Creatives Grab Coffee - Vetting & Managing Talent (ft. Maddy O'Shaugnessy at Impossible Studios) | Creatives Grab Coffee 31

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov from Lapse Productions.Our goal is to make the video production industry smaller by creating a sense of community. Whether you are a creative, an entrepreneur, or a professional there is knowledge for you to learn. Join us as we have industry professionals from around the world come on the show and share their insights on the industry and business. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Welcome to Video Production.Today we are welcomed by Maddy O'Shaunessy, an executive producer at Impossible Studios. With her past experiences at Ogilvy and Momentum to name a few, she has shot and produced commercials all over the world for brands such as Buick, Dove, Shoppers Drug Mart and many more.Timestamps:00:00 - Intros04:26 - Bringing together an international team of talent06:40 - Vetting your talent08:58 - What to look for in talent10:14 - Budgeting is similar all throughout the world11:07 - 15s ad storytelling is so key 14:48 - You can’t hire solely based on reels18:25 - Cheap isn’t always better20:10 - DP Tips and Red Flags25:01 - Social Media Ad Tips and Info33:30 - Adapting your content to TikTok40:10 - Learning about and preparing for VR & FB Metaverse43:10 - Don’t give your audience too many steps to view your content44:00 - Future of VR and Video50:01 - OutroTo learn more about the show, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/lapse-productions-blog/Subscribe and follow for future episodes!Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee https://www.instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffee/Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comInstagram: @lapseproductions https://www.instagram.com/lapseproductions/#videography #videographer #videoproduction #businesspodcast #videoproductionpodcast #lapseproductions #creativesgrabcoffee #videomarketing #videographers #videoproductioncompany #videoproductions #videoproductionservices #videmarketingstrategy

All right, perfect. So now do we have to, I sometimes keep thinking, do we need to clap for this? Because I know we're on Zoom, but all right. Anyways, welcome everybody to Creatives Grab Coffee. Today we welcome Maddy O'Shaughnessy, an executive producer at Impossible Studios based out of Toronto. With her past experiences at Ogilvy and Momentum, to name a few, she has shot and produced... Ogilvy. Ogilvy and Momentum to name a few. She has shot and produced Ogilvy, Ogilvy, sorry. She has shot and produced commercial projects all over the world for brands such as Buick,

Dove, Shoppers, Drug Mart, and many more. Welcome Maddie. Hi, how are you? We're doing great. You just mentioned before we started recording that you just got back from uh Uruguay for a commercial project so how did that go yeah it went really really really well I uh I had actually shot in Uruguay over the pandemic when we weren't allowed to travel um so that was obviously tricky like working with the company over there and like you know we were all stuck here in Toronto trying to do the whole thing over zoom um so this time a project came through, it had to be summer in our spot. And it's obviously not summer in Toronto yet. There was some talk of maybe exploring Vancouver, but it's just so tough with spring weather. The chances of you actually getting a sunny day and like leaves on trees and all that kind of stuff.

So we took it as an opportunity to head down to Irigoyen and like the price difference was about the same to get the same stuff done so it worked out really well we got to meet everyone in person that we'd worked with over zoom last time uh and their uh Irigoyen is actually known for, um, their steak. So they do like really great beef meals. So we like basically went to Uruguay for a week. We shot for a day and we ate a bunch of steak that was like cooked on like open fires.

It was amazing. Wow. So you only went down for just one day, uh, one week, one week, one week. Oh, okay. Cause you said one day uh one week one week oh one week okay because you said one day yeah one one yeah we i heard one day shoot one day one day for the shoot yeah no no

the uh the travel's way too long to do it just for one day it's like uh you fly out of toronto copa airlines was fantastic i will highly recommend. But you fly out of Toronto to Panama City is kind of like the hub that everyone flies into and out of. And that flights about six, six and a half hours. And then you fly from Panama City to Uruguay, which is like another seven-ish hours. hours. So you're looking at like a 14, 15 hour travel day. It's not like a, you know, hop on, get there right away. No big deal. Like we'll tech scout this afternoon once I'm there. Like, no, no, it is a travel day. I can't believe it's that far away. It doesn't feel like it, it should take 15 hours to get there. That's almost a full day. I know. It's wild. I know. Just directly down. The nice thing is though, for anyone who doesn't travel to, they're also on almost the same time zone as us. So like, I've also done shoots in like Spain or like Australia or something. Australia is the hardest one. The time zone,

it's just the exact opposite. So like, that's really annoying because you have to work until like, you know, five o'clock in the morning. But yeah, earquakes really, they're only one hour, I think, ahead of us. I always get it backwards. But I think they're like, yeah, one hour ahead of us. So I didn't like miss any emails or have to be like, sorry, I'm in another time zone. Like, good luck. Yeah, I have a friend down in Australia and it's always so hard to schedule calls at home because they're plus 12 hours.

No, they're plus 14 hours, something like that. It was 15. I think it was 15 or so. 15 hours. So it's like when it's daytime here, it's nighttime there. So it's always tricky. It's wild. They wake up at like 5.

They start work at like 5 p.m., 6 p.m. our time, depending on how early they wake up. So you're just like any feedback you get from clients all day, you're like, well, I'll let you know what they say at 6pm. Thank you. But I did a shoot once where the production company was in Australia. The client was in the UK, and we were in Toronto. So there was not a single hour of the day where we were all working at the same time. I was always sleeping. That was a poor decision how did that how does that team come together you know i mean whenever well i mean obviously through emails i mean like in terms of like here in toronto you know a lot of us work with people closely within our own um our own

networks you know maybe some people in other parts of the country, but never really in such taking little pieces of the whole project and like having them from all over the world that you only usually hear that for, you know, big budget studio movies or something like that, you know, where they have teams all over the world. Like how does one manage all that? So I, before I switched over to working at

impossible the last account I was on at an agency was a global account it was a global client so they actually required like when we did a shoot like I had to explore directors all over the world so some of those directors would be word of mouth you know so and so had worked with so and so before so and so lived in south america before and this is who they worked with and that kind of stuff um but my dirty little secret that you know i'm sure uh i probably shouldn't be saying but whatever a lot of the time like i'll end up googling like production companies in other countries and then I'll just do like a vetting call with them so I'll call them and I make sure that like you know obviously their

directors reels will somewhat speak for the work that they're capable of doing but then like you know do you use the same budgeting system as us you know can you take us through a pre-production meeting do you have access to this camera and this gear and whatever and like if they can answer those questions they obviously know what they're talking about. So for the most part, yeah, like, ideally word of mouth. And then occasionally, when I'm in a real situation, it ends up, you know, I'll find people on Google or Instagram as actually also a big one. And then I'll just have a vetting call with them. Look, as long as you do a vetting. Sorry, I was gonna say, I'm really curious to see exactly what kind of vetting questions you ask. That's really interesting. Like you're mentioning running through the, running them through, like run me through your pre-production meeting. I was like, oh, okay. If someone asked me that, I'd be like, uh, uh, I really have to think about it.

See, that's good. And it's very important to, to be able to vet the talent that you, that you're going to bring on for your projects. And it doesn't really matter necessarily where you find them. You know, obviously the, obviously Google, Instagram is not always the most, you know, the most, how do you say, ideal way. You obviously want to get word of mouth from people and recommendations that have worked with these people before, but sometimes you just have to do it. You have to hustle. You have to find talent in certain ways. And if you can vet them and they seem like they will be really good for the project, then what's the risk in working with them, right? Exactly. You have to start somewhere with every person you ever work with. It's not like you can always have worked with everyone in the past. There's always like you can always have worked with everyone

in the past. There's always going to be new people. And like, especially when it comes to like directors and production companies, before we award the job, we go through a whole treatment process. So they have to do an entire treatment with us. There's, you know, they take us through everything. There's, we vet all of their estimates and, you know, everything we're going to go through. So it's not like, you know, we're like, hey, I saw you online. You look great. Let's do this job. Here's $500,000.

It's like, no, we're going to, you know, go through this really strict process. You're going to answer all of our questions. You're going to put together a treatment of exactly how you're going to shoot our commercial, all this kind of stuff. We have multiple calls, all this stuff. And then once everyone's comfortable then we move forward so i think it'd be a little scarier if we were just willy-nilly handing out money and signing off on things before we really went through the process but well i can imagine because you guys are also dealing with like half a million

million dollar budget so yeah you do need to know the abcs of everything at that point oh yeah for sure and like like, it is like, obviously like that when you look at the total budget altogether, it seems like such a huge number, but then once you actually like siphon it out to all the different people that need it and all the different things you're going to be doing and how many hours everyone's working on the project, it's crazy how fast all that money gets eaten,. And there's never enough money to go around. It doesn't matter if your project is $100,000 or a million dollars. The creative always reflects that.

And then you end up being like, so I think we need more money. Wow. You mentioned in your vetting process, there are certain questions you typically ask. What are some of the key things that you look for when you're vetting talent that automatically is a surefire sign that this is someone that we can work with? So when we go into the product, like I'll do a pre-call with them and I'll ask them more production related questions. That's more for like whether or not their production company can, you know, get us exactly what we need. like that whether or not their production company can you know get us exactly what we need um but then we'll do a call with the creatives and the director and the creatives will you know look for certain things from that director as well and kind of make sure they're saying the right things so on the production end of things you know I depending it's dependent a lot on the job

you know like I'm not gonna ask whether or not you have a drone person that you work with if we're not using a drone in the shoot but if we are i'm gonna make sure that you know it's more technical stuff before it's more technical right okay yeah like you know chances are like for the most part you know you can use any camera but for the most part you know we're looking at an alexa we're looking at you know some anamorph looking at, you know, some anamorphics or cook lenses or something like that. So like, I want to make sure that you have access to those kind of things. And then I want to make sure when I go through your budget that I'm seeing all the right stuff. So one of the really interesting things that I've found working all over the world

is that the budgeting is so similar. So we use something at Impossible called a point zero budget. The other one that's used more in the US, but it's the exact same thing is called hot budgets. And almost no matter where I've got in the world, it's the same budget. So it's the same line items in the same spots, they do the exact same thing. So if I see that budget, I usually I'm like, okay, you've done this before, you know what you're talking about, I can see all the lines I need to see, this is great. So it's a process of, you know, do they have access to the kind of equipment or people that I think will need? Do they understand how to put together a budget? And then when we get into the creative side of things, it's more, what does the director understand? So one of the things that

we see a lot that I actually will caution like some of our directors against is so many directors want to put like the 60 second spot on their reel. They want to put the two minutes of, you know, great work that they've done on their reel. But at the end of the day, most commercials these days are 15 seconds, like almost 30 seconds are almost becoming rare. So, so many creative teams want to understand, can you actually put together a commercial in 15 seconds? It's so great that you can do a two minute spot, but can you do a 15? Can you tell an entire story in 15 seconds? Because that's a huge part of it. And, you know, almost every time I don't think I've ever gotten a 15 second script where I've been like, yeah, this is actually 15 seconds. This is going to fit perfectly. Wow, you guys did it.

So it's always great when you hear like the director come on and they're like, look, I timed it out. This is sitting at 25 seconds. So, you know, we're going to have to talk about how we actually shoot this. If there's anything we can speed up, like, you know, what are you willing to lose on the cutting floor? And if we can have those conversations beforehand, it just makes the editing process so much easier. So understanding 15 second cuts, understanding, you know, whatever genre we're in, they should know that know that so like do you understand how to shoot comedy do you understand how to shoot beauty do you understand how to shoot a montage anthem like see you see those things on there real but when you actually talk to them like you know do they

talk about how that's gonna happen so little things like that is kind of what we vet with directors so it's not necessarily an exact specific list of questions that I have on my computer, but it's very job based. Do you understand what we're doing? Because I figure hopefully at this point in my career, I understand what we're doing. So if they can answer my questions, then, you know, they obviously know what they're talking about. Yeah, we found over the years that reels are never fully indicative of the person's actual capabilities. We used to, when we first got into the industry, we thought, oh, wow, we have to get a killer reel together. Oh, this person's reel is amazing. We think he'll do a great job. There was one case where

we hired this one DP who had an amazing reel, very narrative based work, creative shots, really cool looking shots, great storytelling. But then when we put up for a corporate shoot, we thought a corporate shoot would be very easy for him at that point. And we realized, oh, and when we looked at the footage after we realized, oh no, this, this wasn't, this wasn't the right hire. We should have done a little bit more of a vetting process. So ever since then, now we look at very specific projects according to the tasks and role that roles that we're hiring i think she froze by the way i just yeah i knew it yeah i i wanted to finish the point just so we have a clean a clean cut

i don't know if i should cut this it's pretty funny what you're laughing I just wanted to get a clean sound bite I told you I told you you didn't update your zoom client it was bound to happen I'm sorry it's okay it froze on you listening very intently so I finished the sound bite before you mentioning and, it's flowing so well. I'm debating whether I should cut this part out or not. Don't cut this. Don't cut this. This is staying in. This is this is golden. What was the last bit that you heard from me, by the way? Literal last word I heard was, oh, wow. And then it cut. Amazing. OK, just to kind of give you a quick summary what we were mentioning was uh uh vetting talent is very key and and um and people's reels are never fully indicative of

what their capabilities are we used to uh hire and judge people based on their reels and there was one situation where we hired a dp who was a very uh creative uh shooter had great narrative work that he was presenting and we thought a corporate shoot should be no big deal for him right that was on us because if they mainly do narrative work what made us think that they could do corporate work because they are two different they are two different things apples and you know this was early this was back in 2015 we were maybe a year or so in the industry and um and then when we saw the footage afterwards we realized oh no they're they're not that experienced in in corporate okay from now on we have to ask for people specific projects that

they have done similar to the job that we're hiring so that we know that they're actually capable of doing it and we can trust them to do a good job. So vetting is so important in this process. And I feel sometimes people don't do enough of that. I've seen many projects where you could tell that the talent was never vetted and they just threw it together really quickly. And you know, you're very experienced that where if you can put it all together really quickly, if you're experienced, you can get all that stuff done in shorter period, shorter time periods. The, uh, the one thing that like always is a little iffy about someone's reel is like, technically it's their best work. Like that is the best of the best, but it, the other piece of that is, are they consistent in that best work? And you can't always get that from their reel. Like

they may have five amazing spots on their reel but then they've got 20 that were like pure garbage that they won't show anyone so you never know if it's like are they consistent or is it hit and miss and you never know what you're gonna get yeah and you also never know like how like how involved they were within that project because it's like there's in in, in like, you know, when you create a video, it's not just one person being a dictator and just saying, this is my vision. This is what we're doing.

There's so many different voices that are putting their input in. And like, again, behind every video, there's like the work of dozens of people that were involved within that project. So you never know like okay was it fully their vision or like what what was their input what wasn't what was demanded what was done so that's another thing you have to kind of figure out and i i can't even imagine how tricky it must be on your end because it's like a yeah like the real is someone's best work you don't know like how many duds they had maybe before they got that one cool one.

So referrals is always like your key point. But if you're not going based on referrals, like, oh, I'd be stressing. I'd be worried up until like that project is locked in. Especially when you're hiring a director or even a DP to put together the vision for a half a million dollar project where everyone else can do an amazing job in their role. But if the director was, or sorry, if the, if the DP accidentally lit everything too intensely, then everything else, all that work is just gone for nothing at that point. But then I guess if you are at that level, you are pretty much,

you don't get to that level, I guess, by being bad, you know, you don't make it to that stage. So I think by that, but then I guess at that level you are pretty much you don't get to that level I guess by being bad you know you don't of course of course so I think by that but then I guess at that point it's kind of like it's like being I don't know maybe at the bottom of like a doctor's class you know it's like it's still still pretty good place to be you might be the worst doctor but still a doctor right the one with the lowest score in med school is still a doctor at the end like the uh the risk is so much greater i find on smaller budget shoots because yeah when we're doing the larger budget shoots like we're working with people that you know they're the best of the best because we can give them the money that they require to do the shoot but in smaller budget things you know you're

taking a little bit more of a risk already because it's someone who's willing to do it for a smaller budget. So it's a little bit more risky on smaller budget things on the larger budget things. I think I've always had it. Like it just, it always works out. Everyone knows what they're doing and it's all good. The, uh, the smaller budget ones though are trickier. You're saying we have to charge more to seem more trustworthy. There's, there's, there's a, there's a saying to that as well. I mean, if there have been times where Dario and I have put out talent calls for videographers or editors, and a lot of the time we found ourselves looking at the budgets of people who are doing, for example, 800 to 1500

day rates or something like that, because we know that is usually the standard for people who are doing, for example, 800 to 1500 day rates or something like that, because we know that is usually the standard for people who know what they're doing. If someone is saying, oh, I can, I can shoot your entire commercial for $150, then that's a red flag right there. It doesn't that much that little you know or yeah sorry that little 150 I'll do it for 50. Oh god no definitely definitely not worth it like you you absolutely get what you pay for it which is you know it is what it is I don't think anyone's like oh you know we don't have to pay that much like it's great it still works out just as good you can see the difference in like you know the digital spots people put out and then like the super bowl spots like they're just not the same the uh other thing i always look for on dp's reels because i've been burned on smaller budget things with this if all of the spots on their reel are shot outside red flag it's so much

yeah yeah i don't know yeah because it means they don't know how to use lighting if they're not showing any indoor stuff interesting exactly so little things like that yeah if you need someone though who's really good with just outdoor type projects okay maybe but if it's a studio shoot then you have to you have to show examples of how you incorporated a studio system with the lighting and everything one one for another one for example is specifically green screen projects those are so so uh not a whole different world of lighting it is so specific to be able to light your subject away from lighting the green screen and like understanding how to separate them and how to make sure like it works out in the vfx in the end and if it's not your niche it is not your niche

yeah don't don't say you can do green screen if you've done it once or twice uh especially if it's something very massive uh you need full you need full-on green screen studios in order to do something especially if you need to do a full body type thing like occasionally we daria and i get projects where it's like having like corporate clients who need to be you know maybe just like the waist up and then we can get away with bringing our own green screen for those types of projects but if it's something more uh more complicated and uh like a whole other ball game you know where it has to be with other vfx that plays into it then yeah it there there needs to be more that goes into it oh for sure it's a lot what are some other things uh uh that you've learned over the years by doing all these

international type projects like what is like something that you've learned that you you know like a like a key tip that you know you always hold with you uh for future projects um one of the things that i always do um especially if I'm working with a team that I haven't worked with a bunch before, especially creatives, is, you know, they have their website, they have their reel, they have their Instagram. That's great. I'll go on Vimeo and search them on Vimeo because so many creatives keep like all of their spots on Vimeo or like, you know, the post-production companies will tag them on Vimeo in spots. And then I can see any spots that they maybe haven't chosen to post on their reel or on their website just to get a better sense of like, you know, what other kinds of stuff are they doing?

So I will always go search people on Vimeo. Or one of the things I've done speaking of Vimeo just on like the flip side of that is I've also gone into jobs where the creative team is using you know certain references for something or like you know this is the spot we really like um we want to do something similar to this or client may have a reference for the type of spot they want it to be I'll also go on Vimeo and I'll search that spot to see if I can figure out who directed the original and depending on our budget depending on you know whether or not they're wrapped in Canada or not we can always look at shooting with that same director if they're using that as the reference anyways so that's sometimes also how I found some of my international directors is based off the references the creative team sent over oh wow how do you have how do you have that conversation we like that reference video you

sent over we're gonna work with those guys yeah I'll just like I'll well like uh we can do that as a production company as well because any any director that is, you know, I can go to whatever country they're in too but I can bring those directors to Canada uh and shoot with them here so it it literally gives the creatives the exact spot they want because it's their reference we're working with the same team so it works out pretty. You mentioned how the 30 second earlier, you mentioned the 30 second spot is kind of disappearing. And now it's mostly maybe like the one two minute one plus the 15 second version. I'm wondering also how how important is the social media version becoming like by that?

I mean, like the nine by 16 aspect ratio version, because a lot of ads, you'll still see them in regular 16 by nine. But are you guys now focusing more on the nine by 16 version as well? Are you shooting that? Are you framing shots specifically for that type of aspect ratio alongside the actual regular shots? So it totally depends on the complete media buy. TV is still number one. So people will always focus on the TV spot the most.

30 second spots are becoming less and less of a thing. 15 second spots and 10 second bumpers are usually what we're seeing the most for TV these days. So the 15 and the 10 seconds, 69 for TV, those are still hero. But if you don't have that media buy, if it is just a digital spot, most online platforms aren't 69 anymore. Most online platforms aren't 69 anymore. So 69 kind of becomes, you know, it's your YouTube spot. It's, you know, your video on demand spot. If someone's, you know, watching some sort of platform or an ad plays before, but for the most part it's paid Instagram, paid Facebook, and paid TikTok now is becoming a thing. So, and the really, really tricky thing with that is it's not only just 916 you have to worry about, but also where the usable media spaces. So even though you're doing a 916, you know, you have to look at on Instagram, there's

that little bar at the bottom where you can type something in and there's the X on the top with your little name. So you can't put anything under those things like they're on the edge. Anyways, it's pretty easy. TikTok is a whole other thing. So TikTok has the entire text blurb at the bottom and then they have the name at the top and then they have the icons all down the side. So the usable space is in 916 is like this little blob right here. One by one, basically. Yeah. you're basically back to one by one. So what we're doing a lot of now for digital spots is, you know, whereas before we could get away with shooting on a less expensive, smaller camera, it's digital.

We save money that way. Now we're back to shooting it, you know, on the big, like we're shooting a digital spot on a 4K RED camera because we have to shoot this wide and then we're going to cut it down and we're going to cut it down and we're going to cut it down. So it becomes all these little tiny, tinier spots. And what we do is we just, you know, we'll have VTR on the day and we'll put up bars

where, you know, where the 916 is. So we can see what the 69 looks like, but we can understand how big the 916 is just to make sure that we're shooting far enough away and we can fit it all in. But yeah, so if your TV spot is still there, 69 is your go-to. If you're just doing digital, 69, four or five or one, one, then 9, 16 are kind of all evenly weighted. They want all of them the same and you have to pay attention to all of them equally. Yeah, I noticed as soon as we started posting highlight clips of this show on Instagram Reels and TikTok, that's when I realized how little space we actually had for our stuff.

And I was like, oh, wait, so we can't use the whole side. We can't use the bottom. The top is like cropped out. And it was like oh wait so we can't use the whole side we can't use the bottom the top is like cropped out and it was like oh my god this is so messy and then the thing that really irritates me is that the 9x16 on tiktok is slightly different from the 9x16 on instagram real always it's off it's not the same it's not it's not the same i don't understand the logic behind that don't they just copy each other anyways so it's so frustrating because if you look at the tiktok guidelines it does say it's 916 but when you actually look at the spot on tiktok because especially with iphones that's the screen now like goes up around the camera at the top it's actually slightly longer and they don't

tell you that in the specs so So I've had to like fully redo TikTok spots before because it just, it's not the same. So you can't, whereas like Facebook and Instagram are very similar and integrated, like a four or five on Instagram and a four or five on Facebook, easy peasy, they swap back and forth, good to go. When you get into the 916s for Instagram versus TikTok, it's two separate deliverables. It's not the same thing. It's because they're the same company, Facebook and Instagram are the same company. So they're going to make it interchangeable and malleable between their

platforms for the content. Whereas TikTok is the new player in town and they're, they're messing things up for everybody. By their own rules. TikTok has been a really, really interesting one to watch come into the industry because you know where facebook and instagram are known for being like i mean at this point facebook is what all of our parents are on to post crazy news articles but you know yeah exactly conspiracy central that's facebook now yeah it

is facebook oh lord um but facebook and instagram themselves are known for being fairly curated so a lot of ads you know some ads will always be ads and i'll always stand out but there's a lot more stuff on facebook and instagram that you can do that are like high quality that don't seem out of place. So we can use stuff from our actual ads on Facebook and Instagram that don't seem, you know, too, too crazy. But then when you're going through TikTok, TikTok is not a platform that is like curated or, you know, meant for high quality. So it, it's been a really tricky thing. You know, we've spent years and years and years explaining to clients, like, we can't just shoot this with an iPhone. Like it's not going to look as good. And then TikTok came out and now we're like, we should probably shoot this with an iPhone. Like it's, it's just going to perform better if we do. So, you know, it's tough. TikTok is kind of,

it's a whole other thing. And I don't know if anyone's fully cracked the code of ads performing well on TikTok yet. It's still new. The platform is still so new that it's hard for people to kind of figure this out because I mean, Instagram, when it came, it came out, people were just posting photos constantly. Not everyone knew how to market it or, or how to, how to put advertisements on there. Uh, and we were all putting on a filter, putting on a weird border around it. We were like, Oh my God, exactly. Exactly. And now TikTok, uh, has really taken the, um, the organic feel to content very literally in terms of how how it'll perform with audiences because that's typically what people look for people went to instagram before

because people saw a little bit more of the authentic side a little bit uh in the beginning and then it becomes because facebook was becoming too convoluted so that's just a nice way to just see people's photos or whatever. Facebook was just getting a little too messy at that point. It was very messy. And Instagram was a great platform for that. But then people realized very quickly that it was always going to be very much people showing only what they wanted to show very specific. It was almost like a portfolio based platform for a lot of people. And that's now essentially what it's become. And people were looking for some kind of content platform that um that could be a little bit more

authentic snapchat was kind of a little bit of that uh in the beginning yeah and so was i think vine back in the day tiktok is just a longer vine that's all it is yeah it's just vine it's nothing tiktok is vine but longer yeah yeah longer way longer like their limits are like 10 minutes now yeah that's why i was gonna yeah you can post up to like a 10 minute video i like that it's a little longer because on instagram reels it's only up to a minute so i'm always struggling to to like shorten the the highlight clips of this show i gotta like trim them down and trim them very it's a process whereas like on TikTok you just do up to 10 minutes I don't know why they don't do that in seven seconds or 15 seconds yeah yeah do you do you feel though because of because you're

starting to create content for for the TikTok platform or so are you guys considering shooting less with the higher end cameras of you know the aries and the alexas to kind of get that more authentic feel with the content or is it still the standard now on our end what we've kind of noticed works probably the best is you know we still do our regular shoot we still shoot on the higher end cameras because it works best for obviously best for TV. And then also, you know, Instagram, Facebook, all that kind of stuff. It looks really nice on the curated reel, but then for TikTok, what we're doing is we're usually bringing out one person specifically to shoot TikTok content because the, like it just, your standard spots don't work as well on tech talk for two

reasons. The first one being seven seconds is the magic number. You want to have a second, seven second spot. So if you're doing a 15 second spot, as much as you have 10 minutes on tech talk, seven seconds performs the best. So what kind of content can we do in seven seconds? We should think about that. The other thing being one thing that really draws people to your content is using new and upcoming, but also popular audio sounds. So if you're just putting your regular spot in, it's not necessarily going to get, obviously you can pay for the ad space, but if you want to grow that more organically, it's not going to get pushed to people's for you page if you're not going with specific trends that are already on TikTok. So we would actually bring someone out to film separate content.

The other really, really tricky part of it is, you know, usually the process is, okay, the client briefs a creative team on, you know, what they want to do. Or like the client works with the strategy team to brief the you know, what they want to do, or like the client works with the strategy team to brief the creative team on what they want to do. The creative team writes some scripts. They go back to client. There's maybe three rounds of revisions. You know, they go back and forth. They finally have a script. Then it goes to production. Then we assign a director and then we do treatments and then we do pre-production and then we shoot. And then we spend another month editing and then it goes to traffic and then it goes out so you know end to end you're looking at months and months and months of work and if you were to start that brief with so there's this viral video on tiktok that we really

want to do something for and then you're putting it out like let's say best case scenario three months later like great job You didn't do it. Yeah. You got to be quick. You got to turn up content like right away, like today and tomorrow, another one. So fast. So what we've been doing that we find works a little bit better is basically we go to the shoot day knowing we want to do TikTok content and maybe having some ideas, but we don't have like a signed off script for TikTok. So like the spot is signed off on, you know, we've done the casting, we've done the locations all based on, you know, your bigger commercial spot or your Instagram or Facebook or whatever. The day of the morning of we sit down and we go through some of the things that are just starting to be viral right now. Like what are those ones that are like just starting to

hit that we think could work. We'll film stuff to go with that on the day. And then we edited it out and send it out a week later because a week is maybe an okay timeline, whereas three months just isn't. So, you know, it's a lot less being prepared and a little more rolling with the punches which is the exact opposite we do for everything else but it tends to work a little bit better and you can still kind of get on some of those trends if you're willing to you know roll with it a little bit I've also done some stuff for some clients where um we knew they wanted to do like a few different TikTok videos. We had some ideas of some stuff they liked, but knew that we probably

wouldn't hit the trend. We just casted two people just for the TikTok stuff. And then we just spent a whole day filming all sorts of different TikTok videos based on different TikTok trends. And then we presented, you know, 15 different TikTok videos to the client. They picked the four or five that they liked. So that way it's like, you're not necessarily signing off on, you know, the script in advance. You're almost signing it off on it in the end. And we just kind of did a, okay, you know, our shoot day, well, here's the cost for the shoot day it'll get you automatically three tiktok videos are included in this anything above and beyond that you know it's 500 bucks for

us to deliver the extra tiktok videos so that way it's kind of like buffet style pick and choose what you want the reason for that is because the with with trend with internet trends, you can never really pre-production it that well that it will actually turn out exactly what you're thinking. Because with all these trends, there's these different dances, there's these different lip sync type songs. And sometimes you just have to do it and see if it works or it doesn't work.

It either does or it doesn't. There's no, oh, it's not bad. Maybe it's a little bit okay. We could kind of use it. But that's a very good strategy where you guys came up with putting together 10 to 15 different TikToks to see what kind of works, see what works with the brand that you're working with, and then they can choose which ones will be executed online. And you have to do it quick. We found that no matter what stage in your career you are, whether you're doing $10,000 projects, $100,000 projects, or a million dollar projects, you have to be so nimble and you have to, you have to be able to adapt to what it is. And TikTok has really forced even the big players, such as your studio to adapt to these new changes that

are happening. Oh, for sure. It's every new platform that comes out, we change every time. Like, can you imagine working on ads back in the day when they did like $1 million TV spot a year and then called it a day? They were like, great, good job, everyone. We did it. All right, we're good.

Yeah. And now we're doing like, you know, a TV spot every quarter, but then also social content every quarter, if not more. Most brands have something called like always on social, which means they post something every week to their social account, whether that be, you know, something, some stock footage with some text on it or some old spots or, you know know an image from the store or whatever if they're a brand that has a store they post something every week now and they have to and like we have to keep up with that so i would like to go back to the day where it was just one big commercial year but it's not gonna happen i think it's only gonna get more and more spread out especially now that the metaverse is becoming a thing I am so interested in that are you guys getting involved with Facebook's uh metaverse like is there any any project currently in the works to an extent

um we haven't fully shot anything for it yet so we're still figuring stuff out um but we do have like a vr team and all that kind of stuff so we do have some stuff we're like doing tests for different clients and stuff like that just because it'll be interesting i i have to say i was a little bit skeptical until I got a VR system and I'm like, wow, I will just be in this for the rest of my life. It's so cool. I found that I got dizzy after being in some of those VR sets after a while. I always find I'm always like, okay, like I'll play whatever game or do whatever. And then I'll go to take the headset off and I'm like I expect

just like the text to disappear but I'm obviously still in you know the Mayan village that it's got me in in the game and then I take my headset I'm like all right I'm in my own living room what a letdown yeah I the the whole it just cracks me up how we went from oh don't stay too close to the tv to now we just have it like, right, right to the eyes. It will be on your face now. The whole Facebook metaverse thing though I don't know I have, I think it's going to be a dud, like the barriers to entry are just too high for it. Like I mean it's not like you got to get the headset. And then you got to put it on, and then you gotta put it on and then

you are you really gonna wear that the whole time i don't know like they've had you gotta put it on all right i don't know like there's been like vr headsets for a while now there's a lot of games that are out on it like i i still haven't seen it gone viral yeah because we tried we tried the 360 thing when it was just coming out 360 is different i know but it's different from vr like but i think ar might definitely take might be like the next like thing for me was over Christmas this last year we brought our VR set home when we went home for Christmas to like our parents and stuff uh my parents bought a VR set the next week they love it and I feel like if

like 60 year olds are that into it how much was it you know how much is it I think like if like 60 year olds are that into it. How much was it? How much was the headset? I think it's like 400 bucks. So you do have to be able to afford the $400 headset, but as the technology increases and that cost starts to come down, so they're coming out with things now too, where you can do the VR, but it's actually your phone. Like, so it's like just a case that like holds your phone and the whole

thing works. So I think once we get to the stage where it's literally just your phone and you can have a, just a strap, that's like 20 bucks. I think that's when it's really going to kick off. But the thing is they've had that, uh, that they've had that thing for a while because they first introduced that with the 360 video back in the day. So one thing we learned, uh, when we were first getting into it, uh, we thought 360 video would be also the next big thing. Everyone did. Remember 2016? You saw someone with a 360 rig at every event possible. Everyone was doing it. And we were doing it. We tried it with a few clients. And yeah, it is cheaper to get that mask and the phone. But the funny thing is,

it's hard enough to get people to watch your content these days anyway to add more steps for them to do it. That is the challenge. That is what we learned. I think now that Facebook is in and it's a whole thing, and now that, you know... I'll wait till Apple gets into it. When Apple gets into it,

because Facebook is, like like we said before facebook is already for old people anyways like the young is already onto the new stuff so i don't know they're not really a trendsetter yeah it's not a trendsetter definitely still growing like i think you're right like it's not there yet like you it you're not going to get nearly enough views if you're doing vr stuff yet unless you're like the right client but i think it will get there niche too niche at the moment it's it's okay we'll make a bet right now we'll touch base in 10 years and we'll see like i'm sure vr will take off in the future for sure it will but it will i don't think facebook's gonna be the one that it was thanks to them. It went like, no, no, no. I just need to be getting more talked about now because Facebook is in.

So like, it's so much word of mouth. Like Facebook is a big company. Everyone, all of our parents are on Facebook. They know Facebook. So like the more people start to find out about stuff and the different stuff that exists, it's just going to keep growing. And I think Facebook is like a step in that. The only thing that also confirms what Dio and i are saying is that the second they mentioned the metaverse their whole market share just plummeted so i don't know like i mean numbers don't lie listen the thing about the metaverse that cracked me up was that it wasn't anything special like for

example in crypto like that's been a thing for like over a year now there's mana there's the central land there's the other one i don't know the other one's too shit to mention oh there's sandbox in the central land that have been doing a lot of stuff in the metaverse plus i mean there's been other metaverses before right like there's the biggest one is uh minecraft that's the biggest metaverse out there they were like touting it like it's like oh my god guys we came up with a brilliant idea it's totally new it's called the meta Yeah, that's been around for a while. It's all still really complicated. And I think too many words like people are like, you know, I don't even know what that is. How would I even figure that out? But I think slowly

over time, like as the next generation comes up, because they're more used to it, because it makes more sense to them. I think we will start to see a little bit of a shift it won't be our generation at least that's what i think i don't think it'll be i don't think it'll be our generation we'll be the old people that i think will be like our parents in the metaverse being like you know how do i log on to the facebook or the meta the meta you know it'll the Apple. I'm still calling it. It'll be Apple. Listen, I want those Apple AR glasses that they've been teasing us with

for the last 10 years like that. AR for sure is going to be like cool as hell. That I can get behind easily. And it's pretty easy to implement. Someone just needs to figure out like the some type of glasses for it. And it'll work. I remember I remember like 10 years ago, Google came up with something like that. It was like these like, uh some type of glasses for it and it'll work i remember i remember like

10 years ago google came up with something like that it was like these like yeah the google glasses those are really cool i keep getting ads right now for uh ray bands that have a little camera in them so they like film your day if you're like an influencer or whatever i'm like well wasn't that like the snapchat thing wasn't there like a snapchat thing where like you could you could just record your snaps this was a while ago no i remember this there have been ideas there have been ideas like this for a while there was this there was that youtube uh creator casey neistat who had this like other app idea i think it was called beam or something where he like puts the phone there and just records his day very similar to that so the u.s government loved him for that by the way

they bought him out very quickly like i would just feel bad if i was recording my whole day because like it's so boring it's just like me sitting at a computer like you're welcome this is how fun i am you know you said earlier that i had a was thinking it was funny was that you mentioned that seven seconds is the magic number and i was thinking how funny is it that we've gone for like from like one minute is great to 30 seconds is great to 15 to 7 and i was thinking we're going we're gonna say we're gonna go down to one second yeah just a photo just post a photo that's all we need but I like we're we're lucking out on the video side for whatever reason on social media um short video content does better than stills oh yeah oh yeah it performs better two seconds three seconds yeah you get two seconds

like do gifts all right let's just do gifts already we know where this is great gifts are great cinemagraphs perfect like they just want like graphs yeah a ton of cinemagraphs just all those requests like those perform actually better than still so that'll that'll be what we'll end up doing for the next 10 years. People want to see movement when they're scrolling, when you're scrolling, the thing that will catch your eye is not so much images anymore. It's now if you see movement, right? So that's, that's maybe like one of the first things that will catch people's attention.

So, yeah, I mean, it's funny. Vine died for some reason, but we're going back to that format according to you in seven seconds so just bring vine back we're going back to vine and then anything with a human face or anything with like a cute dog that is like tops so any really video of a human face with a dog you've cracked the code carol all of our videos from now on just have to have a human face and a dog in You've cracked the code. Carol, all of our videos from now on just have to have a human face and a dog in the corner just to increase our metric.

Literally just in the corner. Oh, we just do like in Fight Club. We just flash it for like half a second. Yes. Dog face. Dog face. Just like that. You still first create is grab coffee. coffee yeah how funny would that be though if we just start throwing like

subliminal messages in our videos and our clients are like wow i love it i don't know why but i really love this adopt the dog today oh my god it's perfect i'm at we're we're now roughly coming up to uh the one hour mark already uh you know it's been honestly a great conversation we don't we don't want to take too much more of your time but what you mentioned you've uh shot and produced projects all over the world at this point so like what would you say is your favorite place that you've been able to visit as a result of that i mean iraq was the latest one. So that one's like fresh on my mind. I absolutely loved it. It was, I didn't, sometimes when you go somewhere, you know, like the food's a little different or like the amenities are a little different. And you're like,

by the time you're done, you're like excited to get home. Uruguay for me was like, you know, Um, Uruguay for me was like, you know, steak is universal. So that was fine. Uh, the food was really great. The, uh, it really, really reminded me of like, if, you know, Western Europe and LA had a baby, it would be Uruguay. It's like Europe with palm trees and beaches. Um, so I really, really did like it there. and beaches. Um, so I really, really did like it there. Um, oh gosh, I have also shot all across Canada for whatever reason. I multiple, multiple, multiple times I've shot in Moncton, New Brunswick.

So shout out to Moncton. It's lovely. Everyone there is super nice. Um, and then it's also really nice shooting in the UK they have a really great um like they have a huge pool of you know directors and talent and all that kind of stuff so the the um what's the word I'm looking for the like market in the UK or like the industry in the UK is phenomenal. Like they are so, so, so good. So I think those would probably be, those are my top three, definitely including Moncton. The one benefit of shooting in the UK is that you never have to worry about harsh sunlight. You know, you have one big soft source. It perfect you're gonna be careful with those dps especially because they have perfect lighting outside all the time all the time it's just always overcast it's perfect to do your due diligence with those guys

yeah super super super great amazing well maddie thanks again for joining us on the show and uh you know we'll we'll keep in touch and uh we'll we'll touch base again in 10 years and see where we're at with the vr world yeah i'm probably gonna end up having to eat my words so i'm very sorry see you in the metaverse yeah see you in the metaverse just another world another verse okay that that's one that's another verse we're going maybe this tgc verse one day right yeah all right signing off on the next verse guys take care