Creatives Grab Coffee - Telling Effective Stories (ft. Minifridge Media) | Creatives Grab Coffee 6

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, hosted by Kyrill Lazarov & Dario Nouri.A platform where creatives and business professionals discuss industry topics, ideas and share experiences.Today we welcome our guest Andrew Osborne, the founder of Minifridge Media, one of Toronto’s top video production companies, and a freelance director whose work has played on national TV, in Cineplex Theatres, and at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8Bd...Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee Facebook: @CreativesGrabCoffeeProduced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS - www.lapseproductions.com

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, hosted by Kiro Lazaroff and Dario Nuri, a platform where creatives and business professionals discuss industry topics, ideas, and share experiences. Today we welcome our guest Andrew Osborne. He is the founder of Mini Fridge Media, one of Toronto's top video production companies, and he's a freelance director whose work has played on national TV, in Cineplex theaters, and at the Tiff Bell Lightbox. We hope you enjoy our discussion, so let us start. theaters and at the Tiff Bell Lightbox. We hope you enjoy our discussion, so let us start. Well, today we have another guest on our show. We have Andrew from MiniFurge Media. Andrew is a video producer just like ourselves, and he actually got his start five years ago just like we did. So

let's just hand it off to Andrew. That's great. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Good to be here over Zoom. Yeah, it's definitely changing nowadays, right? Everything's just over Zoom. Yeah, like a lot of meetings and calls, like what used to be done in person now has obviously switched over to this platform. So we've kind of mimicked this platform a little bit with the format of the show as well. Yeah, I mean, all the interviews are being done over Zoom, even for filmmakers. Like I just all the, all the interviews are being done over zoom, even for filmmakers. Like I just watched the new Charlie Kaufman movie last night and then watched a bunch of his interviews today and they were all over zoom,

uh, as well. It was probably easier for him to just go into the, just do it from his house instead of going into a million different studios. Yeah. The only thing I found that's a little tricky is that with connection issues, sometimes you talk over each other. Oh, yeah.

I almost want to just say, okay, let's do video, but then I'll call you on the phone. That way we'll have like a clear line. Yeah. Just have a different means of recording. Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and how you kind of jumped into the industry? Sure. into the industry? Sure. Well, lifelong filmmaker and film fan, film fanatic, and always wanted to be a writer, director, and editor. I'm good at editing as well. And I, you know, studied film at Queen's University in Kingston. I made a ton of short films and skits while I was there.

My first job in the industry was as an assistant editor at a place called Saints Editorial, where I was sort of behind the scenes preparing the footage on a bunch of huge TV commercials and rubbed shoulders with a bunch of ad agency people and learned how the advertising business worked. And then I got let go from that job at the end of 2015. And I mean, I can tell you the whole story, but I started my own company about a month and a half after that, because I met somebody who had their own company and they needed a video. And I didn't even think it was a possible thing to do. But they sort of convinced me that I should do funny videos for tech companies, funny explainer videos. That's actually how it started. And the model was a sandwich video in

San Francisco, which he was a big fan of. He turned me on to them. And he said, you could do this. You could be this guy for people in Toronto because he thought I was funny. I was doing a skit channel at the time. That's how I met him. And then it just sort of evolved into, you know, it's mini fridge media and it's not just funny tech explainer videos. It's any kind of video that any business needs. It could be a corporate interview video, but more likely or more what's more fun for me is to do funny commercials promotional videos that sort of thing but i've done so many different types of videos everything from logo reveals to more recently zoom of we just did a zoom skit where it was four people talking to each other over zoom

that's a whole other discussion about how covid's changed everything but yeah any kind of video people need we can do it. Mini Fridge Media. It's interesting. You mentioned you had, you, you were a lot, a lifelong, uh, film lover and you wanted to get into, uh, filmmaking, right. But now you're doing, uh, corporate filmmaking in a way. Uh, like how, how do you, we, we kind of had the same thing as well, right. We've got into it to do well, to try to get into the film industry, right? Like that was our original goal. But then as time went on, we found that we feel a bit more grounded

and more comfortable in the corporate filmmaking world. But we do kind of want to dive into that at some point, right? It happens to a lot of people who start in this industry. I'm sure you've noticed this as well. Anyone who decides to pick up a camera, no one's ever really starting off thinking, yeah, you know, with this camera, I'm going to make corporate promotional videos and advertisements. That's never the first thing that people typically lean towards. You know, they want to be either a director, cinematographer, filmmaker, but they definitely kind of tend to

transition in that direction because like many of us realize that's where the money is at least in the beginning right yes yeah and listen I'm still a young man I got my whole life ahead of me I'm I'm gonna be doing actual movies and I do look at this as a stepping stone or or whatever it is a job an experience for my 20s, mid 20s, now into my late 20s, spending that time that a lot of other people spend working at some company, I don't know, working their way up, whatever they're doing. I've got my own thing. And I've spent the time writing, directing, editing, producing commercials and videos and learning about that, but also spent a lot of time, you know, there's a lot of rejection and waiting and being a self-starter and

making things happen for yourself that I think is going to come in handy later on when I do try to pursue the actual Hollywood filmmaking thing. So I haven't resigned myself to this as like, this is my career now. Cause I do think I have more to offer than in just this space, but it's a great thing. It's the freedom of being your own boss and, and, and making your own decisions and, and controlling your destiny is,

is a great, beautiful thing. And I've gotten a ton of practice practice which I think I'll apply to to my filmmaking career but this is my filmmaking career too I'm not going to say like when it starts or anything like that it has started but yeah to answer to your point it is about money and making money is the greatest reason to be in advertising as a filmmaker, I think. It helps you get your start and just kind of build that support that you need because everybody needs a little, needs that financial backing, you know. Going into filmmaking, typically people

realize, okay, I'm going to go for broke if I go in this industry. Well, there's two ways of going about it. You either work up the ladder and then hopefully in 20 years you end up uh maybe you finally get that directing job you've always wanted right but it seems like it's from what i've seen and who we've talked to this they seem to be two very separate worlds right and it seems like the only way you can really uh transition into it from maybe like our industry would be to again create some type of short or feature and then submit it to these independent film festivals that seems to be like one of the only ways to get in because the other route is again uh working up that ladder and who knows how long that'll take that might take maybe

20 years i don't believe in that i don't i don't believe in working up the ladder like you're going to start as a pa and then eventually you'll be directing a movie at some point if you just wait long enough. I mean, that that never works. That's never worked. Because the once you learn about what's on a film set, it's PA. You move up to production manager or something like that. More likely you'll end up as a producer director. You could have some 22 year old be the director and everyone else working on it is 45. And they've been waiting their whole lives to be the director. And it's just like, why does this kid get to do it? And the answer is that he just, well, I don't know why that kid got

that job. But in general, to be a director, you really just have to do it and show somebody that you did this thing. And then hopefully they'll give you the opportunity to do that. But it's like being a writer or something. It's like you got to be good at it and you just have to do it and nobody's going to let you do it or give you a chance. And I'm going to speak in cliches,

but I think that's true. So when I was faced with the, okay, I got to let go from my job as an assistant editor, that path would have taken me to be an editor of commercials. That's the path that I was on. I could have jumped back on that path and gotten another job somewhere. But I just thought this would be a faster way to get to what I want by immediately starting and building up my directing reel

and showing people what I could do. I felt like I had so much more to offer than I was offering people at that job as an assistant editor. I really felt like I was really meant for the big leagues right away. And it was a blessing to get let go and have that opportunity to start directing right away. I wonder if it also has to do with the fact that like us three, we do have an entrepreneur uh type of mindset and like we need to be our own bosses and trying to work up the ladder it it didn't work at an agency it's certainly not not going to work through a union right so it's maybe it's something within us that

we just can't do it but you didn't mention something else which was interesting was that you you thought you're ready for the big leagues right away and that you just wanted to build that portfolio that's one of the reasons why kyril and i partnered up we wanted to be able to achieve our goals that much faster by kind of uh boosting each other to that spot and we we kind of are we're in the process of doing that too right yeah and like you being by yourself how have you grown your business to what it is today you know like like dario and i know how it is you, because we have a leg to stand on at times, you know, if, uh, one of us is struggling with one thing, the other one is able to help out and vice versa. Whereas with you, it's, it's all you basically, right? How do you, how do you push yourself day by day, month by month, year by year?

It's so lonely. Uh, it's terrible. No, it is. I, well, I didn't, well well I didn't know anybody who I could have been a partner with at the time where I was like you and me should go into business together I don't even know if it would have worked because it took me a while to get to the point where I could make a living doing it and that's me keeping all the money not splitting it 50 50 with somebody else I didn't have to navigate that because it would have taken me... Well, it's an interesting point. You said you can go twice as fast because I was thinking it would have taken me twice as long to get to the point where two people have good salaries off this rather than one person.

And running it is difficult and it's not the thing that I enjoy as much. I was a salesman before I was the assistant editor. That my first job, but that was only a summer job. I was a door to door and also phone. I made phone calls. I was a salesman for this construction software company and I was a tele-fundraiser all through university. I was the best tele-fundraiser at the university. I raised the most amount of money, at least in my last year there. So I had these sales skills and I'm pretty good at talking to people, I guess, but I had to learn a lot of that stuff too. And same with the branding. I think the branding and the name and the tagline and how the website looks, which I actually designed the website,

I think just having really great taste in is what helped me because I was able to reject a lot of things and say that that's not going to work. That name sucks. That tagline sucks. This website design sucks. So I was able to narrow it down into, okay, I like these fonts. I like the way this looks. This is good. And I was able to use the sales experience of cold calling to create a huge list of companies in Toronto that I thought might need a video and cold call them and just ask them if they need a video. And that's what led to the first 6, 7, 8, 20 videos, whatever. And then that kept it moving with word of mouth and whatnot. So it is, but it is really lonely and hard. I live with my girlfriend that helps. I have a lot of friends. I think having friends helps because I at least

can talk to people and, and, you know, not feel so lonely, but yeah, it sucks. And, and, uh, I, sometimes I wish I partnered up with somebody like you guys did, because at least you guys know you're in it together. And you have each other's backs. And it's a beautiful thing. I kind of wish I did that. It's honestly a matter of opportunity. You know, it just kind of worked out the way it was.

The way it did. And, you know, we've just kind of made it happen since then. But we've actually been told that at at the beginning when we first started we had a lot of people tell us oh you know what business partnerships don't work especially if you guys are friends don't do it and you know what we've seen it it doesn't work for the most part luckily we've been able to make it work um it has its ups and downs don't get don't get us wrong after five i don't want to see his face ever again especially since monday do you guys hang out after work?

Not as often as we used to. We used to do it a lot more. It's COVID right now. There's only so much hanging out you can do right now. Do you think our friendship has changed a little bit ever since we became partners? It definitely has. You know, I think we kind of, I feel like with anyone, if you're friends

and then you're trying to work in a business, you spend time together, you know, to hang out together to hang out and enjoy each other's company. But when we're working, it's kind of like those things kind of overlap a little bit. And it's almost as if, okay, I've hung out with my friend, hung out, but worked with him all day. It's time to go and spend time with the girlfriend as well. You got to balance out some of the time. How do you guys divvy things up like who who's good at what how do you know who does what at this point we're really at this well i mean at this stage we're really splitting everything 50 50 so carol and i will both take on producing responsibilities

uh directing responsibilities although you know what when we're shooting together if Kirill's going to be the DP that allows me time to produce and direct a bit more because again when you're being the cinematographer it's hard to focus on also directing it and producing it right yeah so while he focuses on that that's when I'll take care of a lot of the producing and the directing and I feel like those roles kind of work really well a lot of the time when we're when we're shooting on that aspect but at the same time like we both produce a lot of the producing and the directing. And I feel like those roles kind of work really well. A lot of the time when we're shooting on that aspect, but at the same time, like we both produce a lot of the projects. So Dario's handling several accounts

with different clients and he's taking care of that aspect, whereas I'm taking care of a few other clients as well. It's kind of like having double the manpower and being able to take on more projects as a result. Because like you do you you reach out to cinematographers audio operators crew you know to help realize your vision in our case we basically have double the manpower to do that because we both go out and take care of those

accounts separately at times but also if there is the opportunity where we can work together we do that as well yeah and and recently recently, as of this year, especially this time period now, we are taking more of a managerial role. So Kirill and I are just, we're transitioning to just strictly produce and direct the projects. Yeah. And then just outsourcing a lot of the cinematography, extra shooters, audio ops, you name it. We're just outsourcing that stuff, especially on the editing end. We're really outsourcing that because we're really focusing on just growing the business this year. Like Carol and I are focusing a lot on strategy right now.

And we just we don't have time to sit down and edit for a week, you know? Yeah, that's fair. I thought maybe you'd reel things in during COVID because I found that I have to things I would have outsourced edit like I would outsource this editing job now I'm doing it because I can't afford to outsource it anymore because we're not as busy so I don't have to delegate as many tasks of course in that case yeah like definitely during COVID a lot of the if if there is if there is the time for us to do it whether it's COVID or not if there's the time for dario and i to do it we will do it uh but uh so now it's different because it's a little different now

yeah like we're we're in the midst of doing some some heavy sales in this coming month and as well as into october and it's just it we're focused like i find us working earlier and earlier every day like right we used to start at 10 And we'd be done by 5 now. We're starting as early as 9 and 8 a.m. And I find myself like sure I'll take a break at 5 But I find myself going back to work at 7 to like 9 at least you know you get burnt out if you try to Do it all and I'm sure you might have experienced the same thing did you ever experience something like that like burning out early on Yeah, well, I'm with you guys on the later start, because that's one of the great things about being

your own boss, because I really am a night person. And I get a lot of things done at night. And society judges people who get up late, you know, who start their day at 10 or 11. But if you're working until two in the morning, it's like the same. If not, you're not, you're getting more work done. You're just doing it when everyone else is relaxing or sleeping. So, but I find that obviously I'm busiest when I have a lot of projects going on. If I've got four or five, three or four, whatever it is, shoots in a month and I'm managing all in a month. And I'm managing all those different projects. Um, and I'm also in the midst of editing some, that's what I'm working all the time. And then summers are a little slower and obviously COVID has been slower. So I haven't

had to deal with burnout. I've actually been more like hungry for things to do. And I've been working on not an exit strategy, but sort of like working on my screenwriting a lot more because I think that like you guys said the ticket to getting out of advertising and into filmmaking where people actually want to watch it is writing a hopefully writing a great script or making a great short film so I've been working on that stuff more so I'm always busy but it's just a matter of if it's personal and business or just all business. There's always work. You know, the, the, the, the crazy thing that I've learned about this industry is no matter what you never don't have work, even, even during COVID. It's just a matter of finding the work. Well,

there's the finding of the work, but it's also, as you said, there's so many opportunities for passion projects and things you want to do on the side that even if say, uh, there's some small things that, uh, or like there's some corporate projects or client work that you, you don't have a lot of at the moment, there is business development that you need to still be doing constantly. And at the same time, uh, you also want to fill up that time with, as you mentioned, passion projects, those, that's the time to get your portfolio work done and, you know, hopefully even learn some new skills at times. There's always something to do.

Yeah, when you have your own business, there's always something to do for sure. And I did a speech at an entrepreneur's conference thing where I just said that it's just a never-ending or starting your own business is just a never-ending pile of work that just every time you finish one thing you know the stack just keeps getting higher but if you break it down into just getting one thing done at a time it seems more manageable but I agree with you branding and and uh reaching out to people biz dev stuff always can be working on that making it better work I've created so many decks in this past few months that nobody's even seen yet but i'm just i just have them in case for when they come up i'm gonna have them ready we're doing the same thing and i feel like now that we're not exactly out of covid but you know uh the sky's a little bluer um a little bit we're i noticed i noticed

this change with us we're really hungry now we're putting a lot more work and effort into trying to grow the company compared to before. Even the past couple of years, it seems like these last two months, it's been like we're hungry. I can sense it. And I'm noticing a lot of changes too. So it's been really good for us. We noticed that COVID forced us to stop and reflect on the business and kind of almost tear it down and build it back up again, you know, and as you mentioned, work piles up constantly and sometimes you don't even get to do some business development because of all the client work that is coming your way at the time

or all the shoots that you're doing. I mean, who would have weeks on end to think about business and strategy in the future when you have X, Y XYZ number of clients who are calling you daily asking you, okay, can you get this project done by this day? Then this day, you know, there's a lot of work that needs to get done. Do you feel like since COVID, you've been able to have the time to kind of think a little bit more about what you want to do in the future? you want to do in the future? Yeah. Yeah. And it is partly thinking about what I want the business to be because I think I'll still be doing it for a while still. And one of those things was I wanted to partner with more ad agencies because I realized that all the pretty much all the clients that I had during COVID were ad agencies feeding me work from their clients rather than, because ad agencies

have a whole plan and a schedule for what they want to do with your marketing dollars. And just because of, just because COVID happened doesn't mean that all stops necessarily. Whereas if you're doing it direct for client, they might just have, you know, their plan is just to completely pull the plug on things, which is what happened to me for a lot of my projects. But yeah, reflecting on that, reflecting on trying to get more serious about figuring out how to transition into an actual filmmaking Hollywood career. And doing more screenwriting than I've ever done and doing more. Even just like ideation, coming up with movie pitches, movie concepts, movie treatments. I wrote like 10, 15 treatments of movies that I'm not,

I don't know if I'm going to write the script for, but I just wrote the story of the movie out and all the characters, you know what treatment is. And it's just to see just and pitching my friends all the time. Every time I see my friends, I say, oh, I got a movie idea. What do you think of this? Get their reaction, hone it. So getting a lot more serious about that because I want to do that ultimately with my life. And I think when you're making money and having success in advertising, you kind of forget about your other dreams, what you so-called really want to be doing.

And it's easy to just forget because you're so busy with what you're actually doing. And so everything stopping really gave me the time to sort of snap out of it and say, OK, what do I really want to do here and work on it? Yeah, it's funny you keep coming back to transitioning into the film industry, because when Kirill and I first started this, our we we were thinking of getting into it we're gonna we said to ourselves we're gonna use this as a jumping board to get into the film industry and i think we completely forgot about that i think i only remembered that in the first episode or second episode where yeah carol made a comment about how that was our initial plan and i was like oh i i completely forgot about that

was like exactly what we're going to do. And that's somehow just got lost along the way. But it's good to see that like that's still at the forefront of your goals, right? Because we've been in business roughly the same amount of time. We started in 2015. Well, 2015 is where we really pushed it. And so we've pretty much been in the same in the industry for the same amount of time and yeah as you mentioned you know like we've kind of forgotten that that's what we were

originally wanting to do but I think we also evolved in terms of some of the passions like I originally wanted to go into the industry to be a cinematographer and while I am still very passionate about cinematography I feel like there's other opportunities that I want to explore more. Like, for example, documentary filmmaking and directing feature documentaries. That's something I really want to explore. So I feel like people's goals evolve all the time, especially when experience comes into play. And if you went into filmmaking back then versus you kind of trying to figuring out how to get into it now, you're probably going to be bringing something completely new to the table that you didn't even think you had before. Right. In terms of experience, you know, like what are some of the skills you've learned creating content for clients, too? Right. Yeah. And I don't even know what that would look like.

And I don't even know what that would have looked like. You know, I did apply to a ton of jobs when I first got out of school. And a lot of them were at film production companies in Toronto. I wasn't about to move to L.A. and do that because I had to stay with my parents after school and live with them for a few years. Well, you know, I couldn't afford to do that. Also, there's all this stuff about the visas and whatever that I'm sure I'm going to have to deal with at some point. Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, yeah, I applied to some production companies. One of them was doing this HBO show called Sensitive Skin at the time. And I actually watched the entire series. It was with Kim Cattrall set in Toronto. It was actually pretty good. But I

watched the whole series before the interview, just so I, if it came up, I'd know everything about it and it never came up. And so, and I ended up getting the job at the advertising place rather than the film place. But I do think that I did jump into filmmaking more than if I had kept a job anywhere. I think what I'm experiencing now is much more similar to the director, writer's life than having a job at an office would, even if the office makes films or TV shows. Because it's a life of creating, you know, creating your own opportunities, facing a lot of rejection, all the responsibilities on you, creating the ideas and bringing them to life. And I've never forgotten about, I can't forget about the filmmaking dream. It's literally my entire life. I mean,

if it doesn't end up happening, my life is over because I've put so much emotional stakes into it. It actually scares me to think that if it doesn't happen, what would happen? But I try not to think about that and just work towards making it happen. And I think all the experiences I've had are going to help, definitely. When I was mentioning about evolving your goals, it's kind of like you're obviously going to still go into filmmaking, but what I'm talking about is also how you might want to do different types of filmmaking versus other ones, right? Like I thought I wanted to do feature film cinematography. I, mine kind of evolved into

more documentary directing, you know, and, and potentially even sports documentaries. So like, I feel like things change over the years, but you know, it, it varies for everyone. Well, I can see how you go from a corporate video job to a documentary job because they are like little mini documentaries a lot of the time you show up you film interviews you film b-roll and then you cut it together the way you want to cut it together rather than like according to a direct script so i can see how that your experience would lead you to want to get more into documentaries and maybe you have been watching more documentaries i think it's a lot about what you are into what you watch maybe you maybe you got really into documentaries and you've been inspired i don't know it's interesting that you bring up again this need to create uh art you know through your your scripts

and potentially through your features and whatnot um Because we had a guest on previously, we had Yang from SDE, and this is something he brought up as well. Yang owns one of like the biggest wedding video companies in the city, right? And he also mentioned this kind of metaphysical question of, you know, at the end of the day, like, what are you really creating? And that's something that he was struggling with, with his work, right? And it seems like it's something that probably all of us struggle with, because at the end of the day, ads, they could be cool, they could make you feel emotional. But you don't remember an ad from six months ago, let alone one from 10 years ago, right?

Yeah, you might remember a radio jingle. But that's about it, right? Yeah. And it seems that because of that, we're trying to, it's almost like a lot of filmmakers nowadays that are in the ad world, they're trying to create filmmaking, they're trying to create ads that are almost like films. That's a lot of like, a lot of ads nowadays look like they would be short films, right? It's almost like the filmmakers behind these ads are trying to like their creativity and their passion for films and showing it through the ads. But at the end of the day, it is still an ad, right? Yeah, at its core, at its very core.

So you mentioned something that was interesting. You said that you want to get more ad agency clients, right? ad agency clients, right? And this is interesting because a lot of the other production companies I've talked to, they're actually transitioning a bit away from that or they're kind of hedging their bets by working with more direct to clients, right? So it's interesting that you're going the other way compared to them. Well, maybe they know something I don't or maybe they've had experiences and have been burned or whatever. I don't know. Because for me, it's, that's where the money is. That's where the clients are. And also the whole, I mean, the whole industry is, is people just knowing each other. And you know, this guy, I know that guy, oh, we go out for beers

all the time. I walked the dog, whatever. It's all been, it's always been like that it was like that when I was at Saints and I and I if I could do anything differently I would I would um I don't know try to be more a more one of those people who is I'm very sociable but I don't I didn't make I didn't make that many efforts to like really keep in touch with my connections when I left Saints, because I was kind of embarrassed that I had been let go, even though nobody would have cared. And I think, yeah, I think it's where, like since COVID, it's been, I've gotten all these jobs from not all of them, but some, you know, and they've been the biggest name clients I've worked with yet in terms of the companies. Like, I don't even know if I'm allowed to name them, but you've definitely heard of all of them. Whereas before I'm doing direct to client,

I'm doing companies that people haven't really heard of. So it raises the profile of work. And usually the best part about it is you go, what's the budget? And they go, this is the budget. Instead of going, what's the budget? Oh, I don't know. I've never done this type of thing before. What do you usually charge? Oh, okay. Well, it's better if things go, it's $50,000. It's this much. It's whatever. And you're like, great, done. Let's do it. It's a lot simpler. It's less, um, it's less haggling or discussion on, on, on the, the small details in the beginning. And then you can just get straight to the pre-production. Uh, and you're absolutely right. Network is everything now. And I feel like your, your portfolio and your

career a lot of the time is reflected by the people that you know and you and you meet along the way and that is how a lot of the work you do also kind of gets shaped by your network what is like something that you've kind of done to differentiate yourself from a lot of other people that you kind of really push forward with a lot of your network? Oh, like, you mean, how have I done networking differently than other? No, no, no, more so. More so the business, like what makes mini fridge and you different compared to a lot of other people? Well, I don't know what it's like to work with other companies. And I wish I could be a client and like just try a bunch of them out and see what it's like. You know, the idea for mini fridge was me coming from the commercial world, googling corporate video companies, Toronto, or, you know, whatever promotional video production

companies, video production companies, video production companies, let's call it. And looking at the companies that were in the space and thinking these, this is not, this does not, I mean, this does not feel like 2016. This does not feel modern. This, this is still cheesy and old and I could do so much better than all of this. It really was from a place of ego thinking I could just do so much better than this. And that was having never directed a commercial before. I just had this confidence, cockiness, belief that I could, whatever you want to call it, that I could do a better job. And I was really young. I'm trying to think of the interpersonal relationships if I could offer.

I think I'm better now at offering people that seamless sort of experience and a good time. And people like to hang out with me and talk to me, I think. So they enjoy the experience of working with me. I'm not awkward or weird when I talk to people on the phone. I know how to get through a meeting and not embarrass myself or anybody else. And maybe other people in filmmaking don't have those skills it it does attract a certain type of introverted shy person and I am an introvert at heart and I have those, but I also can be an extrovert and outgoing. And so it's a mix of, I think the videos are better and I think it's probably more fun. Do you think your sales background kind of played a role in giving you those necessary skills to make you a little bit more outgoing and a little less introverted?

Like that's kind of what happened with us as well, because we were dario and i both worked at different banks as tellers so i feel like we had a little bit of that sales skill there as well and uh over the years um although we started out being introverts like you uh we kind of expanded and we're a lot more extroverted as a result but i feel like the reason we're extroverted again is because we've shot a lot of weddings. And in the wedding scene, you need to, you got to break the ice with so many people. You have no idea. I mean, like you go to the groom's house, you got him, his friends, his family. And then you go to the bride's house, you got her, her bridesmaids, her family. And you got to be, you know, happy.

You got to be excited. You got to be able to get them excited and break the ice super quick. So I feel like that's really what got us out of our shells. Yeah. Did you find it was the same with you, with your sales background? That's a good point about the breaking the ice because that's me, but doing corporate style interviews with people where they have to talk on camera and they're really nervous and you have to be funny and make them feel relaxed.

really nervous and you have to be funny and make them feel relaxed. In the sales background, I wasn't like that good at it or anything. And I was really young. I was like 22 when I had my last like official sales job before all this, which is like pretty much a child. And I was, you know, apart from like getting over the fear of making phone calls to people, um, in front of other people, because the office was, there was a bunch of people in the office and I was calling people all day with the same, like, you know, script. Can we meet? This is what we do. That was scary and calling people scary, but I got over that fear. And I think it just comes

from like life experience the more like the older you get you get a little more confident with yourself who you are you've had many more social interactions social interactions are by nature like pretty awkward until you really work on skills to make them less awkward and more more natural and fun and talking to so many people, because for every client I have, I've met with like five or 10 who didn't, it didn't end up happening for whatever reason, but I still did the whole dance with them and called them. I mean, how many times a week, less now, but when I, you know, am I talking to a complete stranger who's reached out to me saying,

I want a video. You have to break the ice with every single one of those people. You can't just go straight into business. You have to warm them up. You have to do some small talk. And these are people across every age and gender and ethnicity and location. And you never don't know anything about them. And you have a call set up with them. And you got to make it fun right away and make it not be weird too because some people are too salesy and too like oh yeah you know make an awkward just like how the hell are you beautiful day that's

like that's too much so it's like you've got to find a balance. And it takes years of screwing up, really, and bad experiences and mistakes to get to this point. And I still think I got so much further to go. I can be so much better at it because if I was really good at it, I'd get every job that I go for. You just mentioned it takes a lot of years to figure it out. You've been in business roughly as long as we have. What are some mistakes that you've made? Oh, man. I've said the wrong thing.

I've done, you know, sometimes someone asks you to do a pitch or like come up with ideas and I'm so excited to start that I don't even fully read what they're asking for until I've already worked so hard on the idea. And then I go back and go, oh, that's not what they wanted. Oh, crap. You know, so that happens.

It's funny. It's hard to call it a mistake if it's just something that you forgot to do, but it didn't actually, they didn't notice that you forgot to do it but ultimately subconsciously they noticed like lately i've been and one of the things i've implemented in covet is a whole system of a whole like google drive link where all everything from the job is there and um the script the storyboard the treatment the casting options the location options and it's all labeled and organized. And I'm going to send it as a link in all my emails. So anytime someone gets an email from me, they can just catch themselves up on the project. That's something that I haven't done before. And did anyone notice that I wasn't doing it? No, because they didn't

know to expect that because they'd never done this before. But if it had been there this all these years, would it have been a better experience for them? And would they have had an easier time and not had to search their emails to find certain things that I'd sent them weeks ago and getting frustrated with me without even realizing it because they didn't know there was a better way? You know what I mean? It's like, it's not really a mistake. It's a mistake. It's just like, I wish I knew to do that. You learn things along the way. If you miss something or you make a mistake or someone makes a mistake, you learn from it as it goes. And you actually mentioned how you created a solution that people didn't even know they needed, especially when it comes to client

management. Because I think we've all been there where a client has sent you something in a long email chain of 50 other people that gets lost at times and it just became a lot easier whatever assets briefs and files were needed you can just keep it all in one place and keeping it at the end of every email for that particular client you definitely solve the problem that they didn't even know they they had at the time so it just goes to show show how mistakes you can learn from and you shouldn't be afraid of them happening at times. Yeah, one thing I like to do is when we're creating our briefs,

I like to reword their project description and needs in the brief. Just so as I'm going through it, I'm also not going over anything that I might forget about, you know, so it's like everything, everything that's in their document is in the brief, and I've reworded it, just so I know. Totally. And that, that totally helps basically writing down everything they say, or even better yet, recording it and then typing it up later, and then putting every single thing they said,

giving it back to them in the in their brief, they think you're reading their mind, but really you're just paying attention. And then you can get into all, I mean, I don't know if you guys know Chris Voss, the negotiator guy, you know, he wrote a book about just stuff like mirroring techniques and the power of no and all these like negotiation techniques that really help. So you just come across these things as you're living and, and it gives you ideas for how you could be doing, doing things better. I think it's just good to watch, watch widely, read widely, be open to everything. And you're going to get ideas for how you're in, listen to people, talk to to people and you'll get business ideas on how to improve your business and i don't think mistakes are

mistakes are awesome let's let's all make lots of mistakes that's become the cliche thing to say but it's true so so that was one one mistake but what about um i guess wording it as a mistake maybe was the wrong thing but what would you do differently if you could go back five years like how would you start your business differently yeah well it'd be great to take everything i have now and just start in terms of like all the like the decks that i've built the pitch decks that i've built the but then again i wouldn't have all the clients to create that to begin with. Like the website. Starting again, I mean, like, like has everything you've done, would you just not change anything? If you could go back? Or if you had the opportunity, would you do some things differently, maybe one or two things, I probably would have like gotten

a co working space a little sooner than I did. I worked from home for a little too long. And I'm really missing it now because I am stuck at home. And I just found out my co-working space is still not going to open up for another little while. I thought I was going to be back today. I probably would have gone into an office more sooner than I did. Because it is, in terms of loneliness, it just feels better to be at a place with a bunch of other entrepreneurs and professionals,

even if you're not talking to them all the time and just leave your house and get out there every day. Uh, and having a downtown address as your company's address is really helpful because I had it as my like parents house for a while. Then I had it as my house, you know, which was still downtown,

but it was like a residential address, stuff like that. But there's a million like lessons that you you couldn't learn them unless you did them so what can you what what's the point of thinking about going back I mean I could start a new video production company from scratch right now but then I'd have to build up the whole reel again and a whole new list of clients and might as well just stick with what I already have. Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned a co-working space or an office because we also again, we had Yang on for the last episode. And he also mentioned how getting an office really set it set him on a course where he couldn't really change things. Like he was now locked into a three-year lease and that was that. He was, he had to focus on that full-time. And I feel like that's something we've been wanting to do for a while. Obviously COVID has changed our

plans, but if anything, it's made it easier for us in the coming future because now the leases are very cheap, you know? I mean, every situation is different you know for some people they find that having a co-working space is very productive for them for some it doesn't necessarily work uh so every situation is different like for example we had an office early on in our in the business as well uh we got like this one small office downtown that we would occasionally use but none of our editing suites were there. It was just a place to kind of simply go to. It's an address for the business and we can meet our clients there.

But very quickly, we learned after about almost a year, all of our clients wanted us to meet them at their offices, right? Does that make sense? That's exactly right. So we realized exactly like we realized that it didn't work out for us at the time and we didn't need the space. So we got rid of it. We continued to be working from our own homes and then obviously renting out spaces and studios whenever needed. But now it's starting to get to the point where we realize, okay, we can see that in the next six months or so, it might be a good idea to get that space again. so needs change constantly and everyone's situation is different and like you mentioned in your case having that energy the the lifestyle of people around you it really helped uh helped you whereas now you're kind of adjusting back to you know working from home and it doesn't it's not as easy as it was before i mean the reason to get an office as if you have a video production company is because you want to convince people that you're a bigger company, that you have, you can take on bigger

projects that you're more trustworthy. If like, you know, Nissan comes calling or some big agency and wants to give you a huge contract, cause they're going to be looking at five different companies. And there, and it's, it's like, it's just one more factor that, that, that might push you in that direction. Um, we want to work with a company that has an office and a reception and we can go there. We probably won't, but we could, and they have a whole staff and that's great, but it's, it's like those, you know, those people were probably wiped out when COVID hit because it's so expensive and it's, and it's so to me unnecessary because you don't, I mean, I'll hire people on when there's a project, when we have projects, I hire them on to do the project. When the project's done, they leave.

Um, and it's, you're literally charging your clients more so that you can pay for your office. You can charge them less because you have less offering expenses. And that should be way more attractive to people. But everyone's still in an old fashioned mindset that you need a big office to truly have made it. And I think that this COVID thing has made everyone realize that that's bullshit. Yeah, Carol and I actually had a discussion early on when we heard that a lot of companies weren't doing too well. We're like, well, why would you go get a huge office downtown? Like your overhead costs are so high, right? I mean, you could have gotten it maybe Midtown or would it cost you like half the price? You're still like pretty much in

the core at that point, right? And I mean, again, how many clients really come to you it's mostly you going to your you going to the client you should do the office for you not for the client necessarily but you bring up another interesting point too which is um because of the pandemic again you don't really need an office and then again especially in our business you don't really need that many employees like you, like freelancers are more of our go-to sources, right? Like same with you, you hire a lot of freelancers. We do that too. I feel like if we were to hire employees,

it would be maybe a full-time editor, but I think we would focus more on producers that can also shoot and direct. Well, you'd want an account manager probably when this is and this is something I wish I had. So like, because it does make you seem more legit when you can pass someone off to an account manager, because nobody wants to think that you're doing everything because people don't think that you could possibly be good at everything. I just happen to be good at everything I can do. And I don't think I could have started this business

if I wasn't able to do everything, except for videography and cinematography, which I can hire other people to do. I believe in hiring other people to do what you can't do. But the main sources of income are the producing fees, the writing fees, the directing fees, and the editing fees. And then everything else is sort of all the other line items. So the fact that I can do those four for every video, if need be, because if when I get busier, I'll outsource some of those roles

to other people. Like if you work with an agency, usually the script's already written. And a lot of the time you can get someone else to edit the video if it's not that important. They're all important, but if it's not, you can get a good editor to do the editing. So yeah, like I couldn't do this unless I was able to do all those roles because I just don't think there's enough money to – like we said, support the whole office with the, with the, with, with the whole staff. And maybe I'm bitter that I don't have that, but I just, and I, and I know that big clients won't go with people who don't have that, but it's like, how am I supposed to, it's like a catch 22. How are you supposed to get the big office with the staff? If the clients won't hire

you for those huge budget jobs to begin with. So then you're funding it yourself just to look cool and to show people that you're big. But if some sort of calamity happens, you're screwed. You're like so overexposed. Yeah, I've actually heard two different viewpoints on this. I spoke to one company that said, you know, they're still waiting on the government support for the rental coverage. They still haven't gotten that yet. And I spoke to another company that actually said, thanks to the government subsidies, they've been able to stay afloat really well. Because they got their employees covered and they also got their business, the rental covered, right?

So it seems like it works for some, doesn't work for others. Who knows, right? So it seems like it works for some, doesn't work for others. Who knows, right? As we mentioned before, every situation is different for everyone. And you can see what works for other people and see what similarities or parallels there are to your situation.

But at the end of the day, you always have to make the call yourself on what you can and can't do so one thing you mentioned was how everyone kind of does a little bit of everything especially in the beginning and with the barriers to entry are so low now in the industry what is something that you think a filmmaker needs in terms of a skill or element is is it that that you mentioned that you can do everything or is there something else? To start a company or just do an individual video? To do a video or even to start a business. Let's say to start a business, like a video production business,

like what do you need in terms of as a skill? Yeah, you need to, well, you need so many different skills. It's crazy. I mean, you need to like, especially at the beginning, because you really won't have the leeway to hire other people to do things for you. So you should be able to write the script for, you know, any product that comes along or any service, you got to be able to write a script or at least have an idea for a video for them. You can't expect them to have the idea for the video. It's got to be your idea. Then you got to be able to find the people to pull it off with you. Book the whole crew. Go to the set. Tell them all what to do. Direct it. Make it actually look

professional and passable. Edit it. I mean, it's like, it's so many different things. And it's, you want to inspire people and say, anybody can do this. You just have to work hard and have a dream. But man, you got to do all these things well. And obviously, you won't be able to do them as well when you start out because you're going to learn and get better. But man, I still think there's a barrier to entry because all this equipment won't make you good at any of these things.

That's for damn sure. And if you're not good at those things, you should be an amazing salesman who can convince people that those things aren't important or that you are going to get better at them or whatever. And I've seen people who have companies who I personally think the videos are not good, but I've met,

I know they're amazing salespeople who have convinced their clients that this is good stuff and they're doing a good job and the clients are happy and they're still paying them because they're that good at whatever personal relationships and, and selling and being and presenting themselves as a really organized successful person so yeah it's there's so many different things what what can you say yeah like uh it you definitely need to be able to balance uh a business mindset with a creative mindset which is so so difficult. It's very difficult.

Like, I mean, with Kiril and I, it's usually when we get into a business mindset, our creative mindset kind of decreases in a way. It's hard to balance both of them. Because again, like we almost have to have like our feet in two different ponds, right? Whereas like if you're just focusing on one thing, if you're just a freelance shooter,

you don't need to worry about the business side of things aside from just getting your gigs and once you've built that network you're already gonna be getting a lot of gigs based on the people you know right but if you have a business you not only have to work focus on growing that business you also have to focus on remaining competitive and one of the the best ways to remain competitive is to create creative work, right? Again, like at the end of the day, we are creating stories. And if you can't create a story, again, like you better be a really good salesman, right? Yeah. But that's something we struggle with a lot. Like, so how do you being a one man band, like, how do you balance the

creative with the business? That's a good question. And, you know, some people say that creativity comes from limitations and knowing, OK, I only have this much money. I only have a one day shoot. We're probably gonna be able to afford a house and a couple actors. You know, what can we do with that? So I think they are pretty intertwined because the creativity comes out of whatever the, uh, job is. So, you know, if it's a dog food company and they have 20 grand, you're, you think you have a lot of options, but you kind, I mean, you kind of don't, you, you kind of have that, those parameters and then great creativity can come out of that.

Or like, we have to incorporate this line into the script it's like okay um that can that can change what you end up doing for the better sometimes um and yeah it is a one-man band but it's not because i'm not like i picture a guy with who's also filming who's like well i literally picture a one-man band when you say that, but I have, when I'm on set, I have like all these people around and they, they know what they're doing. And, and, and, and I should change what I said earlier a little bit, because I think you can start a company and hire someone else to write your scripts, hire someone else to direct it, hire someone else to edit it and hire someone else to produce the videos and be like, I'm just the

business guy. I sell these videos. They make them dah, dah, dah. I just don't, I just think the path to being profitable is so much, uh, longer than I'm saying how to make money when you actually can, you know, get paid for all those jobs. And I also don't know why you'd want to do that because I don't think this is like the most profitable. If you're just a businessman who just wants to be in some sort of business and you're going to hire someone else to do all the creative filmmaking stuff, you know, go into like anything else. Yeah. This is not, this is not the industry to scale sales right yeah no you can't sell a million of these things they're they're like little i say it's like being an artisan it's like someone who sews something and like sells on the side of the highway and each

one is like has love and hard work in in in each one it's not like a mass produced scale, expand global offices thing at all. And that's, maybe that's why it's creative. I don't know. Yeah, everything, everything, everything we quote is always custom tailored to the particular client. I feel like that it's like that with everyone else in our industry, right? Because, again, everyone's needs are always different. They're not going to understand that, okay, that promo video you want to do, they don't know that it's going to be a half day. Sometimes it's a half day.

Sometimes it's a full day. Sometimes you need an audio operator. Sometimes you don't need it. That's actually why when we tried to bring on a salesperson one time, it just didn't work because he came from the wedding industry and his mindset was packages, right? Because in the wedding industry, they got bronze, silver, gold packages, right? And you just can't apply that same mindset to like corporate videos, right? It's completely different. Everything is custom tailored to the client.

That's a great point. It's completely different. Everything is custom tailored to the client. That's a great point. You have to, it's true. So many times I've been on the phone with people and it's, it's come down to how much is it going to cost? What can we lose? What can we gain? And I can't trust a salesman, an outside salesperson to be able to do that. It has to be me really on the phone being like, well, this is what it's going to be. And if you have this much money, this is the kind of ideas we can do. So the creativity and the business all bleeds together for me, because at this point, I can just tell you exactly how much anything is going to cost and if we can do it for your budget or not based on what your vision is. And I have a trust problems in general. I mean, when I heard about you guys splitting up your company that you both do the directing and both do the producing and oh I couldn't I couldn't do that because I I it's also

an ego thing but I have to be like everything here I did and I don't trust other people to do when you're directing you have to trust other people because they're on your crew but you're also you get to stand over their shoulder and tell them yes or no. You don't you know, is this good? No. Fix it. It is. Is this good? Yes, it is. You don't let them go off and do it and then see what they come up with.

Yeah, I think what I think it's it works with Carol and I, because, again, we've known each other for so long. I think we know each other for eight years and we've been working together for six years. Yeah. So at this point, we pretty much, we know exactly how the other person thinks. We know how we think. We have a lot of parallels in terms of like our mindsets. And we've been doing this now for so long. Obviously, as you mentioned, like in the beginning, there was issues where like, you know, we were both so into the work that the other person was doing because we wanted to make sure that it was all good. But I guess over the years, as it's kind

of gone on, as we've both gotten experience, we we've seen each other grow and we have developed the trust even further to the point where, uh, I, I know Dario can handle the work with this client. I know he can handle that call because he knows what to deliver to the client just as much as I do. And that actually also allowed us to kind of take some of the pressure off at times because especially if you get an influx of work, which happens like every now and then,

you can't do everything. As you mentioned, you outsource a lot of the roles and responsibilities that, that you need on set to people who are better, right. Or at least can handle that. And you know, you can trust them with it.

And at times, as you mentioned, even the writing and the producing, sometimes if you're overworked, you hire out other people. Whereas in our situation, when we get to, when we get a lot of work,

we divvy it up because then it just makes our work life a little bit easier. So I think it happens when you grow with the other person, you can develop that trust. In your case, if you were to now just like that, get another business partner, there's no way you're going to be, as you mentioned, there's no way you're going to be able to just blindly trust them with everything. No, I'd have to train them. And even then, I don't know, it'd have to be a certain type of person and it would be a person in business it wouldn't be another creative person because then it would just defeat the whole purpose I don't want to be the guy who's like making the deals and then passing the work off to this other person who's gonna actually make

it happen I it would have to be someone who's like in business or like is very experienced in the agency world, knows how to quote videos, someone like that. Yeah. And I think another thing, too, is that we're of a different mindset now. Like, yes, we're still creative, but our goals for the company are a lot bigger. I feel like because of COVID, the restructuring we've done, we're more focused on growing the business now versus being creatives in a way. Because I feel like before COVID, we're like, let's try to build a really cool portfolio, get a lot of cool projects, this and that.

We never really focused on growing a business. Whereas now our mindsets are more like, okay, we need to grow this business. Let's try to test out these good shooters that we know um we've worked with them on on projects uh alongside them but now we got a project we want to do let's bring them on let's see if they're really good if they're if they're just as good as they are on set uh when we're shooting with them we'll keep them we'll keep feeding them work so carol and i can just focus on growing the business so even they go out and do the videos and then well in a way when you stay in the office what

we want to do is again instead of us going out and you know being the dps and directors and whatnot like we're still we're just going to focus on the producing the producing and the strategy that's what we want to focus on at least the the core, at least that would be the core focus. Like there's obviously going to be situations where we go out with the crew at, like you do, uh, to the shoots to make sure that everything is running smoothly, that things are, are happening. Um, but, uh, at the same time, we want to, at least at this point in time to focus on setting up the business so that it can start growing from now. Cause if we, if we just try to do what we were doing before, we would just be in the same boat as it was a year ago.

Yeah, because then we're working for the company rather than having the company work for us. So we're trying to set that in motion now because long term, we do want to get it to the point where we grow and then somehow develop a marketing arm and then kind of have it so that we're kind of a marketing agency and kind of a video production company as well maybe add a photography arm in there as well and then once that becomes fairly large i'm thinking in the next five to ten years try to get investing to open up internationally that's that's our long

term goal right now well Well, that's great. It sounds like you guys are thinking more like business people and your producers at heart. You've tried everything and now you've tried the different jobs and that's the job that you're leaning towards. And that's really cool. And I've thought about doing that too and having a sort of mini fridge label of like I'm not the director I just hired someone I really trust to come do it and and be the videographer too and hey wouldn't it be nice to lay back like lie back and just

keep an eye on things and let uh let the money flow in without you having to get so involved every single time and spend your time looking for new business. And I think in general what the industry is going towards, I think it does make sense to have an office. If you have a studio attached to the office with a white wall, you know, whatever that's called, a white wall with, you know, you can do backdrops on it and film products basically, because that's what everyone wants. Now they just want a product on a, on a colorful background, you know, with a hand drinking the soda or whatever it is. So if you can do that and just pump that out of your own studio, that makes sense to have an office. And that's something you can probably just set up and hang back and and supervise without getting so involved because no i've done so many shoots where i felt

like i was the pa and the director and i really was i mean i was the director everyone you know defer to the director what does the director want but then when they all you know i'm still at the end like picking up chairs and moving the gear into the car with everybody else. And I don't want to be like that forever. So I totally understand. You know, we have a really funny story, actually. Carol and I were on a shoot. This is the time we had to clean the dishes. Oh, my God.

Oh, yeah. This was in February. Okay. Yeah. This happened not that long ago. So we were at this shoot and we rented out this person's apartment. Yeah, it was like not Airbnb, that other company we all use. But anyways, it's like Set Scouter.

Set Scouter. That's what it was. Yeah. So we rented out this place and we went, we shot there. We finished. The entire crew left. It was just Kirill and I were just packing up the product to get out of there. And the owner comes back.

Right. And I remember her. She just. Well, you weren't there for this because you actually were out in the car and I was we're just packing up the product to get out of there and the owner comes back right and i remember her she just well you weren't there for this because you you actually were out in the car and i was inside and uh she comes in through the front door because she got uh got back a little early uh and uh as she walked in uh you know they had a kitchen right and obviously we used the kitchen for lunch you know and uh and we we threw out most of the food. But we used their plates and their forks, right? There was like a couple of plates. It wasn't that many.

It was like maybe four plates and four forks. And as I'm packing up my last bag and I'm just about to leave, she looks into the sink and she's like, so are you guys going to clean the dishes? Now, mind you, this thing had a cleaning fee included in the invoice. It was already included the cleaning fee. And she said, yeah, because if and I'm like, what do you mean? Like we have a cleaning fee and we that we're paying in there. And she said, yeah, but, you know, yada, yada.

This I'd have to charge extra for for so and so like the cleaning fee only covers vacuuming for four plates. OK, for four plates. She hands us she hands him this like sponge that was so dead it was dirty it was dirty i'm like you use this on your stuff so i i remember so we were cleaning i came back i'm like what are you doing and he's like yeah we gotta see i wouldn't even think that was weird if i was there i'd be like yep you gotta clean the dishes what are you gonna do but it's. Take the garbage out with you. So yeah, like I was like, oh my God.

So I went and I helped them out. And you know what? I barely use soap just because. I should not have to be cleaning dishes because I'm paying you a lot of money for this. Because the cleaning fee was included. And if we use like three or four dishes for lunch, like that should be included. You know, like if there was no cleaning fee, I'd understand that. But we paid, what was the cleaning fee?

Like $150 for that? So Kirill and I are cleaning it and we're quiet. Like we're quiet the whole time. After the shoot finishes and we say bye to the crew and everything, I just call them up and I was like, that is the last time I'm touching a dish. Like I'm never doing that again in my life. Does that ever happen to you?

Something like that? You're not too good for dishes. That's the thing. It was just like, I felt like that was the lowest point in our career. We were cleaning those dumb dishes up. Because it just hit us. I've done worse, man. Oh, really?

What is worse? Well, I've done, I'm just, I mean, every location I've been to we've you know you clean it up when you're done i mean it's like it's comes down to this yeah like you feel like you i get in this mindset when i'm actually on set of filming where i'm so grateful to be there and doing it that i actually sort of forget that i shouldn't be doing those certain things um and and shouldn't be cleaning up and it's going to be amazing when I don't have – as a director, you just show up and the trucks are already set up and they're ready for you. And when you're finished, you leave. I don't want to watch people pack up gear ever again or have to wait another hour and a half for everyone to pack up gear. But that's what it is.

But I completely agree with you guys. You work until you don't have to be the, you know, the last guy on set. Yeah. I don't mind being the last guy on set, but I do fantasize about not bringing the rock and roller cart, loading that thing up, packing it and then unpacking and then packing it up again. I do fantasize about never touching that thing again. That's like a long term goal for me. Yeah. But I mean, in that situation, it was kind of like one of those things where we

didn't expect you know like we cleaned up as much as we could even like uh the places as we as we left it you know like we pretty much came and we left the place as it was i just felt the meaning that's what it was it's just the way she communicated to us right you know it was very it was not it was not very like kind of um how do you well she was this creepy lady. Like the way she said, I don't know. I just got like psychopathic vibes from her. I'm not supposed to be clean. I'm paying you 150 bucks. I'm not cleaning the dishes, okay?

Yeah. I'm going to keep that in mind when I go to my... I'm shooting at a set scouter house in a couple weeks from now. Yeah. I mean, if the interaction was a little bit more pleasant in terms of the way she mentioned it to us, then we would have been like, okay, that's not a problem or vice versa, right? There would be like at least an understanding, but it was just like very hostile the way she communicated to us. But anyway, as you mentioned-

I hope you're listening, lady. I hope you're listening. Send her the link to this. Definitely. Definitely. We'll find that old, that link. But anyways, we've talked a lot about business, business development, growth. Now let's kind of move on to the creativity. How do you tell it? How do you tell an effective story? I think an effective story is whatever makes you want to buy the product or try out the service, not even when you finish watching it, but already in the first like 10, 15 seconds of it. And the great phrase, the great saying of advertising, I think is, you know, you don't fix the, you don't need to fix the ad so much as you need to fix the product. Like sometimes people tell me product ideas or companies come to me saying they need a video.

And I just know within hearing what the product is that the video is going to write itself people are going to want to watch this video people are going to want to buy this product because it is because it solves a problem that either people know they had or they didn't know they had and and I said and I think the whole industry is moving more towards a straightforward style of advertising rather than a emotional cinematic uh style that we were talking about before those that style works more for an established brand that you already know about and they just want to keep reminding you that they exist but when when you have a new product, which a lot of types of videos that I do, you try to figure out what problem it solves and try to come up with a way to show how it solves that problem without the cheesy,

you know, infomercial style, black and white photo of a woman washing dishes and like, oh, she broke the brush. What am I going to do? You know, not go in that direction, but come up with something that's going to grab people's attention and go, oh, I have that problem. Because listen, we all have tons of problems. Every single person I know, you have emotional problems, physical problems, societal problems, convenience problems, you know, and every year, 15 things come out that make your life easier, and you you buy them, and you don't know what you did without them. And but not every product has that. So that's why I think, you know, fix the product, not the story. It shouldn't be

so hard to figure out what how to sell your thing if you if you business and you've gotten to this point that you're asking somebody to make a video for you. So start with that. That's what I would have to say. Do you feel, cause like Andrew's work is really good. Like the types of ads he makes are very comedic, but effective and that's why they're good. They're memorable.

They're memorable, but they got a comedic twist to it which is why they're good because you always remember them um do you would you say um creating more of that type of content or would you say that um maybe even that's changing like you do you find your style um needing to evolve or kind of what you got going on is good well obviously, obviously it needs to evolve if, you know, it's going to fly off the shelf and, and my phone won't stop ringing. Obviously I can always get better. Uh, I think though funny is always better and funny is going to, it's going to keep, uh,

it's going to keep being popular. I think emotional ads are way trickier gambit and most likely end off coming off as a bit cringe. And also people are very cynical. So if you see some emotional story and then at the end, the MasterCard logo pops up, you're kind of like, well, screw you. So might as well admit that it's that.

I think the problem is that, I think the weirder the better in terms of humor the weirder you can go is because I think a lot of people try to make funny ads but they try to make them safe and I've tried to write funny scripts for people and then they that are like weird outside the box would definitely be memorable, but then they don't exactly feel comfortable doing that or being that weird. So then you whittle it down into something that's a lot safer. And it's not as funny as when it started out. How do you, how do you manage that process? Because again, you're starting out with something

that you think is, is really good and it'll be really effective for the client, but then they keep telling you to changing you to change it and to change it and like how do you get to the point where you're like okay like it's no longer worth doing this because you've changed it too much at this point right well it's always worth doing it i think uh if they want to do it with you i will do it if they're happy and everybody in advertising knows this if you you know the client's happy, that's all that matters. So if they want to do that, you know, I'm not going to be all precious about my weird joke that I wanted to go in. But I try to keep, I try to keep it funny, even if they, so they'll say, I don't like, like, I like the general direction, but I don't like these jokes.

You need to change this dialogue. I like the general direction, but I don't like these jokes. You need to change this dialogue. But you get to replace it with, you get another chance. You think of another funny line that might work instead. And it's not like they, you know, once they start coming in, we have some ideas for some jokes we'd like you to tell. We have some ideas for the dialogue.

We're going to write the final script. Then you just have to let go and say, all right. I mean, if it doesn't come out well, they're not going to blame you. And that's another thing you want to make sure doesn't happen. But if they're giving you the responsibility to come up with it and they trust you, that's when the funniest things happen. But then again, the clients can also be funny and have funny ideas too. It's, it's all on a case by case basis.

Some clients think they're really funny and they're not other clients, but I want to use these, this interview on my LinkedIn. So I can't really go much further than that guys. Yeah. It's, um, with, with every client, it's different. There are situations where, you know, like certain clients are wanting you to do all the creative work. There are other ones that have a lot of creative input that they want to put in there. And at the end of the day, as long as you are able to make them happy and give them what they want, you're always going to be memorable and put in a good light with them. memorable and put in a good light with them. And a lot of the time that people, a lot of creatives don't even realize is that sometimes the input from the client can actually even make the product a little bit better than you expected because they might see something that you don't. Because as creatives, we're always so attached to our work. We're so proud of the work that we've done.

And, you know, we're happy how it's come out because it's come out just from us that when other people are starting to tell you to change things you try to block it out but I remember we did a project two years ago where the initial cut you know we were really happy with it but then the client said I really like it I like the direction like you mentioned but can we remove these few things and kind of restructure a few of the the pieces because it was a much longer project piece it was like about 10 to 15 minutes long and oh okay yeah it was like a documentary yeah this was though this was a short documentary we did a few years ago and the first cut was about 17 minutes and we knew it

wasn't gonna be that long by the end of it but the client told us some of the things that we can remove and replace or even just kind of restructure. And that actually brought the time down to 12 minutes. And now as a result, we're really happy with the final product because it, it helped make the story a little bit more, it helped kind of pop a little bit more just from their perspective. And sometimes, you know, you need that collaborative effort with clients and they value that as well. And sometimes, you know, you need that collaborative effort with clients and they value that as well. Yeah. And it's it's just another person's opinion and another person's ideas.

And, you know, and it's good to ask other people besides the client who, you know, maybe don't necessarily have the same power that they do to make the final decision what they think of your your work i love the story of kanye west working on his album and and at the studio and asking everybody who came through the room what they thought and they give them they give him suggestions and he'd go that's really not something i would ever say or do but i love your suggestion anyway um and you hear that about studio you know it's you can compare commercial filmmaking to like Hollywood filmmaking and the fact that the studio is like the client and they're hiring you to make this thing. But ultimately it's up to them and they give you notes and you have to listen to the notes and people complain about the notes. But a lot of the time, from what I've heard, those notes are great and they actually improve the movie. Because sometimes you're in a room with some really smart people who love movies and know what they're doing. And other times people just want to make changes so that they can get the credit for making a change or that they contributed something to the project.

You never know. But it could definitely be a good thing. And I've gotten tons of great notes that i've that have improved my work and made me look better uh we're kind of reaching the end now i do want to get your thoughts on the future of the video production industry it's uh it's not going anywhere it's a great it's a great industry it's uh it's obviously going to be it's going to keep going in the direction we've seen where there's a lower barrier to entry and more people can get involved with it and start their own companies because really as i was saying earlier you can you can start a company with nothing you can get the client to pay for the videographer

i do think you have to have the skills of like being able to write direct produce and edit and then hire everyone else but if you if you can that, you can start one of these things. And it's the more work is probably going to go away from the big ad agencies or the big ad agencies are going to have to figure out ways to lower their lower their costs because the client's budgets, I think, have have shrunk. lower their costs because the client's budgets I think have, have shrunk. And they also want, um, more straightforward, predictable content that literally tells people what it is rather than really fancy flowery, um, cinematic stuff that doesn't necessarily work, but looks good on a reel. I think that's gonna, that's gonna happen. And hopefully, you know, well, everyone looks at video all the time now.

So hopefully there'll be more and more demand for it from an advertising perspective. And people are going to want to spend more and more money on it as opposed to other things they could be spending money on like radio or print or digital banners or whatever it is. The more people want videos videos the better it is for us you kind of uh already touched upon this a little bit earlier in our discussion but just to kind of uh summarize like what are some of the next steps for mini fridge like we know your long-term goals you want to go back into into the film making industry but what are some potential next steps for mini fridge as a business specifically?

Work with huge name clients, make tons of money. You know, blow you guys out of the water, basically destroy all my competition. No, everything except for the last part i think i you know i want to make i want to i think i have what it takes to make tv commercials i really think that

the only reason my portfolio is not better is because i've been just limited by budget i haven't had the opportunity to yet to work with a huge brand and have a significant amount of money to play with. Because I know that if, you know, if you have an idea and you can, you know, rent out a studio, build a set, hire great actors from Actra, have a great production crew, have money to do a few days of shooting instead of cramming it all into one day, editing, pose, you know, color grading, days of shooting instead of cramming it all into one day, editing, post, you know, color grading, you just need money to do all these things and make it look great. And just got to be able to get someone to trust you with a bigger budget.

And it's a catch 22 because they'll only trust you with a big budget if you've already done a big budget. And I've done a TV commercial and I've done videos that costs, you know, close to 100,000. But, you know, you want to get to where you can do a video that costs 500,000 or a million. And so my goal is to convince people that I'm ready for that, that I can do that. And once I convince one person and do it, I'm sure the rest, you know, the ball will just keep rolling. And in order to do that, I have to keep making relationships with people and meeting people because nothing will ever happen if you're just sitting around at home waiting for it to happen. And that's basically what I've learned with this whole journey of having my own businesses. It's a cliche, but you got to make it happen. And you got to talk to people and convince them that

that you can do it. And then when you get the opportunity, you can't screw it up. them that that you can do it and then when you get the opportunity you can't screw it up yeah this industry is a is is such a massive hustle and uh you always have to be on your feet and the second you kind of stop that's when when things don't really happen and that's what we discovered very quickly from covid is that you know we stopped and everything else stopped as a result but the second dario and i started working on small even passion projects on the side or networking and making connections with people the fact that we were uh making things happen we were able to kind of attract that kind of energy and that kind of network that required more work and now as a result you know at least uh in beginning in august and now uh

bleeding into september like the work is starting to come back even though we're still technically all in a pandemic yeah and this is like work from previous clients it's not exactly new new work yeah uh but yeah even something as simple as like this whole show started with uh kiro myself and another friend of ours we're trying to do like a funny uh comedy podcast and then as we did a couple of weeks of that we're like why don't we just do this for the business yeah do it for the business and then this this kind of grew from that and then once we started doing this it was like well we need to network with more people right because like when you bring guests on the show right

so started reaching out to more people and that that really got us in the groove of things because from there we're like okay i'm used to now calling random people up talking to them i want to do this with businesses now and that's what we're going to be doing at the end of this month and next so it's it's been good it's been good so far and it's led us to people like yourself you know and you bring a lot of you share a lot of uh experiences and stories and and you bring a lot of value to people especially the people that will be listening to this show and you know maybe someone can learn something from your journey and your experiences. Yeah. And even just being connected to people like yourselves.

Like, I love how determined you are to just, like, get what you want. Like, it's like from our end here, I'm like, damn, like this guy really wants what he wants. Right. Right. Like, he's just like, I'm going to go do this. I'm going to get that half a million dollar commercial. I'm like, damn, like, I like that. Like, it kind of motivates us in a way, you know? Dream big, fellas. Dream big.

You got to. You definitely got to. And I agree. And I think your podcast is a great idea. And it's the type of thing that I would have thought to maybe have done. You know, thinking of more ways you can market your own company and create content for it is excellent. And it's the type of thing that I would have thought to maybe have done. Thinking of more ways you can market your own company and create content for it is excellent. And also talking to the competition, literally.

I mean, you guys have a competing video production company to me. And maybe some of the other people who watch this will be people from competing video production companies. And they'll learn something from how I do things. And I'll learn from them and and uh we should all you know be friends and uh and and know each other we shouldn't all be in our own little dark worlds just thinking about what what is everyone else thinking it's like let's have an open discussion and it's a positive healthy thing so good for you guys I love the podcast yeah a lot of people I've reached out to they're like oh it's it's a positive healthy thing so good for you guys i love the podcast yeah a lot of people i've reached out to they're like oh it's it's cool to finally like talk to someone else in the field because it's always like like you said we're all in our own bubbles right we're

afraid to talk to other people you know and and the the thing that we're also even potentially hoping that we can even get out of this is you know this can actually push all of us to do better work to make better connections you know and even in a way sometimes help each other. We found that a lot of companies that we've collaborated with in the past, you know, there have been times where they've been in a tight spot and they needed someone to come help them produce a commercial or a promotional video or something like that, you know, and then we're able to come in and help them with that. And then vice versa, there have been situations where we weren't able to do a project and

we needed help. And then because we made those connections, they've been able to come in and help do that. So we really hope that we can kind of create some kind of collaborative network with this that, you know, other people can also benefit from. Yeah, because I don't think I don't think we're really competing against each other because directly that even indirectly, because you're going after clients that we're not going after. Right. And again, the market is so huge. There are so many businesses out there that need video. It's, it's an insane amount of businesses that need it. And

especially now because of the pandemic, everyone realized the importance of it. So a lot more businesses want to do video. Right. And if you, if you look at all the other production companies that are around, they, they've all got different clients. I haven't seen one that has the same client. I mean, you do see them, but that's how you know they've worked with an agency. Some similar ones, yeah. Yeah, that's when you know they've worked with an agency.

It's like, okay, you have that big client because, well, or maybe you're working with that specific department. But we're all essentially, there's enough food to go around. There's work to go around. And we're all going after different clients at the end of the day, right? Yeah. I mean, that's a good way to look at it.

I think that when I get a call from a client that says, I'm talking to you and four other agencies and may the best pitch win, you're kind of like, okay, well, is there enough work to go around? Because what if I get all these or what if this other guy gets all these? What am I going to do? So I don't totally agree with you on that. I think there is a lot of competition. And obviously, any company you see that has a bunch of videos, you know, you could look at that and be like, I could have done those. Why wasn't I doing? Why didn't I do those? So but it's a nice, it's a good mindset to have. And I hope it becomes more and more true. I think people will get out of their shells a little bit, hopefully, when we come on the other side of this thing. And there'll be more work to go around because it's definitely contracted a little bit. So you got to work even harder to to get those get those jaws and get

those pitches, you know yeah so before we kind of sign off here is there anything you'd like to plug any anything that's happening in the near future that you want to promote well I'm sort of revamping my Instagram mini fridge media at mini fridge media and taking it a little more seriously as a promotional tool and keeping people updated. I might do some, I'll probably post this on there and do some webinars or something. I'm trying to just be more active on there. So people follow me on Mini Fridge Media. That's great. And I'm going to have a bunch of shoots coming up where we'll be wearing masks and face shields. And

I'll be posting about all that and what it's like to be shooting in a pandemic. So that'll be exciting. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for joining us on the Creatives Grab Coffee podcast. You know, as we mentioned before, your unique experiences and journey have really kind of added value to the discussion today. And we look forward to discussing more

with you in the future. Thanks for having me, guys. It was fun. Yeah, likewise. All right, Take care. Bye-bye. Thank you for tuning into 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.