Creatives Grab Coffee - Post Covid Productivity and Job Security | Creatives Grab Coffee 3

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

“Hey we should grab coffee sometime.” This is one of the most frequently used phrases to set up a meeting and connect. Who knows how many ideas, plans and relationships have been built over a cup of coffee. This is why we decided to start Creatives Grab Coffee. A platform where we invite creatives and business professionals to come and discuss industry topics over a cup of coffee. Make sure you subscribe because we'll have guests from the video production, marketing, and film industry in upcoming episodes! Also subscribe to our Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9and Instagram: @LAPSE.Productions

Hey, we should grab coffee sometime. This is one of the most frequently used phrases by creatives seeking to set up a meeting and connect. Who knows how many ideas, plans, and relationships have been built over a cup of coffee. This is why we decided to start the Creatives Grab Coffee podcast. A platform where we invite creatives to come and discuss various topics about the industry, all over a cup of coffee. So let us start. all over a cup of coffee. So let us start. Welcome everybody to episode three of the Creators Grab Coffee podcast.

You'll notice that the setup is a little bit different today. We swapped seats because it only seemed right to have Kirill buy his hat collection and I figured since he's got a hat collection I'll bring in my well part of my shoe collection here. So it's one of his over there. One of many, which is an understatement. You could probably date. Oh, if I bring them in based on when I got them, you could probably date these episodes. Oh, yeah, probably. Another thing we're doing different today is Dario's deciding to have tea.

thing we're doing different today is uh dario's deciding to have tea yeah i'm trying to taper off coffee because i notice it's just not doing the job anymore so my goal is to go to tea and then go to decaf tea and then after a month or so that go back to coffee yeah he likes to complicate the his drinking coffee process doesn't work after a while You have like three to four coffees and it's still, it's not doing anything. So we're going to have to change the name of the show. Creatives Grab Coffee and Tea. And Tea, yeah. But no worries. I'm at least the one that's still going to be drinking the coffee.

Today I'm having Kicking Horse. See, he's already screwed up the intro now right uh so i'm having kicking horse coffee uh espresso and dario's having some tetley tetley green tea that's not no it's earl gray but doesn't matter i gave you i gave you the the blueberry one that's the one you wanted no i wanted the earl gray well you haven't been complaining. Oh, okay. What is this? This is one of my drinkies. Oh, it is blueberry. Yeah. Doesn't taste good anymore.

Wow. So I'm not even going to go there. But today we're going to be covering a few smaller topics instead of one or two bigger ones because we felt that there's a few things that we noticed ever since COVID-19 hit that has kind of affected us a little bit. Specifically our productivity. I feel like everyone has gone through, I feel like everyone's gone through a process where they're having some struggles with productivity, especially now when a lot of work has gone. Dario, how was it for you when the pandemic hit?

It was brutal, man. But I don't think I'm the only one that went through the same stuff because, I mean, when it first hit, I just, I couldn't get motivated to do anything because I went from like a pretty packed schedule and then all of a sudden, there was just nothing to do and it was cold outside.

So you couldn't even go out for walks for longer than like half an hour. So I wasn't it took me three. It took me about like I think just this month, July, I finally got back into my pre-quarantine groove. Really? It took you pretty much all of the quarantine, four months to really kind of get back. I mean, we're still in it and we're still still gonna be in it for a long time to come yeah yeah i just because i i had such a set schedule like we had work during the day and then later on in the evenings i had so many hobbies like every day i had at least one hobby to do i had either like kazumba yoga muay thai gym or whatever right, gym, or whatever, right? I was just

going to those things. And it was just a fun time, right? And then all that stuff got canceled. So it just, it threw me off balance so much that it took me a while to get back into the usual flow of things. Yeah, I don't think people realize, or I think a lot of people actually realize this now, but our hobbies are also what help us remain productive because you can't be working a hundred percent of the time 24 7 because you're going to experience burnout we've covered this in some of the previous podcasts yeah yeah like when I was when we were doing work like let's say uh we were just taking care of managerial stuff for the day. If I felt stressed or my head just wasn't in it for that day,

I would just go to a quick yoga class. Then I'd come back and I was in the zone again. But then when quarantine happened, it was just like, you can't do anything. Yeah. Dario, you mentioned that it took you a couple months to get productive. So let's go back a little bit to around May or June. We were still getting some work done at that point. So you did seem like you were starting to get in the groove,

at least from my point of view back then. Barely, man. Really? Yeah. I then have a routine. Whereas before the quarantine, I had a routine. Every day, I knew what I was doing. And then once I got taken away from me, it just threw me off. Mm hmm. So what ended up working for me to get back into like a groove was how we would start doing morning calls every day because you said, we were doing some work but it was only when we'd call each other and then we'd stay on the phone to try to get some work done right yeah

at a set time every day i think we started that in early june early june is when we started uh i remember you got into the groove of it way before you got into the groove of it in june no actually it was earlier than that earlier than that you got into it yeah well you you finish first i'll go over my my bit in a sec yeah so uh let's see we left off we're yeah so three to four months so june is when we slowly started calling each other more frequently to try to get work done and that was helpful uh and then eventually in july we started doing it every day well on weekdays right yeah so that helped a lot because that helped me just you know uh it helps set a routine that's that's what helped me at the end of the day yeah and then it also helped that uh my brother and i

got a home gym so i was slowly getting back into the groove of things so in the morning i'd call you at 10 and then till like four we'd talk and do work and then after that it was kind of like okay we're done now and then we also had it set so on the weekends it was like a no like work uh period yeah so that helped too so that was slowly helping me develop a new routine. Yeah. Developing a routine is, is very key to helping people get back into the groove of things. And I think, uh, as a team, uh, June and July was pretty much where we started to get back into things. And I think a lot of other, a lot of other things on the side that started kind of being reintroduced. We had our first, gig again just recently.

Mid-July. Yeah, mid-July. So that's kind of giving us a little bit of a confidence boost knowing that businesses are starting to kind of realize that it's time to get back to work as much as possible. Obviously, there are restrictions now because we're still in stage two, at least in Toronto, at the time of this recording. But we don't know where it's going to go. But as I said, now we're pretty much back in the groove of things. And I think this podcast also helps us continue with that same level, if not better, better level of productivity. So what about you? did you handle the the quarantine

how what happened to your productivity well pretty much like everyone else and like yourself it just went away instantly i think it was for three or four weeks i was i got nothing done uh we went like you said packed schedule on not only weekdays but weekends as well with the with all the work that we were doing especially since we were on a growing trajectory, we were getting more and more bookings as as each month came along. And we were pretty much getting ready for a pretty busy summer. But, you know, because of the pandemic, everything just went away. So now we just got hit with Okay, how do we figure out a way to start working but you know there's no actual client work there um setting setting hours for work was very difficult to do from the beginning because

as we mentioned you know there were no hobbies uh like going to the gym uh was also not happening anymore either so we decided so i decided okay great there's nothing i can really decided there wasn't really much that I could do at that point. But when a few things started to kind of slowly get me back in the groove of things, I discovered this one online software called Skillshare, where they basically allow you to look up courses, you know, that people have put together based on different skills so i i first started trying to trying to learn a few new skill sets and i think that kind of started getting me into the groove of things uh and uh we also started to update our our website we updated

our portfolio and we updated our reel i think you forgot that we did that a little bit earlier on so it was a slow bit of work um But you know, we were at least getting things done. So once those things were taken care of, I was trying to figure out, okay, what next? And there was a project that I had started a couple years back called the Art of Doc, which was basically a little idea for a YouTube show that I wanted to do. And I thought, okay, you know what, let me get my brain, like start my brain up again you know at least get the creative juices flowing and i put together about two episodes and i think that that got me into more of a work mode at that point and one of the other things that also helped me kind of keep going was that we have our partnership with the ama

and they finally got back to us with some revisions that needed to be done in early May. And that's when we were wrapping up that project. So this was a project that we had recorded just prior to the lockdown, literally two or three days before the lockdown hit. So we got that project in just in time. And luckily, that was a bit of a process that kind of helped us at least help me in terms of the editing side

of things, you know, get back into being productive. Another thing that really helped me stay very productive was I got back into writing in my notebook. This was something that I had tried many years ago, you know, a couple of times, you know, taking notes based on meetings, based on calls or even writing ideas. And over the last few years, I just kind of dropped it and I didn't really do much with it. But within the whole lockdown, I basically had to buy a new book because I filled up an entire book up until now. Were you writing in their ideas or just uh tasks so mostly some tasks but mostly ideas um anything that that would come to mind i would i would write down um what the idea is and then just kind of like just kind of what my thoughts were on it then i would also write down

notes from meetings also questions that i wanted to ask people during meetings um especially because now we've been doing a lot of zoom calls so i always have my notebook handy with me you know meetings also questions that i wanted to ask people during meetings especially because now we've been doing a lot of zoom calls so i always have my notebook handy with me you know in case somebody mentions something that could be interesting you know i just quickly jot it down if i can so i don't forget and to be honest writing in your notebook it helps you remember things a lot better i had completely forgotten about that. Yeah. I use, I use like a legal pad for calls. Uh, and then, and then for tasks to do during the day, but I predominantly use Google keep because you could carry it around with you, right? Google keep is good. And I, everyone has different means of, uh, of how they are productive in terms of how they get their work done. Um, I also use

Google keep a lot of the time if I don't have my notebook on hand. But what I like about the notebook is it allows me to get my initial thoughts and ideas down right away. And then, for example, if we have an idea for a video, I write down my ideas. And then later, we bring it into our briefs. And then we just kind of develop it from there. So it's not meant to develop a lot of things, but it's at least to kind of get the initial ideas on paper, just to just kind of see what it looks like, right? Yeah. That's pretty much what I have done to try to stay productive throughout the last few months. And like you mentioned, in June was when we started doing our daily calls at set times around 9am. And I think that helped us as a team kind of get back into the flow of things. Doing our daily calls really helped us as a team get back into the swing of things.

We had our own different ways of getting ourselves back into a work mindset. But at the end of the day, I think that bringing those two experiences together as a team, I think really got us to being productive finally. Yeah. One thing I would say that helped a lot is developing a regular sleeping schedule. So nowadays I wake up at seven every day and it really helps. And I'll go to bed at the latest at 1am. And that helps a lot because now I have a sleeping schedule. Before it was kind of, eh, I'll go to bed at two, maybe three, and then I'll wake up at 10. It's not like we have to do anything anyways, right? Well, that was that's kind of how it was in the first few weeks. You know, we were everything was screwed up in terms of scheduling, including the sleep schedule.

Let's kind of go over now on to our next topic, which is job security. Is there really such a thing, Dario, as a safe job now in 2020? No, I don't think so. I don't think there's been, I don't think there's been a job that offers long-term job security in a long time. It's interesting because the last jobs that you and I both had that was considered the traditional safe job was us being tellers.

Not at the same bank, albeit it was just coincidental that we both ended up being tellers at one point but we also both worked at Hollister we also both worked at Hollister which was completely unrelated as well which I think I got the job it was a different Hollister from you but you were at Geithens Center yeah and you were at Fairview but we never even mentioned that we both worked there but it was just a funny coincidence um but anyways so yeah like uh being tellers were the last jobs it was considered a pretty safe job in the sense of you know you get in and you're at the bank you're anytime you get into the bank you'll be fine right but i think i don't know how it was

for you but uh from what i heard when i was working there they were planning on closing a lot of the branches right but think about it what do you do why would you spend 15 minutes there in line driving there we could just go to the atm deposit your check withdraw money yada yada yada right well now how often is a young person withdrawing over like a thousand whatever the daily is, let's say over a thousand bucks. Why are you carrying over a thousand bucks with you, right? Well, here's the other thing. A lot of the time now, they've also introduced photo deposits for checks.

So anytime I'm depositing a check into my bank account, I could just e-deposit it with my phone. I haven't actually needed to go into the bank unless you and i have had to go to talk to a financial advisor specifically for our business which is like once every blue moon but yeah like we haven't had an employment job since that time so we're pretty much out of the loop when it comes to that but from what i've seen with a lot of people that i've talked to in my network people who have worked at the banks for 10, 15, 20 years, not at a branch level, but more on a marketing level.

Some people are even being phased out on those higher levels, which was almost like a surprise to me because I remember when I first got to Ryerson, I wanted to do marketing and that was kind of the direction I wanted to go. Thinking, okay, I'll probably make some decent money and I should, I should be pretty much relatively safe. But, you know, hearing now how a lot of different

companies are shifting, trying to make their teams smaller, phasing out some other, some other team members. I thought I was thinking to myself, wow, not as safe as I, as I once thought it would be. At the bank, right? Yeah, like at the bank or any of those. But ad agencies are doing that too, aren't they? That's the other thing now. That's the other thing now. A lot of ad agencies and marketing companies are starting to downsize

because they're realizing they don't need all that overhead and all that amount of talent to work. Especially now with COVID, so many companies have gone out of business because of it and not being able to bring in work. So many people have been laid off. And I honestly don't know if they're going to come back. A lot of them aren't. Probably not. So what happens now to all those people who are working at these companies? You know, it's unemployment. Because we didn't go that route, because we didn't go that route because we didn't go that route of trying to work at other agencies or companies and things like that and we were starting our

business from the ground up we have at least a foundation now right and we can we're now at a point where we can start looking in and uh looking at different avenues of where we can go with the business what type of clients we can work with. We have experience with it, right? Imagine if some people were deciding to start a company right now. How would that work? Yeah, I don't know. All I know is that pandemics or moments in history like this,

usually they're fat trimmers almost so they'll they'll um a lot of companies won't make it but the ones that do end up becoming mammoths of industry yeah even like the strongest like some of the biggest companies were found were founded or came to prominence during the great depression now oh 100 yeah those are always the brands and businesses that were able to thrive and and push forward well you know another thing is um a lot of the companies that have failed due to the pandemic were probably not in a good spot to begin with yeah so it's almost like again it just ripped off the band-aid at that point it's like well if you can't survive under

these conditions and you probably weren't doing that well when it wasn't like this right but at the same time it also depends on the types of business that you were in because i know a lot of companies and you do as well a lot of wedding based companies that were thriving like crazy they were having hundreds of weddings a year but because of this pandemic all of that business just went away like that it's not necessarily that they weren't successful it's just unfortunately for them the line of work that they were in was very dependent on people gathering together and now because of this they're they're now gone or at least not gone and that's doesn't that say a lot about money management though if you're a company

and you're not setting aside money for a rainy day i mean it depends especially a wedding wedding company you don't need to be in like a big big office with this and that well you look you're like your overhead should not be insane right right? Like that company you were talking about that's downtown and is paying, they're locked into a lease, which is an absorbed, like it's a crazy amount to pay every month. Was that a good idea to begin with? Why go downtown? Why not go somewhere else where maybe the rent is cheap? Why have so much overhead? Before that? Well, look, from their perspective, the amount of work that they were probably getting, it

was probably 5% of their costs at the time. So you also have to think of what maybe their perspectives would have been pre-COVID. They probably would never have even thought that that was that much of an expense considering the amount of work they had. They had a team of people that had to work on projects they needed a space obviously you're going from the approach of why was it downtown and not um you know somewhere else but i'm just thinking a lot of companies probably didn't i mean i don't want to put words i don't want to judge by not knowing them but i'm gonna go ahead and assume that before this pandemic there were a lot of there

was a lot of overhead that didn't need to be there right well maybe maybe a little bit but at the time you still needed this whole downsizing thing it's not because of the pandemic it's been a trend for a couple years now people companies have been downsizing i think it depends on also in terms of the amount of downsizing that is needed i think it depends on the industry that you're in and the type of client work that you're bringing. So these companies that have bigger offices downtown, their reasoning probably for working from there was to be also closer and be in the environment where their clients were. And I think that helps a lot when it comes to having a sales funnel as well. If you're in an environment where there are hundreds of companies around you that are probably going to need work like that, it's just a little bit easier to sell to them from

that location than say, if you were up in Vaughn, especially if that's where your clientele is. If you are a very remote based business, then yes, of course you can probably be anywhere like, like us, you, you and I are very remote based. But us, like we usually, we almost, we never invite the, even when we had that office downtown, we never invited the clients over. They didn't even want to come.

Like we always went to them, right? Yeah. I don't know how it is with other companies. Do they most of the time just go to the client? I'm assuming because their clients are usually always busy, they probably go to them or they arrange something like that. Okay, let me ask you a question then if you had three employees three people that worked for you that you were

paying 60 000 a year each and you guys did not have a space for all of you to work how would you always know at least in the beginning you know how would you know or get to know them to the point where um uh you you can trust that they will get the work done and they're or they're efficient with their work or even creating the company culture that's another thing to keep in mind a lot of companies have spaces to help foster a good company culture that is maybe one thing that is missing from our business because we're more remote. Our culture is a little bit different and it's basically just the two of us, right? It's what you and I decide to make it. But if we have every person that we start to bring in in the future that become a permanent member of the team, that evolves the workplace culture.

It evolves the perspectives and it evolves the skill sets and opinions and values of the business, right? So if we're looking at it from our perspective now, obviously we were smart to not have an office space beforehand because it was not necessary. But other businesses, they needed it to be productive. They needed it to work. No, I get that. But being downtown because you're surrounded by the businesses i don't really buy that argument i think it's just uh we are downtown type of deal i mean i i honestly don't know it it really i mean maybe some people that we bring on to the podcast in the future we could

always ask them and yeah i'm curious because it doesn't sound like it's good if you have a lot of cash flow but are you is it what about in downtown like what if something bad happens look we're still gonna be saved look we're still looking at this from a hindsight perspective you know where we we see how things have uh we see where things have gone because of the pandemic we can't be judging too much because of this you know no one would have expected something like this the the industries have been running smoothly for decades yeah no one would have expected a virus to come in and just shut down their business and then have so many companies struggling just from their overhead

you and i were just very fortunate to not be in that position if we were in that same position as them considering the amount of work that has gone away for us we would have had to shut down the business yeah you know like technically the business should be but because of the position that we're in we're able to survive and push through this obviously you know we're not um you know like we're at a level where it's like you know the clients are starting to come back you know and we're starting to grow back up again but it wouldn't have happened quick enough that it would have been sustainable for us. And the business would have had to shut down, we would have had to maybe even consider career changes. I know some people who, who have had businesses where they were successful for years. And they're now in the process of even of switching industries completely,

like getting out of the creative and moving into into something different and that's because not necessarily that the business have have failed some of them are also nimble but they're noticing that there's no work so it's time for a career change for them you know and i think we're fortunate also right now and the fact that we also don't have a lot of personal expenses that are is allowing us to kind of, um, it's like we said, we're starting the business almost all over again. So all the five years of work that we put in to kind of get to the, to get the business to the point where we're making sustainable income from it is now gone. We're basically starting from scratch almost again. Right. And it's now going to be probably another two, three years of us as a business trying to find that sustainable cash flow um and and that's pretty much it at this point with that you know

there's there's not much else we can really say about you know the the businesses that are like who had a lot of overhead you know it is what it is right now the situation and there's not much that can be done for now i mean other than evolve like we have working remotely, like everyone is right now. And I think once those leases that a lot of these businesses have downtown are up, they're probably gonna get rid of it because of also-

Or go to a smaller spot or somewhere where it's cheaper. Exactly, because like us, other businesses have been able to reflect on their model and see what resources they need and what resources they don't. And so as a result, they've evolved. I think in a way, a lot of companies are benefiting because they've been forced to adapt during COVID, and they might come out of it a lot lot more efficient which will allow them to get back on their feet a lot faster yeah i can definitely see more efficient because now you

just have i mean uh probably cheaper too because now you can uh go to smaller offices because you don't need your whole work staff to be there right you can have them work at home for us i think it's uh um let's see how this affects us though because we were planning on bringing in a couple of full-timers right going forward if we were able to do that but yeah i think i think we'll just stick with freelancers at this point at this point we're gonna have to yeah um it's unfortunate because i really wanted to get the business to the point where we could have and develop a workplace culture you know that's tangible to see you know like a physical space the closest thing that this set for our podcast is probably the closest thing that we've had to you know um like a workplace culture in a way right you know we're we decorated

it to the point you know to kind of reflect who. You know, that's another way to kind of help promote yourself is work in a space that reflects you. I wonder if job security will actually, well, at least for the freelancers out there will actually, I wonder if this will actually improve job security going forward. It might, there might be in terms of how they get business companies will be a little bit more strategic and they'll be a little bit more strategic in terms of how they bring in business and how they lock down employees right the thing that i've noticed though is that i think there's more a lot there's going to be a surge in freelancers yeah because so many businesses are downsizing what are these people going to do if there's going to be a surge in freelancers yeah because so many businesses are downsizing

what are these people going to do if there's not going to be any companies hiring they're going to just have to hustle and and work for themselves the one thing that i've noticed a lot of companies uh value nowadays is flexibility and i think that is a skill set in a way that is overlooked by so many people. A lot of people are very set in their ways where they charge a certain amount for a certain amount of work. And if there's any deviation in their model in terms of what is being asked of the project, then they're very set in it. I remember a couple years back, I would, I would do weddings. And

I was always very flexible. You know, if if a day was needed, where it was 12 hours versus 14 hours, I gave a rough quote for that, right. But there were some people that I worked with, where they said, they work only 12 hours, not a second more, no matter what, like, I was good to do more hours, obviously, I'll get paid for those more hours as well you know i had a i had a pricing set for if you need extra hours this is how much it costs but i will do more work if need be or less work depending on what's needed and i completely agree with what you mean in terms of flexibility of skill set like skill set is very like people are looking for others who are not necessarily swiss army

knives but know more than one or two things i think you need to know more than one or two things nowadays yeah but if you're too flexible on prices no you shouldn't be flexible on it hurts it hurts other uh freelancers but i think now that the pandemic is coming to and well i mean things are opening up. So many people are in need of work. They'll be charging a lot less. I feel like I never find people charge exactly the level. I think it's always going to be like a little bit of a variance. Some are less, some are more.

Well, there's a range, right? Like, for example, if you're a DP, once you become like a pretty skilled one and you you've got a network the average rate seems to be about 12 to 1500 for the day yeah that's a pretty standard right now pretty standard and that's pretty much if you're a you're a good dp like if i hire you doing if i hire you you know where you're gonna give me good footage right yeah uh those guys make a killing because i know some some of them work almost every day of the month and think about it at even 1200 a day for 30 days that's a lot of money at the end of the day that's pretty good but but that's sustainable now going forward maybe five years will you still be

able to charge that amount it honestly just depends on the market and um it depends on how many people are actually with the low barriers to entry that we have now look at the cameras that are coming out now like the the r5 that's crazy man you'll be able to get some pretty high-end footage right and then even light lights are starting uh lighting prices are starting to come down as well well you're going to be competing with like i don't know if you could charge the same amount so even your job security will be will be threatened to a certain extent right well the thing that i that i notice is that equipment may go down but i feel that you're the pricing won't necessarily go down in terms of uh who you are because that's when

skill and quality of of your of your experience comes into play more and people are going to have to sell themselves on that because if barriers to entry are that low which i agree you know they're going to cause a shift in terms of that that means a talent pool is also so much bigger. Talent pool is bigger, but how many of those people are, are people that basically work with just the equipment they have and the stock, uh, the,

the stock, uh, templated kind of, uh, videos that they've seen other people do a lot of the people that are going in, that are getting into the industry. There's kind of like,

I've noticed that it's the skill sets in that industry have um kind of like branched off into kind of tiers the lower end when people are just entering almost all of them are doing the same type of work that i from what i've seen they're all imitating some of the people that they see on youtube because those people have have gone up like. I remember when I was getting into it, there was a handful of YouTube creators that were making work. And I noticed that each one had a different kind of personality in their work. And that's why it was a lot easier for me to adopt a little bit of my own when I was starting out. If you look at almost not every content creator, but maybe 80% of them, they all... In the video space? In the video space, yeah.

Buy my LUT. Costs a thousand bucks. I'll give it to you for 30 bucks. See, that's an example right there, right? A lot of them look the same. They all mimic each other. There's so much mimicking. Like there are some guys that

well they all copy like peter mckinnon and casey neistat they all copy that well well they were kind of copying a little bit of that a few years ago but now there are even more of them that are also coming out on youtube where a lot of there's maybe like 20 to 30 guys who are basically the same content almost same look same style same uh gear reviews you know it's there's so much of it out there now that there's no there's no uniqueness anymore in terms of that so that's when experience and adaptability and flexibility um start to come into play in the future. You know, like obviously never be flexible on your pricing if you know your worth, but you're able to kind of like look at like a bulk project

and see how you can create the best work that's also worth it for you in terms of how you get paid, but also worth it for the person that's hiring you, right? There's always going to be a balance, but at the same, just to kind of circle back on what I was saying, was that if you know how to shoot in the moment, you know how adaptable you are to a lot of different projects, it will show in the work.

A lot of these people who claim to be experts on YouTube, they're just imitating someone else. I've never seen their portfolio. Well, that's the thing. You never see their portfolio. You never see their portfolio. You've never seen it. They're just imitating someone else. I've never seen their portfolio. Well, that's the thing. You never see their portfolio. You never see their portfolio. You've never seen it. They just talk.

They have a good looking video and that's it. But here's the thing. There's a lot, there's less barriers to entry. There's a lot more people entering the field. What do you think

they're going to be doing for work? Weddings. A lot of them, yeah. That's a good place to level up on your skills right good place to start yep so i think that the talent pool of good shooters is going to go up by a lot in the in the future in the coming years there's going to be a lot of good shooters and then from there as long as they learn some basic lighting, three-point lighting, like you're good. The baseline for skill is going to go up.

I agree with that. That's basically what you're saying. The baseline of what's considered not passable, but, you know, it works for the job. It's obviously going up every year. And that's how it is with any industry. It always evolves like that. You know, obviously the wedding space. Pricing is going to go down. Pricing is going to go down at the end. Pricing probably will go down. But if you're a high end DP, like after a while, you're going to go like shit, like I got to compete. Well, not high. I don't mean like

you're on reds or whatever, but yeah, you're going to end up competing with these guys. And it's going to get to the point where there's a, I mean, let projects are small small to medium level size right so they're not going to need to bring in a guy what is fs7 or fs9 and you don't need that as long as they got something good shoots 4k which almost every camera does yeah as long as it's 10 bit which most of the newer cameras are you'll be good as long as like you make sure like as long as there's someone on set letting them know, you can get good footage to use at a fraction of the price. Oh, I completely agree. I think we've moved on from the era where your camera is what hires you at this point.

Yes, there are some broadcast jobs that have very specific needs uh those are dying out anyways right in a way yeah a lot of them are dying out especially because a lot of projects are becoming more and more independent as well uh and not a lot of people shoot for tv nowadays everything's online yeah you don't need to have a broadcast camera because unless you're part of the news like why do you really need that like seriously yeah uh i mean a lot of like for example one of the industry standards for broadcast is for example using a canon c300 or an fs7 yeah those are some of the most versatile cameras that give uh high quality um which make it good for broadcast

but some of the time people are hired for those jobs because of those cameras, not necessarily for their skillset some of the time. And you start to see it in their work. It's very interesting how things are evolving. And I think, like for example, I did one documentary shoot where they asked me if I had a C300

and that was a requirement for the shoot. And I told them i don't have it i have a c200 which is the next best thing very close to the same and almost the exact same image quality shoot on raw it's better so if yeah if but if you're doing if you're doing a documentary shooting raw is not necessarily the most efficient because of how like you know canon with their file sizes not we're not going to get into we're not going to get into the specifics of this camera necessarily but basically the c200 um had a few features missing uh compared to the other one but the production was actually willing to still work

with me on that because of some of my experience in terms of the work that i have done and i guess once they saw some of the footage, they thought, oh, this, they captured it pretty good. That's what I'm, that's what I strongly believe is that I don't care what camera you have, as long as it's a fairly decent one, that's somewhat modern and you can put out good work, then you're more valuable than 80% of the other people out there. Cause I think you and I have had experiences where we hired people who had those bigger cameras as well, thinking, all right, they might know what they're doing,

but they would mess up on some of the most basic things, like exposure or framing, and you would think to yourself, how are you missing this crucial skill? Whereas other people who might have just a DSLR and some of the older ones even, and you see the video and the content that they put out right after that, and you're thinking, wow, you really gave a lot of value for what you put out there. This is amazing. So I think a lot of freelancers need to learn to adapt in that sense.

One other point I wanted to address was how we're part of this group called Toronto Video Producing Group. What's that group called? It's a Facebook group for Toronto content creators. Right. So anytime you need a person, you just make a post and like, you'll just get applications. You get flooded with hundreds so here so here's the thing yeah like you can just say like i have this project i

need an audio operator you'll get 30 to 40 recommendations oh that's so hard to go through even so job security even for a freelancer it's crazy because you're competing with there's like 20,000 people in that group no competing with everyone there don't get us wrong our our line of work there is no job security yeah the difference is that you're hustling for for work rather than hustling for a job yeah and that's what i in in a sense you have job security where you're always going to be working but the work is going to vary significantly there could be a year where maybe you do more corporate type gigs there could be another year where you do more documentary type gigs so pre-covid i found that you know i was of the opinion that there's enough work to go around

if you know where to look and if you know what connections to make. Because we were working pretty comfortably. And that's why we weren't focusing also as much on the business as well. Because we were making connections, working with these other production companies and people to broaden our skills, expand our network, and still make some extra money aside from... But even there, there's no job security because if a better cure-all comes by with a cheaper rate, because you're a freelancer,

they don't owe you any loyalty. No, of course. They don't owe you any loyalty. But that's what I'm saying. It's not necessarily job security. It's more of opportunity security in a way, you know, because it's like, we're all self-employed at the end of the day, right?

But if I applied to a job and I don't get it, I move on to the next one and to the next one and to the next one. If you had a job and you got fired, you can't just find another job like that. Like the process, the process that it takes now for some people to get a job, it, they go through three, four interviews almost, and you can make it to the last two and they're picking between you and another person.

And then that other person gets it that whole month of work gone. Well, our friend, uh, he was trying to get some job in, I don't know if it was animation or graphics design or editing that stuff, somewhere in that ballpark. And I remember he told me, he's like, yeah, man, I see a job. First of all, the pay usually sucks because you look at it and he's like, they want to pay me like $35,000 and I got to work like me to they want to pay me like 35 000 and i gotta work like 50 hours a week i'm like how can i survive on that and i was thinking about i'm like how could you survive on that you really the rent alone in toronto you're looking at at least two g's

okay if you want to get like a which is 24k in expenses right there right how are you gonna live on 6 000 right working like a full week so he's like aside from that but what happens is you might you'll find younger people that'll take those jobs on those jobs on for like a couple of years get that experience under their belt and then move on to something better right yeah so he was he's an older guy too so he was dealing with first of all low salaries second of all the pool of applicants is huge he told me he's like by the time he'd apply he's like they're probably like 500 other people yeah and a lot of the time people go with some of the first people who had applied so you have there have been times where i've seen a job posting where i thought okay i could

probably do this and then i see how many people have applied like two three hundred i'm like i'm not even gonna bother point i'm not even gonna bother putting in an email like my efforts are better spent somewhere else but if you applied and you were maybe like the 10th or the 5th you will guaranteed to be uh reached out it's almost like a sneaker uh release first time first serve it is it really is almost because by that point they're not going to want to go through 300 applications once they find the closest thing to what they're looking for then then that's it. That's pretty much how it is when we were applying to get editors, right? But yeah, it's tough out there.

Well, Dario, I think we can wrap it up there. I think we've covered... Yeah, we can sign off now. We've pretty much covered quite a bit of stuff. So for the next episode, we're going to try to bring on a guest because while it's been fun with Kirill and I here, I think we're starting to exhaust a lot of the topics

we alone can talk about. Basically going forward with some of the future episodes, we want to bring in guests that can help share their experiences and perspectives on certain topics within the industry. And we're going to go forward with a Zoom approach. So you're going to see it a little bit different, pretty much the same setup with Dario and I like this, but we're going to have our guests calling in. Yeah, and yeah, we look forward to it and thank you for watching. Thank you

Thank you for tuning in to the creatives grab coffee podcast. You can find us on Spotify YouTube Instagram and LinkedIn Let us know if there are any topics you would like for us to cover in future episodes You can reach out to us at creativesgrabcoffee at gmail.com.