned, there is the the the
rare example of people from a working class background that
have gone on to make a sustainable successful career in
(31:43):
the creative industries. That is not the norm anymore.
And that's going to go down and down and down until I don't know
what the solution is. That's maybe my next question
for you. I was going to ask about social
mobility, how you think we can maybe improve on that in both
countries. But is there a way to succeed if
you don't come from that background anymore?
Because it just doesn't feel like realistically there is at
(32:04):
the moment. You know, at the moment, I, I
would probably share your pessimism, unfortunately,
because I think right now, at least in the United States, it
would require a little bit of a paradigm shift.
I think it requires an understanding that arts
education is, is as important asSTEM, which is what everyone's
emphasis is on right now. If you want to create
(32:26):
opportunities for people, then you have to have better STEM
education. That's the message.
And that's probably true, but I think you also need better arts
education as well. And you know, a lot of the
creative industries jobs aren't actually arts jobs as well.
There's lawyers, there's MBAs, there's, there's, you know,
skills like, you know, craft skills, Craftsman skills as
(32:48):
well. So there are, there are those,
there are those opportunities. But ultimately without the
creative component, none of the rest works.
And I think there needs to be, there needs to be investment in
the in the creative component. No for sure.
And and I guess just to sort of make a point where I do probably
(33:11):
sound quite pessimistic on I'm sure my listeners on the
podcast, some of the episodes we've done recently will
probably think the same. But I guess the point I'm at
personally is I think it's dangerous to tell people that
you can go and achieve great success and like, you know,
anything's possible. That is true to an extent, but I
don't think it's, I think for the average working class
person, the ones who work in thegreat industries, that's
probably not true. And I think being able to make a
(33:34):
career where you can afford to pay the rent by being in the
crave industries is actually a success as much as, you know,
big success at the moment in thearts because it's generally as
hard as it's ever been. So I guess that's want to say on
that point, but you know, it's really interesting to sort of
get your perspective from acrossthe pond as well.
I want to ask you about page craft as well because you've
(33:54):
done a lot of work with that business to support emerging
writers. And again, these sort of things
are really important to address some of the inequalities we've
just talked about. Sure I'd I'd love to talk about
Page Craft a little bit. Page Craft is a screen writing,
teaching, coaching consulting company that I Co founded with
my wife Heidi. The website I should give the
(34:17):
website is Page craftwriting.com.
It was born out of my life. Right now so.
Thank you. It was born out of my wife and I
going to UCLA screen writing program and I was sitting in a
workshop with my instructor PaulChitlik one year back in 2007 I
(34:42):
think it was. This was a long time ago and we
were going through someone's script and exchanging notes on
everyone's pages and someone said wouldn't it be fun to do
this in Italy? And I said funnily enough,
that's not impossible. My dad's good friend who
unfortunately passed away a couple weeks ago owned a villa
in Tuscany. And so I got the use of it and
(35:07):
not for free, we had to pay. But you know, everybody pitched
in and we did a screen writing retreat in Italy.
And we have been doing those screen writing retreats in Italy
ever since. A few years back we it was just
a sideline to do that retreat. So it was, it's kind of fun, but
that's all it was for many years.
And then a few years back we said, let's make this a real
(35:28):
business. So we started doing LA based
workshops. We did a retreat in Los Angeles.
My wife who has started out reading scripts and later Co
founded the Slam Dance Script Writing Clinic, started teaching
(35:51):
and then we started offering workshops, which then became
online workshops. And so now we're running a
couple of workshops every quarter on Zoom and you can also
get 1 to 1 feedback and 1:00 to 1:00 coaching.
And we're still doing the screenwriting retreats in Italy.
In fact, I'll go to Italy at theend of May for that.
(36:13):
And we also have a screen writing retreat in California
that we do every year. So what people get out of it,
our focus is really on making people better writers, on giving
people the tools to succeed as, as as screenwriters.
We don't make a lot of promises about, you know, success in the
(36:35):
industry. And that's not really our core
proposition. Our core proposition is we will
help you develop your idea. If you already have a script, we
will help you make your script better.
If we can help people in the industry, we will.
But we don't want to make any promises on that front.
We know that a lot of our competitors will suggest that
they do that sort of thing. I think those promises are
(36:59):
sometimes not entirely, there's not a not a whole lot of follow
through on it. So we just want to focus on
making people better writers andwe've tried to build a little
bit of a community around what we do.
We have a lot of returning people who come back for content
and for advice again and again. We have an alumni who's won
(37:21):
multiple Emmys and is now teaching for us.
We have another alumni who won the Nickel Fellowship, which is
a big deal in the United States.So we've had success stories and
we're very proud of the work that we do.
And it's how I spend most weekends doing at least a couple
workshops with Heidi. That's really nice as well that
(37:45):
you, you know, get to do something like that with your
wife and. Hello, it's Jamie here.
I hope you're enjoying this week's episode.
It's just a quick one for me to say that if you're listening to
the podcast on Apple, Spotify orwhatever platform you engage
with our show on, be sure to give us a follow or a subscribe
(38:07):
as it goes a long way into helping us grow and find new
listeners as well as helping youkeep up with all the latest
episodes and everything that's happening that just get a real
job. You can also support us by
subscribing to our patron page for the price of a cup of coffee
per month. All the money we make goes back
into the upkeep of the podcast. Thank you for you can continued
support and we hope you enjoy the rest of today's episode I.
(38:28):
Kind. Of want to know, like obviously
it'd be really easy to ask you like what advice would you have
for writers? But instead, I think a more
interesting question is what's acommon thing that you find
writers are missing that come toyour workshops?
(38:48):
I think given that our focus is really on making the screenplay
as good as it can be and helpingeach individual writer realize
the vision that they come in with.
We're not here to tell you, oh, don't write that script because
that sort of thing isn't sellingright now.
We're we're just trying to help you realize your vision as best
(39:09):
as best we can. What we find is usually a script
that isn't working on all the levels that it needs to work at.
That's often times and and that's, and that's kind of a
natural process for any writer. You know, sometimes you come in
and you have a clear vision about what the, you know, the
(39:30):
main drivers of the plot need tobe, but you have no idea what
the emotional life of the scriptis.
And sometimes you know what the emotional journey of your script
is, but you haven't really figured out what the story story
beats are. And, and getting all of that to
work in concert is I think the magic of a, of a, of a
(39:51):
successful screenplay when you have kind of the, the external
sort of narrative working in concert with the emotional
story, working in concert with the internal growth, that's
difficult to achieve. But we have tools that we've
developed to help people achieveall those things.
(40:11):
And when we break it down into the separate components and
apply our tools, it's pretty. I'm not going to say easy,
because writing is one of the everyone thinks they can write,
but it's one of the hardest things.
But it becomes more manageable to kind of identify where the
strengths of this project are and where the gaps are and focus
(40:33):
on the gaps. And so that's what we try to do
in our workshops. No, it's really interesting.
And as I said before, there's links to page craft and you find
out more about all that in the show notes and below this video.
I guess just because you've obviously worked for, you know,
(40:54):
in various spaces doing page craft and your day job and all
that. Do you have a sort of idea of
what the latest trends or where we may be headed as a media
industry? Like do you, I mean, obviously
things like AI, it's hard to predict and it's quite scary and
stuff, but do you see where we might be headed as an industry
in the coming years? Do you have a hunch about that,
(41:15):
or an inkling or anything like that?
I mean, I can give you a sort ofa, a random grab bag of trends
that I see. I am not an AI expert, so I'll
limit myself on AI to saying that I don't think it's going
away. I share people's concern over
(41:37):
the fact that it might replace alot of the creative input.
And I think that ultimately creators need to figure out how
to use AI as a tool to make their own work product better,
faster and more efficient while still retaining their personal
(42:00):
creative component at the core of it.
And I think there's there's waysthat creators can do that.
Otherwise, the, the risk is thatstudios will attempt to create
story ideas and content, hold cloth out of AI down the road.
We, we probably aren't quite there yet with the technology
that we have today. But you know, I have no doubt
(42:21):
that it, it's, it's coming. So creators have to have to
figure out how to use AI as a tool to make their work better
because the human component to me will always be necessary for
something that's truly extraordinary.
So my message there is let's figure out how to make I, I work
(42:42):
for us rather than trying to compete it with it head on.
And don't ask me any follow up questions because I, I don't
have any good answers on that asI'm not an AI expert.
Other trends. Look, let me actually, let me
start by saying something that'snot a trend, it's an anti trend.
(43:05):
And I don't really want to say this on this podcast because you
know, sometimes we can all feel a bit of doom and gloom about
all this, but storytelling is universal.
Storytelling has always been universal.
Storytelling has existed since dawn of human history, since
(43:26):
before we had written history. Stories were how we passed down
information. As my friend Lynn Ferguson, who
is a A good Scotswoman says, story is about it's about
lessons and warnings. There's fish in the river,
There's there's a bear in those woods.
(43:47):
You know, that's how you teach, that's how you pass on
information from generations to generation.
And people respond to story. People respond to information
communicated by a story much better than they just respond to
a piece of dry information. It is part of what makes us
human. It's part of how our psyche is
wired is responding to a well told story.
(44:09):
It will always be there. So when we talk about the ups
and downs of the creative industries, it's important to
remember the demand, the hunger,the appetite will always exist.
And it's just a question of the business side, getting the
business models right. And we go through ups and downs
of this. But you know, and look at the
(44:30):
Great Depression in the United States, one of the most popular
things that people could do affordably was go to the movies
at a time when they were struggling and every other front
of their lives. And yet, and they still went to
the movies. Movies were more popular than, I
don't have the statistics and somewhat fact checked me, but I
think movies were more popular than ever during the 1930s.
(44:51):
So storytelling will not go away.
So I think that therefore this industry will not go away.
So we just kind of have to figure it out.
Right now. I think animation is working
really well. Something like 40% of U.S. box
office last year was animated content.
I don't know if we're counting Wicked or not on that 40%.
(45:14):
It's not technically animated. We might be counting Wicked in
that, but it's, it's the biggestproportion.
I don't know if it's the biggestproportion ever, but it's, it's
the biggest proportion in a verylong time and it's been trending
upwards. Huge number of animated films
were among the year the, the, the top box office draws last
year. You know, inside out too, you
(45:38):
know, the new, the new Wallace and Gromit film, Moana 2 and so
on. And on television, you know, we
have the Bluey Phenomenon, whichis streaming content and we have
our own content, our two daughters entertainment that
we're very proud of. The Moly series is available on
Boomerang and Peacock and Youku in China.
(45:59):
It's available in 108 countries,30 languages.
And so I'm very pleased to be working in the animation space
because I think there's a lot ofopportunity there.
And I think that parents will always want to share stories
with their kids that will, you know, entertain them, teach them
values and help them learn aboutthe world.
(46:22):
And you know, that's part of that, that storytelling constant
that I just spoke about. I think is is family
entertainment is looking really,really solid right now.
So I think that's, you know, I think that's a healthy part of
the industry. In terms of other trends, you
know, we spoke earlier about production budgets need to need
to come down. And you know, again, we like to
(46:45):
criticize AI, but hopefully thatAI is going to help on that
front. You know if your VFX budget can
be cut in half but still achievethe same result.
If your virtual production costsare continually coming down and
they are, that hopefully will translate into a smaller
production budgets that will enable more content to be made
(47:06):
and and restore some of the jobsthat that people are worried
about. Wow, Carl, that was a very, very
good answer overall that covereda lots of stuff.
I don't even know how to respondto be fair.
But I really liked what you saidabout storytelling never
changing though. I think as an anti trend that's
important. I think we get too obsessed
sometimes by the where we're at and it's harder to, it's hard
(47:29):
when you're in it to step back and remember that.
So I think it's an important reminder for sure.
I guess I want to follow up veryquickly actually.
What do you think, animation? Since you're working quite
closely in that just now, is there anything the rest of the
industry could learn from the animation space?
That's a good question, I'm not sure how to answer that.
(47:51):
I think animation does timelessness really well.
So when we talk about timeless story storytelling, I mean, you
think about some of the animatedfilms of the past 30-40 years,
many of them don't feel very dated at all.
Whereas if you look at some of the movies that you might have
loved in the 80s or the 90s, if you're old enough and you try to
(48:12):
watch them today, you might lookat them and go, wow, that is not
how I remember that film at all.But but I think there's there's
a timeless 'cause you know, there's a fairy tale quality to
these things. They're not for the most part,
tied to a specific time and place.
There's, there's a long tail anda lot of animated content.
It's, you know, you can watch itmany, many times and and so
(48:35):
forth. So timeless storytelling is kind
of a creative lesson that you can take away from the animation
space. In terms of other lessons, I,
you know, I think animation, andwe're doing this at Two
Daughters. Entertainment, by the way, is an
area where also production budgets also need to come down.
And at Two Daughters, part of our core business model is
(48:57):
making content for a lot less money than some of our
competitors are making it and keeping those production costs
in control. And we've done that by working
with certain animation studios, but we've also done that by
controlling our corporate overheads.
We're extremely lean company. We don't employ a lot of people.
(49:19):
We don't spend a lot of money onthings that aren't strictly
necessary. And that puts the content
development and production first.
So I don't know if I've answeredyour question, but those are my
initial thoughts. No, for sure, it's really
interesting. I just, I was thought of it
(49:40):
there and you know, somebody didn't think to ask before, but
I think it's just always interesting to see how different
sectors can, you know, learn from each other and, and things
like that, especially given yoursort of current role and
expertise and stuff. I also want to ask as well a
bit, quite a big question may bea harder to answer, but what's
the biggest lesson you've learned in your career so far,
which I know you know, it has spanned many different areas.
(50:04):
You know, I've probably touched on them already in this
conversation, you know, except for lessons that I learned
managing people when I was working at the British
Consulate, which is a whole other topic of conversation that
could probably keep us busy for another hour.
I would say the importance of relationships is one thing.
(50:25):
The importance of being the sortof person that does exactly what
they say they're going to do andfollows through on what they say
they're going to follow through on, I think is hugely important.
Helps cut through the noise a lot of times because the
industry is full of so many people who don't do that.
You know, I'm not claiming perfection in this area.
(50:46):
I don't think anybody is absolutely perfect, but if you
make your best effort, I think that that's really important.
And I don't know, I don't know what else I could, I could tell
you right now because I think webasically touched on a lot of it
already. No good, it's great.
(51:07):
No, so many brilliant things in this episode so far for people
to take away for sure. I suppose everything which I ask
everyone to come, I ask everyonethat comes on the show this.
But how do you protect your mental health, especially, you
know, you run a separate business at the weekend and on
top of your day job as well, like with Page Craft, which I
know you've really enjoyed and it fills you up and stuff.
(51:28):
But how do how do you protect him?
And I often quite a busy industry where there's often
lots of money involved and risk attached and all that as well.
That's a really hard question toanswer and I may not be the best
person to answer it. You should have my wife on at
some point. She recently took up a
meditation class and swears thatit's doing wonders for her.
(51:50):
I'm not a meditator myself, but I've seen the positive effects
on her. So maybe I should take it up in
terms of my mental health. I, you know, I tend to, and
basically this was a gift of thepandemic because prior to that I
worked set hours, you know, had to be at a desk for 8-9 hours a
(52:11):
day, 10 hours sometimes if things were, you know, we had a
visiting minister, things were all hands on deck and you were
working 14 hour days. But the, the gift of the
pandemic is that when you were working from home.
And now that I'm also working from home because I'm two
daughters entertainment's only AUS employee.
We do have APR Rep and a, and a talent management company, but
(52:33):
I'm the, the only sort of, you know, person in the US with two
daughters on the business card. I'm working from home and, and
that gives me a lot of flexibility in how I allocate my
time. And I find that incredibly
helpful because if I need to go to the vet or the grocery store
in the middle of the day, then Ido it.
(52:54):
If I feel like jumping on my computer and doing emails for an
hour after my wife has gone to bed, she goes to bed very early,
then I do that and I do that. And I know that I'm not going to
wake up in the morning and quiteso many emails.
So I'm not as stressed when I wake up.
I tend to have a very sort of fluid approach.
And I think everyone is wired a little bit differently, you
(53:16):
know, so I, I don't think anything of, you know, pulling
out my phone and, you know, doing 15 minutes of work, you
know, right before dinner or whatever it is, I stay on top of
the flow. But I also don't think anything
of taking a break in the middle of the day because there's
something I need to go and take care of.
And, you know, when I sit there,I don't do this very often
(53:38):
because I don't, I believe in counting productivity rather
than hours. But when I do think about my
hours, I think, yeah, I, I, I think, you know, A, A, I'm more
productive and B, yeah, I am putting in about the hours that
I say or I should be putting in.So it all sorts sort of works
out. Well.
I also think that it's incredibly important to be able
(54:01):
to just step away when you step away.
The times where I'm feeling mostmentally unhealthy is when I
can't turn off the pressure of something went wrong or
something still needs to be done, sort of buzzing in your
ear. It's incredibly important to be
able to just set it aside. And that's easier said than
(54:23):
done, but when particularly whensomething really is important is
looming. But if you can find ways to
unplug yourself, you know, whether it's a piece of content
that you love on television or ameditation or going for an hour
long walk with the dog, which I do, I think it's important to be
(54:43):
able to do. Thank you very much.
Yeah, a really good answer and Iappreciate your honesty.
And yeah, I completely agree about getting productivity more
than ours. I think we lose a lot of value
in doing that sometimes. Last question for you, and
honestly, it's been so nice chatting to you tonight.
You've covered lots of interesting areas which I've not
(55:04):
talked about on the podcast before, and it's really
interesting to get yours to our perspective on things, so I
appreciate it a lot. But my last question for you is
just, is there anything good that you've watched recently or
you'd any, any content really that you've seen that you'd like
to share with our listeners? I just watched the season 2
finale of Severance. I love that show.
That is a that has a wonderful show.
(55:26):
It is unlike any show I've ever seen before.
And look, I mean, we, we teach screen writing and I've seen a
lot of content, so it isn't often that I'm surprised by
something. So I love it when I am, you
know, and Severance just it always keeps you guessing.
So that's that's really great. I love that about that show.
(55:51):
What else have I watched recently that I've loved?
You know, I love Hacks. If you've seen that, that's a
great show. I think it's I think they've
done three seasons of that. I just watched a mini, an
Italian miniseries. I speak Italian, but it's
(56:11):
subtitled called The Leopard. That was interesting.
It didn't, it didn't end in a way that content typically ends.
It just kind of ambiguously sortof stops.
But but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching the the
period, the period costumes and the commentary on a certain
period of battalion history. So that was really good.
(56:33):
And I've watched a lot of black comedy as well.
We're currently watching the latest season of Mythic Quest,
which is, you know, a funny show.
God, what else have I loved? I mean my favorite film from
last year was actually, I mean my top films from last year were
(56:54):
probably animated. I love the wild robot.
I loved flow in terms of non animated content last year.
A complete unknown conclave substance was really
interesting. Those were some of my favorite
films of last year. I've given lots of
(57:15):
recommendations. I need to get on the Severance
bandwagon. I've watched the Pilot like a
year ago and really liked it. I don't have Apple at the
moment, so I needed to get Appleand watch it, I think because,
you know, you're not the first person to tell me to watch it.
So there are lots of it. But Carlo, thank you very, very
much for your time today. I really appreciate it and I've
loved chatting to you, so thank you.
I'll let you go on for your day because I know it's in the
middle of the day over where youare, but thank you so much.
(57:38):
Well, thank you so much for yourtime.
I really appreciate the time andit was great chatting with you.
Hello and welcome back to just get a real job with me, Jamie
McKinley. How's it going?
It's been a bit of time. I didn't expect to be away from
the podcast for a month, but sometimes life gets in the way.
So nice to be back. Just I guess a brief update on
everything that's been going on,I guess.
So I think I mentioned in the last episode we put out with the
(00:25):
brilliant Cat MacLeod that I wasmoving flat, I was moving house.
Then of course, we had live podcast with and friends and cat
and it was a brilliant afternoon, brilliant panel and
filmmaking. And thank you everyone that in
Glasgow that came down to that. But that was of course very busy
to organize as well. And I suppose lastly, the other
thing that's been keeping me away from doing the podcast this
last couple of weeks is I was upfor a really good opportunity, a
(00:48):
really what would have been quite a cool job.
Unfortunately, I just fell a bitshort, but it's quite a long
process and quite a full on interview process.
So it was keeping me busy. But, you know, we learned from
failure and rejection. And, you know, I try to, on this
podcast, be as honest and open about the reality of what it's
like working in the creative industries.
And yeah, this is sometimes unfortunately what it's like.
(01:09):
It can be quite a competitive, quite a tricky industry to work
in sometimes. But anyway, I'm thrilled to be
back with the podcast now. And yeah, just catching you up
on what's been going on. But joining us on the podcast
this week is the brilliant CarloCavania.
And Carlo is currently the Vice president of US operations at
Two Daughter Entertainment, and he's also one of the key people
(01:30):
behind the global writing program, which is called Page
Craft. Carlos had a really interesting
career which spans both the creative and business side of
the industry. And from developing VOD
platforms at Lionsgate to working in global trade for the
UK government, all the way through to coaching writers on
story structure. Carlos had a really, really
(01:51):
interesting career and it was a joy to have him on the show.
We recorded this one back in March, so been sitting on this
episode for a while and some about time it goes out, but it
was a really interesting conversation.
Really enjoyed chatting to Carloabout his experiences across his
quite varied career, but also asking him stuff about, you
know, the differences between the UK and the US, what's been
going on with the sort of TV andfilm industry, why the screen
(02:12):
industries may have been struggling so much.
Spoke a bit about bloated budgets and AI and stuff like
that, but some really interesting chats.
He has had a lot to say on social mobility and why class is
quite a big barrier in the creative industries as well.
So it was a joy to have him on the show and appreciate him
giving us his time as well, especially with the time
difference with him being over in LA.
(02:33):
But yeah, thank you to Carlo forhis time.
Hope you enjoy this week's episode.
We've got lots of exciting stuffcoming up on the show in the run
up to the Edinburgh Fringe as well.
And hoping to get over to Edinburgh in August and do some
sort of behind the scenes stuff like we did last year as well
for I know we did a few people asking.
So yeah, that is the plan. And yeah, thank you for your
continued support. Thank you for coming back to the
podcast and yeah, enjoy this week's episode.
(03:09):
Thank you very. Much for coming on.
Just get a real job. It's evening where I am in the
UK, but I believe that you're it's still morning over in LA,
isn't it? So good morning to you.
Good morning. Thank you.
Good morning. Good evening.
It's still just about morning. It's 11.
It's just after 11:00 here. Yeah, it's been it's interesting
(03:30):
trying to work the time difference out.
I thought to start off, I wantedto ask, just introduce yourself,
tell us about by your background, you currently work
for Two Daughters Entertainment in the animations space.
You do a lot of work with and scripted and in the American
market and you also sort of usedto work for the British
government in America as well. So you just sort of introduce
(03:50):
yourself, give us a brief overview into who you are and
your career and stuff. I'll do my best.
It's not the most intuitive path.
My my training is is in international affairs and
international relations. That's what I have a degree in.
That's what I went to school for.
My first job was in Washington DC working for the US government
(04:14):
and international trade policy. I was always sort of pulled to
the creative industries though on the side.
Started out managing a band and I found a founded a film
criticism website and eventuallydecided to make the move out to
Los Angeles to get a full time job in the creative industries.
Which I did for a time in the video on demand space with a
(04:36):
company called Cinema now doing business development.
They were a startup majority owned by Lionsgate
Entertainment. In fact that's where our office
was. The problem was that this was
about 7 or 8 years before Netflix blew up.
Netflix did already exist as a sort of a DVD by mail service,
but we were very early stage. Like 1/4 of our audience was
(05:00):
streaming films on 56 K dial up modem.
So you can imagine that that wasn't the best user experience.
That being said, the company didOK, but you know, they had to
make cuts as as companies often do on the side.
I went through the UCLA screen writing program and eventually
(05:20):
all this culminated together into a job at the British
Consulate creating and building a new portfolio of work which
was focusing on the creative andmedia industries.
So essentially it was business development for Britain.
So I did that for many years of running the US strategy for
North for, for the for the UK, supporting UK exporters and
(05:41):
doing business in the United States, attracting investment
into the UK. And after some years, I manage
the entire business development team, which took me a little bit
further away from the creative industries because we were
already already also doing, excuse me, also doing life
sciences and engineering and what have you, but still with
the creative industries as an important focus because this is
(06:04):
a global hub for them. There were cuts at the
consulate, layoffs. Again, layoffs are a constant
here in LA and last year I left the consulate and after a few
months found myself working for Two Daughters Entertainment as
their VP of the US operations and that's been a lot of fun.
(06:27):
I haven't been there for very, very long, but it's been a lot
of fun working for an animation studio and helping them to
develop business in the United States.
I think someone we'll talk a lotabout it tonight.
Thank you for sharing your careers because I know it's
we're covering a lot of things very succinctly.
But someone I kind of want to talk to you a lot about it
(06:47):
tonight is business and how it ties in with the creative arts.
Because I mean, there's a big push at the moment that a lot of
creative people keep getting told you need to be more
entrepreneurial, you need to be more business minded to make it
as an artist. Firstly, what is your opinion on
that? Do you sometimes think we should
let the creative just be creative or do you think it's
quite useful to be business minded if you're creative?
(07:07):
Because I think a lot of our listeners will kind of, I've
heard a lot of this recently. Yeah, I do have some thoughts
about that. I'll attempt to present them
coherently. I I do think that it's an
important subject that you bringup.
I don't think that you can be successful in the creative
(07:29):
industries as a creative if you don't at least have some cursory
understanding of business drivers and motivations.
Similarly, I think on the business side of the creative
industries, sometimes they fall into a trap of considering the
creative is just another ingredient or step in the
production process, which is nothow creativity works.
(07:51):
I think we all know. I'm sure most of your listeners
would agree. It's not something you can
quantify. It's not something you can de
risk. It is.
There's an art to it, There's a magic to it.
Whether something works or not is something you know, there's
algorithms that can predict whether or not, you know, the
latest Transformer movie will befinancially successful, but
there's not an algorithm I thinkthat can tell you, can help you
(08:16):
make a judgement call about the quality of the script or a pitch
in terms of its potential, actually connect with audiences.
And maybe there were people thatwould disagree with me, but I
think that ultimately you have to hold space for that and you
have to understand creativity and not to work with it.
(08:36):
So it's an important subject that you bring up if, if you
want to talk about what creatives need to understand or
need to do to better work with the business side of things.
The first thing that I would sayis that, you know, you have to
know how to talk about what you do.
(08:58):
It's the same thing if you're, if you're creating a piece of
content, if you're writing something or directing
something, you want to connect with an audience, right?
And so you, you know, you tell astory that you think will will
do that. And you know, when something
isn't landing and you know, you read pages of a screenplay and
you can tell if you know there isn't something that an audience
(09:18):
can hook onto and, and you work on those things.
Well, it's the same thing on thebusiness side.
You have to be able to pitch yourself.
You have to be able to pitch your story, pitch your project,
pitch your talents, whatever it might be.
You have to be able to talk about them succinctly in a way
that people connect with and in a way that they can understand.
(09:39):
And you always have to bear in mind, you know, why should they
care? And the answer to that isn't
simply because I'm passionate about it, although passion does
translate when you're pitching anything, right?
But it can't just be I love it. So I'm just going to tell you
how much I love it. You, you have to you have to
(10:00):
think about what it is that they're motivating.
Were motivated by struggling with what drivers might factor
into whether or not they're going to make time for you and,
and pitch to that. And that sounds difficult and it
is. But you know, if you have a
story or a project, you're the person who know it best, knows
(10:21):
it best. And if you can't summarize it
distinctly in 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 2 minutes,
compellingly, then that's a gap.So that's important.
I think knowing how to talk about your your project is
important. For sure.
I think as an interest, it just seems to be quite a common thing
(10:42):
that's coming up a lot at the moment.
And I'm here in and, you know, just online or around the
creative industries. Is that because of the way that
the world is changing and the way that social media is
changing and stuff, it's kind ofdisrupted a lot of the way
creatives maybe would work or the careers that they would have
in the past. Where is now much more non
linear than it ever was. And that often creative people
(11:04):
have to completely transition into a different type of, you
know, say you're a writer, you maybe have to move into a
slightly different space or whatever it is.
And it's having that sort of business mindset that may be
quite useful. And I think, you know, pension's
obviously a big part of that, but it's, yeah, it's
complicated. And I suppose it's always been
on linear as well. I think that's right.
I think well, I mentioned earlier about the business side
(11:28):
of things is always trying to derisk the the gambles that they
take on on creative projects, right.
So when you're talking about content, you know, film, music,
television, whatever it might be, one of the things that they
look for in their efforts to de risk the gamble's they take is a
(11:50):
built in audience. So you I'm sure that you've
heard all about, you know, existing IPS, sequels, remakes,
things based on a best selling book that already exists and so
forth. And so now downstream of that,
that's always that's, that's tended to be translated into,
oh, I'm more interested in, I'llbe more interested in your
(12:11):
project. Your project is great, but I'll
be more interested in it. If you have a million followers
on TikTok already or there's an audio book that's done really
well already. So I think there might be a
built in audience that it gives me a hook in which to sell and
market it. So that helps get me closer to
gambling the money that you needto to to make this thing.
(12:36):
And you know, we are often timestalking about huge quantities of
money. So the effort to de risk the
gamble is something that, you know, creatives need to
understand and I guess need to factor in.
And, you know, maybe there's things that you can do even if
your idea is completely fresh and new and has nothing to do
(12:57):
with anything that's come before.
You know, if you have a novel ofit, if you have a really well
thought out pitch deck that contemplates what some of the
ancillary ways that it can exist.
You know, what a video game might look like, what the
merchandising might look like. You know all of those things
(13:18):
will help communicate the potential of your project to to
a business person. Is there anything that business
could learn from the creative industries on the flip side,
because you, you're obviously a very creative person, but you've
obviously worked a lot on the business side as well.
Do you ever, did you ever look across your colleagues
frustrated going if you were more open minded creatively this
(13:40):
would probably benefit us on thecomplete flip side of that.
You know, I have been surprised.I'm still surprised today, even
though I shouldn't be, at the amount of content that gets
bought, sold, greenlit and significantly down the road
before there's even a good script.
(14:01):
And this isn't film and television, obviously.
And you know, I through my page craft business, which we haven't
talked about yet, but I'm sure we'll get to, you know, I, I
believe firmly that without a great script, you don't have a
piece of TV or film content. So I mean, sometimes getting a
(14:24):
good script does require a financial investment.
You have to commit some money before you have that.
And you're not going to commit the money if you don't think
that the idea is good. I, I get that.
But an idea is not the same thing as having a script that
you believe in. There are plenty of ideas.
In fact, you can't even in the United States, you can't even
copyright an idea. It, it has to be more developed
(14:47):
than that and it has to exist ina, in a, in a tangible medium.
On top of that, we don't have totalk about IP law.
But I think that the reason you see a lot of mediocre content is
because the train was already inmotion before you had a script.
And by the time you have a script that doesn't work, you've
(15:10):
already committed to delivering this content to certain markets
on a certain timeline. And you know what, it's not
good, but we're going to have tofinish it and deliver it.
And that that's what happens. And that to me is, you know, I
understand why it happens, but it always feels a little bit
backwards to me. And if I could wave a magic
(15:32):
wand, that would be the one thing that would change about
the industry. Start with the script.
We spoke a little bit of this about, yeah, we spoke a little
bit about this last night actually.
We had, I mean, it's made particular maybe an interest for
listeners to talk about call we had that we're not recording,
but we were discussing some of the problems facing the TV
(15:52):
industry and the media industry both in the US and in the UK.
And one of the things we discussed was that budgets have
gotten so big that shows requireso much money to make.
And that's part of the issue, that we're not making enough
lower budget stuff as a result. And it's just costing so much
that squeezing a lot of people out, that's probably part of
that issue as well, that this, these, all these mediocre
(16:12):
scripts have to be made because it's already been paid for and
it requires these huge budgets for not actually a great return.
Yeah. I mean, once you are, if you're
making something, even a small budget, right, What's a small
budget these days? 10, even even 20 or $30 million
is considered a small budget. I mean, that's a massive amount
(16:33):
of money to anybody, right? So you nobody can afford to just
lose that amount of money. Well, maybe there's some
billionaires that can, but nobody can afford to lose that
amount of money. So that's how that's how stuff
gets completed and delivered. Even though it might not be
good, might not be ready or a year extra development would
have would have made it into something good.
There's plenty of bad content that makes is made out of great
(16:56):
scripts too. And sometimes things go wrong.
But I do agree with the idea that production budgets have, in
general, gotten too big. Right now, the the example that
everyone's talking about is The Electric State on Netflix, which
allegedly cost $320 million to make.
I don't know if that includes PNA or not.
(17:17):
Even if it doesn't, even if it does include PNA, that is a
massive, massive quantity of money to spend on a film that
I'm not going to. I'm going to reserve my personal
company. But certainly the reviews have
been dreadful. So how does a movie that cost
that amount of money with dreadful reviews, almost
universally dreadful get made? Is is you know it?
(17:39):
It's because of the dynamic thatI just talked about.
But Even so, it still feels likea bit of a mystery.
I do think production budgets are too high.
I think that incentives in various markets like the UK,
like the state of Georgia, like many of the Canadian provinces
(18:01):
and other parts of the world arehelping to support these very
large budgets because you can get 2030, even 40% of your money
back in these places. And I don't criticize these
jurisdictions for offering a taxincentives because I think there
is a cultural value and a, and a, and a value to developing
(18:21):
skills and creativity that is, is, is a hidden is a hidden
benefit of, of those incentives.But at the same time, if you
remove those incentives, I thinkthe production market would
would quickly fall apart. So, you know, I think that
productions just have to be leaner.
And I know that's an easy thing to say, but when you see what
(18:44):
some of the studio overheads areand you see what some of the
talent salaries are and you, youstart thinking about that, you
know it, it's easy to see where some cuts could be made.
And I, I don't think you know, alot of a lot of the studio heads
like the blame, but Gills for escalating costs, But I don't
(19:07):
think that's where the majority of the problem lies.
No, no, not at all. And often a lot of writers and
people in the crew are actually the ones that are probably the
being underpaid as opposed and the money's been arguably wasted
in other areas more. Yeah, but this is also where,
(19:28):
you know, creatives can help. You know, I, I think that when,
if you're writing a script, you have to write the best version
of the script possible. You don't, don't start making
production decisions before you've completed a brilliant
script. But once you've completed the
brilliant script, then you can then you can start looking at
what compromises you can make toreduce costs without
(19:49):
compromising the overall vision of the project.
And, you know, you have famous stories of directors like
Francis Ford Coppola, who, you know, have spent hundreds of
thousands of dollars to, you know, to shoot in a particular
place or to get a particular shot in exactly the way they
wanted. And, you know, those are those
are expenses that on the creative side, creatives need to
(20:12):
understand you, you just can't, you just can't do that.
And then on the business side, there's a lot of ways too, I
think. And there's lots of great
examples in film and TV, you know, in Hollywood, in the UK,
everywhere, of like great stuff that was made on a lower budget
and a leaner budget. And it's still successful and
commercially successful. So it's definitely achievable.
(20:35):
I'd agree with that. There are countless examples and
even today there are countless of examples.
And you know, sometimes those, sometimes the most successful
films are the ones that are based on completely new IP as
well, which I think you know, production decision makers need
to remember. If you only ever make sequels
(20:57):
and remakes, then you run out ofcontent pretty, pretty quickly.
At some point, you, you need the, the, the industry does need
those fresh, fresh ideas. And oftentimes, because they're
seen as bigger gambles, they aremade for lower production
budgets. Yeah, for sure.
It does feel very risk averse atthe moment.
I want to also ask you about thedifferences between the UK and
(21:19):
the US Obviously you work for the UK government and to try and
bring investment into the UK andthings like that.
And obviously you live in America, work in America.
Are there any differences in terms of opportunities in terms
of the media landscape there in positive or negative senses, or
do you think there's a lot of overlap as well?
Probably more, more similaritiesthan there are differences.
(21:39):
But if you want to talk a littlebit about the differences, I
mean look, the differences, I think they're probably fairly
obvious, but just to run throughthem really quickly, I mean
there's the scale of the marketplace obviously and the
scale of financial backing that you can get as a result of it is
a huge difference. the US marketis what is the United States
(22:01):
about five times as many people as the United Kingdom.
So that's that, that means a huge amount of difference in
terms of people competing for attention, people competing to
get their projects made and the size of audiences and the size
of money that's available. So that's obviously a huge
difference. The second thing that I would
(22:24):
say is in the United States, there's really very little place
for public money and public sector institutions in the
market. The UK still has a pretty strong
role, public sector role in the creative marketplace through the
BBC, but also through different development funds that you can
(22:48):
access, you know, skill set, thescreen agencies and, and various
countries and regions, that sortof thing.
So I, I have British friends whooften bemoan that there isn't
more of that support available, but it's certainly more than is
available in the United States from public money.
(23:09):
I forgot to mention the British Film Institute.
And then the third is how the market is segmented.
I think the US is a very, it's, it is a very segmented
marketplace in this day with, with these days with streaming,
it's even more segmented, but it's not segmented regionally.
(23:31):
It is segmented based on kind ofthe, the cultural backgrounds of
different audiences, in some cases the political background
of audiences. So it's sort of like it's, it's
a national marketplace, but it'ssegmented based on other
factors. Whereas in the UK there's still
(23:52):
regional marketplaces like Scotland, you know, there's
Welsh language content, there's Gaelic content, for example, and
you know, content that's made inparticular parts of the UK using
particular funding that exists only in those parts of the UK.
And you don't have so much of that in the United States.
(24:13):
So those are the, those are the big differences.
I think what all of that means ultimately, and this is true,
God, it's true in any industry sector, is that there's just a
lot of more competition in the United States.
And so it becomes more challenging in the United
States. And I'm not saying it isn't
challenging in the UK, because Iknow that it is, but it's more
(24:35):
challenging the United States toget noticed, to sell your
project, to meet the people thatyou need to meet.
But the principles for doing those things are the same.
You have to have quality ideas. You have to be able to
communicate those quality ideas effectively to the point about
(24:55):
pitching that I was making earlier.
And you like everything else, you know, it's relationship
based, a lot of it. And you have to, you have to
build your personal network and you have to meet the right
people. And even if you only ever meet
other writers, that's helpful because there's a great writing
(25:16):
community here in LA and a greatdirector's community of people
that just, you know, support each other.
And then we'll make introductions for one another.
And then when one of them is successful, sometimes there's a
knock on effect where they can bring some people along with
them. So having a personal network is,
is hugely important. What I, what I think also is
(25:38):
that in the United States, people have such limited
bandwidth on the business side and it can come across as rude
and off putting and unresponsive.
But if you look at it from theirperspective, these are people
who are probably getting hundreds, and I mean hundreds
unsolicited inquiries everyday from people.
(25:59):
And that's not even counting thepictures that they hear at a
cocktail reception or whatever it might be.
So they have to, they have theirown, everybody has their own
personal systems in place for how to filter that down to a
manageable amount of of noise for them to actually filter
intelligently and process. And one of the most common
(26:21):
filters that people use is a personal referral.
So that's why networks are important.
There's lots of it, yeah. So much to unpack from all that.
It's really interesting. I suppose one thing I want to
ask, and again, this could be myown stereotype, I've never been
to America and this is just something I feel like I've heard
(26:43):
quite a lot from people and guess on the point of said this,
who have been American in the past.
It does the sort of American dream and the cultural side of
it actually, that you can achieve anything because does
that help give people an advantage in America?
Because I feel like in the UK, especially when I grew up in
Scotland, there's very much thisidea of don't get ideas above
your station. The whole name of my podcast has
(27:03):
just got a real job. That's been said to me many
times in my life. Like it's not seen as like a
viable career to go and be an artist or go and work in the
creative industries. Whereas in America, maybe
there's more of a a dream or a permission to believe you can
achieve anything. Is that true, or is that just
kind of media nonsense? I mean, the American Dream is
(27:25):
part of the foundational mythology of this country,
right? So I would say it is a factor,
but, and I don't want to be too discouraging, but I'm not sure
that the reality always measuresup to to the to the ideal.
And it can feel like opportunityis difficult in the UK, but I
(27:48):
actually see a lot of things that the UK does better than the
US, For example, arts education.In the UK, there is not just an
investment in arts education at the primary and secondary school
level, or I don't know how you, I can't remember how you refer
to the school system there, but we call them primary and
secondary schools. Yeah.
(28:08):
Correct. Yeah, there's a belief, Yeah,
there's a belief in the importance of arts education
here in the public school system.
It's the first thing. It's the first funding that gets
cut. It's generally unavailable.
There's a lot of schools that don't even have them.
You only have seriously serious investment and quality arts
(28:29):
education in expensive private schools, which then starts
creating, you know, a social stratification to people who are
getting training in the arts, which is not good.
So, and then in the UK you have development pots that you can
access, you can apply to different, different bodies to
get funds to make your, your short for your first short film
(28:52):
or your, your write your first screenplay or whatever it might
be. It's not a lot of money, but if
you're making a film for for £10,000, you know, it, it's,
it's, you know, you get a one or2000 LB grant.
It could be the difference, right.
So those pots of money don't really, there are some private
sector organizations, some competition, some fellowships
that you can get in the United States, but you don't really
(29:14):
have public money in that. So the fact that the UK has
public money behind those sorts of things, it may not be a lot,
but it's more than we have in the United States.
Those sorts of programs are programs that help create
equality of opportunity in the creative industries.
If, if you don't have those programs, you, you, you have a
(29:36):
situation where basically only the people who can afford to
take risks with their life or afford to send their kids to
expensive private schools that have really quality arts
education or people who are sortof born into creative families.
You know, those are the people who tend to get access to the
(29:58):
opportunities. And I'm not saying that they're
untalented. They're, they're hugely talented
people, many of them, but there's also hugely talented
people that never get those opportunities because they
didn't come from, you know, a family that had the money to
(30:20):
kind of create that for, create that opportunity for them.
And so this isn't universally true.
And of course, there are plenty of examples that you can cite of
people who came up from the working classes, let's say, and
had a successful creative industries career, but I don't
(30:42):
think it's the norm. No, no, for sure.
I think it's an at the moment itwas an exception.
And I think it's really interesting you said about
quality, about the, you know, quality of opportunity and, and,
and chance for, for equal opportunity.
It's obviously while the UK doeshave access to those public
(31:02):
funding, as you acknowledge this, it's crazy to think that
America doesn't have that at allactually, because it's something
that has been squeezed and squeezed and squeezed here and
is not in in reality now workingin the way it should.
It's still better than nothing. But it's so interesting how
similar both countries sound at the moment in terms of it's now
getting to a point where if you don't come from a privileged
background and you can't even pay the rent.
(31:23):
That's the big one of the big things to do.
If like so many people in the arts the moment can't afford to
pay the rent, they can't take the risks to go and forge a
career and be a full time creative and it's not a
sustainable career anymore. And I do worry we're at a point
now where obviously, as you mentioned, there is the the the
rare example of people from a working class background that
have gone on to make a sustainable successful career in
(31:43):
the creative industries. That is not the norm anymore.
And that's going to go down and down and down until I don't know
what the solution is. That's maybe my next question
for you. I was going to ask about social
mobility, how you think we can maybe improve on that in both
countries. But is there a way to succeed if
you don't come from that background anymore?
Because it just doesn't feel like realistically there is at
(32:04):
the moment. You know, at the moment, I, I
would probably share your pessimism, unfortunately,
because I think right now, at least in the United States, it
would require a little bit of a paradigm shift.
I think it requires an understanding that arts
education is, is as important asSTEM, which is what everyone's
emphasis is on right now. If you want to create
(32:26):
opportunities for people, then you have to have better STEM
education. That's the message.
And that's probably true, but I think you also need better arts
education as well. And you know, a lot of the
creative industries jobs aren't actually arts jobs as well.
There's lawyers, there's MBAs, there's, there's, you know,
skills like, you know, craft skills, Craftsman skills as
(32:48):
well. So there are, there are those,
there are those opportunities. But ultimately without the
creative component, none of the rest works.
And I think there needs to be, there needs to be investment in
the in the creative component. No for sure.
And and I guess just to sort of make a point where I do probably
(33:11):
sound quite pessimistic on I'm sure my listeners on the
podcast, some of the episodes we've done recently will
probably think the same. But I guess the point I'm at
personally is I think it's dangerous to tell people that
you can go and achieve great success and like, you know,
anything's possible. That is true to an extent, but I
don't think it's, I think for the average working class
person, the ones who work in thegreat industries, that's
probably not true. And I think being able to make a
(33:34):
career where you can afford to pay the rent by being in the
crave industries is actually a success as much as, you know,
big success at the moment in thearts because it's generally as
hard as it's ever been. So I guess that's want to say on
that point, but you know, it's really interesting to sort of
get your perspective from acrossthe pond as well.
I want to ask you about page craft as well because you've
(33:54):
done a lot of work with that business to support emerging
writers. And again, these sort of things
are really important to address some of the inequalities we've
just talked about. Sure I'd I'd love to talk about
Page Craft a little bit. Page Craft is a screen writing,
teaching, coaching consulting company that I Co founded with
my wife Heidi. The website I should give the
(34:17):
website is Page craftwriting.com.
It was born out of my life. Right now so.
Thank you. It was born out of my wife and I
going to UCLA screen writing program and I was sitting in a
workshop with my instructor PaulChitlik one year back in 2007 I
(34:42):
think it was. This was a long time ago and we
were going through someone's script and exchanging notes on
everyone's pages and someone said wouldn't it be fun to do
this in Italy? And I said funnily enough,
that's not impossible. My dad's good friend who
unfortunately passed away a couple weeks ago owned a villa
in Tuscany. And so I got the use of it and
(35:07):
not for free, we had to pay. But you know, everybody pitched
in and we did a screen writing retreat in Italy.
And we have been doing those screen writing retreats in Italy
ever since. A few years back we it was just
a sideline to do that retreat. So it was, it's kind of fun, but
that's all it was for many years.
And then a few years back we said, let's make this a real
(35:28):
business. So we started doing LA based
workshops. We did a retreat in Los Angeles.
My wife who has started out reading scripts and later Co
founded the Slam Dance Script Writing Clinic, started teaching
(35:51):
and then we started offering workshops, which then became
online workshops. And so now we're running a
couple of workshops every quarter on Zoom and you can also
get 1 to 1 feedback and 1:00 to 1:00 coaching.
And we're still doing the screenwriting retreats in Italy.
In fact, I'll go to Italy at theend of May for that.
(36:13):
And we also have a screen writing retreat in California
that we do every year. So what people get out of it,
our focus is really on making people better writers, on giving
people the tools to succeed as, as as screenwriters.
We don't make a lot of promises about, you know, success in the
(36:35):
industry. And that's not really our core
proposition. Our core proposition is we will
help you develop your idea. If you already have a script, we
will help you make your script better.
If we can help people in the industry, we will.
But we don't want to make any promises on that front.
We know that a lot of our competitors will suggest that
they do that sort of thing. I think those promises are
(36:59):
sometimes not entirely, there's not a not a whole lot of follow
through on it. So we just want to focus on
making people better writers andwe've tried to build a little
bit of a community around what we do.
We have a lot of returning people who come back for content
and for advice again and again. We have an alumni who's won
(37:21):
multiple Emmys and is now teaching for us.
We have another alumni who won the Nickel Fellowship, which is
a big deal in the United States.So we've had success stories and
we're very proud of the work that we do.
And it's how I spend most weekends doing at least a couple
workshops with Heidi. That's really nice as well that
(37:45):
you, you know, get to do something like that with your
wife and. Hello, it's Jamie here.
I hope you're enjoying this week's episode.
It's just a quick one for me to say that if you're listening to
the podcast on Apple, Spotify orwhatever platform you engage
with our show on, be sure to give us a follow or a subscribe
(38:07):
as it goes a long way into helping us grow and find new
listeners as well as helping youkeep up with all the latest
episodes and everything that's happening that just get a real
job. You can also support us by
subscribing to our patron page for the price of a cup of coffee
per month. All the money we make goes back
into the upkeep of the podcast. Thank you for you can continued
support and we hope you enjoy the rest of today's episode I.
(38:28):
Kind. Of want to know, like obviously
it'd be really easy to ask you like what advice would you have
for writers? But instead, I think a more
interesting question is what's acommon thing that you find
writers are missing that come toyour workshops?
(38:48):
I think given that our focus is really on making the screenplay
as good as it can be and helpingeach individual writer realize
the vision that they come in with.
We're not here to tell you, oh, don't write that script because
that sort of thing isn't sellingright now.
We're we're just trying to help you realize your vision as best
(39:09):
as best we can. What we find is usually a script
that isn't working on all the levels that it needs to work at.
That's often times and and that's, and that's kind of a
natural process for any writer. You know, sometimes you come in
and you have a clear vision about what the, you know, the
(39:30):
main drivers of the plot need tobe, but you have no idea what
the emotional life of the scriptis.
And sometimes you know what the emotional journey of your script
is, but you haven't really figured out what the story story
beats are. And, and getting all of that to
work in concert is I think the magic of a, of a, of a
(39:51):
successful screenplay when you have kind of the, the external
sort of narrative working in concert with the emotional
story, working in concert with the internal growth, that's
difficult to achieve. But we have tools that we've
developed to help people achieveall those things.
(40:11):
And when we break it down into the separate components and
apply our tools, it's pretty. I'm not going to say easy,
because writing is one of the everyone thinks they can write,
but it's one of the hardest things.
But it becomes more manageable to kind of identify where the
strengths of this project are and where the gaps are and focus
(40:33):
on the gaps. And so that's what we try to do
in our workshops. No, it's really interesting.
And as I said before, there's links to page craft and you find
out more about all that in the show notes and below this video.
I guess just because you've obviously worked for, you know,
(40:54):
in various spaces doing page craft and your day job and all
that. Do you have a sort of idea of
what the latest trends or where we may be headed as a media
industry? Like do you, I mean, obviously
things like AI, it's hard to predict and it's quite scary and
stuff, but do you see where we might be headed as an industry
in the coming years? Do you have a hunch about that,
(41:15):
or an inkling or anything like that?
I mean, I can give you a sort ofa, a random grab bag of trends
that I see. I am not an AI expert, so I'll
limit myself on AI to saying that I don't think it's going
away. I share people's concern over
(41:37):
the fact that it might replace alot of the creative input.
And I think that ultimately creators need to figure out how
to use AI as a tool to make their own work product better,
faster and more efficient while still retaining their personal
(42:00):
creative component at the core of it.
And I think there's there's waysthat creators can do that.
Otherwise, the, the risk is thatstudios will attempt to create
story ideas and content, hold cloth out of AI down the road.
We, we probably aren't quite there yet with the technology
that we have today. But you know, I have no doubt
(42:21):
that it, it's, it's coming. So creators have to have to
figure out how to use AI as a tool to make their work better
because the human component to me will always be necessary for
something that's truly extraordinary.
So my message there is let's figure out how to make I, I work
(42:42):
for us rather than trying to compete it with it head on.
And don't ask me any follow up questions because I, I don't
have any good answers on that asI'm not an AI expert.
Other trends. Look, let me actually, let me
start by saying something that'snot a trend, it's an anti trend.
(43:05):
And I don't really want to say this on this podcast because you
know, sometimes we can all feel a bit of doom and gloom about
all this, but storytelling is universal.
Storytelling has always been universal.
Storytelling has existed since dawn of human history, since
(43:26):
before we had written history. Stories were how we passed down
information. As my friend Lynn Ferguson, who
is a A good Scotswoman says, story is about it's about
lessons and warnings. There's fish in the river,
There's there's a bear in those woods.
(43:47):
You know, that's how you teach, that's how you pass on
information from generations to generation.
And people respond to story. People respond to information
communicated by a story much better than they just respond to
a piece of dry information. It is part of what makes us
human. It's part of how our psyche is
wired is responding to a well told story.
(44:09):
It will always be there. So when we talk about the ups
and downs of the creative industries, it's important to
remember the demand, the hunger,the appetite will always exist.
And it's just a question of the business side, getting the
business models right. And we go through ups and downs
of this. But you know, and look at the
(44:30):
Great Depression in the United States, one of the most popular
things that people could do affordably was go to the movies
at a time when they were struggling and every other front
of their lives. And yet, and they still went to
the movies. Movies were more popular than, I
don't have the statistics and somewhat fact checked me, but I
think movies were more popular than ever during the 1930s.
(44:51):
So storytelling will not go away.
So I think that therefore this industry will not go away.
So we just kind of have to figure it out.
Right now. I think animation is working
really well. Something like 40% of U.S. box
office last year was animated content.
I don't know if we're counting Wicked or not on that 40%.
(45:14):
It's not technically animated. We might be counting Wicked in
that, but it's, it's the biggestproportion.
I don't know if it's the biggestproportion ever, but it's, it's
the biggest proportion in a verylong time and it's been trending
upwards. Huge number of animated films
were among the year the, the, the top box office draws last
year. You know, inside out too, you
(45:38):
know, the new, the new Wallace and Gromit film, Moana 2 and so
on. And on television, you know, we
have the Bluey Phenomenon, whichis streaming content and we have
our own content, our two daughters entertainment that
we're very proud of. The Moly series is available on
Boomerang and Peacock and Youku in China.
(45:59):
It's available in 108 countries,30 languages.
And so I'm very pleased to be working in the animation space
because I think there's a lot ofopportunity there.
And I think that parents will always want to share stories
with their kids that will, you know, entertain them, teach them
values and help them learn aboutthe world.
(46:22):
And you know, that's part of that, that storytelling constant
that I just spoke about. I think is is family
entertainment is looking really,really solid right now.
So I think that's, you know, I think that's a healthy part of
the industry. In terms of other trends, you
know, we spoke earlier about production budgets need to need
to come down. And you know, again, we like to
(46:45):
criticize AI, but hopefully thatAI is going to help on that
front. You know if your VFX budget can
be cut in half but still achievethe same result.
If your virtual production costsare continually coming down and
they are, that hopefully will translate into a smaller
production budgets that will enable more content to be made
(47:06):
and and restore some of the jobsthat that people are worried
about. Wow, Carl, that was a very, very
good answer overall that covereda lots of stuff.
I don't even know how to respondto be fair.
But I really liked what you saidabout storytelling never
changing though. I think as an anti trend that's
important. I think we get too obsessed
sometimes by the where we're at and it's harder to, it's hard
(47:29):
when you're in it to step back and remember that.
So I think it's an important reminder for sure.
I guess I want to follow up veryquickly actually.
What do you think, animation? Since you're working quite
closely in that just now, is there anything the rest of the
industry could learn from the animation space?
That's a good question, I'm not sure how to answer that.
(47:51):
I think animation does timelessness really well.
So when we talk about timeless story storytelling, I mean, you
think about some of the animatedfilms of the past 30-40 years,
many of them don't feel very dated at all.
Whereas if you look at some of the movies that you might have
loved in the 80s or the 90s, if you're old enough and you try to
(48:12):
watch them today, you might lookat them and go, wow, that is not
how I remember that film at all.But but I think there's there's
a timeless 'cause you know, there's a fairy tale quality to
these things. They're not for the most part,
tied to a specific time and place.
There's, there's a long tail anda lot of animated content.
It's, you know, you can watch itmany, many times and and so
(48:35):
forth. So timeless storytelling is kind
of a creative lesson that you can take away from the animation
space. In terms of other lessons, I,
you know, I think animation, andwe're doing this at Two
Daughters. Entertainment, by the way, is an
area where also production budgets also need to come down.
And at Two Daughters, part of our core business model is
(48:57):
making content for a lot less money than some of our
competitors are making it and keeping those production costs
in control. And we've done that by working
with certain animation studios, but we've also done that by
controlling our corporate overheads.
We're extremely lean company. We don't employ a lot of people.
(49:19):
We don't spend a lot of money onthings that aren't strictly
necessary. And that puts the content
development and production first.
So I don't know if I've answeredyour question, but those are my
initial thoughts. No, for sure, it's really
interesting. I just, I was thought of it
(49:40):
there and you know, somebody didn't think to ask before, but
I think it's just always interesting to see how different
sectors can, you know, learn from each other and, and things
like that, especially given yoursort of current role and
expertise and stuff. I also want to ask as well a
bit, quite a big question may bea harder to answer, but what's
the biggest lesson you've learned in your career so far,
which I know you know, it has spanned many different areas.
(50:04):
You know, I've probably touched on them already in this
conversation, you know, except for lessons that I learned
managing people when I was working at the British
Consulate, which is a whole other topic of conversation that
could probably keep us busy for another hour.
I would say the importance of relationships is one thing.
(50:25):
The importance of being the sortof person that does exactly what
they say they're going to do andfollows through on what they say
they're going to follow through on, I think is hugely important.
Helps cut through the noise a lot of times because the
industry is full of so many people who don't do that.
You know, I'm not claiming perfection in this area.
(50:46):
I don't think anybody is absolutely perfect, but if you
make your best effort, I think that that's really important.
And I don't know, I don't know what else I could, I could tell
you right now because I think webasically touched on a lot of it
already. No good, it's great.
(51:07):
No, so many brilliant things in this episode so far for people
to take away for sure. I suppose everything which I ask
everyone to come, I ask everyonethat comes on the show this.
But how do you protect your mental health, especially, you
know, you run a separate business at the weekend and on
top of your day job as well, like with Page Craft, which I
know you've really enjoyed and it fills you up and stuff.
(51:28):
But how do how do you protect him?
And I often quite a busy industry where there's often
lots of money involved and risk attached and all that as well.
That's a really hard question toanswer and I may not be the best
person to answer it. You should have my wife on at
some point. She recently took up a
meditation class and swears thatit's doing wonders for her.
(51:50):
I'm not a meditator myself, but I've seen the positive effects
on her. So maybe I should take it up in
terms of my mental health. I, you know, I tend to, and
basically this was a gift of thepandemic because prior to that I
worked set hours, you know, had to be at a desk for 8-9 hours a
(52:11):
day, 10 hours sometimes if things were, you know, we had a
visiting minister, things were all hands on deck and you were
working 14 hour days. But the, the gift of the
pandemic is that when you were working from home.
And now that I'm also working from home because I'm two
daughters entertainment's only AUS employee.
We do have APR Rep and a, and a talent management company, but
(52:33):
I'm the, the only sort of, you know, person in the US with two
daughters on the business card. I'm working from home and, and
that gives me a lot of flexibility in how I allocate my
time. And I find that incredibly
helpful because if I need to go to the vet or the grocery store
in the middle of the day, then Ido it.
(52:54):
If I feel like jumping on my computer and doing emails for an
hour after my wife has gone to bed, she goes to bed very early,
then I do that and I do that. And I know that I'm not going to
wake up in the morning and quiteso many emails.
So I'm not as stressed when I wake up.
I tend to have a very sort of fluid approach.
And I think everyone is wired a little bit differently, you
(53:16):
know, so I, I don't think anything of, you know, pulling
out my phone and, you know, doing 15 minutes of work, you
know, right before dinner or whatever it is, I stay on top of
the flow. But I also don't think anything
of taking a break in the middle of the day because there's
something I need to go and take care of.
And, you know, when I sit there,I don't do this very often
(53:38):
because I don't, I believe in counting productivity rather
than hours. But when I do think about my
hours, I think, yeah, I, I, I think, you know, A, A, I'm more
productive and B, yeah, I am putting in about the hours that
I say or I should be putting in.So it all sorts sort of works
out. Well.
I also think that it's incredibly important to be able
(54:01):
to just step away when you step away.
The times where I'm feeling mostmentally unhealthy is when I
can't turn off the pressure of something went wrong or
something still needs to be done, sort of buzzing in your
ear. It's incredibly important to be
able to just set it aside. And that's easier said than
(54:23):
done, but when particularly whensomething really is important is
looming. But if you can find ways to
unplug yourself, you know, whether it's a piece of content
that you love on television or ameditation or going for an hour
long walk with the dog, which I do, I think it's important to be
(54:43):
able to do. Thank you very much.
Yeah, a really good answer and Iappreciate your honesty.
And yeah, I completely agree about getting productivity more
than ours. I think we lose a lot of value
in doing that sometimes. Last question for you, and
honestly, it's been so nice chatting to you tonight.
You've covered lots of interesting areas which I've not
(55:04):
talked about on the podcast before, and it's really
interesting to get yours to our perspective on things, so I
appreciate it a lot. But my last question for you is
just, is there anything good that you've watched recently or
you'd any, any content really that you've seen that you'd like
to share with our listeners? I just watched the season 2
finale of Severance. I love that show.
That is a that has a wonderful show.
(55:26):
It is unlike any show I've ever seen before.
And look, I mean, we, we teach screen writing and I've seen a
lot of content, so it isn't often that I'm surprised by
something. So I love it when I am, you
know, and Severance just it always keeps you guessing.
So that's that's really great. I love that about that show.
(55:51):
What else have I watched recently that I've loved?
You know, I love Hacks. If you've seen that, that's a
great show. I think it's I think they've
done three seasons of that. I just watched a mini, an
Italian miniseries. I speak Italian, but it's
(56:11):
subtitled called The Leopard. That was interesting.
It didn't, it didn't end in a way that content typically ends.
It just kind of ambiguously sortof stops.
But but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching the the
period, the period costumes and the commentary on a certain
period of battalion history. So that was really good.
(56:33):
And I've watched a lot of black comedy as well.
We're currently watching the latest season of Mythic Quest,
which is, you know, a funny show.
God, what else have I loved? I mean my favorite film from
last year was actually, I mean my top films from last year were
(56:54):
probably animated. I love the wild robot.
I loved flow in terms of non animated content last year.
A complete unknown conclave substance was really
interesting. Those were some of my favorite
films of last year. I've given lots of
(57:15):
recommendations. I need to get on the Severance
bandwagon. I've watched the Pilot like a
year ago and really liked it. I don't have Apple at the
moment, so I needed to get Appleand watch it, I think because,
you know, you're not the first person to tell me to watch it.
So there are lots of it. But Carlo, thank you very, very
much for your time today. I really appreciate it and I've
loved chatting to you, so thank you.
I'll let you go on for your day because I know it's in the
middle of the day over where youare, but thank you so much.
(57:38):
Well, thank you so much for yourtime.
I really appreciate the time andit was great chatting with you.
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