Creatives Grab Coffee - Benefits of Co-Directing (ft. Light House) | Creatives Grab Coffee 29

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov from Lapse Productions. Our goal is to make the video production industry smaller by creating a sense of community. Whether you are a creative, an entrepreneur, or a professional there is knowledge for you to learn. Join us as we have industry professionals from around the world come on the show and share their insights on the industry and business. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Welcome to Video Production. Today we're joined by Brett Connors from Light Factory, a video production company based out of Calgary that focuses on creating video for brands and arts. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - Intros 07:46 - important systems 10:45 - business audit 15:10 - Team Structure 17:32 - Co-directing 29:42 - Tik Tok 35:50 - Social media variations 37:50 - Attention spans 42:20 - Branded docs 47:25 - Outro To view the post for this episode, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/benefits-of-codirecting-creatives-grab-coffee-29/ To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/creatives-grab-coffee/ Subscribe and follow for future episodes! Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee https://www.instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffee/ Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.com Instagram: @lapseproductions https://www.instagram.com/lapseproductions/ #videography #videographer #videoproduction #businesspodcast #videoproductionpodcast #lapseproductions #creativesgrabcoffee #videomarketing #videographers #videoproductioncompany #videoproductions #videoproductionservices #videmarketingstrategy

All right, let's get into it, guys. Welcome, everybody, to Creatives Grab Coffee. Today, we're joined by Brett from The Light Factory, a video production company based out of Calgary that focuses on creating video for brands and arts. Welcome, Brett. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Let's dive right into it. One thing we typically like to do at the beginning is kind of hear a little bit about your background, how you, into the business of video production and how you've gotten to where you are now? Um, I guess I technically started, uh, we started our business in 2014. So I own a company with another guy named Brett, which has been our biggest, like marketing win ever. Cause everyone just refers to us as the

Brett's. Um, they have no idea what our company name is you should have just called it the bretts i seriously like we i was gonna ask if you were brothers because when i noticed that on the website i was wondering this can't be that they don't look similar but how weird would it be if they how weird would it be if they were brothers and their parents just called them both by the same name. I thought it was a last name at first. Oh yeah. No, no. So we met in university, went to the University of Lethbridge and down there, there was a fine arts program called New Media. So this covered a bit of film, a bit of art, a bit of graphic design, animation, all that stuff. It was a liberal arts degree. So this covered a bit of film, a bit of art, a bit of graphic design, animation, all that stuff. It was a liberal arts degree. So you had to do some fun history courses and animal psychology and all that stuff to fill up the degree. And we both of us focused on as much

film as we could in that program. And we did a short film project um and other kind of university projects the last couple years of school and very organically out of school uh we jumped into doing some short films so Brett got a government grant and we shot a short couple years out of school they did quite well um and from there it was quite organic like he was working at a bar at a time and this was our first corporate gig we were asked to do a kind of a cooking competition video this was in 2012 so we did that we thought it was pretty cool. And from there, you know, doing part time work and getting slowly through word of mouth, getting more and more projects on the go very organically became a company. It was like, OK, we're actually gathering clients. We're getting computers and learning how to edit and getting cameras. And it just kind of slowly grew from there. And 2014, we officially incorporated.

And again, it's just kind of been a steady growth up until now. So you guys didn't exactly come with the decision right from the beginning. All right, we're going to create a production company. And this is what we're going to do over the next few years. It just kind of progressively went into that direction. So I guess you guys were just kind of going with the flow. Yeah. I mean, honestly, yeah, there was, and there's never really been that big of a huge goal set on, on what the company would be. I think think especially the time that we started like in 2012 2014 um video production you know was changing all the time you know the accessibility of these cameras the canon mark ii which like

changed everything um it was hard to plan anything really i never wanted to own a business per se. I just liked video work. So really coming, coming from wanting to do film and making short films and stuff, you know, I guess that's where it started. And when the reality of kind of doing corporate work and commercial work and music videos and stuff, I think we were both quite flexible in our career paths and understanding that this is pretty cool. Like we can get our creativity out in this way. So you basically move from project to project as like a starting point, because I agree with you that that time around 2012 to 2014, that was roughly around the time that Dario and I also started. And I remember everything was completely changing, you know, every, every five, every, every five, every few weeks or so,

there would be a new camera, a new light, a new tutorial, constantly shifting. So it's hard to plan, obviously, but because we were also starting out, we were also just learning as we went, right? All we, all it was, was from one project to the next, to the next, to the next. But obviously, you know, after a while we have to think to ourselves, okay, how do we plan going forward? So how did, how long did it take for you guys to get to that point? To get to like a legitimate company, I guess is what you mean.

The mindset more so as well, because it's one, it's one thing to incorporate a business. It's another thing to also start treating it like a business, right? Yeah. I would say we're still learning that very much now. We, this is actually quite funny. So Brett's wife was doing her MBA program last year and she, as their final project, they had to pick a company and do like a business evaluation and business plan for them. So she suggested doing us and we were quite hesitant.

Like, we're not like really a real business here like are you sure you're going to get all the information that you guys need um you know like is this going to be a legitimate thing for you guys to do we're so tiny we're just kind of it almost still feels like we're freelancers in a way but it was interesting like they they went in and did an evaluation and audit basically of how we operate in our business and a lot of it we came out with like a huge amount of knowledge of in a third party looking at what we how we actually operate um and a lot of it you know where we don't didn't go to business school so you know it was just filing away and all of our information's on dropbox and we somehow

organically created structures and stuff to operate um and not go under as of yet but you know the amount of suggestions and stuff that they've given us to to operate and set goals and you know kind of just structure it in a, in a far more efficient way has been super interesting. So I would say, you know, even now we're learning so much about structuring it, uh, properly. Um, but it probably wasn't from 2014, I would say to maybe 2017, 18, when we're actually getting a full year's worth of work is when it was like, oh, this is legitimate. Let's make some plans and kind of go full, full bore on this thing. It makes sense that you guys had to structure it in a way where it would be self-sustaining, because if you are getting to the point where you're getting work and it's filling up your whole year's timetable if you're

just kind of if you got your head in the clouds it's just not going to become sustainable right it's just going to fall like apart right so it makes sense that you guys were able to kind of form like systems in a way right what would you say you say, what would you say, um, um, some of the most important systems have been that you guys have developed for your business? You know, I mean, it's, it's simple, but kind of just, we knew what we were good at, I think at the beginning. And it was like, I think it was client relations. It was being, being very real with people. And I mean, in that way, that was almost a system. We knew how we were coming off and we knew what our,

yeah, what our positives were. So it was, it was kind of developing and maybe unsaid just how, how we dealt with clients and what the kind of review process would be like with them. How we follow up with them in terms of, I guess, structures. It was, it was keeping, you know, making a on Dropbox, like just categorizing everything as much as we could saving projects and outputs and and archiving everything we needed to

um that was the big thing and just being like I guess super conscientious and not crazy creatives like we're I myself I'm quite conservative in just, I don't know, making sure everything's clean and put away and in the right place and stuff. So we, yeah, I guess that's how we work together and organized it. Yeah. We're, we're running kind of into an issue lately where we have to just get on top of our, our, our organizational skills. I feel like we don't even use Dropbox, we use Google Drive. And sometimes that folder gets so messy and we have to create subfolders within subfolders.

And then sometimes we can't find stuff and it's because it's just a mess. But yeah, it's good that you're keeping on top of that because it can get out of hand very easily, especially once the workload increases. You have to do audits. You have to do audits of it every now and then in terms of hand very easily, especially once the workload increases. You have to do audits. You have to do audits of it every now and then in terms of your internal systems, how efficient it is after a while, because we had a few systems where it's like, okay, we can do laps 2.0, laps 3.0

in terms of different ideas that we have. And then we realized about a week ago, okay, we got to consolidate everything a little bit more, keep it as bare bones as possible. So we did that. And now obviously after a while, after a few months where it's probably going to get a little bit more disorganized again, you know, with all the other things that we throw in there. One thing that I thought was interesting though, because you don't have a business background, how, how interesting did it seem for you to look at your business from an outside perspective,

how other people viewed your business? Because we as entrepreneurs don't always get such a structured view of our business from other people, you know, just little comments and passing things like that. We would tip, any of us would typically get, but you got a whole audit. And how did you judge your business based on seeing what that audit was like? audit and how did you judge your business based on seeing what that audit was like? Um, I think it was in a lot of ways, it upped our confidence just to see how we're being perceived, you know, whether, I mean, most people, you know, take a look at your website and Vimeo,

see a bit of a demo reel and you get a pretty good, uh, in that, I think people's opinions are formed, you know, immediately through that. And you can never, it's so hard to look at your own website and not see its faults and what it's missing. Um, at the same time, I guess, contradictory, you'll look at it and go like, well, I think that, that, At the same time, I guess, contradictory, you look at it and go like, well, I think that that that's saying everything that we need it to say. So I think seeing it from their perspective, like I said, some things it looks like we were doing well, like, you know, with stuff like, yeah, look at these great Google reviews. reviews that's a that's a big thing to have on there um and just seeing i guess getting feedback on the work again and the testimonials and all this great stuff so but i mean what's missing is also a gargantuan amount of just i guess goal planning and kind of where this thing's going um and kind of and really the the numbers like

you know obviously we're saying we got a full edit so it's looking at our competitors and how they quote versus how we quote and invoice and you know all that stuff about markups and not marking up like we were doing it quite haphazardly in a way, you know, we, we have our, we have our rates and, you know, we want to stick to them, but we're quite flexible and that's basically how you run it. Like you're just trying to get work like that. And eventually, you know, we've put together these structures, but yeah. What did I learn from it? Um, how much we still need to do

and some of the stuff that has worked, keep on doing it. What is like one of the first ones? What is the first thing that you think you might have to do after that? Or after you had that happen, what was the first thing that you tackled? The biggest thing was probably getting on a system to do invoices and quoting a bit differently. Like we would just do it through Excel and, you know, keep them on Dropbox. It was not being recorded on any sort of internal system. And hours and stuff as well was really hard to record accurately.

I mean, we were doing it in our heads or you write it down and kind of you're getting in that zone. But like that was probably the biggest thing. So you guys need a system that you're recording like more accurately, everything that you're doing and in a quote, an invoice system, that's not just Excel. That was the biggest thing. We we were doing our invoices manually too, at the beginning,

then we switched over to Wave Accounting. Oh, my God. Yeah, that thing is an amazing piece of software. Photoshop. We were doing it in Photoshop before. I was like, Carol, we need this invoice. He's like, oh, it takes a while. Give me a second.

I'm like, come on. I need it right now. He's like, okay, you try it. He sent me the Photoshop file. And I was like, there's got gotta be an easier way to do this. Cause we were trying to make it fancy at the time, you know? And then, and then we had this discussion where we were thinking to ourselves, who are we trying to be fancy for with the, with the invoices, their accountants, they're not going to care. They're numbers people who cares. We went online and we found wave and

we've been using it since the beginning. That thing it's amazing yeah that's just it that we were it was the exact same thing we're all worried about how how it came off and the and the logo and stuff but like you said they really just care about the the number at the end really so just make sure you're categorizing it and recording it properly so in terms of let's, let's go to, uh, your team structure right now is just, uh, the Brett's the UN and Brett number two. Um, is it just you guys? Do you guys have like other people on, on, on payroll or, uh, we have yet one, uh, we hired someone in January Haley, who is awesome. She's kind of our project manager, production coordinator. And we had her on doing contract work through October when a couple of big projects came up.

She has experience doing some producing for TV, and she was kind of fresh out of school as well. So like super eager to do everything so anyway she is now part of the team and we're not gonna give her the honorary brett title she'll be her own person so it is us three now which is like it's been such a difference it's unreal just the amount of stuff that you realize that you know we had to do internally like a lot of the bookkeeping and and all that um hayley is kind of a jack-of-all-trades she's jumping into everything doing instagram and little edits there and producing and bookkeeping and in mid work and everything so it's um us three and of course, on bigger projects, we've got a whole community here that's quite strong.

And we all use each other for different projects and bring people on, kind of expand and contract. It's good that you guys brought her on via contract work at first so you guys can see how well you two worked together before you brought her on for a more permanent role. That's a really good way of going about it. In terms of like what you and Brett do, is everything kind of split down the middle with you guys? Or does one person focus more on like the business side of things

and the other person more on the creative? It's split down the middle basically we all we have our strengths um uh i probably do maybe a bit more just straight editing um brett does you know a lot of the design and motion graphics work that we do um but yeah other than that like we rerun it just straight um we we do the same things basically kind of produce and direct on on bigger projects like the biggest thing actually that i guess was a unique thing and maybe you guys do the same thing is that we co-direct projects um and this even now like it's that's quite i think unique for crews to understand or clients um you know it'll be like oh who's directing it and who's producing it we just found that especially on big corporate stuff or commercial

stuff there's so much for one like director to do that we can kind of split it up and we have such a shorthand and back and forth that you know you got to be on the day involved in the vision as it's happening at the same time there's all this external you know you got to talk to the client or talk about getting food for lunch or whatever and we're just kind of like passing back and forth off of each other so that's kind of how we direct on set is together that's very similar to us as well. Like we've developed this kind of like fusion mix of co-directing and almost co-producing at the same time. Cause like you said, well, actually you said like on bigger sets, it's, it's harder, but I find that on smaller sets,

it's almost harder. And those roles have to kind of intermix with each other because again, you don't have, it's not unionized. again you don't have it's not unionized so you don't have one person doing one specific job on that set it's kind of like everyone has to kind of wear multiple hats and like let's say if you have freelancers on board like they all have their own roles that they're doing but like for us since we're running the whole gig like we do have to produce it direct it sometimes be like the cinematographer in terms of like, okay, like, no, this is kind of not the vision we have in mind,

has to be a little bit more in line with that. But it's interesting to hear that you guys are also co-directing it because to date, like, I think I, like Carol and I are one of the few companies that we knew that would, are doing that. But it's good to know that there's another company out there that's also doing it.

And it's also good to know that it is working, right? Because normally when you think of co-directors, there's normally not a lot of co-directors out there, right? Otherwise, you'd see big names up there, but usually you don't. It's always that one person, right? Yeah. It's because it doesn't typically work. And in terms of aside from the companies that within our network, as Dario mentioned, you're probably the only other company that we know that does a very similar approach. And even out there in the creative world, I've looked at the work of hundreds of directors and cinematographers over the years. And the only one that comes to name that has a kind of co-directing

style is this, are these two brothers, I think called the twin towers, uh, that I remembered. I haven't seen their work in a little while, but I remember they had really striking, uh, work that was really interesting. And I thought, okay, this is the only other in a way case study that I found that is where this potentially does work. So it's not that it's impossible, but it's very dependent on the relationship you have with the other person, you know, whether it's a family or close friends who have, uh, who've been working together for years, like, like the, like our two companies are people who might seem like family, but are actually just friends, you know, the breaths.

Well, it makes sense in these circumstances. it's like okay if you guys are both running the business and you start off as videographers move into running a video production company if the chemistry is right and like you guys both want to take up that mantelpiece it makes sense that co-directors would come out of that situation right whereas like i feel like yeah in other situations it'd be rare yeah yeah i mean i hope it gets more accepted and it's more understandable especially for creative agencies where a lot of it like optically is oh you know who are they getting to direct um you know yeah just hopefully they're not they become more accepting of it and understanding that you know maybe getting two people if it works um is going to be a stronger vision like you a lot of directing i think is uh

has to do with confidence or perceived confidence and just saying yes that's what i yeah that makes sense and do it this way and do it that way even Even if you don't know if that's, that's the right approach to take, you just kind of have to go one way or the other. But I think with two people, you can be quite honest with each other, having a quick creative discussion and also just getting different options, you know, and contradicting each other is completely fine too. Yeah, it just seems like it's always seemed like a weird thing for one pitch the co-directing thing or in those situations, you guys just go like, okay, just one of us will go do it? but, uh, you know, we have a bit in the past and of course are wanting to work with them more. And that's been actually a big question. Um, the times that, so the times that we've worked with, uh, creative and marketing agencies, some of the projects have been smaller, so they don't really, the optics thing is not there. so it's just going out and shooting a small corporate

but you're working with them there are the you know they're the creative and you're kind of facilitating just the shooting um in that case they don't seem to care who's actually doing it or directing it and stuff um but there is a bit of confusion. Like for instance, we just had, um, a meeting the other week and, you know, the, the question came up, um, who's on your director's reel, who's on your director's list. And, you know, we did explain to him the co-director thing. That's what we kind of generally do, but we can also bring in people. But it is still pretty foreign to them, I think, that aspect. And we're trying to right now, we're kind of in the middle of doing a website revamp and getting a new design and everything um is how we're going to advertise ourselves on the site you know is it you know really blatantly put it out there that we're

co-directors or we're separate directors um it is a question that we're asking ourselves right now kind of specifically to advertise for the creative agencies that have perhaps a more older view of the structure of like a film set it all depends on the the type of work that's coming in and the people that you're typically collaborating with for dara and i for example all the projects that that we work on or pitch on uh the clients are always curious about the idea the project how it will be executed and they come to laps for example for the team that's how we always pitch it we we makeshift uh we mentioned you know like it's going to be darren and i leading the project and we have our team of people that we bring in based on what the

needs to the project is that's how we've always structured. Never has there been a question of who is directing, who is cinematography, who is doing that. They don't care. As long as the end result is what they want, whatever we, in terms of who's putting it together, as long as they basically come to us because they trust us. And that's the type of work that we do. us. And that's the type of work that we do. Whereas for you guys, I guess, because you work with a lot of those types of clients, agencies, and companies, because they have that type of view, you have to adjust your business model in a way to kind of help facilitate that as well. So it's all about adapting essentially at the end of the day. Yeah, that's just it, you know, and yes, sticking to that, that sounds, you know, perfect. That's how it should be.

I think they trust you to execute however you want to do it. Totally. But yeah, you do have to work within their structure sometimes or speak the same language as they do. Well, the reason is because you're essentially working with, for example, if you're working with an ad agency, they're the ones that are client facing, right? The client with them doesn't really care who's getting the work done, right? In a way, Dario and I are just cutting out the agency in a way by working directly with the client.

Whereas if you're working with a production or with an advertising agency, they're going to be a little bit more picky in terms of who they bring on for these certain projects because they have a certain vision. They want to make sure the people that come on board can help execute that vision. I mean, we all do that ourselves with the people that we hire, you know, shooters, DPs, editors, especially to make sure that they have the capabilities to execute that particular vision or, or video products. So it, that's essentially why it is what it is like that yeah yeah no great point yeah they want to get it though because it's like imagine if you hire like a dp and he brings on like a second shooter but then between them it's a shared role like i feel i feel like i would be confused on my end no depending does it make sense so like I just think about it. I kind of get, I kind of get why now they just want one.

I think, I think, I think I put it best though, where it really depends on in what role in what chain of the production you are, you know, if you're the production company, then there's an advertising agency between you and the client. There's going to be more of that type of buffer. You know, at the same time, if I bring on a, uh, an audio operator, I'm not going to be questioning the exact brand of every little tool that he's using. As long as he is able to, as long as I am able to let him know what type of audio we need to record the amount of people that there are, then if they say they can do it, they can handle it, take care of it. Great. That's, that's, that's all I need.

You know, it all depends obviously. Right. Yeah. And of course they don't want to pay two people for one role. I mean, that's probably. I think that's the source of it all. It all comes down to money, right? If they think, Oh, there's two. So do I have to pay double? If they think, oh, there's two. So do I have to pay double? Truly. Yeah. It's funny how, you know, there's all these questions about how you present yourself and advertise

yourself and your services. Wait, so do you guys like charge twice? Like the rate as like a team thing or how does that work? like charge twice like the rate as like a team thing or how does that work we we do have our own individual charge again usually we're also like there would be like one less producer so okay okay that makes sometimes we do break it up on a quote, say director, producer, but on set, we're directing it. That's exactly what we do. That's what we do. We have producer, director.

We have producer slash director. And then it's director slash cinematographer. It's just for us. The client doesn't care they're paying the same amount they're paying the same amount but you know to us it's like okay we know our own roles oh uh one thing i noticed that was pretty interesting on your website that i haven't seen any other company do yet. The TikTok thing, right? Exactly.

Yeah. Your visual context studio for everything except TikTok. Tell us the backstory of that. Well, that was put on some time ago before I didn't realize how big TikTok would be. Literally, we're now doing videos that I think have been put up on TikTok. Whether you want it or not yeah we didn't really know too much about tiktok like we didn't really dive too deep into it until we started we start we restarted the podcast this year and i was like okay we still have it we still have it no no we started posting regularly we get we get quite a bit of hits

on that actually it's kind of wild. Like, yeah, yeah. Like, we've been posting just highlight clips on there. Because we started posting on Instagram Reels. And then when I looked into Reels, I was like, wait a minute. This is just a copycat of TikTok. Then I checked out TikTok. And I'm not going to lie.

It's kind of dope. I've noticed he's started to share videos from TikTok a lot lately. I'm like, oh like oh no it's happened once dario gets once dario gets into something he goes full full steam pretty cool man like the suggestions are a lot better than on instagram so now i'm kind of trying to talk like our friends group into joining it because i always have to share the link so i gotta copy the link and then go to whatsapp and post it there instead of just directly sending it over there. Why resist? Why resist? Yeah, I mean, it does bring

up a pretty good point. Like it's actually kind of ignorant for us to put it on there because, you know, you never know like where video is going and the value and where that value is going to be placed. So, you know, you have to be adaptable to whatever the distribution models are and they're changing all the time. So, yeah, I say that, but at the same time, you know, we're, you know, we're doing YouTube pre-roll, you know, commercials and clips and stuff now. So it's important to be, to understand, you know, what all these new apps and stuff that come out and how they're delivering video and what's gaining a bunch of traction there. Cause at the end of the day, your clients are using those and they want to, um, you know, they don't want to be behind and you got to keep up with the trend, I guess.

Well, the other thing too, is that all these platforms just copy each other. So before you know it, you might not like TikTok, but Instagram copied it. And then as soon as you post a reel on Instagram, you can cross post it onto Facebook. So now you got that happening on two platforms. And then YouTube also did youtube shorts so boom there's another one then you can also post the same tiktok video on on youtube as its own thing it'll just post like it will be on tiktok like it's they all like just copy each other so before you know it it's like everyone's just using the same stuff but i get it i i totally hated the vertical video until i realized you know what i watch most of most of my content is

on my phone, which means it's all vertical content. So as much as I hate it, I get why it's so popular. And to be honest, it's a lot more convenient when you're just scrolling on your phone, right? As much as I hate it as like, you know, cinematographer, director, all that jazz, like I hate nine by 16. but it's also very convenient. But here's the good thing though, is that what people don't realize is that if you're already creating the content for one of those platforms, like you mentioned,

because everyone's copying each other, it's like getting a video and you're able to post it on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, or whatever, you know, with the 16 by nine. But now that it's nine by 16, you know, there's, as you said, Instagram shorts, YouTube, Instagram reels, you know, with the 16 by nine, but now that it's nine by 16, you know, there's, as you said, Instagram shorts, YouTube, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, TikTok. If you've created for one platform, you've created for all of them. So it's not like you have to think too much extra about those particular platforms. Yes. Obviously there's obviously different

audiences, you know, you might have to think like that. But at the same time, if you want to create content that is evergreen and can go on to different platforms like got to, you know, go into the camera settings, figure out where the marker section is and then do nine by 16. And then now it becomes a matter of, do we have enough time to shoot the regular 16 by nine and nine by 16? Or we just simply do this. Yeah, but you just double the amount of time it takes to shoot content, right? I know, I know. That's the thing. I don't think anyone's figured out yet it's like okay if you're on a timed like if you don't have that much time like how do you do it like you're gonna have to just compromise and then just frame

it in this weird way where you could use it both as 16 by 9 and 9 by 16 which i hate because it's always like the weirdest type of framing you have to do and then sometimes when you're looking at it sometimes when you're looking at you get confused for a framing you have to do. And then sometimes when you're looking at it, sometimes when you're looking at it, you get confused for a moment. You have to add those like, you know, the safe safety markers. You got to darken those all the way. So it's like, okay, I'm specifically shooting this way. Yeah. No, yeah.

It's funny. Like technology just dictates a lot of what we end up, you know, having to do the technology fits us into the, the content in a way, or the, you know, the barriers of how we shoot the content. But yeah, if it, if that's, yeah, it makes sense, you know, portrait video a lot of the time. I mean, now, now our minds, like it just takes a while to adapt of the time. I mean, now, now our minds, like it just takes a while to adapt to different things. I mean, now when we talk to clients and this is the thing that's, you know, only a couple of years old for us, we will, if they say we want a five minute

edit of this or a two minute edit of that, and they don't say initially that they want social edits or the tiny smaller edits we'll just suggest that to them because they'll want them at some point so we always kind of as a package almost kind of feel like yeah like also think about these edits as well because it'll be awesome for you guys to have that we're starting to incorporate that in our packages as well so like it'll be in the whatever package is above the basic one we'll also include like a social media package so yeah it'll have like 9 by 16 edits or cuts of the videos right or shorter versions of them for in case they want to market them on youtube right like 5 15 30 second ones right because we we didn't have those before and like sometimes we were kind of like i don't think we even brought it up it was kind of like if they wanted it but

now we're just going to say they would ask yeah yeah and it also makes sense when we're beefing up the the packages uh yeah it makes sense when we're trying to beef up our packages, right? So just to distinguish them one from the other, it seems like a good way to do it. Yeah. It all depends on the client and their needs. Obviously, if it's an internal type project, they may not necessarily need the social for anything that's outbound. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually curious how this is going to play with a lot of branded documentary type projects specifically, because those are still big favorites, uh, for a lot of companies. And I noticed that you're, you guys do do quite a bit of those as well. I've seen,

you've done one for sport check and a few other companies as well. Um, so I'm curious how that's going to shift into the nine by 16 form because they're long stories they're not necessarily uh they're not necessarily you know little short bite-sized bits but you know well it's easy you just short you just shorten the story carol the attention spans are not that long i know i know you can have what i mean is how long cut what i mean is like his they're going to be that same value for them being shorter than compared to them being longer over, over the longterm. I'm just curious to see kind of where it goes or how it's ever been at the same time. The question of value, I think, you know, on a branded documentary, I think the value does cheapen and lessen the, you know, making these short little edits, but I guess it's working as a teaser for the larger thing. That's great. At the end of the

day, I think they just want content content is big you know getting eyes on logos and and directing you to a longer piece of content but yeah like i'm sure you guys know when you're filming these kind of larger stories or corporate story or profile story these documentaries you know you're you cut it down so much, you know, you're, you cut it down so much, even, you know, you've this two hour long interview and you cut it down to five minutes, you know, it's a lot of cliff notes and about their actual story. Anyways, it's takes a lot to make it feel complete and, and kind of this worthwhile emotional journey. So, yeah, I don't really know where I'm going with this, but it's, even those are tough to do.

Even, you know, taking these big stories and making them five minutes, like you're just losing so much. But at the same time, you know, apparently people don't want to be watching something so long well who has the time right like even everyone's time is limited it's like okay i don't have time to watch like a 20 minute video and then like if i do that i use up all my free time right so it makes sense that like like you said well you can have like the teaser for the long version right

that's the best way to do it because like yeah okay you can keep like the teaser for the long version, right? That's the best way to do it. Cause it's like, yeah, okay. You can keep making long form content with no shorter versions of it. But, but, but if you don't get eyes on it, A, you won't get money to do it a second time. And B, it'll never happen again. Like if you look at all these, you look, you got to look at all these platforms like TikTok, for example, the maximum length of a video is three minutes. What does that mean?

That means that based on their research, no one is going to watch it past the three minute mark. And I think if you look at their statistics, the sweet spot is the one to two minute angle, right? So based on their research, if their research suggested that, hey, you know what? Everyone loves long form content. They would have raised the time limit to five, 10 minutes, right?

But if they keep it at max three minutes, that tells you everything right there. Like, I mean, these are like billion dollar companies. So they have like a lot of money at their disposal to do this research. Right. If you look at a company like Facebook, they leave their reels limit at one minute. So that tells you right there, based on their research, no one's going to watch it past one minute. Right. But again, they've created created the borders they've created the borders for us to work within right no it's i don't think i don't know i don't i wouldn't say it's them i would say it's the research they did so then it's basically they're just telling us hey if you guys if you want to get a lot of eyes on this follow this format right because it's not really them they go based on their

research it's not like they're They go based on their research. It's not like they're making numbers up in the air, right? But I guess that what that says to us is that as storytellers, we have to get really good at just being able to tell a story within that timeframe. Yeah. Or make something flashy at least, or eye-c catching or poppy there is. Yeah. I do wonder in five years, say, you know, what, what does Tik TOK look like? Is it, are people going to get more relaxed and want to watch something longer? I think maybe it's like, it's a medium length that people don't want to deal with. I mean, it's really easy to watch something, say it must be like up to a minute or that, you know, that's a, that's a maximum.

You'll watch something for a minute or you'll watch something for a thousand minutes, but you can't watch something for 20 minutes. You know, the movies are getting longer TV series. You know, just want to watch it so long and you want to listen to podcasts that are three hours, whatever, but it's that medium length that, although maybe it works better for a documentary, you know, we actually can't play with it because I guess no one's going to watch it for 20 minutes.

The other thing I wanted to quickly touch upon was because you guys have already worked on some branded documentary type projects, how did that conversation go with the client in particular? Did they come to you with the story or did they come to you with a need for basically a particular need that they wanted video to solve? And then you help them find the stories for this and you pitched a branded documentary to them. How did that go? For the few that we've done we certainly haven't pitched straight up pitch the idea i mean sport check was different as in they had this series going already so that was

like working with kind of their their creative teams they're kind of their own creative agency in a way and we worked in executing their vision having said that like we had a huge leeway in um what we were capturing where we were going what we were doing the interview you know we gave and we edited it like had very little direction actually in in what the final product would be. So it was almost more reactive. You get the idea and then we give you what we made and there was a bunch of leeway there. Another, I think they're just quite popular because they cover, i mean doing a profile documentaries on people a lot of companies it's almost like a testimonial right like there's a lot of you know you can do them on employees in the company or clients that they've had they're like larger testimonials in a way and everyone has a story so we've done a few with a um a credit union that we work with

it's been a big client of ours in calgary so they have a lot of wonderful um like bank members who have these crazy stories about opening up businesses um they have a lot of farmers as their clients and stuff and they have like amazing stories so they kind of came to us and wanted to gave us some names and some people who might be who might work well in this structure and we um from there just kind of work with them and meet the people and do location scouts and kind of do pre-interviews and stuff like this. I like how you, how you put it, that essentially these branded documentaries are essentially more structured testimonials, you know, with a little bit more substance, because obviously all of us have done testimonial videos. Everyone in this industry has done it at this point. And it's all around the same structure of why did you work with this company? Why did you

do this? How did they help you solve the problem? Which is important. We all need testimonials in any business just to show other potential leads of what the company can do. But doing it in this format kind of allows you to connect more with the people in it rather than it being very straightforward. And I think that's a very interesting perspective to kind of portray and put it for other people to understand. Yeah. Yeah. That's totally what they are. Right. And if you make them cinematic and if people have great stories and you can in the time limit you know uh structure something that's like really emotional and impactful that's awesome i mean i like watching profile documentaries a lot of companies are doing them now so it's yeah it's great well it's because they they one thing that

sometimes is being shown is the conflict and the challenges that a lot of these people need to overcome. And that is essentially what people love to see. I mean, if we look at any of them, some really big movies or anything that happens, you know, with a drama series, there's always a type of conflict that a character needs to overcome. And that's what a lot of audiences are drawn to. drawn to. And essentially we're, we're showcasing that in these documentary testimonials, as you put it, right. Rather than it being very straight to the point, this was our problem. This was solved. Thank you for solving it. That's essentially what a testimonial video is, but with a story behind it, these elements are sprinkled in, in a way for the audience to naturally view and, and experience as well as if they also went through that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well said that they can be far more effective,

I think. Definitely. So I'm just curious to see how that will translate over the years through TikTok because I mentioned before. I've got to make it shorter. Just got to make it shorter. Get to the point. It's like, Oh, look at that. Isn't that cute next video oh nope next all that work for a quick swipe right it is funny yeah and don't forget all the first three seconds already count as a view so exactly that is so is that the most important thing or what um okay well brett before we head off uh why don't you tell

us where you guys got the name oh good question actually i think brett just gave a story let me open up an email so i'll say it verbatim what he said he wrote it so perfectly you know what honestly um we were like this was probably 2013 and we we we literally almost came to it at exactly the same moment from what i remember we always liked the idea of um maybe it's pretentious but video or film was like painting with light uh i like that famous quote um so we just had that in our minds and then factory i don't know is very like definitely cool hipster at the time i think we're probably seeing influences like the beer factory or whatever and uh we both kind of wrote down the light light factory light factory i like so yeah that's how we got so yeah it's the whole painting with light thing but again

i don't think most people know us literally as brett's or they'll say lighthouse the lighthouse how do they get lighthouse the brett lighthouse they just there you go they can't remember our name i think and they think it's light light and then i think your brain just goes like house lighthouse you know they're like filming something lighthouse now here's a question to kind of maybe this might be a question that throws a wrench into into the business a little bit does that maybe tell you something about what you may need to do with the name if people are having trouble remembering it? Totally. Yeah. I mean, we're kind of talking about that right now. I think we're going to drop the the a lot of Facebook. But what about the whole, you know, the, since they co-direct actually going to the breads would

work, work out pretty well. Yeah. That's, that's the very memorable thing that you just pointed out to us. You know, at least as if you if you if you don't mind our perspective is that you're telling us that everyone is mentioning that they remember you as the bretts is that maybe something around that that uh that uh you guys should maybe explore or not yeah like again we've been kind of talking about all that um and it's it's interesting because you know you ask yourself who you're um advertising to and you don't want to come off as too small i guess in a way so you know it's kind of contradictory information but you hear you need to be yourself and people you know people really love you guys so kind of know, be yourself and kind of show

who you are and be really personable and, you know, talking kind of first person on the website. At the same time, you don't want to feel like you're just this kind of small crew who can't do these bigger projects. So do you hide yourself a bit more on the site? hide yourself a bit more on the site. There's a balance. It's hard to find that balance because it also, I feel like everyone in this industry flip-flops from that, especially when you're starting out. The first thing you want to do is to make yourself seem a little bit bigger than you are. I remember the first year that we were going into business, every client that we got, we really put that front and center as like, here's the work that we have done. Here are the projects.

Our team is very, very experienced and we know what we're doing. But obviously, you know, then over time, you also want to show who is behind the business. And personality is key. You know, you'd also don't want to be another, you don't want to be another kind of faceless company. Faceless and baseless company, you know, the not having really something to you that distinguishes you because, you know, at the same time, everyone can create video, but what distinguishes you from other people? It's not necessarily the work because yes, that is one way to do it, but what is behind, what is it that

creates the work? Who is behind the work that is able to produce that type of uh project and you have you have to showcase that and from what we see right now you guys are doing that which is great and you know continue what you're doing with that i would caution you though because be careful with the seo uh end of things because yeah if you do just a bit of that yeah the light factory you might you're gonna have to start from scratch with the brett so that's you're gonna get a long journey ahead of you if you're gonna make that there's a lot of brett's out there too i don't know if we want to compete with all this yeah yeah i would say get a third look at this point you've

solidified you've solidified your seo standing i would say like careful not to lose it man yeah this is true yeah you know if he if they find a third they can call themselves the triple brett you know triple threat triple threat sorry just uh we only specialize in tiktok videos at that point exactly exactly maybe a separate company just for t, right? Yeah, I'm kidding. Okay. Well, Brett, thank you so much for taking the time to come on our podcast. And yeah, we'll reach out to you sometime in the future to see where you are at.

See what you decided on the name. Definitely. Thanks for having me. This was super fun. you