August 29, 2024 • 47 mins
On video... the importance of video in EVERYONE'S marketing cannot be stated enough. Today's episode speaks life into the production side of video as well as the marketing side. There are so many ways to utilize video content today, so be sure to tune in to learn from these industry professionals.
- If you have marketing questions for James, contact him at: jamesd@mediavisionadvertising.com
- If you would like to learn more about James, click here: https://mediavisionadvertising.com/james-danella-strategist/
- If you would like to be considered as a guest on the show… or if you would like James to speak at your event, reach out to jamesd@mediavisionadvertising.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:05):
Hey, Aaron, welcome back to the marketing
perspective. I'm James Danella,and I am so excited about today
because I get to speak with myfriend and colleague, Eric
Carlson of scene labproductions. We've known each
other for quite some time, we'vedone a lot of work together, and
today we're talking about allthings video, probably one of my
(00:26):
favorite topics, because if youdon't know, I started my career
in television and in film, andcame up the ranks in that world
first, before I crossed over andsold out to the agency side,
there's so many uses today forvideo, as opposed to back in the
day, where, you know, you make acommercial and you may use it
(00:46):
for that specific reason, or youwould make an infomercial or an
educational video for very largecompany. They were, they had
their specific lanes, butshooting video today, you can
cross use that video in so manydifferent ways, and that's one
of the things we're going totalk about. So many of my
colleagues through the yearsfeared what the internet would
(01:07):
do to the advertising industryback in the day, and then again,
they feared what would happenwhen digital advertising came
along. But through it all, youknow what was constant video. It
always had a place. It alwayswill have a place if anything is
just going to be even strongeras we go forward and who knows
what's coming next, right? Sothere is not a marketing
(01:30):
strategy today that I would notinclude video to some capacity
ever. I don't care if you're Bto B, B to C, mom, pop, being
corporate video is a key part ofwhat you do, and my short
answer, why? Because Google ownsYouTube. Just saying, I'm so
(01:50):
excited to get into this rightnow because I get to talk to my
friend and colleague, EricCarlson. Eric, thank
you so much for being on theshow today.
James, thanks for having me. I'mexcited to be here. Yeah. So
we're over 1000 miles away fromeach other, but yet we get to do
this. We get to see each otheras a technology is crazy, right?
Absolutely. Thank goodness. Didyou invent it?
No, no, I did not. I take nocredit or blame.
(02:14):
So I'd like to, let's forlisteners, let, let's
start with telling them yourbackground and who you are and
what you're about, sure, well,my background is probably the
definition of school of hardknocks, because if you go back
to it's about 20 years ago, verygood friend of mine who is super
(02:35):
talented and I worked with forseveral years, Leif Poland. He
came to me. We had done a coupleof little hobby films together
and some things just for fun.And he said to me, Look,
broadband is going to changethings, right? Of course, I
worked in tech at the time, andhe's like, now that people are
getting, of course, this is atthe time. It's DSL, right?
People are going to get DSL athome. Video is going to come to
(02:59):
people's houses through theinternet, and there's a whole
new opportunity for advertising.So we talked about it, and in
2004 we formed our own littleproduction company, and we
started just grassrootsmarketing this real estate
companies, catering company, youname it, golf courses. We just
started kind of door to doorselling the idea of putting
(03:20):
together these little videocommercials. And at the time, I
think Leif had a Canon GL two,he had a Mac, right? One of the,
this is like one of the oldbrick boxes, right? We grabbed a
couple lights from Home Depot,and, you know, some scrims. And,
I mean, do we, you want to talkabout a bootleg setup. This was
(03:41):
it. But we started, we startedshooting things, and we started
working with clients. And youknow, when I look back now, I
feel like, when I look at someof the stuff we shot early on,
I'm like, How did anyone pay forthis? But the idea was, here's
an opportunity for them tovisually start to tell their
story, who they are, what theydo, if it's a piece of property,
(04:03):
if it's a service they provide,and people were excited about
it. So we started back then.I've done a lot of different
things through the years, latheand I actually made a
documentary together back in2013 that we ended up, you know,
having on several platforms,Netflix and prime and so forth.
I went to work in the not forprofit sector for a few years,
(04:26):
and then in 2017 surprise, mywife and I have been married
almost 20 years, but we had ourfirst child. And so I went back
to work with scene lab again. Atthat time, Latha kind of, kind
of ventured into differentthings. So I took over the
business solo, but he stillserved as an advisor at that
point, and then over the lastfew years, a lot of what we do
(04:50):
is real estate on the brokerageside. So not so much like
property videos and Agentvideos, but more marketing for
teams. Is one of our big clientsis Sotheby's regional promos. We
work a lot in the tech sector.We work a lot in the commercial
real estate sector, and thenalso healthcare as well. So
(05:10):
those are our biggest ones. Weget a few outliers in some other
areas as well, but those are theones where consistently, we tend
to do that type of client work.Yeah. So if you're listening, I
know Eric's real. And some ofthe stuff he just mentioned, I
started visualizing some of thestuff that he shot, and they are
incredible. They're reallyincredible company. Yes, I'm
(05:32):
bragging on him, and no, I don'tget a percentage of money that
he makes. If you're in thatmarket. Eric is in the Hudson
Valley. But Eric, do you travelnow? Are you? Yeah, a lot of our
work is tri state, right? So NewYork, Connecticut, New Jersey.
But the way it tends to work issome of our clients, because
they have a national presence.We do shoot across the states.
(05:55):
And what's nice is we have mediapartners in Phoenix and San
Diego and Orlando, so it givesus some opportunities to be able
to help clients out withoutalways us locally, having to
travel, although on occasion wedo, our team will pack up the
gear and head, you know, todifferent spots to be able to
shoot things, you will have torevisit that conversation too,
(06:15):
going forward. Okay, so you saidsomething earlier about
storytelling. As part of, youknow, everybody has a story. I
would like to dig, dig deeperinto that, because, as you said,
you made a couple of films inthe beginning, and you know,
part of my background was doingthat. Well, that's two hours a
film's, you know, about twohours or 90 minutes at least.
(06:36):
You know, I think it's kind ofeasy to tell a story in that
amount of time. You know, heck,it's even easier to tell an
influencer story in two or threeminutes, but try to tell a story
in 30 seconds in a commercial,and people say, Oh, it's just a
commercial. It's justadvertising. It is a lot harder
than you think to have acomplete story. Can you can you
speak into that? Because it'ssomething you're very good at.
(06:58):
Man, I'll tell you. It goes backto, I think it was Mark Twain
who wrote right the and I'mgoing to misquote this to some
degree, so let's just put, like,you know, single quotes on it. I
apologize. I would have writtena shorter letter, but I didn't
have the time right. So hispoint was, what, it's hard to be
concise. It's very difficult.And so when you're talking about
(07:21):
a video, let's say to tell yourbrand story, or to share
something new about what yourcompany is doing or what your
organization's about to do.That's really tough, and when
people think a lot of times,what'll happen is clients will
come to us and they'll say tous, we want to do a video, or we
want to do a short film on this,and they'll start out with a
number, let's say they say, I'mgonna, we want to do a two
(07:43):
minute piece. But when we startkicking around ideas, and a lot
of times, they'll give us theirfirst draft of what they call a
script, and it's five minutes,right? And so it's like, Okay,
it's good. We want to, we wantto know what they're trying to
do so. So that's, that's for us,one of the first things we try
(08:04):
to do. And I don't want to jumpahead if we're going to jump
into process, but we try andascertain, Hey, what is it? What
do you expect from this? Who doyou want to watch this, and what
do you want their reaction tobe? And by knowing that, then we
can try and help them get wherethey want to go. Because, you
(08:24):
know, I'll use myself as anexample when it comes to certain
trades or skills. I might knowwhat I want to do or what I want
it to look like at the end, butI don't necessarily know how to
get there, right? So I need aprofessional come in and help
me. Hey, this is what I want todo. I know the things I don't
want to do or don't want to see,but I need someone to help me
get there. And so that's ourjob, is to find out what it is
(08:47):
they want to do and sometimeshow they think they want to get
there. If you could help themappreciate that might not be the
best route. Now, at the end ofthe day, they're the client, but
we'll just help share with them.I'll give an example. So we were
dealing with a client, we clientrecently, um, this company is
very successful in thecommercial real estate space.
Um, and you're very well known,I want to say top two or three
(09:11):
in the nation as far as whatthey own retail wise. And so
they had an idea for a piecethey're doing for a new property
in a major city in theNortheast, and they had an idea
on how they want to tell thatstory, and they came to us, I
mean, they really had put a lotof prep work into it. I was
super impressed. Their marketingteam's phenomenal. And they had
(09:34):
some, you know, some storyboardsthat they had put together, a
script that they had written,but in reviewing the script,
basically as a team, werealized, hey, there's a lot of
telling when there could be alot more showing. And so that's
the beauty. Obviously, whenyou're dealing with film and
video, there are areas where youcan become more concise by
(09:54):
giving the visual that tellsthat story without always having
to be so on the note. Lose witha narrative. You just hit it on
the head. We have four internsright now going through our
internship program, twostrategic and two design
focused, and one of them isinterested in scripts writing.
And we got into and he'sthinking feature film, of
(10:16):
course, you know? I said, Well,that's awesome. I said, Can you
apply the skill into a 32ndcommercial, and he they do mock
so he has a mock for his client.He's doing the strategy, and he
has a designer assigned to himdoing the visuals of that mock
brand, so they get to walk awaywith some real meat, you know,
so excuse me, in thisconversation, he said, Of course
(10:39):
I could do it. I said, really. Isaid, What would you process
but, well, it's the same thingas writing a long format script.
I went, Okay. I said, Well, tellme all the things you want to
say. You know your mom, you knowyour client, so what do you want
to say? And he went through awhole list of he was at like,
three or four minutes, you know,of meat. And they said, how do
we get down to one main pointwith a couple of bullets, and to
(11:02):
get the main point across ofwhat you want your listener to
remember. Oh, but they need tohear everything. I said in 30
seconds, absolutely. I said,Okay, go ahead and try it. I
can't. He's still working on it.By the way, he's his
internship's not over. And thenI threw him a bigger curveball
and said, By the way, it'sreally only 25 seconds, not 30,
(11:24):
because we need to be able tohave the brand come up, and it's
got to be something that we wavea flag on right, or jingle if a
jingles involved. And I said,but keep and you just you made
the point that I had made tohim. Keep in mind that you don't
have to say everything, becauseit's video, and like a light
(11:45):
bulb went off in his head. Hewent, Oh, and it's a moving
company that is his mock movingin storage.
He goes, I get it. And now Ithink he's pretty close. You
know, it to take the auditoryand the visual at the same time
is a world of difference. Andyou know, you and I both know
(12:06):
some of the media vendors inyour market, and I used to have
what I call intense fellowshipwith the radio people. And I
would argue that video isbetter, and they're like, audio
is radio is the best, and howcan you use anything? But we're
captive audience. I said, Ohyeah, because are you listening
to radio in your car? Radio hasa place sure for anybody if
(12:32):
you're listening, you know, butcommercials, the visual aspect
of it, allows you to really tellthat story in a much stronger
way. And James, you mentionedsomething that that cute, an
idea in my head, too. And Ithink you and I have may have
talked about this before, butlike, there was a book by Harry
(12:53):
Beckwith. He wrote, I mean,years ago, right? And obviously
he's one of the great marketingminds, you know, in recent
history. And one of the thingshe brought up, he had a whole
chapter devoted to this, and hewas talking about, how many
things can you include, conceptwise, when you're trying to
share an idea, right? And sothey did a test campaign on a
commercial. Was a carcommercial, right? The visuals
(13:14):
were exactly the same. In the32nd commercial, the visuals did
not change. But there were twoversions. One talked about how
the car, you know, theperformance was amazing. The
interior features were, youknow, second to none. And it
went through all these thingsthat the car had. And then the
next commercial, all they talkedabout was performance. This car
(13:35):
had amazing performance. It wasoff the charts when they did the
test. Basically there was twogroups of people in the first
commercial that shared all sortsof benefits that the car had.
Zero people said that they wouldconsider buying that car. In a
second test, 6% of the peoplecame back and said, I would
consider buying this car. Andwhen asked why, they said, well,
(13:55):
it has incredible performance,right? So the what's the point?
The point is, people, you thinkthat you need to share 100
important ideas of why whatyou're doing is great, but
people aren't prepared for that.And all that means is nothing
stands out. So it's better toshare a point or two about why
(14:16):
what you're doing is so gamechanging, or so different or so
interesting, and then peoplecome away with something. And if
you think you have someadditional points, well, that
sounds like something you'd wantto put in a completely different
film or commercial. You know,that's a separate point to be
made later on, right? Longerformat, more of an educational
kind of a thing. Maybe it'sshowing in the showrooms,
(14:39):
exactly. You know, behavioralscience is a key part of
marketing understanding humanbehavior, and I think video is
one of the ways that captures itthe most, because that process
that we're talking about backand forth is exactly what we go
through project by project toget the client the best effort
possible. So. So I want tochange subject for a second. I
(15:03):
know this. I know your answer,and you've kind of already
touched on it. But how importantis scripting to you in your
process? Oh, I mean, it'sessential. And you talked about
screenwriters earlier and tryingto, you know, educate them and
and bring them up to speed onthe difference between a long
form film and a commercial. Andsometimes what we found to be
(15:23):
helpful when you're dealing withthat is, at least for an early
meeting, putting a screenwriterin the same room with your
director, with your DP and maybeyour editor too. I mean, in some
cases, obviously, with smallerteams, your director might
actually end up being youreditor, which is great, but
putting those people in the sameroom to talk about it, because
(15:44):
that's where ideas on cullingverbiage but enhancing the
actual concept can really cometo light, and then the
screenwriter walks away withlike, Okay, I know how I want to
approach this. Yeah, yeah.That's one of the reasons I love
working with you, because thatprocess is my favorite aspect,
by the way. Not to brag evenmore about Eric Carlson and
(16:09):
scene lab. He is, Eric, you'rethe only producer director that
I can trust as as the agency andnot be there. I have given Eric
projects and know he is not onlygoing to meet what we need, but
he's going to exceed and come upwith things that well, that's
(16:31):
great. We'll use that instead.He they're just that good. Not
I'm gushing a little bit, but wereally heck. I want more work in
his tri state area so that Icould just keep working with
him. So if you're listening andyou're in the tri state, please
hire our agency so that we cangive Eric a lot more work.
(16:52):
We appreciate the trust and therecommendation. Yeah, it's and
it's earned, without a doubt it,
and I don't say it lightly,having been in the industry for
so many years and went all theway from PA to executive
producer and director in mycareer,
you're the real deal. So enoughlove.
(17:17):
Let's talk about all the waysthat video can actually be used
today, because it's so muchdifferent. All right? So I'm a
little bit, a few years olderthan you. You know, I've been in
the industry before, theinternet, yep, back in my day.
So it used to be, everything wasshot on film. Everything was
very intentional, only used forone specific purpose. So let's
(17:39):
talk about the way video is usedtoday and the many uses that it
has. Yeah, absolutely. I thinkthat piece to the puzzle when
clients start to realize that, Imean, I don't want to act like
nobody understands that. I thinka lot of people are
understanding that now. But wecall it, you know, repurposing,
right? There's a lot of ways youcan convert to it. We call it we
(18:00):
call it repurposing. So you comein and you say, Okay, we're
gonna create this short film orthis brand story, and here's
what our objective is, and whattends to happen right along the
way. And this is where there canbe really good compromise and
actually value add to theclient. So they say, we'll go
back to the piece about notincluding too much in one piece,
(18:21):
too many points, right? Theywant to include seven main
points. And it's like, Hey, canwe pare this thing down to two
or three at most? Right? Even,even if it's a one minute film
or a 92nd film. And then theysay, Well, we got to tell this,
and we got to tell that, but nowwhat you can do is create the
opportunities to capture thatadditional narrative, whether
(18:42):
it's an on screen interview,whether it's some additional B
roll that you're going to shootto demonstrate those points. And
then, depending on what it isthey want to share, those could
be things. So for example, maybetheir main piece, their 92nd
piece, they're planning on itsitting on their website. Maybe
they plan on it sitting one ofseveral professional platforms.
Maybe it's sitting on LinkedIn,or maybe it's sitting somewhere
(19:05):
else that's related to theirindustry. Maybe they're gonna
play it at an event. But then wecapture those additional things,
and we say this would be greatif you put it on one of several
social media platforms. Andsometimes we'll even while
filming, film certain portionsof what they want, not for the
main piece, but we'll film it,let's say vertical video, right?
(19:28):
And we'll say, Hey, we're gonnaput this we're gonna put this
one piece together for youraudience that we think will
reside on Tiktok. Or we're gonnaput this together, and this is
gonna be an Instagram story. Nowthey're finding new ways to take
the same content, or pieces ofthe same content, and kind of
distribute it out there todifferent audiences who are
going to, you know, take thatcontent in the way they choose
(19:50):
to. Because, you know, as weknow, not every age group or
professional group is on thesame social media platform,
which makes it very. Verydifficult for people to be
effective marketers. So otherways that we will also use
video, just so, you know,
so obviously, for television,
(20:11):
we also use it for OTT over thetop, which is streaming video.
Any places that you stream towatch anything, there's
commercials there as well.There's long formats,
educational videos, Eric said,website content, social content,
that same footage can berepurposed in different ways, as
long as you plan ahead and youscript for it and understand the
(20:34):
shots that you need to walk awaywith on your shoot, whether it's
a couple of days or a week ofshooting, depends on your needs.
We also this is one of my secretsauces. We will transcribe all
the video so we've alreadywritten the content, but we
transcribe everything so that wecan repurpose it and use it. So
(20:55):
for example, if Eric is on a joband he is interviewing and doing
like a live piece with somebody,and it's a Q and A kind of a
thing, but he's just promptingsome good content from the other
person. That content isinvaluable because it's not just
that industry content, it'scontent from that specific brand
(21:17):
company, and unique content isprobably the most valuable thing
you have when you're marketingyour business. And video plays a
very key part of it today. Wouldyou agree with that? Eric, or
Oh, absolutely, yeah. Andusually within a an
organization, right, there aresome key personalities that
(21:39):
people, either within theirindustry, or clients that
they're touching really want tohear from. So when you have that
person on camera, that's atremendous opportunity to end up
redistributing some of that,right? I mean, video is content.
You know, depends on how you useit. I think websites that don't
have video, I don't know whythey exist today. I think video
(22:01):
is such an important part of itbecause of the way it searches.
It's got to be built correctlyand not to I don't want to go
off on this tangent too much,but if you're listening,
understand that when you put avideo up on YouTube, for
example, I like YouTube betterthan Vimeo, purely because
Google owns YouTube. Google ownsYouTube. I say, I think I've
(22:23):
said it on multiple shows likeunderstand that, and then you'll
get it. So if you put it onYouTube, on the back end, you
have to put all the content.When we do it, we actually
transcribe the entire video andput all of the content behind
it. I want all those keywordsand phrases searching, not just
a sentence or two that one of myinterns or, you know, a content
(22:45):
person is typing up and say, Oh,just put this there. It makes it
extremely searchable. Why isthat important? Because it'll
drive traffic to your site. Ifyou don't understand why driving
traffic to your site isimportant. I really don't want
you to listen to the showanymore.
I'm kidding. This is why theyneed you. James, yeah. Well,
everybody
(23:05):
does. They just don't know it,right, right, right. It's we
both look at it like, why wouldthey do it any other way? Like
we have. We've seen some bad,bad marketing, and I have seen
videos that I can't, I justcan't Well, and I think that's
part of the P That's a piece ofthe puzzle as well, right? So
I'll go back to, let's say, forexample, I'm going to have
(23:28):
someone come in here and they'regoing to build a deck for me, or
they're going to, you know, puton a gazebo, or do whatever. If
I've, if I've chosen to hire aprofessional, it could be that I
don't just don't have the timeto do it. That's possible, but
it's also possible that I don'thave the skill to do certain
things. So when you hiresomebody that you actually
trust, right? Not just somebodyyou found, but somebody you
(23:48):
trust, where you're like, I havea good feeling about this
person, because conceptually,they're they're mirroring back
to me what I think I'm lookingfor, right? They get it, then
you got to trust that person,right? And not second, you know,
second guess everything they'retrying to do. And so we say that
not because we have try to havea big creative ego when we go
into clients, but we're asking alot of questions. We're
(24:10):
listening to what they'resaying. We're talking to the
team. We're doing research onwho it is they're trying to
reach. And then when we comeback with ideas and say, Hey, I
know you said you wanted tohave, you know, an on screen
narrator, or, I know you saidyou wanted to go about it this
way, but have you thought aboutgoing about it this way? It's
(24:30):
not simply to be difficult or totry and come up with our ideas.
We really want to think about,hey, what's going to reach the
viewer? What's going tomessaging wise, not just the
visuals, but the way they'redelivered what's going to hit
their target audience. Sohopefully that helps people to
appreciate if it's differentthan what they had put pen to
paper on early that may not be abad thing, right? Hey, Eric, for
(24:53):
the people you just mentioned, abunch of different types of
people, whether they have theskill set or they don't have the
skill set, let's say you. Got aniPhone. It's new. They shoot 4k
they're going to take the advicetoday from our conversations and
try to do some of this stuffthemselves, because they're on a
tight budget Talk Tech for asecond, and just kind of help us
(25:14):
through what that would looklike it because it really
depends on the format. Itdepends on where they're putting
the video. So just speak intothat a little bit. Yeah. So I
mean, anytime you're gonnarecord video yourself, whatever
you're using, you know, soobviously, phones are a big
source of people capturing videonow. And by the way, there are
feature length film directorswho have made this their niche
(25:36):
right recording on an iPhone andgetting it done. The great thing
is, and I'm using Apple just asan example, there are, there are
other great phones out therethat absolutely get the job
done. I'm just speaking to whatI'm familiar with, right? So
like Apple now has made thedecision that you could record
on your phone in ProRes, right,which is a really high quality
(25:57):
format. And so what you're goingto come out with that's editable
content as opposed to compressedcontent, right? So if you record
on a phone a lot of times, it'sin what's called h2 64 right?
And so it's compressed. Looksgood when you first look at it,
but when you start to put it upon a bigger screen after editing
and then re exporting andcompressing again, sometimes
(26:18):
it'll fall apart. So I mean,it's getting better and better.
And there's h2 65 which is evenbetter. Is even better
compression. Now my advice wouldbe, if you're going to try and
do that yourself, and if youthink you have a good grip on
the storytelling and themarketing piece, look at your
device, whatever you're using.It's a GoPro camera, right? It's
a little DJI camera, and thinkabout how to make the content
(26:43):
that's on screen the mostimportant thing, less about the
tech, more about really goodcontent. I have to say, I've
seen a lot of video out therethat was poorly filmed, I mean,
and maybe even the audio was notthe best, but the content is so
good, what the person is saying,or what they're doing or what
(27:04):
they're talking about is sogood, it doesn't matter. So if
you can just take the tech sideof it and make it the least
distracting possible, that'sgood. I would advise people to
maybe consult with a productioncompany and let them know, hey,
right now, we can't afford tofilm. But would you be willing
that we could pay you for acouple hours? You know one of
(27:24):
your creative people, preferablya creative with some tech,
right? And could we pay you fora couple hours for a consult on
how we could do what we want todo in house? And that's
something we're always happy todo with clients, because what
happens is we give them someeducation that's useful for them
to get it out the door, and theycan use their own you know,
people use window Movie Maker,or they use iMovie, or they use
(27:46):
something else on their tablet,right? And then at a certain
point, if they're using videoeffectively, they get the return
on it. And somewhere along theline, a lot of times, clients
will come back to us and say,Okay, we're ready for something
a little more highly produced.Can you help us out? So we're
always happy to help, kind ofget them started down that road.
We do the same thing for smallcompanies. We'll come alongside
(28:06):
them and just give them adviceand give them an initial
strategy, save money here, spendmoney here, try this, do this,
and hoping that they become abigger company. And maybe one
day we'll sing our praises. ButI get what you're saying. I
think that's good advice on theon the tech side. I didn't hear
you talk about so that footage,if it's raw footage, and they're
(28:30):
shooting ProRes, it'll come outat 4k or even higher, depending
on what they have. I mean, whenwe go up to 8k now, obviously
those files are going to be verylarge. So if the final product
is going to be on social mediaor for internet. Can you, is
there another way for them?Because they may not have
professional softwares like weuse to be able to scale it down
(28:54):
easily, you know, oh, I'm justgoing to export it for YouTube,
kind of a thing, if they'reusing, I don't know, iMovie, or
something really simple. Isthere a way for them, in these
simple programs, to export downto a lower format? Yeah, and
they could, I mean, they couldeven shoot on a lower format,
but I like to shoot a higherbecause it's better to be able
to take it down, right, becauseyou might want it later on.
(29:16):
Agree? Um, so, yeah, there are abunch of ways to take it, take
it down. In fact, inside iMovieitself, and a lot of, I don't
say a lot of people, some peoplemay not be aware that iMovie and
Final Cut Pro, for example, it'sthe exact same framework, right?
It's the same thing, only FinalCut Pro has more bells and
whistles built on top of it,right? So iMovie is great. A lot
(29:40):
of when just to date myself.Here, when young people come to
me and say, hey, I want to getstarted. I want to learn. I'm
like, use iMovie. It's a greatway to get started. Then if you
decide to switch to Final CutPro, obviously you'll see
similarities. But by the way,Premiere or Avid or resolve,
right? All these. Things,there's a ton of options, and
(30:02):
they all have a similar look andfeel. Um, and then, you know,
you may like one or the other,but they all can work to get it
done. And I think most peoplewho work, whether they're video
marketing companies or whetherthey're cinematographers, will
tell you it doesn't the the whatyou're using doesn't matter if
you would have the skill you canuse any of them and produce a
great product. But I agree withyou, James, make that you know,
(30:25):
the footage itself only needs tobe really at like HD level at
this point, it doesn't need tobe 4k 6k 8k right on the web, HD
is about as high as it is rightnow, I understand there's some
streaming services that claim 4kbut honestly, they're doing some
flavors to it where it's reallypretty compressed as well. Big
(30:46):
truth bomb, we won't name themthough. You said something a
second ago reminded me ofanother question, if you're
okay. So I've watched you foryears as you built your company,
and I've watched this companygrow and evolve and cool toys
and you know, better people,better equipment, better process
(31:08):
for the young video companiesout there, or the ones that are
just, hey, I
think that's what I want to dowith my life.
Even there's high schools thatare now teaching it in high
school, which is really cool,that it depends on what their
path is going to be on. Ifthey're if they go on to
college, they at least have adirection of where they're
headed and if they go into ourindustry. Is there any advice
(31:29):
you can give if they're startingout and they want to be their
own company? Yeah, absolutely.One is, don't be afraid to
attach yourself to a company andlet them know your goal like a
good you know, there arecompanies that, if you tell them
I want to eventually own my owncompany, or I want to do, you
know, via a director, or I wantto be a DP or whatever. There
(31:51):
are some who are like, Oh, no,no. We only want people who work
for us. But there are a lot ofgood companies out there who are
like, Hey, we're happy to helpbring you along and help teach
you benefit from your skill thatyou gain, and then maybe you
inform a good partnership in thefuture, right? So I'll just say
that for scene lab, most of thepeople we work with and who even
work for us are media partners,right? I don't have a lot of
(32:14):
employees that you're right. Asfar as like being an S corp, a
lot of them are media partners,and some of them, right? Not all
of them, but some of them arepeople I've trained along the
years, and they've gotten to thepoint where they're running
their own companies as well, butthey still love coming to do
work where the process is allspelled out. It's easy. They're
going to do one piece to thepuzzle or a couple pieces, and
(32:35):
they know exactly what toexpect, because we work
together. And I would say from,from an even higher level, when
you're when you're young,there's a lot of people out
there who know more than you I'mgonna say, you know, I'm nearly
50 years old, and there's stilla ton of, you know, I mean, I'm
gonna say million so that. Butthere's so many people who know
(32:58):
so much more about things,individual things, than I do. So
surround yourself with thosepeople, embrace the fact that
you don't know everything, askquestions, appreciate other
people's strengths. Becausealong the way, what's happened
to me is when I've done somemeasure of mentoring and
training, as I start to mentorthese people, you see areas
(33:22):
where they are going to be somuch better than you, they have
more skill than you, or theyhave a better eye, or they're
better with tech. And so alongthe way you're you start to say,
oh, this person is going toexcel here. That's not
threatening. That's fantastic.And so if you're starting out,
figure out surround yourself bypeople who either are smarter
(33:43):
than you or maybe they're not.Maybe you're a super smart
person, but maybe they're moreexperienced than you, and just
embrace that. And if you connectyourself with people who aren't
afraid to see you grow, they'renot trying to hold you back and
keep you in the same spot forthe next 510, 15 years, they
want you to grow. I think that'sa good opportunity, and it's how
(34:03):
we have some of the greatrelationships we have across the
industry. Is I'm not afraid ofthat conversation when someone
comes in and says, Hey, I'veloved working with you in this
capacity, but I think I want todo this now, and it's like,
okay, how can we help you to dothat? That's great advice. It
reminds me so quick story, soback in the day, so when I was a
(34:25):
producer, I've worked with twodifferent directors in the same
season. One was Bob Giraldi, andif you look up that name, or
know that name, he was thenumber one director in the
country for commercials. He mademore money than anyone. I won't
say the amount, because it mayembarrass somebody, but it was
insane, like whatever number youjust thought it was probably
(34:46):
more. Just know that. And I alsowork with a director named Bill
Mason Now, both of them verytalented directors. Bob had the
mindset of staying ahead of thetimes, staying. To the curve,
knowing what the next cool techPenguin's going to be. He was
about post production, and itwas why he was so well paid. He
(35:09):
would spend, I don't know,because I produced for him. He
spent maybe two hours on set anygiven day, point click, walk
away, go back into his trailerand do whatever he did for the
rest of the day, and we're doinglike, B roll and all that kind
of stuff. And I'm like, What theheck? And Bill was like an
actor's director. He was therethe entire time. He loved the
(35:31):
process, but he could care lessabout the rest of it. He on set,
is where he was capturing whathe wanted. Bill, all right, I'll
say the number, because it makesrelevant to the story, Bill made
6k a day, where Bob made 25k aday. So it taught me a valuable
lesson when I crossed over tothe agency side and into
(35:54):
strategy. I want to be Bob whenI grow up and I stay ahead of
the curve, I'm always learningwhat's next, what's the new
thing? Like, one of my biggestquestions in social media right
now is there's no new shinything on the horizon, and I'm
wondering why, like, have wemaxed out on social platforms? I
mean, there's a bunch of littlewannabes, but there's nothing
(36:17):
big. You know, have the big onesreally monopolized where we are,
and that's it, because that'sdangerous when that happens. So
I keep an eye on things likethat. I'm always looking ahead.
But you just gave the sameadvice to somebody. If you're
young and you're coming out andyou're starting a business, make
a choice. Do you want to be Bob,or do you want to be bill? And
there's no wrong answer. It'sjust, what do you want to do
(36:39):
with your life? What's yourpassion? Bob was passionate
about the tech, and he wasamazing at it in post
production. Man, there wasnobody that can touch him. I
learned so much from that manjust by standing behind him and
watching. And then I had amentor friend who he and I were
both executive producers,working at the same place side
by side, same title, same amountof money that we made a day, but
(37:02):
he had so much more experiencethan me. I mean, the man worked
on Star Wars, okay, so I wouldbe like, I'm not worthy, you
know, and bow to this man. Andhe brought me up, and I learned
so much from him what I thoughtI knew I didn't know, and it
humbled me, and it taught methat I can always learn from
others no matter where I am inmy career. So I love that you
(37:23):
gave that advice. I hope peopleheed it. You can apply it in so
many different ways.
Thank you for that, Eric. Ireally appreciate
it. Well. I like that, that thatmentality, James, and it's
obviously serving you wellstill, right? Because the other
piece of that is you reverse it,right? So I feel like, at this
point now, I'm learning a tonfrom people who are younger than
(37:45):
me, right? So, so I'll ask,like, somebody will come back
and they'll have shot somethinga certain way, or gone about us.
Or, I'm like, what? Why did youdo that? Like, what made you
want to do that? What, you know,what's your thought process?
Blah, blah. And I just find,like, there's so many things
that I would not have thought todo or, you know, purposefully
gone about. And, yeah, age, youknow, you see people who are
(38:08):
excelling in their teens, 20sand beyond. So to think the only
person who's sharing knowledgeor experience is the older
person, I think, is completelyinaccurate. And if, if you want
to stay relevant, as far as yourteam is concerned, meaning
collaborating with them andcontributing meaningfully, it's,
it's a two way street, and Ithink that's one of the things
(38:31):
internally that keeps usclicking, is there's a really
good dialog. It's not, yeah, theprofessionalism, the kind
treatment of people, the respectfor others. I do think that
comes from the top down, but youreally want to make sure that
people know that when you say,Hey, we love to hear you speak
(38:51):
up. We love to hear a questionor an idea that has to be
evidenced day to day by the wayyou treat people and the
reaction you have when peopleactually do come to you with an
idea that's very different fromthe way you're approaching
things, and you have to say,Okay, well, let me rethink this.
Why are we doing this? Whyaren't we doing that? You know,
it's everything we're talkingabout is biblical too. But let's
(39:12):
not that's a whole notherpodcast. That's true. It's true.
I have one more topic, and I wasmarinating on it as you were
talking say, Wow, do we talkabout this? It's we're already
kind of maxed out. Yeah, I don'tthink we're going to go there.
(39:33):
It'll be a long conversation forboth of us. So I'm going to,
I'll save that one for anothertime. All right. So Eric, one
last thing, I feel like I'vegushed about you enough, but I
want you how would somebodycontact you if they wanted to
Sure? So, um, scene labProductions is our company name,
(39:55):
right? You can find us on theweb at the scenelab.com um. Um,
we do a lot of work, as Imentioned, in the tri state
area. So, yeah, reach out. Youcan always reach me by phone.
I'll share my contact info ifyou want to be able to post it
on, you know, with with theYouTube link or with the actual
(40:16):
podcast link. But we're alwayshappy to help out the that's the
other thing. Is even consultingif we can help you out and just
getting some ideas started, soyou can kind of move down that
road. We're happy to do that.And we've found through the
years. And James, I know youfound this is the bulk of our
day to day work comes fromrepeat clients. So we do have a
few people who will come to usfor a thing, and then we don't
(40:38):
see them for quite a while, butmost of the people we work with,
it's repeat, right? So they seethe benefit in it, and then we
tend to have a long, longstanding relationship. So we
look forward to thatopportunity. We always are
looking for, you know, newrelationships and new ways to
help people. So yeah, we wouldwelcome a call. Eric, one last
question, what if I'm a client,what should I be looking for
(41:04):
when I want to hire a videoproduction company if I'm not
going through an agency? Yeah,that's a that's a tough one,
but, but a good one, right? Ithink sometimes people look and
they'll, you know, we hear a lotof times they'll be like, oh,
you know, my nephew has thisgear. Or, oh, this person just
(41:25):
graduated from film school, andthey do this. And, you know,
people, people try and refer togear, or, you know, a bunch of
different things that theyquantify as someone who can
assist them when they need totell their brand story. Or, you
know, share something abouttheir organization. Think, if
you're going to evaluate acompany to say, do we want to
hire them? Bring them in, sitdown and see if they ask the
(41:52):
right questions, and if theylisten, you know, it's the old
two ears, one mouth. So ifimmediately are coming in and
they're pitching you and they'rejust pushing, and even if their
portfolio looks pretty good, isthat going to be a good
relationship, and are they goingto be able to do what you need
them to do? But I do think oneof the things we've seen, and
(42:13):
even in other productioncompanies that are having a lot
of success, is they tend to askthe right questions, and they're
really good listeners, and thenthey can say, I think what I'm
hearing from you is this, am Iright? Is this what you want?
Okay, here's some ways we couldaccomplish that. So, you know,
more important than whatplatform they're on or what gear
(42:35):
they're using, or, you know, howmany years in the industry is,
does it seem like they have afirm grip on how to communicate.
If they can't communicate withyou and your internal team, they
certainly aren't going to beable to communicate your ideas
through film or video. Okay, onelast quick story. This just
happened not long ago, and itwas my moment of, what would
(42:56):
Eric do? So I'm sitting in frontof it was a video production
company. We were interviewingthem, and they came to our
office. They I got introducedthem by a colleague that's in
the industry, but they don't dothe magnitude of what we do.
They're they're a young company,and they say, Hey, you should
use these guys. They're awesome.We use them. It's like, okay, so
(43:19):
I kicked their tires, but it wasfor a small client and a small
budget. I said, So Tommy, Iloved everything that he was
saying. He asked, he asked somegood questions, had some good
information. And then we gotdown to math. And I said, Okay,
so here's the budget that Ihave. And it was, I mean, we
know numbers, it wasrespectable, but it wasn't out
(43:40):
of the park. You know what? Imean, it was like in the middle.
Kind of a thing. And I said, I'mgiving you everything I have,
because it's a tight budget,respecting you. Okay, no
worries, don't I'll just catchyou with the proposal in the
next week, and don't worry aboutit, and everything will be fine.
I'm like, great. So I'm planningon using I was like, All right,
wrote it in. He's going to be myguy. It was a Nashville shoot.
(44:03):
He came back almost 10 timesmore than the number I gave him.
I was like, Were you listeningto what I said? And then, like,
a day later, Hey, how's
that proposal? Are
you ready to move forward? Inever even responded. I
(44:23):
couldn't, yeah, plus, I wasflabbergasted. If that's still a
word in Wikipedia, I don'tunderstand, like you didn't
listen to what I said. I mean, Iget that. That's your math.
That's your math. Fine. Whydidn't you tell me that day?
Because I was ready to book.Yeah, right. Here's why we're
not able to do it within thatbudget, or here's why we're not
(44:45):
able to do what we justdiscussed within that budget.
Here's what we could do withinthat budget. Or, you know,
whatever it is. But yeah, onceagain, that comes back to
communication, right? And wewere talking one person, one
camera. It was insane. I waslike. Right? So we can say that
the market tries to just takeand take and take. This market
(45:06):
is tough. Nashville is extremelycompetitive. It's an awesome
market. I
love it here. Our company lovesit here.
We're really starting to, youknow, make the connections we
need to make.
But listening to your story, andI know that if they went direct
to client and they said thatnumber, some people don't know
(45:26):
better, and and I told you thatnumber, you'd be like, holy cow,
I'll
take that number all day. It wasinsane.
It was like, almost double, morethan double, the last job we did
together more than double for aone day, one camera, one person.
Yeah, it makes you wonder. Hey,listen, great work. If you can
(45:47):
get it, I guess if you can getit exactly, not with us. So
anyway, Eric, I am so gratefulyou were able to come on today.
I'm a little bit giddy. At myage, if I could still get giddy,
I don't know. Oh, man, thanksfor having me on, James. I
really appreciate it. And, yeah,good connecting again. And
(46:08):
appreciate you having me on as aguest. Yeah. And if you have, if
you come up with a differenttopic that you want to cover, I
don't know, maybe tiny homes, atsome point we'll have you back
on, fantastic,
very exciting.
So if you're listening today,thank you for being on. I hope
you got something out of it. Myheart always wants people to be
able to walk away and get somereally good information and use
(46:30):
for themselves. This isn't ashameless plug for the people I
have on. Okay, once in a whileit is today. It was just kind of
a gushy kind of a moment. Butit's not, if you notice, I don't
even say the name of myadvertising firm. It's
intentional. That's not why I'mdoing the show. I mean, feel
free to reach out to me if you'dlike. But that's not its
(46:50):
purpose. Its purpose is you walkaway, get some valuable
information, use it in youreffort to improve your marketing
on a regular basis, we talkedabout all different topics. As
you know, we have all differenttypes of guests on I'm really
excited about where the show isgoing. Please, if you love us,
download the show. That's theway to show some love and
comment as much as you wantpositive, negative, we're happy
(47:13):
to interact with you. If youhave any questions, I will
personally follow up with you.If you have a marketing
struggle. Just hit me up, happyto put you in the right
direction. Thank you very muchfor listening, and we'll see you
next time you.
Hey, Aaron, welcome back to the marketing
perspective. I'm James Danella,and I am so excited about today
because I get to speak with myfriend and colleague, Eric
Carlson of scene labproductions. We've known each
other for quite some time, we'vedone a lot of work together, and
today we're talking about allthings video, probably one of my
(00:26):
favorite topics, because if youdon't know, I started my career
in television and in film, andcame up the ranks in that world
first, before I crossed over andsold out to the agency side,
there's so many uses today forvideo, as opposed to back in the
day, where, you know, you make acommercial and you may use it
(00:46):
for that specific reason, or youwould make an infomercial or an
educational video for very largecompany. They were, they had
their specific lanes, butshooting video today, you can
cross use that video in so manydifferent ways, and that's one
of the things we're going totalk about. So many of my
colleagues through the yearsfeared what the internet would
(01:07):
do to the advertising industryback in the day, and then again,
they feared what would happenwhen digital advertising came
along. But through it all, youknow what was constant video. It
always had a place. It alwayswill have a place if anything is
just going to be even strongeras we go forward and who knows
what's coming next, right? Sothere is not a marketing
(01:30):
strategy today that I would notinclude video to some capacity
ever. I don't care if you're Bto B, B to C, mom, pop, being
corporate video is a key part ofwhat you do, and my short
answer, why? Because Google ownsYouTube. Just saying, I'm so
(01:50):
excited to get into this rightnow because I get to talk to my
friend and colleague, EricCarlson. Eric, thank
you so much for being on theshow today.
James, thanks for having me. I'mexcited to be here. Yeah. So
we're over 1000 miles away fromeach other, but yet we get to do
this. We get to see each otheras a technology is crazy, right?
Absolutely. Thank goodness. Didyou invent it?
No, no, I did not. I take nocredit or blame.
(02:14):
So I'd like to, let's forlisteners, let, let's
start with telling them yourbackground and who you are and
what you're about, sure, well,my background is probably the
definition of school of hardknocks, because if you go back
to it's about 20 years ago, verygood friend of mine who is super
(02:35):
talented and I worked with forseveral years, Leif Poland. He
came to me. We had done a coupleof little hobby films together
and some things just for fun.And he said to me, Look,
broadband is going to changethings, right? Of course, I
worked in tech at the time, andhe's like, now that people are
getting, of course, this is atthe time. It's DSL, right?
People are going to get DSL athome. Video is going to come to
(02:59):
people's houses through theinternet, and there's a whole
new opportunity for advertising.So we talked about it, and in
2004 we formed our own littleproduction company, and we
started just grassrootsmarketing this real estate
companies, catering company, youname it, golf courses. We just
started kind of door to doorselling the idea of putting
(03:20):
together these little videocommercials. And at the time, I
think Leif had a Canon GL two,he had a Mac, right? One of the,
this is like one of the oldbrick boxes, right? We grabbed a
couple lights from Home Depot,and, you know, some scrims. And,
I mean, do we, you want to talkabout a bootleg setup. This was
(03:41):
it. But we started, we startedshooting things, and we started
working with clients. And youknow, when I look back now, I
feel like, when I look at someof the stuff we shot early on,
I'm like, How did anyone pay forthis? But the idea was, here's
an opportunity for them tovisually start to tell their
story, who they are, what theydo, if it's a piece of property,
(04:03):
if it's a service they provide,and people were excited about
it. So we started back then.I've done a lot of different
things through the years, latheand I actually made a
documentary together back in2013 that we ended up, you know,
having on several platforms,Netflix and prime and so forth.
I went to work in the not forprofit sector for a few years,
(04:26):
and then in 2017 surprise, mywife and I have been married
almost 20 years, but we had ourfirst child. And so I went back
to work with scene lab again. Atthat time, Latha kind of, kind
of ventured into differentthings. So I took over the
business solo, but he stillserved as an advisor at that
point, and then over the lastfew years, a lot of what we do
(04:50):
is real estate on the brokerageside. So not so much like
property videos and Agentvideos, but more marketing for
teams. Is one of our big clientsis Sotheby's regional promos. We
work a lot in the tech sector.We work a lot in the commercial
real estate sector, and thenalso healthcare as well. So
(05:10):
those are our biggest ones. Weget a few outliers in some other
areas as well, but those are theones where consistently, we tend
to do that type of client work.Yeah. So if you're listening, I
know Eric's real. And some ofthe stuff he just mentioned, I
started visualizing some of thestuff that he shot, and they are
incredible. They're reallyincredible company. Yes, I'm
(05:32):
bragging on him, and no, I don'tget a percentage of money that
he makes. If you're in thatmarket. Eric is in the Hudson
Valley. But Eric, do you travelnow? Are you? Yeah, a lot of our
work is tri state, right? So NewYork, Connecticut, New Jersey.
But the way it tends to work issome of our clients, because
they have a national presence.We do shoot across the states.
(05:55):
And what's nice is we have mediapartners in Phoenix and San
Diego and Orlando, so it givesus some opportunities to be able
to help clients out withoutalways us locally, having to
travel, although on occasion wedo, our team will pack up the
gear and head, you know, todifferent spots to be able to
shoot things, you will have torevisit that conversation too,
(06:15):
going forward. Okay, so you saidsomething earlier about
storytelling. As part of, youknow, everybody has a story. I
would like to dig, dig deeperinto that, because, as you said,
you made a couple of films inthe beginning, and you know,
part of my background was doingthat. Well, that's two hours a
film's, you know, about twohours or 90 minutes at least.
(06:36):
You know, I think it's kind ofeasy to tell a story in that
amount of time. You know, heck,it's even easier to tell an
influencer story in two or threeminutes, but try to tell a story
in 30 seconds in a commercial,and people say, Oh, it's just a
commercial. It's justadvertising. It is a lot harder
than you think to have acomplete story. Can you can you
speak into that? Because it'ssomething you're very good at.
(06:58):
Man, I'll tell you. It goes backto, I think it was Mark Twain
who wrote right the and I'mgoing to misquote this to some
degree, so let's just put, like,you know, single quotes on it. I
apologize. I would have writtena shorter letter, but I didn't
have the time right. So hispoint was, what, it's hard to be
concise. It's very difficult.And so when you're talking about
(07:21):
a video, let's say to tell yourbrand story, or to share
something new about what yourcompany is doing or what your
organization's about to do.That's really tough, and when
people think a lot of times,what'll happen is clients will
come to us and they'll say tous, we want to do a video, or we
want to do a short film on this,and they'll start out with a
number, let's say they say, I'mgonna, we want to do a two
(07:43):
minute piece. But when we startkicking around ideas, and a lot
of times, they'll give us theirfirst draft of what they call a
script, and it's five minutes,right? And so it's like, Okay,
it's good. We want to, we wantto know what they're trying to
do so. So that's, that's for us,one of the first things we try
(08:04):
to do. And I don't want to jumpahead if we're going to jump
into process, but we try andascertain, Hey, what is it? What
do you expect from this? Who doyou want to watch this, and what
do you want their reaction tobe? And by knowing that, then we
can try and help them get wherethey want to go. Because, you
(08:24):
know, I'll use myself as anexample when it comes to certain
trades or skills. I might knowwhat I want to do or what I want
it to look like at the end, butI don't necessarily know how to
get there, right? So I need aprofessional come in and help
me. Hey, this is what I want todo. I know the things I don't
want to do or don't want to see,but I need someone to help me
get there. And so that's ourjob, is to find out what it is
(08:47):
they want to do and sometimeshow they think they want to get
there. If you could help themappreciate that might not be the
best route. Now, at the end ofthe day, they're the client, but
we'll just help share with them.I'll give an example. So we were
dealing with a client, we clientrecently, um, this company is
very successful in thecommercial real estate space.
Um, and you're very well known,I want to say top two or three
(09:11):
in the nation as far as whatthey own retail wise. And so
they had an idea for a piecethey're doing for a new property
in a major city in theNortheast, and they had an idea
on how they want to tell thatstory, and they came to us, I
mean, they really had put a lotof prep work into it. I was
super impressed. Their marketingteam's phenomenal. And they had
(09:34):
some, you know, some storyboardsthat they had put together, a
script that they had written,but in reviewing the script,
basically as a team, werealized, hey, there's a lot of
telling when there could be alot more showing. And so that's
the beauty. Obviously, whenyou're dealing with film and
video, there are areas where youcan become more concise by
(09:54):
giving the visual that tellsthat story without always having
to be so on the note. Lose witha narrative. You just hit it on
the head. We have four internsright now going through our
internship program, twostrategic and two design
focused, and one of them isinterested in scripts writing.
And we got into and he'sthinking feature film, of
(10:16):
course, you know? I said, Well,that's awesome. I said, Can you
apply the skill into a 32ndcommercial, and he they do mock
so he has a mock for his client.He's doing the strategy, and he
has a designer assigned to himdoing the visuals of that mock
brand, so they get to walk awaywith some real meat, you know,
so excuse me, in thisconversation, he said, Of course
(10:39):
I could do it. I said, really. Isaid, What would you process
but, well, it's the same thingas writing a long format script.
I went, Okay. I said, Well, tellme all the things you want to
say. You know your mom, you knowyour client, so what do you want
to say? And he went through awhole list of he was at like,
three or four minutes, you know,of meat. And they said, how do
we get down to one main pointwith a couple of bullets, and to
(11:02):
get the main point across ofwhat you want your listener to
remember. Oh, but they need tohear everything. I said in 30
seconds, absolutely. I said,Okay, go ahead and try it. I
can't. He's still working on it.By the way, he's his
internship's not over. And thenI threw him a bigger curveball
and said, By the way, it'sreally only 25 seconds, not 30,
(11:24):
because we need to be able tohave the brand come up, and it's
got to be something that we wavea flag on right, or jingle if a
jingles involved. And I said,but keep and you just you made
the point that I had made tohim. Keep in mind that you don't
have to say everything, becauseit's video, and like a light
(11:45):
bulb went off in his head. Hewent, Oh, and it's a moving
company that is his mock movingin storage.
He goes, I get it. And now Ithink he's pretty close. You
know, it to take the auditoryand the visual at the same time
is a world of difference. Andyou know, you and I both know
(12:06):
some of the media vendors inyour market, and I used to have
what I call intense fellowshipwith the radio people. And I
would argue that video isbetter, and they're like, audio
is radio is the best, and howcan you use anything? But we're
captive audience. I said, Ohyeah, because are you listening
to radio in your car? Radio hasa place sure for anybody if
(12:32):
you're listening, you know, butcommercials, the visual aspect
of it, allows you to really tellthat story in a much stronger
way. And James, you mentionedsomething that that cute, an
idea in my head, too. And Ithink you and I have may have
talked about this before, butlike, there was a book by Harry
(12:53):
Beckwith. He wrote, I mean,years ago, right? And obviously
he's one of the great marketingminds, you know, in recent
history. And one of the thingshe brought up, he had a whole
chapter devoted to this, and hewas talking about, how many
things can you include, conceptwise, when you're trying to
share an idea, right? And sothey did a test campaign on a
commercial. Was a carcommercial, right? The visuals
(13:14):
were exactly the same. In the32nd commercial, the visuals did
not change. But there were twoversions. One talked about how
the car, you know, theperformance was amazing. The
interior features were, youknow, second to none. And it
went through all these thingsthat the car had. And then the
next commercial, all they talkedabout was performance. This car
(13:35):
had amazing performance. It wasoff the charts when they did the
test. Basically there was twogroups of people in the first
commercial that shared all sortsof benefits that the car had.
Zero people said that they wouldconsider buying that car. In a
second test, 6% of the peoplecame back and said, I would
consider buying this car. Andwhen asked why, they said, well,
(13:55):
it has incredible performance,right? So the what's the point?
The point is, people, you thinkthat you need to share 100
important ideas of why whatyou're doing is great, but
people aren't prepared for that.And all that means is nothing
stands out. So it's better toshare a point or two about why
(14:16):
what you're doing is so gamechanging, or so different or so
interesting, and then peoplecome away with something. And if
you think you have someadditional points, well, that
sounds like something you'd wantto put in a completely different
film or commercial. You know,that's a separate point to be
made later on, right? Longerformat, more of an educational
kind of a thing. Maybe it'sshowing in the showrooms,
(14:39):
exactly. You know, behavioralscience is a key part of
marketing understanding humanbehavior, and I think video is
one of the ways that captures itthe most, because that process
that we're talking about backand forth is exactly what we go
through project by project toget the client the best effort
possible. So. So I want tochange subject for a second. I
(15:03):
know this. I know your answer,and you've kind of already
touched on it. But how importantis scripting to you in your
process? Oh, I mean, it'sessential. And you talked about
screenwriters earlier and tryingto, you know, educate them and
and bring them up to speed onthe difference between a long
form film and a commercial. Andsometimes what we found to be
(15:23):
helpful when you're dealing withthat is, at least for an early
meeting, putting a screenwriterin the same room with your
director, with your DP and maybeyour editor too. I mean, in some
cases, obviously, with smallerteams, your director might
actually end up being youreditor, which is great, but
putting those people in the sameroom to talk about it, because
(15:44):
that's where ideas on cullingverbiage but enhancing the
actual concept can really cometo light, and then the
screenwriter walks away withlike, Okay, I know how I want to
approach this. Yeah, yeah.That's one of the reasons I love
working with you, because thatprocess is my favorite aspect,
by the way. Not to brag evenmore about Eric Carlson and
(16:09):
scene lab. He is, Eric, you'rethe only producer director that
I can trust as as the agency andnot be there. I have given Eric
projects and know he is not onlygoing to meet what we need, but
he's going to exceed and come upwith things that well, that's
(16:31):
great. We'll use that instead.He they're just that good. Not
I'm gushing a little bit, but wereally heck. I want more work in
his tri state area so that Icould just keep working with
him. So if you're listening andyou're in the tri state, please
hire our agency so that we cangive Eric a lot more work.
(16:52):
We appreciate the trust and therecommendation. Yeah, it's and
it's earned, without a doubt it,
and I don't say it lightly,having been in the industry for
so many years and went all theway from PA to executive
producer and director in mycareer,
you're the real deal. So enoughlove.
(17:17):
Let's talk about all the waysthat video can actually be used
today, because it's so muchdifferent. All right? So I'm a
little bit, a few years olderthan you. You know, I've been in
the industry before, theinternet, yep, back in my day.
So it used to be, everything wasshot on film. Everything was
very intentional, only used forone specific purpose. So let's
(17:39):
talk about the way video is usedtoday and the many uses that it
has. Yeah, absolutely. I thinkthat piece to the puzzle when
clients start to realize that, Imean, I don't want to act like
nobody understands that. I thinka lot of people are
understanding that now. But wecall it, you know, repurposing,
right? There's a lot of ways youcan convert to it. We call it we
(18:00):
call it repurposing. So you comein and you say, Okay, we're
gonna create this short film orthis brand story, and here's
what our objective is, and whattends to happen right along the
way. And this is where there canbe really good compromise and
actually value add to theclient. So they say, we'll go
back to the piece about notincluding too much in one piece,
(18:21):
too many points, right? Theywant to include seven main
points. And it's like, Hey, canwe pare this thing down to two
or three at most? Right? Even,even if it's a one minute film
or a 92nd film. And then theysay, Well, we got to tell this,
and we got to tell that, but nowwhat you can do is create the
opportunities to capture thatadditional narrative, whether
(18:42):
it's an on screen interview,whether it's some additional B
roll that you're going to shootto demonstrate those points. And
then, depending on what it isthey want to share, those could
be things. So for example, maybetheir main piece, their 92nd
piece, they're planning on itsitting on their website. Maybe
they plan on it sitting one ofseveral professional platforms.
Maybe it's sitting on LinkedIn,or maybe it's sitting somewhere
(19:05):
else that's related to theirindustry. Maybe they're gonna
play it at an event. But then wecapture those additional things,
and we say this would be greatif you put it on one of several
social media platforms. Andsometimes we'll even while
filming, film certain portionsof what they want, not for the
main piece, but we'll film it,let's say vertical video, right?
(19:28):
And we'll say, Hey, we're gonnaput this we're gonna put this
one piece together for youraudience that we think will
reside on Tiktok. Or we're gonnaput this together, and this is
gonna be an Instagram story. Nowthey're finding new ways to take
the same content, or pieces ofthe same content, and kind of
distribute it out there todifferent audiences who are
going to, you know, take thatcontent in the way they choose
(19:50):
to. Because, you know, as weknow, not every age group or
professional group is on thesame social media platform,
which makes it very. Verydifficult for people to be
effective marketers. So otherways that we will also use
video, just so, you know,
so obviously, for television,
(20:11):
we also use it for OTT over thetop, which is streaming video.
Any places that you stream towatch anything, there's
commercials there as well.There's long formats,
educational videos, Eric said,website content, social content,
that same footage can berepurposed in different ways, as
long as you plan ahead and youscript for it and understand the
(20:34):
shots that you need to walk awaywith on your shoot, whether it's
a couple of days or a week ofshooting, depends on your needs.
We also this is one of my secretsauces. We will transcribe all
the video so we've alreadywritten the content, but we
transcribe everything so that wecan repurpose it and use it. So
(20:55):
for example, if Eric is on a joband he is interviewing and doing
like a live piece with somebody,and it's a Q and A kind of a
thing, but he's just promptingsome good content from the other
person. That content isinvaluable because it's not just
that industry content, it'scontent from that specific brand
(21:17):
company, and unique content isprobably the most valuable thing
you have when you're marketingyour business. And video plays a
very key part of it today. Wouldyou agree with that? Eric, or
Oh, absolutely, yeah. Andusually within a an
organization, right, there aresome key personalities that
(21:39):
people, either within theirindustry, or clients that
they're touching really want tohear from. So when you have that
person on camera, that's atremendous opportunity to end up
redistributing some of that,right? I mean, video is content.
You know, depends on how you useit. I think websites that don't
have video, I don't know whythey exist today. I think video
(22:01):
is such an important part of itbecause of the way it searches.
It's got to be built correctlyand not to I don't want to go
off on this tangent too much,but if you're listening,
understand that when you put avideo up on YouTube, for
example, I like YouTube betterthan Vimeo, purely because
Google owns YouTube. Google ownsYouTube. I say, I think I've
(22:23):
said it on multiple shows likeunderstand that, and then you'll
get it. So if you put it onYouTube, on the back end, you
have to put all the content.When we do it, we actually
transcribe the entire video andput all of the content behind
it. I want all those keywordsand phrases searching, not just
a sentence or two that one of myinterns or, you know, a content
(22:45):
person is typing up and say, Oh,just put this there. It makes it
extremely searchable. Why isthat important? Because it'll
drive traffic to your site. Ifyou don't understand why driving
traffic to your site isimportant. I really don't want
you to listen to the showanymore.
I'm kidding. This is why theyneed you. James, yeah. Well,
everybody
(23:05):
does. They just don't know it,right, right, right. It's we
both look at it like, why wouldthey do it any other way? Like
we have. We've seen some bad,bad marketing, and I have seen
videos that I can't, I justcan't Well, and I think that's
part of the P That's a piece ofthe puzzle as well, right? So
I'll go back to, let's say, forexample, I'm going to have
(23:28):
someone come in here and they'regoing to build a deck for me, or
they're going to, you know, puton a gazebo, or do whatever. If
I've, if I've chosen to hire aprofessional, it could be that I
don't just don't have the timeto do it. That's possible, but
it's also possible that I don'thave the skill to do certain
things. So when you hiresomebody that you actually
trust, right? Not just somebodyyou found, but somebody you
(23:48):
trust, where you're like, I havea good feeling about this
person, because conceptually,they're they're mirroring back
to me what I think I'm lookingfor, right? They get it, then
you got to trust that person,right? And not second, you know,
second guess everything they'retrying to do. And so we say that
not because we have try to havea big creative ego when we go
into clients, but we're asking alot of questions. We're
(24:10):
listening to what they'resaying. We're talking to the
team. We're doing research onwho it is they're trying to
reach. And then when we comeback with ideas and say, Hey, I
know you said you wanted tohave, you know, an on screen
narrator, or, I know you saidyou wanted to go about it this
way, but have you thought aboutgoing about it this way? It's
(24:30):
not simply to be difficult or totry and come up with our ideas.
We really want to think about,hey, what's going to reach the
viewer? What's going tomessaging wise, not just the
visuals, but the way they'redelivered what's going to hit
their target audience. Sohopefully that helps people to
appreciate if it's differentthan what they had put pen to
paper on early that may not be abad thing, right? Hey, Eric, for
(24:53):
the people you just mentioned, abunch of different types of
people, whether they have theskill set or they don't have the
skill set, let's say you. Got aniPhone. It's new. They shoot 4k
they're going to take the advicetoday from our conversations and
try to do some of this stuffthemselves, because they're on a
tight budget Talk Tech for asecond, and just kind of help us
(25:14):
through what that would looklike it because it really
depends on the format. Itdepends on where they're putting
the video. So just speak intothat a little bit. Yeah. So I
mean, anytime you're gonnarecord video yourself, whatever
you're using, you know, soobviously, phones are a big
source of people capturing videonow. And by the way, there are
feature length film directorswho have made this their niche
(25:36):
right recording on an iPhone andgetting it done. The great thing
is, and I'm using Apple just asan example, there are, there are
other great phones out therethat absolutely get the job
done. I'm just speaking to whatI'm familiar with, right? So
like Apple now has made thedecision that you could record
on your phone in ProRes, right,which is a really high quality
(25:57):
format. And so what you're goingto come out with that's editable
content as opposed to compressedcontent, right? So if you record
on a phone a lot of times, it'sin what's called h2 64 right?
And so it's compressed. Looksgood when you first look at it,
but when you start to put it upon a bigger screen after editing
and then re exporting andcompressing again, sometimes
(26:18):
it'll fall apart. So I mean,it's getting better and better.
And there's h2 65 which is evenbetter. Is even better
compression. Now my advice wouldbe, if you're going to try and
do that yourself, and if youthink you have a good grip on
the storytelling and themarketing piece, look at your
device, whatever you're using.It's a GoPro camera, right? It's
a little DJI camera, and thinkabout how to make the content
(26:43):
that's on screen the mostimportant thing, less about the
tech, more about really goodcontent. I have to say, I've
seen a lot of video out therethat was poorly filmed, I mean,
and maybe even the audio was notthe best, but the content is so
good, what the person is saying,or what they're doing or what
(27:04):
they're talking about is sogood, it doesn't matter. So if
you can just take the tech sideof it and make it the least
distracting possible, that'sgood. I would advise people to
maybe consult with a productioncompany and let them know, hey,
right now, we can't afford tofilm. But would you be willing
that we could pay you for acouple hours? You know one of
(27:24):
your creative people, preferablya creative with some tech,
right? And could we pay you fora couple hours for a consult on
how we could do what we want todo in house? And that's
something we're always happy todo with clients, because what
happens is we give them someeducation that's useful for them
to get it out the door, and theycan use their own you know,
people use window Movie Maker,or they use iMovie, or they use
(27:46):
something else on their tablet,right? And then at a certain
point, if they're using videoeffectively, they get the return
on it. And somewhere along theline, a lot of times, clients
will come back to us and say,Okay, we're ready for something
a little more highly produced.Can you help us out? So we're
always happy to help, kind ofget them started down that road.
We do the same thing for smallcompanies. We'll come alongside
(28:06):
them and just give them adviceand give them an initial
strategy, save money here, spendmoney here, try this, do this,
and hoping that they become abigger company. And maybe one
day we'll sing our praises. ButI get what you're saying. I
think that's good advice on theon the tech side. I didn't hear
you talk about so that footage,if it's raw footage, and they're
(28:30):
shooting ProRes, it'll come outat 4k or even higher, depending
on what they have. I mean, whenwe go up to 8k now, obviously
those files are going to be verylarge. So if the final product
is going to be on social mediaor for internet. Can you, is
there another way for them?Because they may not have
professional softwares like weuse to be able to scale it down
(28:54):
easily, you know, oh, I'm justgoing to export it for YouTube,
kind of a thing, if they'reusing, I don't know, iMovie, or
something really simple. Isthere a way for them, in these
simple programs, to export downto a lower format? Yeah, and
they could, I mean, they couldeven shoot on a lower format,
but I like to shoot a higherbecause it's better to be able
to take it down, right, becauseyou might want it later on.
(29:16):
Agree? Um, so, yeah, there are abunch of ways to take it, take
it down. In fact, inside iMovieitself, and a lot of, I don't
say a lot of people, some peoplemay not be aware that iMovie and
Final Cut Pro, for example, it'sthe exact same framework, right?
It's the same thing, only FinalCut Pro has more bells and
whistles built on top of it,right? So iMovie is great. A lot
(29:40):
of when just to date myself.Here, when young people come to
me and say, hey, I want to getstarted. I want to learn. I'm
like, use iMovie. It's a greatway to get started. Then if you
decide to switch to Final CutPro, obviously you'll see
similarities. But by the way,Premiere or Avid or resolve,
right? All these. Things,there's a ton of options, and
(30:02):
they all have a similar look andfeel. Um, and then, you know,
you may like one or the other,but they all can work to get it
done. And I think most peoplewho work, whether they're video
marketing companies or whetherthey're cinematographers, will
tell you it doesn't the the whatyou're using doesn't matter if
you would have the skill you canuse any of them and produce a
great product. But I agree withyou, James, make that you know,
(30:25):
the footage itself only needs tobe really at like HD level at
this point, it doesn't need tobe 4k 6k 8k right on the web, HD
is about as high as it is rightnow, I understand there's some
streaming services that claim 4kbut honestly, they're doing some
flavors to it where it's reallypretty compressed as well. Big
(30:46):
truth bomb, we won't name themthough. You said something a
second ago reminded me ofanother question, if you're
okay. So I've watched you foryears as you built your company,
and I've watched this companygrow and evolve and cool toys
and you know, better people,better equipment, better process
(31:08):
for the young video companiesout there, or the ones that are
just, hey, I
think that's what I want to dowith my life.
Even there's high schools thatare now teaching it in high
school, which is really cool,that it depends on what their
path is going to be on. Ifthey're if they go on to
college, they at least have adirection of where they're
headed and if they go into ourindustry. Is there any advice
(31:29):
you can give if they're startingout and they want to be their
own company? Yeah, absolutely.One is, don't be afraid to
attach yourself to a company andlet them know your goal like a
good you know, there arecompanies that, if you tell them
I want to eventually own my owncompany, or I want to do, you
know, via a director, or I wantto be a DP or whatever. There
(31:51):
are some who are like, Oh, no,no. We only want people who work
for us. But there are a lot ofgood companies out there who are
like, Hey, we're happy to helpbring you along and help teach
you benefit from your skill thatyou gain, and then maybe you
inform a good partnership in thefuture, right? So I'll just say
that for scene lab, most of thepeople we work with and who even
work for us are media partners,right? I don't have a lot of
(32:14):
employees that you're right. Asfar as like being an S corp, a
lot of them are media partners,and some of them, right? Not all
of them, but some of them arepeople I've trained along the
years, and they've gotten to thepoint where they're running
their own companies as well, butthey still love coming to do
work where the process is allspelled out. It's easy. They're
going to do one piece to thepuzzle or a couple pieces, and
(32:35):
they know exactly what toexpect, because we work
together. And I would say from,from an even higher level, when
you're when you're young,there's a lot of people out
there who know more than you I'mgonna say, you know, I'm nearly
50 years old, and there's stilla ton of, you know, I mean, I'm
gonna say million so that. Butthere's so many people who know
(32:58):
so much more about things,individual things, than I do. So
surround yourself with thosepeople, embrace the fact that
you don't know everything, askquestions, appreciate other
people's strengths. Becausealong the way, what's happened
to me is when I've done somemeasure of mentoring and
training, as I start to mentorthese people, you see areas
(33:22):
where they are going to be somuch better than you, they have
more skill than you, or theyhave a better eye, or they're
better with tech. And so alongthe way you're you start to say,
oh, this person is going toexcel here. That's not
threatening. That's fantastic.And so if you're starting out,
figure out surround yourself bypeople who either are smarter
(33:43):
than you or maybe they're not.Maybe you're a super smart
person, but maybe they're moreexperienced than you, and just
embrace that. And if you connectyourself with people who aren't
afraid to see you grow, they'renot trying to hold you back and
keep you in the same spot forthe next 510, 15 years, they
want you to grow. I think that'sa good opportunity, and it's how
(34:03):
we have some of the greatrelationships we have across the
industry. Is I'm not afraid ofthat conversation when someone
comes in and says, Hey, I'veloved working with you in this
capacity, but I think I want todo this now, and it's like,
okay, how can we help you to dothat? That's great advice. It
reminds me so quick story, soback in the day, so when I was a
(34:25):
producer, I've worked with twodifferent directors in the same
season. One was Bob Giraldi, andif you look up that name, or
know that name, he was thenumber one director in the
country for commercials. He mademore money than anyone. I won't
say the amount, because it mayembarrass somebody, but it was
insane, like whatever number youjust thought it was probably
(34:46):
more. Just know that. And I alsowork with a director named Bill
Mason Now, both of them verytalented directors. Bob had the
mindset of staying ahead of thetimes, staying. To the curve,
knowing what the next cool techPenguin's going to be. He was
about post production, and itwas why he was so well paid. He
(35:09):
would spend, I don't know,because I produced for him. He
spent maybe two hours on set anygiven day, point click, walk
away, go back into his trailerand do whatever he did for the
rest of the day, and we're doinglike, B roll and all that kind
of stuff. And I'm like, What theheck? And Bill was like an
actor's director. He was therethe entire time. He loved the
(35:31):
process, but he could care lessabout the rest of it. He on set,
is where he was capturing whathe wanted. Bill, all right, I'll
say the number, because it makesrelevant to the story, Bill made
6k a day, where Bob made 25k aday. So it taught me a valuable
lesson when I crossed over tothe agency side and into
(35:54):
strategy. I want to be Bob whenI grow up and I stay ahead of
the curve, I'm always learningwhat's next, what's the new
thing? Like, one of my biggestquestions in social media right
now is there's no new shinything on the horizon, and I'm
wondering why, like, have wemaxed out on social platforms? I
mean, there's a bunch of littlewannabes, but there's nothing
(36:17):
big. You know, have the big onesreally monopolized where we are,
and that's it, because that'sdangerous when that happens. So
I keep an eye on things likethat. I'm always looking ahead.
But you just gave the sameadvice to somebody. If you're
young and you're coming out andyou're starting a business, make
a choice. Do you want to be Bob,or do you want to be bill? And
there's no wrong answer. It'sjust, what do you want to do
(36:39):
with your life? What's yourpassion? Bob was passionate
about the tech, and he wasamazing at it in post
production. Man, there wasnobody that can touch him. I
learned so much from that manjust by standing behind him and
watching. And then I had amentor friend who he and I were
both executive producers,working at the same place side
by side, same title, same amountof money that we made a day, but
(37:02):
he had so much more experiencethan me. I mean, the man worked
on Star Wars, okay, so I wouldbe like, I'm not worthy, you
know, and bow to this man. Andhe brought me up, and I learned
so much from him what I thoughtI knew I didn't know, and it
humbled me, and it taught methat I can always learn from
others no matter where I am inmy career. So I love that you
(37:23):
gave that advice. I hope peopleheed it. You can apply it in so
many different ways.
Thank you for that, Eric. Ireally appreciate
it. Well. I like that, that thatmentality, James, and it's
obviously serving you wellstill, right? Because the other
piece of that is you reverse it,right? So I feel like, at this
point now, I'm learning a tonfrom people who are younger than
(37:45):
me, right? So, so I'll ask,like, somebody will come back
and they'll have shot somethinga certain way, or gone about us.
Or, I'm like, what? Why did youdo that? Like, what made you
want to do that? What, you know,what's your thought process?
Blah, blah. And I just find,like, there's so many things
that I would not have thought todo or, you know, purposefully
gone about. And, yeah, age, youknow, you see people who are
(38:08):
excelling in their teens, 20sand beyond. So to think the only
person who's sharing knowledgeor experience is the older
person, I think, is completelyinaccurate. And if, if you want
to stay relevant, as far as yourteam is concerned, meaning
collaborating with them andcontributing meaningfully, it's,
it's a two way street, and Ithink that's one of the things
(38:31):
internally that keeps usclicking, is there's a really
good dialog. It's not, yeah, theprofessionalism, the kind
treatment of people, the respectfor others. I do think that
comes from the top down, but youreally want to make sure that
people know that when you say,Hey, we love to hear you speak
(38:51):
up. We love to hear a questionor an idea that has to be
evidenced day to day by the wayyou treat people and the
reaction you have when peopleactually do come to you with an
idea that's very different fromthe way you're approaching
things, and you have to say,Okay, well, let me rethink this.
Why are we doing this? Whyaren't we doing that? You know,
it's everything we're talkingabout is biblical too. But let's
(39:12):
not that's a whole notherpodcast. That's true. It's true.
I have one more topic, and I wasmarinating on it as you were
talking say, Wow, do we talkabout this? It's we're already
kind of maxed out. Yeah, I don'tthink we're going to go there.
(39:33):
It'll be a long conversation forboth of us. So I'm going to,
I'll save that one for anothertime. All right. So Eric, one
last thing, I feel like I'vegushed about you enough, but I
want you how would somebodycontact you if they wanted to
Sure? So, um, scene labProductions is our company name,
(39:55):
right? You can find us on theweb at the scenelab.com um. Um,
we do a lot of work, as Imentioned, in the tri state
area. So, yeah, reach out. Youcan always reach me by phone.
I'll share my contact info ifyou want to be able to post it
on, you know, with with theYouTube link or with the actual
(40:16):
podcast link. But we're alwayshappy to help out the that's the
other thing. Is even consultingif we can help you out and just
getting some ideas started, soyou can kind of move down that
road. We're happy to do that.And we've found through the
years. And James, I know youfound this is the bulk of our
day to day work comes fromrepeat clients. So we do have a
few people who will come to usfor a thing, and then we don't
(40:38):
see them for quite a while, butmost of the people we work with,
it's repeat, right? So they seethe benefit in it, and then we
tend to have a long, longstanding relationship. So we
look forward to thatopportunity. We always are
looking for, you know, newrelationships and new ways to
help people. So yeah, we wouldwelcome a call. Eric, one last
question, what if I'm a client,what should I be looking for
(41:04):
when I want to hire a videoproduction company if I'm not
going through an agency? Yeah,that's a that's a tough one,
but, but a good one, right? Ithink sometimes people look and
they'll, you know, we hear a lotof times they'll be like, oh,
you know, my nephew has thisgear. Or, oh, this person just
(41:25):
graduated from film school, andthey do this. And, you know,
people, people try and refer togear, or, you know, a bunch of
different things that theyquantify as someone who can
assist them when they need totell their brand story. Or, you
know, share something abouttheir organization. Think, if
you're going to evaluate acompany to say, do we want to
hire them? Bring them in, sitdown and see if they ask the
(41:52):
right questions, and if theylisten, you know, it's the old
two ears, one mouth. So ifimmediately are coming in and
they're pitching you and they'rejust pushing, and even if their
portfolio looks pretty good, isthat going to be a good
relationship, and are they goingto be able to do what you need
them to do? But I do think oneof the things we've seen, and
(42:13):
even in other productioncompanies that are having a lot
of success, is they tend to askthe right questions, and they're
really good listeners, and thenthey can say, I think what I'm
hearing from you is this, am Iright? Is this what you want?
Okay, here's some ways we couldaccomplish that. So, you know,
more important than whatplatform they're on or what gear
(42:35):
they're using, or, you know, howmany years in the industry is,
does it seem like they have afirm grip on how to communicate.
If they can't communicate withyou and your internal team, they
certainly aren't going to beable to communicate your ideas
through film or video. Okay, onelast quick story. This just
happened not long ago, and itwas my moment of, what would
(42:56):
Eric do? So I'm sitting in frontof it was a video production
company. We were interviewingthem, and they came to our
office. They I got introducedthem by a colleague that's in
the industry, but they don't dothe magnitude of what we do.
They're they're a young company,and they say, Hey, you should
use these guys. They're awesome.We use them. It's like, okay, so
(43:19):
I kicked their tires, but it wasfor a small client and a small
budget. I said, So Tommy, Iloved everything that he was
saying. He asked, he asked somegood questions, had some good
information. And then we gotdown to math. And I said, Okay,
so here's the budget that Ihave. And it was, I mean, we
know numbers, it wasrespectable, but it wasn't out
(43:40):
of the park. You know what? Imean, it was like in the middle.
Kind of a thing. And I said, I'mgiving you everything I have,
because it's a tight budget,respecting you. Okay, no
worries, don't I'll just catchyou with the proposal in the
next week, and don't worry aboutit, and everything will be fine.
I'm like, great. So I'm planningon using I was like, All right,
wrote it in. He's going to be myguy. It was a Nashville shoot.
(44:03):
He came back almost 10 timesmore than the number I gave him.
I was like, Were you listeningto what I said? And then, like,
a day later, Hey, how's
that proposal? Are
you ready to move forward? Inever even responded. I
(44:23):
couldn't, yeah, plus, I wasflabbergasted. If that's still a
word in Wikipedia, I don'tunderstand, like you didn't
listen to what I said. I mean, Iget that. That's your math.
That's your math. Fine. Whydidn't you tell me that day?
Because I was ready to book.Yeah, right. Here's why we're
not able to do it within thatbudget, or here's why we're not
(44:45):
able to do what we justdiscussed within that budget.
Here's what we could do withinthat budget. Or, you know,
whatever it is. But yeah, onceagain, that comes back to
communication, right? And wewere talking one person, one
camera. It was insane. I waslike. Right? So we can say that
the market tries to just takeand take and take. This market
(45:06):
is tough. Nashville is extremelycompetitive. It's an awesome
market. I
love it here. Our company lovesit here.
We're really starting to, youknow, make the connections we
need to make.
But listening to your story, andI know that if they went direct
to client and they said thatnumber, some people don't know
(45:26):
better, and and I told you thatnumber, you'd be like, holy cow,
I'll
take that number all day. It wasinsane.
It was like, almost double, morethan double, the last job we did
together more than double for aone day, one camera, one person.
Yeah, it makes you wonder. Hey,listen, great work. If you can
(45:47):
get it, I guess if you can getit exactly, not with us. So
anyway, Eric, I am so gratefulyou were able to come on today.
I'm a little bit giddy. At myage, if I could still get giddy,
I don't know. Oh, man, thanksfor having me on, James. I
really appreciate it. And, yeah,good connecting again. And
(46:08):
appreciate you having me on as aguest. Yeah. And if you have, if
you come up with a differenttopic that you want to cover, I
don't know, maybe tiny homes, atsome point we'll have you back
on, fantastic,
very exciting.
So if you're listening today,thank you for being on. I hope
you got something out of it. Myheart always wants people to be
able to walk away and get somereally good information and use
(46:30):
for themselves. This isn't ashameless plug for the people I
have on. Okay, once in a whileit is today. It was just kind of
a gushy kind of a moment. Butit's not, if you notice, I don't
even say the name of myadvertising firm. It's
intentional. That's not why I'mdoing the show. I mean, feel
free to reach out to me if you'dlike. But that's not its
(46:50):
purpose. Its purpose is you walkaway, get some valuable
information, use it in youreffort to improve your marketing
on a regular basis, we talkedabout all different topics. As
you know, we have all differenttypes of guests on I'm really
excited about where the show isgoing. Please, if you love us,
download the show. That's theway to show some love and
comment as much as you wantpositive, negative, we're happy
(47:13):
to interact with you. If youhave any questions, I will
personally follow up with you.If you have a marketing
struggle. Just hit me up, happyto put you in the right
direction. Thank you very muchfor listening, and we'll see you
next time you.
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