HOST
Larry Jordan

GUESTS
Zach Lipovsky, Director, Reel Apps Inc
Linda Tadic, Founder/CEO, Digital Bedrock
Michele Yamazaki, VP Marketing, Toolfarm
Robert Cohen, President & CEO, Future Video Products, Inc.
Damian Allen, VFX Supervisor, Pixerati LLC
James DeRuvo, Film and Technology Reporter, DoddleNEWS

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Larry Jordan: Tonight on the Buzz, we have a wide variety of interesting subjects to cover. We start with Zach Lipovsky; he’s the force behind Real Apps Inc and the developer of Shot Lister and Script Speaker. These two software tools help a project stay organized, during the chaos of production.

Larry Jordan: Michele Yamazaki, the VP of Marketing for Toolfarm; reports on the latest plug-ins for adding effects to our editing systems.

Larry Jordan: Robert Cohen is the President and CEO of Future Video; he’s invented V-Station HD; which is both hardware and software, designed for live event, multi-cam video production and post.

Larry Jordan: Damian Allen, Content Development Consultant for Moviola; has developed the ‘Coffee-Break Film School.’ This series of short webisodes is designed to help budding filmmakers better understand the craft of visual storytelling.

Larry Jordan: Linda Tadic is the Founder of Digital Bedrock. This is an archiving company, focused on enabling smaller production companies and work groups to archive and actively manage their media assets. Tonight, she describes how her new system works. All this, plus James DeRuvo with this week’s DoddleNEWS update. The Buzz starts now.

Male Voiceover: Since the dawn of digital filmmaking. Authoritative: One show serves a worldwide network of media professionals. Current: Uniting industry experts. Production: Filmmakers. Post-Production: And content creators around the planet. Distribution: From the media capital of the world, in Los Angles, California, the Digital Production Buzz goes live now.

Larry Jordan: And welcome to the Digital Production Buzz, the world’s longest running podcast for the creative content industry; covering media production, post production and marketing around the world. Hi, my name is Larry Jordan.

Larry Jordan: The annual NAB Show is coming and the Buzz will be there. For the tenth year in a row, the Buzz will be live on the tradeshow floor; covering all the news, production announcements and technology that NAB is famous for. This year, we are originating a new show every hour; 27 shows in all; featuring more than 90 interviews with industry leaders, all focused on the filmmaking community. Shows start Monday April 24th at ten am and to see our current guest line-up and the show schedule, visit nabshowbuzz.com. Our shows are being produced by Debbie Price and she has a number of surprises planned for this year. Visit nabshowbuzz.com and mark your calendar, to join us for all the news and excitement live, from the tradeshow floor, starting the first day that NAB opens. That website is nabshowbuzz.com.

Larry Jordan: By the way, I want to invite you to subscribe to our free weekly show newsletter at digitalproductionbuzz.com. Every issue, every week, gives you an inside look at the Buzz; special links to different segments of the show; and, best of all, it’s free and comes out on Friday. Now it’s time for a DoddleNEWS update with James DeRuvo. Hello James, welcome back.

James DeRuvo: Hi Larry.

Larry Jordan: It’s good to have you. What’s the top of the news this week?

James DeRuvo: Well, you know, you were talking about tools for budding new filmmakers.

Larry Jordan: I was.

James DeRuvo: You know, when I was a budding new filmmaker, my first short film was cut using Media 100. You remember that? The news came out this week that, thanks to a partnership between software giant Boris and MacVideo Promo, Media 100 is now completely free.

Larry Jordan: Wow. I remember when that was state of the art.

James DeRuvo: Yes, I do too. It includes Boris RED plug-in, 3D titling and visual effects and this update is version, I think 2.1.8 I believe it is. It’ll likely be the last major update for Media 100 aside from this basic housekeeping fixes for the operating system. But, you know, while this likely means the end of ongoing development for this venerable NLE, given to budding filmmakers for free is a great legacy for software, that was one of the first Larry.

Larry Jordan: That is exciting news; it gives us another option for people to discover editing, with a software tool that’s been around for a long time.

James DeRuvo: Yes and it gives you, you know, some limited special effects capabilities, …, 3D; it’s going to be great for, you know, give your kid and let them play with it. It’s going to be exciting.

Larry Jordan: Okay, what else have we got?

James DeRuvo: Well, Sony has created a digital neutral density filter app for their Alpha cameras and this digital filter app is built into the latest firmware for the Sony Alpha model mirrorless cameras. But it will cost about $30 to activate. But I’ve seen some of the pictures of it and it impressively emulates effects of an optical neutral density filter right through the software. It looks like you’re going to apply these changes to the images before processing is actually done and baked into the image itself and then written onto the memory card. But the digital filter app is just one of many that Sony now offers to expand the capabilities of their mirrorless cameras and it makes me wonder. Does this mean the future of cameras is to become smarter, with multiple apps like a phone is? Only time will tell.

Larry Jordan: Very interesting. The whole idea of a camera app is fascinating.

James DeRuvo: Yes, I mean, Samsung came out with a camera that was driven by Android once and you could put a whole bunch of different apps on it. But, to put it on a major mirrorless interchange lens camera or a DSLR, that would be huge; so I can’t wait to see where this goes.

Larry Jordan: Okay, what else have we got?

James DeRuvo: Well, music licensing platforms, Art-List and Music Vine have gotten some major updates. They’ve sought to upgrade and streamline the licensing process. Art-List is an all you can eat subscription service for about $199; whereas Music Vine starts at $31 for 15 seconds. But the new changes will provide over 650 new song, over 120 new albums and, here’s the really cool part, is you’ll also be able to download alternate versions of the same song, which I think would be really cool. Because we’re always looking for fresh tracks to lay down in the background of our videos and these two surfaces look like they really want to be at the tip of the sphere Larry.

Larry Jordan: Very cool. What else happened this last week? Any highlights catch your attention?

James DeRuvo: Well, other stories this week. DJI may be getting into the selfie drone market with a miniaturized version of their Mavic Pro. We’ve got some brand new DIY lighting apps and news that the Apertus AXIOM 4K cinema camera may finally be coming; perhaps later in the summer.

Larry Jordan: Where can people go to get the latest industry news and what’s going on?

James DeRuvo: All these and other stories can be found at doddlenews.com Larry.

Larry Jordan: James DeRuvo is the Senior Writer for doddlenews.com; returns every week with a DoddleNEWS update and, James, thanks for joining us today.

James DeRuvo: Thanks. See you next week.

Larry Jordan: Take care, bye-bye.

Larry Jordan: Enter the new digital ecosystem of media, entertainment and technology; where behavior and business have merged, to re-defined, workflow and revenue streams. It’s the MET effect. A cultural phenomenon fueled by hybrid solutions and boundless connectivity that’s changing the very nature of how we live, work and play. Drawing more than 100,000 attendees from 160 countries, at the NAB Show. Conferences are April 22nd to the 27th and exhibits are April 24th through the 27th, at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Let’s drive and I’ll see you there.

Larry Jordan: Zach Lipovsky started in the industry as a child actor; his career expanded into directing and he’s currently the Producer and Director for the successful Disney Mech-X4 television series; now in its second season. In his spare time, he developed Shot Lister, the leading digital shot listing app available for iOS and Android and, most recently for Mac OS. Hello Zach, welcome.

Zach Lipovsky: Thank you. Hello.

Larry Jordan: Let’s start with the most obvious question. What were you a child actor in?

Zach Lipovsky: Well, I was a child actor, because my Mom was a TV Producer and had no money and needed free babysitting; so I grew up on set, acting and stuff.

Larry Jordan: You’ve made a shift out of acting, into directing and ultimately software development. Why did you decide not to stay an actor?

Zach Lipovsky: Making films was always by far the thing that was the most interesting and I was always acting just because it was fun and a good way of being out of school. I very quickly picked up the camera and was more interested in what everyone was doing behind the camera, when I was on set. I’ve been making movies since I was seven or six; doing stop motion and then making movies my whole childhood and being a techie, on that side of stuff. Then I’ve been directing ever since.

Larry Jordan: Which do you enjoy more, the planning part of being a Producer, or the actual onset part, being a Director?

Zach Lipovsky: I mean, being on set is the easy part and it’s also the best part. That’s one of the things I’ve loved about doing this TV show that I’m doing is, I’ve been able to be on set way, way, way more than I could have ever dreamed doing movies. Because, movies take so long to get going and then you’re on set for like 20 days and it takes two years to get it into the theaters. On this TV show, I’ve been able to be on set directing, you know, for weeks and weeks and weeks. It’s been amazing. We just finished shooting for 97 days; so you really get to learn the craft, on that level, way more than you ever could on a movie.

Larry Jordan: You’re talking to somebody that still has very fond memories of being on set directing. It’s an experience that there’s just nothing like; that’s very true.

Zach Lipovsky: Yes, it’s a magical thing when you have a crew that’s really engaged and everyone’s doing their crafts and you’re just collaborating and creating and the time’s ticking down and there’s just kind of this like orchestra that has to play perfectly. That’s an amazing thing to be a part of.

Larry Jordan: It is indeed. However, I must confess that the word directing and the word spare time are not generally used in the same sentence.

Zach Lipovsky: I know, tell me about it.

Larry Jordan: Directing takes about 125% of every available hour each week and now, suddenly, you’re in a corner developing software. What got you interested in development?

Zach Lipovsky: I mean, I’ve always been a tech guy and kind of always involved and always looking for apps and solutions to make my life easier. I very quickly realized, when I was making my first film that, there was no standard … thing and there was no app designed for doing shot lists, like there is for Movie Magic for scheduling or Final Cut Pro for editing; there was just nothing for doing shot lists; which absolutely shocked me, because, they’re such an integral part of keeping the whole thing running. It was right around the time that iOS and the time that the iPad was coming out and you could actually have a computer with you on set that would last all day. At the time I made like a file maker kind of little version of it and everyone around me was like, oh my God, this is amazing, why does this not exist? So then, it just kind of became a tool that I needed, then helped kind of bring into the world.

Larry Jordan: There’s nothing like having a prototype that people fall in love with; but there’s a huge distance between the prototype and getting a finished version done.

Zach Lipovsky: Yes, well it’s never done.

Larry Jordan: How would you describe Shot Lister; tell me what it does.

Zach Lipovsky: The two things it does is basically, it’s the best app for creating a shot list; so that’s probably pretty obvious. It allows you to customize and build a shot list, exactly for your project and do that really easily. But the thing that really makes it a killer app, that people can’t shoot without is that, you can build a shooting schedule, much like you would build a one-liner with all the scenes; but on a shot by shot and minute by minute level. You can assign how long you think it’s going to take to shoot every shot and put them in order and the app does all the math to tell you that’s going to fit or not fit within your day.

Zach Lipovsky: The really amazing thing is, when you’re on set, it goes into what’s called the live mode, where basically, as you’re shooting, it’s telling you, okay you have roughly 20 minutes to get this shot to stay on schedule. Okay, now you are 45 minutes behind; okay, now you’re two hours behind. What it allows you to do is, at the flick of a finger, rearrange your shooting schedule; get rid of shots; merge them together; move things to other days; move to stuff that’s more important, up earlier. It allows you to do all that with just the flicks of a finger, while it’s doing all the math; so while you’re shooting, you can make sure to get the stuff that’s important, within the time that you have, that the Producers have given you, and make sure you get the most important.

Zach Lipovsky: It kind of gives you control over time, because it gives you something to visualize time and how you’re doing in the day, rather than just kind of guessing and making it up as you go along. There’s, kind of, always this sense of fear that you’re going to make your day and that’s because, in the past, there’s been no way of really knowing how much work is left. Because a scene could be one eighth of a page, but it takes four hours; or it could be one eighth of a page and take 20 minutes. You don’t really know, unless you look at how many shots are in that scene and how complete those shots are.

Zach Lipovsky: It really gives the Director and the AD and the Producer and everyone a tool to kind of visualize the work and change it as you’re going; which gives you so much more power on set, to make sure you get the stuff that’s important. The last thing you want to do is be running out of time, at the end of the day, on the stuff that’s the most important, when you spent too much time at the beginning of the day on stuff that wasn’t.

Larry Jordan: Well, is this a tool that you give to the Script Supervisor? Who runs it?

Zach Lipovsky: Every person’s different. Sometimes it’s the AD, sometimes it’s the Director, sometimes it’s the DP. It completely changes by the project. The app allows you to sync anyone else who has the app and who has an internet connection; so it can even be people that are back at the production office. Anyone who has the app can stay up-to-date with how you’re doing; so that can be helpful for even the make-up artist back at the trailer knowing, “Oh, that scene, they’ve changed the order;” and, “Oh, that scene’s coming up sooner than we thought.” Even on the TV show I’m doing, one of the actors had it and he really loved it. He’s a young 13, but he loved having it because he could see how we were doing; you know, he could just stay informed with what’s happening behind the scenes. It’s a great kind of transparent tool to keep the crew informed.

Larry Jordan: So the data is shared on the Cloud and you can have multiple people dialing into it?

Zach Lipovsky: Yes.

Larry Jordan: That’s very cool. Does it require a lot of input, after you’ve finished a shot? In other words, how much work does it take to set this up and what do you do after the day is complete?

Zach Lipovsky: Most of the work’s in preparation; so you build the shot lists beforehand and now we’ve just released Mac OS, which makes that infinitely easier; especially if you’re doing a feature where you have thousands of shots. So you basically build the shot list ahead of time and the schedule ahead of time, just like you would in preparation for all your other work. Then on the day, it’s been designed to be super simple and fast; so that you barely have to even look at it. You can move shots just by holding down a finger and swiping. You can complete shots just by tapping. You’re doing very little work while you’re actually using it and it’s automatically syncing and doing all the math for you, while you’re going. You’re not fighting with the app while you’re going.

Zach Lipovsky: Kind of the cool thing, once you’re done shooting is, it’s keeping track of when you complete the shots; so if you estimated it was going to take half an hour and then it ended up taking 35 minutes or 60 minutes or whatever, you can then look back at the day and see, oh, at the beginning of the day we were really slow, but then we caught up and then we had lunch and then we were really slow again and then, at the end of the day, were going really, really fast; so, when you build your schedule for the next day, you can look back at the other days and kind of see the patterns, because every crew has a pattern that they kind of fall into. It often takes the same amount of time, at the beginning of each day, to get going and so you can start planning for that.

Zach Lipovsky: A lot of Directors that I’ve used have said that it really empowers them; because they can write down their shot list of what they want, put it into the app, put in the estimates of how long they think it’s going to take and realize, well it’s two hours over already and I haven’t even started shooting; I’ve just estimated it. Then they will re-examine how they’re going to block that scene, or re-examine how they’re going to shoot it within the time. It’s already helping them be more efficient and plan ahead, just by kind of going through the exercise of planning it.

Zach Lipovsky: Just by planning per scene doesn’t really give you a lot of information. The AD might think it could take four hours to shoot that, but, are you starting with the crane or are you starting with the Steadicam? Which one has to be built before you get there? That isn’t said in a one-liner and so, once you know which shots are first and which shots are at the end, everyone can be a lot more efficient and it can really help you just get what’s more important.

Larry Jordan: How are you pricing it?

Zach Lipovsky: Pretty reasonable. Basically, iOS and Android are both 14 bucks and that gets you the app and all the updates, forever, for free and then there’s an additional subscription that’s 14 bucks a year, that gets you some of the extra kind of professional features; like syncing and storyboards and the ability to import scripts into it and stuff. That’s an ongoing yearly subscription of 14 bucks, which really is what helps us continue to upgrade it and develop it and keep the servers running and all that kind of stuff. But if you just want to buy it once and use most of the features, it’s just 13 bucks or 14 bucks, depending on where you are. Then the Mac OS version is a bit more expensive because it’s a desktop app and it will take a lot more work to get up and running for that one. I think it’s 39.99.

Larry Jordan: Who do you find using this? Is it just used at the larger studios, or do you find it being used by independents? How do you look at your audience?

Zach Lipovsky: It’s actually more so the smaller crews. I find, not only are they the ones that are more receptive of new technology and new ways of doing stuff. But they often also have less manpower, so they need to be more efficient and a lot of people that use it, like I said, they’re the Director and the First AD; or they’re the DP and First AD; or they’re the Producer and DP, Director, Actor. They don’t have whole departments doing this work for them and they need to be able to do it themselves. I would say, the majority of our audience is actually the smaller productions; like the corporate videos, the music videos and web series and that type of stuff. Recently with the Mac OS, now that’s starting to have a bigger impact into the bigger industry, because they’re used to working on a computer for a month ahead of time; so now you can do that.

Zach Lipovsky: But it really comes down to the actual people. Like it’s changed massively, even over the last five years that we’ve had the app. Five years ago, people were not used to working on an iPad, they thought of it as something you read a book on, but not something you used as a tool. Now, most people have an iPad instead of a production binder and that’s taken about five years to happen; so people are way more used to working on it as an actual serious tool, rather than just a book reader. That’s taken a while to grow and usually production people take a while to kind of use new software; it’s just kind of the nature of our industry.

Larry Jordan: Zach, where can people go to learn more about Shot Lister?

Zach Lipovsky: Well, you can go to our website, which is shotlister.com and you can follow us on Twitter @shotlisterapp.

Larry Jordan: That’s all one word, shotlister.com and Zach Lipovsky is the developer behind it; as well as the Director of Disney’s Mech-X4 television series. Zach, thanks for joining us today.

Zach Lipovsky: Thank you.

Larry Jordan: Take care, bye-bye.

Larry Jordan: Michele Yamazaki is the VP of Marketing for Toolfarm; this is a company that specializes in marketing plug-ins and effects for a wide variety of software. Tonight, Michele joins us to share the latest news on the cool new plug-ins that we need to pay attention to. Hello Michele, welcome.

Michele Yamazaki: Hello, how are you?

Larry Jordan: I’m always glad to be talking to you. What’s the latest news; what have you got?

Michele Yamazaki: Well GenArts Sapphire units are now available and GenArts Sapphire have always been highly coveted plug-ins and one of the problems that a lot of people had is that, it cost so much. Well now they have these units available. The units break down the plug-ins into categories; so they have all lightening effects in one and they have blur and sharpen in another, distortion plug-ins in another; that kind of thing. There are eight new units. This is very similar to what Boris FX has done with Continuum; how they have those in units and that brings the price point down quite a bit; so they’re much more affordable to everybody.

Michele Yamazaki: They’re compatible with After Effects and Premiere, Avid, Nuke, Resolve and some other OFX.

Larry Jordan: Isn’t GenArts owned by Boris FX?

Michele Yamazaki: Yes, they were acquired some time last year and that was huge news; that was really unexpected for us. But we’re really happy that they’re all under the same roof now.

Larry Jordan: They’ve migrated a pricing policy, because I love the idea of Sapphire being available at a lower price, I only need to get the units that I need. This strikes me as a very smart move.

Michele Yamazaki: I think so too. That’s probably the number one question I’m asked; when’s Sapphire going on sale?

Larry Jordan: Alright, so we’ve got new plug-ins from Sapphire; what else we got?

Michele Yamazaki: Well, there are quite a few new FxFactory plug-ins. They’re put out by, we’ll call them fourth party developers and they use the effects factory engine. All of them are for Final Cut Pro X, but some of them also work in After Effects and Premiere and Motion as well. One of them is from Idustrial Revolution, called Viral Video and if you’re ever watching videos on like Facebook and that kind of thing, with all the text that comes up, you know, a lot of political videos are using this kind of thing, it builds that right into the plug-in; so you can easily create those type of effects on your video. It’s made for putting your videos online; with color schemes and text and all that kind of thing; so it’s all built in as a template.

Michele Yamazaki: Ripple, they have a new one called TitleMation. Actually this is a new version of it, they had an old version. Now this is 2.0 and it comes with title templates and you can just build some cool title effects with that. That’s for Final Cut Pro. Cineflare also has a new titling tool for Final Cut Pro X, Zoetrope FOLD, which gives you folding effects, which are pretty cool. I’d highly recommend taking a look at the demo version, you can download FxFactory. If you download their demo version, it’s free to download and it’s not really a demo version, it’s sort of like a light version of their software. You get a bunch of free stuff in it, but you can upgrade to the full version; we sell it at Toolfarm. You can download all of these effects packs or other fourth party effects from all of these different vendors and try them out; because there are literally hundreds of effects. We were talking earlier, how they crank them out so quickly; they really do and they’re quality effects as well. I’d highly recommend checking them out if you’re a Final Cut Pro user.

Larry Jordan: We’ve got a range of stuff from a variety of factories and I love your term, fourth party developer; I’ll put that one on my notebook for the future. For people that want to keep track of all the latest tools and technology, where can they go on the web to learn more?

Michele Yamazaki: Toolfarm.com.

Larry Jordan: Michele Yamazaki is the VP of Marketing for Toolfarm. Michele, it is always fun talking with you. Thanks for sharing your time.

Michele Yamazaki: Oh, my pleasure.

Larry Jordan: Future Video Productions Founder, Robert Cohen, has extensive experience in product development; working principally in audio video control and recording systems. He holds several patents and awards of excellence for his product design and a Master of Science Degree and Systems Engineering from UCLA. Hello Robert, welcome.

Robert Cohen: Hi Larry, how are you?

Larry Jordan: Robert, you’ve created a product called V-Station HD; how would you describe that?

Robert Cohen: Well V-Station HD, probably in its simplest form, is a multichannel video recording, streaming production system and it comprises of hardware and software that we’ve written and we put it into a box and we sell this as a complete system. However, just aside from the ingest part, we’ve built in several other features that make it much more useful for video production. For example, we have built in Project Management. It keeps track of the projects, the reels, the scenes, the takes, any notes that you may have and generates a shot list, after the event, that you can refer to. It does live editing during the shoot, so it actually creates EDL’s with line cuts. It does live streaming, if you’re got an internet connection available and you don’t need any external streaming boxes to connect up to the device.

Robert Cohen: After the shoot, you can take your line cut and we have a built-in uploader to bring it to an FTP site or a YouTube. It’s somewhat akin to a Swiss Army knife for video projects.

Larry Jordan: Well how would this compare to say a WireCast or TriCaster or Switcher Studio?

Robert Cohen: Good question. We actually try to concentrate more on the aspect of the workflow that’s going to be from the shoot to post. We want to make it easy and quick to go from production to post. The way we do this is with our built in media management system and we way we keep track of projects. At the end of the shoot, you can simply, with almost one click of a button, transfer everything over to your NLE and all the bins sequences, scenes are tagged, notes are marked; everything is synchronized for you. Instead of spending hours trying to figure out how and where the clips came from and trying to rename and build your bins, everything is done automatically with V-Station. That’s one of its most powerful features to get into post and almost ready for delivery.

Larry Jordan: Who would be a typical customer of V-Station HD? Sports, weddings, events, concerts, what?

Robert Cohen: Could be live events for web, webinars, lectures, capture, product demos, clinical and medical studies are done with our system; interviews. A wide variety of different users we find for our system.

Larry Jordan: How are you pricing it?

Robert Cohen: Our lowest cost entry product is priced at 2995, that’s $3,000; which gives you a four channel recording system. It goes up to $8,000 for an eight channel recording system.

Larry Jordan: Why did you decide to create it?

Robert Cohen: I realized how difficult it is; nobody likes to edit; well not in the sense of editing, but in the sense of getting to the editing. It’s all that process of organizing and identifying all this, that takes forever and you really want to get the product out and your production finished as quickly as possible. We found that, too much time is being spent in that process; so, by having a better, more efficient, more unified, more seamless way to get into the edit and to deliver seemed like a better way to approach the problem of video production.

Larry Jordan: Very cool. For people that want more information about V-Station HD, where can they go on the web?

Robert Cohen: They can go to futurevideo.tv, or vstationhd.com; either one of those will get you there.

Larry Jordan: That’s all one word, futurevideo.tv and Robert Cohen is the Founder of Future Video Productions. Robert, thanks for joining us today.

Robert Cohen: Thank you Larry.

Larry Jordan: Take care, bye-bye.

Robert Cohen: Okay, bye-bye.

Larry Jordan: Damian Allen is the VFX Supervisor at Pixerati LLC. He’s also the Content Development Consultant at Moviola. Damian’s well known in the VFX industry as a leading Technique and Pipeline Consultant and has worked as a Visual Effects Supervisor and Compositor on multiple Hollywood features. Damian, it’s wonderful to say hello.

Damian Allen: Hey Larry, it’s good to speak to you.

Larry Jordan: In addition to all the effects work that you do, you’ve created this new training series called ‘Coffee-Break Film School’ and it caught my attention and I wanted to learn more. Tell me about it.

Damian Allen: It’s interesting. I did a lot of work with Paddy … , who was the Head of Training over at Apple and one of the things that I always felt was, we’re in this golden age where everyone has access to this amazing equipment, but very few people have any kind of design sense. Very similar to what happened in the 80s with the desktop publishing explosion. We had these Macs where people could do all kinds of desktop publishing and we ended up with these horrific corporate newsletters with Clipart everywhere.

Larry Jordan: Ransom note typography.

Damian Allen: Exactly. I think we’re in a similar situation with film gear and so, my idea was, if I could make something along the lines of, how to make an independent feature that doesn’t suck; if that was the title. That was the kind of dream behind it and that’s really ‘Coffee-Break Film School,’ which is this thing I’ve been developing with Moviola. The idea is, how do we get people from a clean slate to a professional production aesthetic in as short amount of time as possible? That’s the ‘Coffee-Break Film School’ idea. In a coffee break, how much information could you absorb to understand three point lining, how to operate a boom microphone, how to edit with axial cuts and paying attention to lines of interest; all those kinds of things?

Damian Allen: All of the essential core elements, none of the history of filmmaking; not that that’s not fantastic stuff and valuable, but just, we’re trying to get stuff done in a short amount of time and, also, fairly platform agnostics; so that we’re not focusing just on editing and Premiere, or FileMaker Pro, whichever tool, but really focusing on the aesthetics of editing or color correction or cinematography.

Larry Jordan: Well, I think I’ve gleaned the answer to this question, but I think it’s an important one, so I want to ask anyone. As you create your training, are you learning toward teaching technology, or teaching storytelling, or learning how to run a creative business?

Damian Allen: You know, that’s a great question. The real intent of this site, moviola.com and the ‘Coffee-Break Film School’ is ultimately to be a resource for the entire process. We’re definitely heavy right now on production, post production and screenwriting; those are the kind of emphases. So, we have some insights on the business aspect, distribution, those kinds of things; that’s an area that will probably get developed a lot more, actually, over the coming year. In terms of the technology, you really can’t divorce the concepts from the technology anymore; because, the technology is changing the way we tell the stories and so, I think it’s kind of naïve to say, well, this is just how we tell a story and it doesn’t matter what tools you use. Well it really does. We give time to both those things, you know, so if we’re covering camera support, we talk about all the latest stabilization systems and how they can be used; using sliders versus using … dollies, versus using jib arms, those kinds of things. But, again, we try to stay away from anything that’s so product specific that, you’re not going to be able to pull off the same techniques with some other tools.

Larry Jordan: Do viewers need to watch the whole series, or can they cherry pick episodes?

Damian Allen: We’ve done a couple of things. We’ve actually broken things out into six kind of terms, called units, and each one covers a different aspect of screenwriting, cinematography, production and grip, editing and color, sound, lighting and visual effects; so we have those seven categories. Each one of those units kind of takes you through to the next level of those. But, at the same time, at the very bottom of the ‘Coffee-Break Film School,’ we have a separate section where everything’s broken out into subjects; so you could just go ahead and watch all of the course and screenwriting from start to finish, if that’s all you wanted to do, or everything on cinematography, etc, etc.

Larry Jordan: For people that want more information, where can they go on the web?

Damian Allen: So you just go to moviola.com and we have an amazing deal right now. It’s 35 bucks for an entire year, or just five bucks a month and that’s really, again, just trying to make this stuff accessible to everyone.

Larry Jordan: Damian Allen is the Content Development Consultant at Moviola. Damian, thanks for joining us today.

Larry Jordan: Thank you for letting me share what we’ve got.

Larry Jordan: Here’s another website I want to introduce you to, doddlenews.com. DoddleNEWS gives you a portal into the broadcast, video and film industries. It’s a leading online resource, presenting news, reviews and products for the film and video industry. DoddleNEWS also offers a resource guide and crew management platform, specifically designed for production. These digital call sheets, along with their app, directory and premium listing provide in-depth organizational tools for busy production professionals.

Larry Jordan: DoddleNEWS is a part of the Thalo Arts community, a worldwide community of artists, filmmakers and storytellers. From photography, to filmmaking; performing arts, to fine arts and everything in between, Thalo is filled with the resources you need to succeed. Whether you want the latest industry news, need to network with other creative professionals, or require state of the art online tools to manage your next project, there’s only one place to go; doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan: Linda Tadic is an expert in media and digital preservation and metadata. She has over 25 years’ experience at organizations such as Art Store, HBO and the Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia. She recently founded Digital Bedrock, which is what we want to talk with her about tonight. Hello Linda, welcome.

Linda Tadic: Hey, hi Larry, how you doing?

Larry Jordan: I am talking to you, we are all doing great. What first got you interested in archiving and digital storage?

Linda Tadic: Well, I have been involved in this community for over 25 years. I started out, actually, as a filmmaker and composer, musician; so I know the perspective of the creators, who have digital content they need to preserve, to be able to use in the future and I know the perspective of archives; that organizations have archives that they need to preserve their digital content in the future. As I mentioned, I’ve been involved for a very long time, I also teach at UCLA and I taught in my youth. I’m very familiar with the pain points, because, people lose content and if you lose content, it’s not only your creative work, it can also be history and it can be even your personal history. When you think about your own home movies, that might be on video formats that you can no longer play. That’s a big concern to me and so, as an archivist and librarian by training, this has a great concern. I wanted to build a company that would help organizations and people to preserve their work, so that they would be able to use it in the future.

Larry Jordan: But most people, when you mention the word archiving to them, either fall asleep or run screaming from the room. What is it that captured your attention with the idea of preserving assets for the long-term?

Linda Tadic: You know, I don’t know. I love history, you know, and even my own films that I made in the past use archival footage and so history is important. It’s all information, it’s all information we need to keep, otherwise we forget where we came from and who we are; whether it’s individuals or culture or society.

Larry Jordan: Alright, well let’s shift forward to the present day. You just recently created Digital Bedrock. What does Digital Bedrock do?

Linda Tadic: Digital Bedrock provides managed digital preservation services; so what that means is, we do the work for you, so you can just go on and do your creative work, or go on with your life and know that somebody else is taking care of your content; to make sure that it will be usable in the future. It’s a pretty complex process, which is why I’m happy that we can do it for people.

Larry Jordan: What do the words managed assets mean?

Linda Tadic: Think about all the vulnerabilities to keep digital content alive. You can’t just store it on a shelf and ignore it, you know, you have to keep monitoring it to make sure the bits themselves are okay; you have to be sure that the storage that those files are sitting on is also secure. Hard drives can crash and files can be deleted or destroyed or lost or hacked; so that’s one part. You have to make sure the storage is secure. The digital bits themselves can just degrade; you know, bits can flip, even just sitting there on servers or on hard drives or on tape and become unusable; so you always have to be checking that the digital bits are okay; according to a schedule. Then critically, especially for this community, is you want to be sure that the digital content, the formats themselves are not obsolete; that there is still software that can support that digital object, so you can play it in the future. That’s a really complicated project, that whole aspect of obsolescence and that’s something that we really focus on in our work; all that managed work to monitor when content might become obsolete.

Linda Tadic: Then, of course, there’s all the problems of when you have an increased amount of digital storage and production and that’s where you can start losing things. Because you just have so much digital content you have to manage yourself. You know, how many duplicates do you have, redundancy or are the files healthy? Are they okay? Or obsolescence factors. As you can see, by this list I just gave, it’s a lot more complicated than in the old days, where you just put your film in a box under the bed. You have to really watch these files and make sure they’re okay.

Larry Jordan: Well, let’s talk about a couple of these really core issues. One is security. How do you keep our assets secure? Because we’re counting on you to keep them safe and secure for five, ten, 15, 20 years.

Linda Tadic: Well, it’s interesting. Thinking about it, that’s the technical architecture that we’ve set up. The storage part of it is really old school; that’s in the technology to make sure the files are still alive okay is quite cutting edge. The storage part, the security part is where we, after we do all of the processing that we do on the files, so that we can monitor obsolescence over time, we copy the files off onto LTO-7 tape and it’s only your files that are on those tapes. Then we lock those turtle cases and only we have the keys to those turtle cases. We make three copies, as I mentioned, so that we have geographic dispersal. There’s one copy in our data center downtown, there’s another in a second location and a third 3200 miles away. Because of that storage, nobody can touch them; even the client can’t access their master files, they can only see low res proxies online; so they can’t even accidentally delete or destroy something. Just by keeping it offline and in a very secure environment, so nobody can access those tapes, automatically it’s off the grid; nobody can touch it if it’s off the grid.

Larry Jordan: Well, who would you consider a typical client and the follow up question is going to be, how much does this cost? It sounds like this is designed for the large studio.

Linda Tadic: You might have gathered from my opening, when I’m talking about archiving, that I consider all content to be important and so, if it’s worth for somebody who wants to preserve this to use it in the future, it doesn’t matter if it’s just a document or your own home movie or your production or a studio production, it’s all important and so, I built the company so we can serve everybody. Whether you’re an individual with your home movies, all the way up to a studio or a government agency. In fact, we even have a few law firms that are clients, because they’re very interested in the security aspect, as you can imagine and then we also have producers who are interested in using us and some studios as well; because of the security and because of that managed detailed work that we do for clients.

Larry Jordan: I’ve just finished a project all of my assets are sitting on a ten terabyte drive; pretend. What’s the process of getting that hard drive to be archived by you?

Linda Tadic: Well, basically you can either send us the drive, if you have a back-up of course and we’ll just take care of doing the files. But, also, what we prefer is that the client actually uses a tool that we’ve developed and that’s part of the regular service; you don’t have to pay anything extra for using this tool. This tool helps you to select your files; it’s like a curation tool, as it were. You can select the files that you want to send to us for preservation; because you might not want to send everything that’s on that ten terabyte drive. You might also have duplicate files on that ten terabyte drive and so this tool also then de-dupes the files to identify duplicate files. Even if you have a file where the filename has changed, or it’s in a different folder, it will find it; because, why should you pay for something twice. It shows you the cost, also, as you’re going through this whole process; so it’s a really nifty tool and you can spit out the list of what you’re sending to us; you can do different priority levels, if you think that it’s too much money and you want to just save off some for another time. It helps you to monitor all of that process, as you’re selecting. Then it packages it all up; it creates a checksum and it creates a manifest of all the files that you want to send. Then you basically ship it to us.

Linda Tadic: We don’t take anything off the internet, we only have files that can be sent to us that are on detachable media; so that can be on LTO tape or on hard drives. Once we receive that media, then we start the whole process of ingesting it into our system and you don’t have to do anything else; you’re done. That’s when we extract all the technical metadata off the files, because we need to know exactly how those files were created, in order for us to be able to monitor obsolescence over time. When we ingest it into the system, we create a SHA256 checksum for you geeks out there in the audience and then, when we actually write it off to tape, we create SHA512 checksum and, just to get you even more excited, is that we create frame level checksums if you give us DPX containers. Everything single one of those DPX files has its own checksum. Why that’s important is because, every six months we do … checks. We put those tapes back in our robot, we run the checksums on them, to make sure there’s been no bit loss and, if there’s even a bit loss on one frame in a DPX file, we can go through and replace that file. That’s how detailed we are with the levels of checks and work.

Linda Tadic: That’s just for the bit level health; again, just to preserve the bits themselves. Then the critical thing is monitoring the obsolescence factors over time, which we just do constantly. Because we’re pulling off the header information off the files, again, so, not only can we validate what format it is, but also then to monitor obsolescence over time. Because we might receive something that’s not obsolete; but in ten years it’s no longer supported. We then notify the client, uh-oh, you have these files that you’ve given to us, they’re endangered and these are the steps that you can do, in order to keep your content alive and useable in the future.

Larry Jordan: Linda, one of the things I was impressed, because I had the pleasure of taking a tour of your facilities about two weeks ago, was how reasonably you’ve priced your service. What should I look to spend? Am I spending tens of thousands of dollars or thousands of dollars? What does it cost to get my stuff archived?

Linda Tadic: We’re actually very affordable. We built the software so it’s automated; you know, so once we start ingesting the files, then it goes through the entire process and written off. It depends. But we have the processing costs that we first have to charge coming in and that’s just a one-time cost and you never pay that again. You also then pay for the cost of the LTO-7 tapes and the turtle cases we lock them in and you actually buy those. We were talking to somebody today who’s wondering about the ownership of the content and I said, obviously you own the IP to your content and, also, because you’re purchasing the physical media from us, we’re even charging sales checks on the media. That’s guaranteed legally that you own the media and your files that are on it.

Linda Tadic: That’s a one-time cost and then we have the ongoing annual costs and that cost is by gig. The processing cost is by the gigs and the number of files and that why I’m saying it’s a little bit more complicated. For the pricing structure, the ongoing cost is a price per gig and that’s paying for the three copies geographically dispersed; the six month … checks every six months; access to your portal, so you can of course go online and you can see the data about the files you gave to us; and then we will migrate your files from LTO-7 to LTO-9 in five years and that cost is all amortized in your annual fees, so you won’t get hit with a big fee in five years.

Linda Tadic: I would say, if somebody’s interested in the cost, they can contact me and I’m happy to go through the pricing online. Everybody I’ve shown the pricing to, they all say that, for all the work that we do, they can’t believe how inexpensive it is. We’re cheaper than if you put it up on Amazon; I can say that.

Larry Jordan: I think that’s probably a true statement. You and I ran an example and it’s clearly dependent upon the amount of storage that you’ve got, but it was in the 100s of dollars, not the thousands and I was struck by how affordable you’d made it. Linda, for people that need more information, where can they go on the web?

Linda Tadic: They can go to our website, which is digitalbedrock.com and if you’re going to NAB, please come by our booth, we’ll be there, and say hi.

Larry Jordan: That website is digitalbedrock.com. Linda Tadic is the Founder and CEO and, Linda, thanks for joining us today.

Linda Tadic: Thank you Larry, my pleasure.

Larry Jordan: Take care, bye-bye.

Linda Tadic: Thanks, bye.

Larry Jordan: Normally our shows have a theme; today our theme was just about anything we could put in the show. I love shows that have such a range of information; everything from software that we use in production, to, being able to archive it for the long-term and everything in between. It’s a fascinating group of people we were talking to and I want to say thanks to Zach Lipovsky, the Developer of Shot Lister; Michele Yamazaki, at Toolfarm, talking about effects and plug-ins; Robert Cohen, Future Video Productions, talking about live event multicam work; Damian Allen, the Developer of Coffee-Break Film School; Linda Tadic of Digital Bedrock and, as always, James DeRuvo with DoddleNEWS.

Larry Jordan: There’s a lot of history in our industry and it’s all posted to our website, at digitalproductionbuzz.com. Here you’ll find thousands of interviews all online and all available to you today. Remember to sign up for our free weekly show newsletter, that comes out every Friday. Talk with us on Twitter @DPBuZZ and Facebook at digitalproductionbuzz.com. Our theme music is composed by Nathan Dugi-Turner, with additional music provided by smartsound.com. Text transcripts provided by Take1 Transcription. Visit take1.tv to learn how they can help you. Our Producer is Debbie Price; my name is Larry Jordan and thanks for listening to the Digital Production Buzz.

HOST
Larry Jordan

GUESTS
Sadie Groom, Managing Director, Bubble and Squeak Agency
Eric Trabb, VP Sales, Group Publisher, New Bay Media
Jonathan Handel, Entertainment/Technology Attorney & Labor Reporter, TroyGould and The Hollywood Reporter
Andy Marken, President, Marken Communications
Scott Page, CEO, Ignited Networks
James DeRuvo, Film and Technology Reporter, DoddleNEWS

==

Larry Jordan: Tonight on The Buzz, we are talking about marketing, advertising, and PR. We start with Sadie Groom, she’s the managing director of Bubble and Squeak, a full service agency based out of London. She explains the differences between these three terms and shares her thoughts on how marketing and events are evolving today.

Larry Jordan: Andy Marken heads Marken Communications. This is a PR firm based in the Bay area that he’s run for more than 30 years. Andy specializes in the creative industry and tonight he shares his thoughts on what filmmakers can do to improve their visibility and attract an audience.

Larry Jordan: Next, Scott Page, the CEO of Ignited Networks lives on the cutting edge of technology. Tonight, Scott explains how we’re shifting from the world of social media into a new world of direct messaging and market influencers. This has major implications for all of us launching new products.

Larry Jordan: Eric Trabb is the VP and group publisher for New Bay Media. His magazine titles include Digital Video, Government Video, TV Technology, and Video Edge. Tonight he talks about how marketing is changing, building relationships and what we need to do to stay in front of our audience.

Larry Jordan: Plus, we have an extended news section tonight. James DeRuvo joins us for our weekly DoddleNEWS update, along with Jonathan Handel, with an update on the ongoing Writers Guild negotiations with some surprising statistics on television production.

Larry Jordan: The Buzz starts now.

Announcer: Since the dawn of digital filmmaking – authoritative – one show serves a worldwide network of media professionals – current – uniting industry experts – production – filmmakers – post production – and content creators around the planet – distribution. From the media capital of the world in Los Angeles, California, the Digital Production Buzz goes live now.

Larry Jordan: Welcome to the Digital Production Buzz, the world’s longest running podcast for the creative content industry, covering media production, post production and marketing around the world.

Larry Jordan: Hi, my name is Larry Jordan. This week we’re talking marketing, public relations and advertising, because if we can’t figure out how to find and attract an audience, all the effort we put into creating our project is wasted. We have a wide range of guests this evening, and by the way, our interview with Sadie Groom was recorded when she was in a hotel room in Dubai, attending a trade show. As far as I can tell, this was our first conversation with someone in Dubai for The Buzz, and we recorded it via Skype.

Larry Jordan: While tonight we’re focusing on the business behind the business, we haven’t forgotten the technology that enables filmmaking to occur. Next week we have a grab bag of new products and, in about four weeks, The Buzz returns to the annual NAB show, and webcasts 24 new shows, one an hour, live from the trade show floor. We’ve posted our guest list to NABshowbuzz.com and I encourage you to take a look. We have an amazing assortment of industry leaders as guests this year.

Larry Jordan: Thinking of news and all the stuff that goes with it, reminds me that it’s time for a DoddleNEWS update with James DeRuvo. Hello James.

James DeRuvo: Happy Thursday Larry.

Larry Jordan: A wonderful Thursday to you as well. What you got that’s news?

James DeRuvo: I’ve got two cool new product announcements, and a really juicy rumor.

Larry Jordan: Let’s start with the products.

James DeRuvo: Have you ever heard of the GNARBOX?

Larry Jordan: No.

James DeRuvo: This is a really interesting device. It’s about the size of an iphone and it lets you edit 4K videos without a computer. It’s basically an overglorified external storage device. It supports SD, micro SD and even compact flash by a USB 3.0 connection. But it also has built into it a wifi connection, and basically all you need to do is you connect to it through the GNARBOX editing app on your smartphone or tablet, and you can edit in 4K, and then output it to 1080p, share it to the web. You also get advanced features like color correction and slow motion. While this won’t replace your editing rig anytime soon, it’s bound to be a valuable tool for action camera gigs looking to get their moves up on YouTube while they’re still on the slips.

Larry Jordan: Is this shipping, or is this an announcement?

James DeRuvo: It’s an announcement. It’s supposed to be shipping by the end of the month. They’ve raised a ton of money on Kickstarter, and it just looks like a really clever device.

Larry Jordan: The company is GNARBOX?

James DeRuvo: GNARBOX. Why they call it the GNARBOX I have no idea.

Larry Jordan: What else we got?

James DeRuvo: It’s a cool device though, it really is, I can’t wait to try it.

Larry Jordan: I’ll take a look. What else we got?

James DeRuvo: We all know about Cinetics, they make these really super cool motion controlled sliders, and they have launched a brand new one called the Lynx, as in the cat. It’s a slider that offers not only motion control, but also multi-axis 360 motion control with imaging. There are three motors per controller, and it’s controlled by your mobile device on ios or android with the ability to set over ten key frames to set way points. Currently available for pre-order on Kickstarter, starting at 499, and then with each individual piece, it adds a little bit more to the price but the base model is around 500 bucks. Thanks to Kickstarter, more professional equipment is being filtered down to independents for big budget production values and I think the Lynx is going to fit right into that.

Larry Jordan: The company is Cinetics.

James DeRuvo: That would be correct.

Larry Jordan: Now it’s time, I’m sitting down, what is the rumor?

James DeRuvo: The big juicy rumor is that by NAB, Canon is going to announce that they’re going to support C-Log or Canon-Log on the 5D Mark IV.

Larry Jordan: So what does the C-Log give us?

James DeRuvo: Just about every camera company has a flavor of log. It’s an uncompressed data code app that enables you to grab as much image data as you can, and then basically when you record it, it’s not going to give you the contrast information or anything like that, it’s just going to record all the other details other than color and contrast. So when you see it uncolor corrected it looks extremely flat. Almost looks like you’re looking through a haze, and then as you color correct, it starts to bring out all these incredible details in the dark shadows and in the bright ambient areas, so it really boosts your dynamic range. The rumor is that Canon is either going to make it available starting after NAB as part of a major firmware update, or you may have to bring your camera in for service to get it enabled. Canon has traditionally reserved these pro great features for the cinema EOS line, but bringing C-Log to the 5D Mark IV could go a long way towards closing that gap with competitors like the Sony A72 or the Panasonic GH5 Larry.

Larry Jordan: Well that’ll be something that we can keep our eyes on as we get closer to NAB, and I suspect that this is only one of the first of many NAB based rumors you’ll be giving us. For people that need more information, where do they go on the web to stay current on the industry?

James DeRuvo: All these and other stories can be found at Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan: James DeRuvo is the senior writer for Doddlenews.com and returns every week with a weekly DoddleNEWS update. James, thank you so much, talk to you soon.

James DeRuvo: See you next week.

Larry Jordan: Bye bye. We have news from the Writers Guild. Jonathan Handel joins us in just a few seconds to bring us up to date on their negotiations.

Larry Jordan: Jonathan Handel is an entertainment and technology attorney of counsel at Troy Gould in Los Angeles. He’s also the contributing editor on entertainment labor issues for The Hollywood Reporter, and best of all, he’s a regular here on The Buzz. Hello Jonathan, welcome back.

Jonathan Handel: Larry, pleasure to be back.

Larry Jordan: Jonathan, I was fascinated with an article that you wrote earlier this week with the ongoing Writers Guild negotiations. What’s the issue in terms of money and is there likely to be a strike?

Jonathan Handel: The big issue is the face of television. You’d think with the number of series having more than doubled in the last eight years, that these would be easy negotiations. Lots of TV, lots of work, lots of money for the writers.

Larry Jordan: In fact, we set a new record for the number of series that are in production. It’s a number we’ve never seen before.

Jonathan Handel: It’s astonishing, it’s 455 in the current season. They’re predicting 500. These numbers were around 200, 220 eight years ago. But here’s the thing. We know that a lot of those series are shorter than network series were traditionally. Fewer number of episodes per season. So I put on my hat and said, “I wonder how many episodes are being produced in aggregate per year?” I was able to get data from Professor Darnell Hunt at UCLA covering a period of four years, and what I found was over those four years, although the number of series went up by 50 percent, the number of episodes produced only went up by six percent. The number of writers reporting TV earnings during that period went up by 20 percent.

Larry Jordan: So more people writing, but they’re writing for fewer shows?

Jonathan Handel: They’re writing for fewer episodes. More shows, more series, but fewer episodes. That’s right. It’s a supply and demand mismatch with regard to labor supply and labor demand. Demand went up six percent. Supply went up 20 percent. Although it’s difficult to say what the typical staff writer makes, without having access to internal WTA data, from the data available, and making some assumptions, it looks like those wages have been at best flat over the last really eight or ten years, and perhaps even declining in place and adjusted terms.

Jonathan Handel: These writers are held, year after year, under option because a series might get picked up, you know, for another season. The producer wants the writers available. Same issue with the actors. That means that during that time that they’re held, the writer can’t work on another series. There’s no other work for the writers to do, so they’re being held for shorter seasons, making less money. Meanwhile the separate issue of the health plan, has been running a deficit. Put it all together, you’ve got a lot of pressure on these negotiations.

Larry Jordan: Well, a lot of pressure is one thing, but do you think it’s going to translate into a strike?

Jonathan Handel: Well, I don’t. It’s possible but it seems unlikely. There’s a bit of saber rattling going on, but first of all every strike in these unions in the last 80 years since they were founded, has been about residuals, and the residuals deal that the Directors Guild got which is going to set the pattern for the writers and actors in this round of negotiations, appears to be a good deal and certainly isn’t the focus of discontent. So this will be the first time that you have a strike over something other than residuals, and it’s a difficult move for a union to take. Unions have a difficulty. Their only real leverage is the threat of a strike or an actual strike, but it’s definitely one of those threats that’s quote unquote going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you. Go on strike, you don’t get paid.

Larry Jordan: Well the DGA has set the basic pattern for money, which the writers and the actors are going to follow. The real challenge is the fact that there are more writers in the market. There are more series, but there are fewer episodes, which means that overall, the money that a writer gets is decreasing. This could be a real challenge in the negotiations?

Jonathan Handel: That’s right. Decreasing or flat, we don’t have access to the granular data. But yes, the average length of a series dropped in a period of just three years from 19 episodes to 13 episodes. That’s a major drop and what we saw driving that was not just digital platforms, like Netflix, but also network platforms shortened their series dramatically in response to changing consumption patterns. So the TV world is fractionating and fragmenting just as we see some cable channels are going to struggle to survive because there are a million places to go. The fact that there are a million places to go and a million shows to be done, the number of shows brings in additional writers, and really has to because each show wants its own writers, so you are going to get an increased number of writers, and yet if the series are shorter, that’s less work for them.

Larry Jordan: Jonathan this is something we got to keep our eyes on for the future. For people who want to know what’s happening, where can they go on the web?

Jonathan Handel: THRlabor.com, The Hollywood Reporter Labor, and my own website, jhandel.com.

Larry Jordan: That’s jhandel.com and Jonathan Handel is the contributing editor for entertainment labor for the Hollywood Reporter. Jonathan, thanks for joining us today.

Jonathan Handel: Thanks very much Larry.

Larry Jordan: Enter the new digital eco system of media, entertainment, and technology, where behavior and business have merged to redefine content, workflow and revenue streams. It’s the M.E.T Effect, a cultural phenomenon fuelled by hybrid solutions and boundless connectivity that’s changing the very nature of how we live, work and play.

Larry Jordan: Join more than 100,000 attendees from 160 countries at the NAB show. Conferences are April 22nd to the 27th and exhibits are April 24th through the 27th, at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Let’s thrive and I’ll see you there.

Larry Jordan: Sadie Groom is the managing director of Bubble & Squeak, a global PR marketing and events agency based in London. With 20 years marketing experience in the business to business market, Sadie is the driving force behind the agency working with all its clients on their campaigns and business goals. Hello Sadie, welcome.

Sadie Groom: Hi Larry.

Larry Jordan: This week we’re talking about marketing. How would you define the difference between PR, marketing and advertising?

Sadie Groom: I always like to think of it that PR and media relations is about getting coverage in the magazines, so that’s really about the online and print publications and writing press releases and features and white papers and things like that. I think that’s part of the marketing mix, and I think marketing is defined by PR, events, advertising and can also obviously include digital and email and social media as well. And then events are where you do that handshake thing with people, and meet and greet.

Larry Jordan: Where does advertising fit into that?

Sadie Groom: Advertising fits in as part of that, and I really encourage all of our clients to do advertising and to do a bit of everything. Use the whole of the marketing mix and not just do one thing.

Larry Jordan: Magazines as we know have been in trouble for years. They’re dying quickly. Is magazines even a force in our industry right now?

Sadie Groom: I think it is, and I think the good magazines will survive. I think the ones that have the good editorial, they’re seeking out the news and they have interesting features, will survive, and I think they should. I love paper and I love magazines, so I personally read them. But there is too much that’s digital in a way. We get bombarded too much digitally now, and actually if you look at someone like a cameraman who isn’t going to be sat in an office all day, he’s going to be out and actually having a paper publication works for quite a lot of the people in our industry.

Larry Jordan: Given the definitions you’ve just done of PR and marketing and events and advertising, where does Bubble & Squeak fit into this mix?

Sadie Groom: We do a bit of everything. I’m very lucky that my background and our team’s background is doing the whole of the marketing bit. We’ve all had marketing manager and director titles. We do all three, and for some of our clients we will say, “Actually you don’t need to do PR, you need to do something else instead.” So we really recommend what’s right for our clients, and that’s based on what their business goals are, not just what their marketing goals are. I think that’s really important.

Larry Jordan: How do business goals change what you do?

Sadie Groom: I think that they give us a wider appreciation of what our clients are trying to achieve. At the end of the day, in our market, everybody needs to be making money. If they can sell better and they can sell more, then they have more money to spend on marketing, and I think just knowing what their business goals really helps, and being very involved in what they’re doing. So we have some clients that will come to us when they’re heading for an acquisition or they want to be acquired. That’s a business goal, that’s not a marketing goal and I think we have close enough relationships with our clients for them to be able to share and trust those business goals with us.

Larry Jordan: One of the things that I’ve noticed over the last decade is just how much the marketing industry has changed from being predominantly advertising focused, into much more measurability focused and other trends. What have you seen from your perspective, because you’re much more deeply involved in it than I am in terms of the changes in marketing over the last ten years?

Sadie Groom: If you go back even 20 years when I first started in PR, then a press release was just written as a press release to get coverage and now it’s written for the whole world to see, and whether that’s your competition or it’s your investors or your staff. So I think that’s really changed. Obviously digital is great. It means we can measure things so much more easily, and we can really see what’s working and we can do split testing and things like that. So that’s massively changed. But one of the things that hasn’t changed is the need to see people face to face, so I think how you go about your marketing and communicating why somebody should meet you face to face at a trade show or at an event. It’s just about how you communicate. But although I will say that, I think people are being bombarded a bit too much by email these days.

Larry Jordan: I had a chance to visit your website and take a look and you’ve got some amazing clients. It’s a tribute to you and your team, the people that you’re representing.

Sadie Groom: Thank you.

Larry Jordan: Our audience is principally filmmakers and media creators rather than people who make products. How do their marketing needs differ from someone that’s trying to sell products through distribution?

Sadie Groom: I think it’s the same. I think it’s about having your personal brand. So if you’re a cinematographer, you need to build your own brand up to get more attention. I will always say, “How are people going to hear about you if they don’t have a crystal ball?” Either a small company or you’re selling a service, you still need to have your website and you still need to do social media. You can still just phone up a journalist if you want to, you don’t necessarily need an agency like that, but you could phone up a journalist and say “Look, I’ve just worked on this great project.” You can use all of the same tools, but you don’t maybe need to spend as much money.

Larry Jordan: Which is a really good question. For a filmmaker, clearly there are $100 million films that are made, but they’re made by studios who have the resources to pull this off. Most independent filmmakers are dealing with much smaller budgets. How do they budget for marketing, and where do they spend their dollars if they don’t have unlimited money?

Sadie Groom: I think that’s about doing the things that you can virtually for free which is social media. You can really do that very cheaply and having an opinion and commenting on things and you can really get your personal brand out there. I think you can do that for not a lot of money. If you do have a small pot of money then definitely doing it on your website, which is your shop window. But just things like making sure you’ve got interesting and nice business cards, spending a bit more money on those, so if people get given a business card will go, “OK, that’s a nice card, that’s interesting,” and people remember. Even if you only have say ten or 15 clients that are production companies or whoever they are, make sure you’re sending them a Christmas card and a Christmas gift and an Easter egg, or remembering their birthdays. So actually there is a lot you can do, for not a lot of money.

Larry Jordan: Which tactics were big in the past that no longer work now and I’m going to ask you the flip side question, which tactics work better now that we need to emphasize? You’ve already mentioned social media. What stuff doesn’t work? Where should we not spend time?

Sadie Groom: Oh that’s an interesting question. I think people really need to look at the moment, about what they’re doing through email. I think we’re very bombarded these days, and so even though it’s great, I think some of the email campaigns, so many people now have these apps that they use on their phone, and then their emails are diverted to another folder, so you’re not even getting seen. So I think you have to be really careful with that. Obviously people used to print 40 page brochures, and I don’t think people need to do that these days. However, I will say that actually sending something to somebody in the post these days will get a lot more attention sometimes than an email.

Larry Jordan: What are your views on the usefulness of trade shows?

Sadie Groom: Bearing in mind I’m currently at my sixth trade show of the year, and it’s only the middle of March. People buy off people, and you only get into a relationship with people when you meet them face to face. I really believe that we’re in an industry that if you wanted to buy a $50,000 camera, you need to touch it and see it, and see who else is using it as well. So I think that’s where they’re valuable. From a networking perspective, they’re fantastic, you can meet the press and see what your competition are doing. You can go to conferences and learn, and it’s good for team morale as well quite often. I absolutely think they’re worth doing and I think our industry does seem to love a trade show quite a lot.

Larry Jordan: How do we determine what a marketing PR budget should be? And again, I’m wearing a filmmaker’s hat. How do you figure out how to budget for that?

Sadie Groom: The industry statistics are that it’s between five and eight percent of your overall turnover. So that’s sort of a line that probably the manufacturers would use, but you need to think about a percentage, and whether that’s say five percent of your turnover, but really think about how you’re spending that money. If you’re spending £500 on an advert, would you be better off spending £500 by taking five people for dinner, or to a concert and some hospitality? So there is an industry rate of what it should be, but obviously if you’ve got a big product launch or you’ve got a big project that you’ve worked on as a filmmaker and you really want to get that message out there, then it might be a case of putting more into that because you need to get that news out there that you’ve done it.

Larry Jordan: When do we do the work ourselves, and when do we work with an agency such as you?

Sadie Groom: That’s an interesting question. I think there is so much you can do yourself and I think we go into clients where either they don’t have a marketing person either because they don’t have the budget for someone that’s got the level of experience and industry knowledge that we would have, then we can go in and support them on that and they don’t have to pay all the tax and employers responsibilities. Then I think there’s obviously bigger companies that need that support, that they can’t get in house, and obviously having an agency it means that we’re looking into the industry so much more, and there’ll be opportunities for example with the press where they just come to us and say, “Hi, which of your clients can fill in this feature and questionnaire for us?” So there, the press are able to come to us and they get seven or eight responses straight away rather than having to individually phone up all of those businesses.

Larry Jordan: I could talk about marketing for hours, it’s a subject that I love learning more about, but seeing as we don’t have hours, for people that want more information about you and your company, where can they go on the web?

Sadie Groom: So you can go to our website which is HYPERLINK “http://www.bubblesqueak.agency” www.bubblesqueak.agency or just put us into Google and you’ll be able to find us.

Larry Jordan: That’s all one word, bubblesqueak.agency, not .com, and Sadie Groom is the managing director of Bubble & Squeak, and Sadie, thanks for joining us today.

Sadie Groom: Thank you very much Larry.

Larry Jordan: Andy Marken is the president of Marken Communications, a PR firm based in the Bay area. For the last ten years, Andy has focused on media, entertainment and storage as well as OTT streaming. Hello Andy, welcome.

Andy Marken: Larry, it’s great to be on this side of the mike with you.

Larry Jordan: Many times you have sat watching clients be on the mike. It’s good to hear your voice. Andy, you’ve been in marketing and PR for almost 30 years. What shifts in marketing today stand out most to you?

Andy Marken: Well it’s broadened into anything and everything, and yet it’s narrowed because there’s a gazillion opportunities out there but they’re very focused and it’s much easier to reach people more quickly. And it’s more fun.

Larry Jordan: How would you define the difference between PR and marketing?

Andy Marken: PR is working with the media and placing stories and articles. Marketing is really the aspect of positioning, promoting and newsletters, primarily advertising. The two go almost hand in hand for people.

Larry Jordan: We just heard from Sadie talking about marketing in general. What I want to do is chat with you about more specifically what filmmakers and other creative individuals can do to promote their projects and promote their films. What would you advise them as the best way to reach an audience?

Andy Marken: Let me give you a little background. I was totally depressed with the onslaught of activity on YouTube because I saw a lot of youngsters coming into … a film, because I’ve got an iPhone or what have you. All we were getting was a bunch of dumb tricks and cat and dog stuff, but they were also depressing the marketplace for filmmakers. Incidentally, I work with some very good, nice companies that allow me to work very closely with filmmakers, so they’re a concern to me, and today everybody in the industry is an independent filmmaker. Then I started looking at growth of content that’s being distributed over the net, OTT type of thing. There are a tremendous number of new opportunities for filmmakers to do their work and to place them. Facebook is doing a better job and will do a better job of taking on good content. Amazon is in 20 countries, and will be in 200 countries. I’m not working with them. They’re saying, “Hey, put your stuff here and we’ll get you exposure.”

Larry Jordan: OK, hold it a minute. I understand there’s more market opportunity but how do filmmakers promote their film? What do they need to do? Wear your marketing hat. What advice would you give them?

Andy Marken: Once you’ve got on, the trouble is it’s like doing an app for a phone, most of them don’t go anywhere. Let’s use Amazon as an example, yes you’re there, and you may be one of the top ten, but you have to keep it there, and that means encouraging friends and others to post on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook to “Take a look, here’s a screen grab I had, it’s really a cool film.” Let them tell ten more people or 100 more people and that’s the way it spreads. I encourage filmmakers to also be out in front of strange audiences like the May Film Creative Storage Conference that’s coming up, or Flash Memory Summit that’s at the end of the year. Being able to tell their stories of what they did and how they did it, and that does broaden the interest base. But advertising per se is not effective for a filmmaker and I think they can do it themselves. We’re getting a greater number of new programmatic tools that are going to help the filmmakers in my estimation, and I’m talking of the short filmmakers that says, “Hey, if you like this, you’re probably going to like these three others,” and that will be of substantial help to the filmmakers.

Larry Jordan: Andy, for people that need more information about what you’re up to, or get your advice, where can they go on the web to get in touch with you?

Andy Marken: They can go to HYPERLINK “http://www.markencom.com” www.markencom.com. They can see me at NAB in the lower level at 8905, or they ask me to get on my weekly content insider.

Larry Jordan: That website is all one word, markencom.com and Andy Marken is the president of Marken Communications. Andy thanks for taking time to share your evening with us.

Andy Marken: Thank you Larry.

Larry Jordan: Take care, bye bye.

Larry Jordan: Scott Page is a musician, technologist and serial entrepreneur. He currently serves as the CEO of Ignited Networks, a mobile broadcast network focused on content creators and he’s widely toured as a professional musician. Welcome back Scott, good to hear your voice.

Scott Page: How you doing Larry? Glad to be back buddy.

Larry Jordan: Tonight Scott we’re talking about marketing. Tell us what changes you’re seeing in marketing for creative individuals.

Scott Page: We’re actually going through a major shift right now because we’re going from what we call public networks to private networks. This year, 2017, the trends are showing that mobile messaging applications will be taking over social. In other words, apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Messenger, are now moving towards being the preferred method of communications for folks right now. That basically starts to create a whole different set of rules for marketing, because how do you get your marketing messages into private communications?

Larry Jordan: Before we get too in depth on this, could you define what private messaging is because I’m not yet seeing the picture?

Scott Page: When you’re talking about a two way kind of communication like through WhatsApp or WeChat, or those type of things, it’s not the same thing as where you’re just putting up a post, maybe running an ad. Now we’re going back and forth. Our communication is between you and me across these apps and it’s not necessarily across a public situation where everybody can see that, so it creates a challenge for folks to get into the conversation, and when you’re talking about real time conversations, it’s not just a one post thing. You’ve got to go back and forth. So it makes it difficult again for marketers to get their messages into these communications. Does that make sense?

Larry Jordan: It does, it makes perfect sense, except I see a huge problem. In order for you and I to have a conversation, I need to know that you exist. If I’m marketing, and trying to reach a new audience, they don’t yet know that I exist. How do I reach them through private messaging?

Scott Page: These are some of the challenges. This isn’t to say that the public networks are going away, but definitely some major challenges that are starting to come on board for marketers, and marketers being able to interject themselves into the communications through influence marketing. So those folks that are part of those communities, the influencers now will be the ones that will be more important. Also what will happen is Facebook likes and follows and all that are going to be a lot less important. It’s really going to be about the word of mouth of the community. Now instead of all these big giant public networks, we’re now moving to what they call hives. Smaller, direct, niche kind of communities and if you want to survive in this game moving forward, you’re going to have to figure out how to be part of a hive and create that hive mind of folks with like mindedness and communications around products and around things need now be more conversational where everything that comes out has to have a conversation around it because that’s what’s happening with the whole idea of real time.

Larry Jordan: Scott, where did chatbots fit into this conversation?

Scott Page: First of all, what are chatbots? Chatbot is really artificial intelligence. AI, they’re great for help systems and for keeping people up to date. Chatbots are now taking over like crazy, especially on Facebook and Twitter, all of them. Facebook has made a big initiative to really focus on chatbots and bringing them into the system, because they really do help in the communications and delivering information to people that you normally might not be able to get, because how do I scale myself in a conversation to give them information all the time? So chatbots are very helpful in that way. Unfortunately, this is going to have a major impact on jobs and so we’re going to have to figure out new ways to keep people in the game, because I read an article not too long ago that said 47 percent of all jobs are susceptible to these robots. So there’s pros and cons to all of this, but we’re definitely moving into a world where chatbots are going to be much more prevalent in everything we do every day.

Larry Jordan: Put your creative hat on for a second Scott. If you’ve only got a limited amount of time, and a limited budget, and given the vast new areas that marketing’s exploded into, where do we invest our time?

Scott Page: You’re better off, number one, to focus on one or two networks and not try to focus on lots of networks, because it’s very difficult to keep up with the pace of having to post and deal with all these different networks when in reality you’re trying to create relationships. We’re moving into this area where the relationships are word of mouth. The real time communications is really going to be the most important part of the communications you have with your customers. Right now I believe that Twitter still is a very big opportunity for folks because you do have this direct messaging, but what’s happening is that communications and that real growth in marketing is happening in the DMs, not so much in the actual streams of the content. These days, the money is in the relationship, especially for content creators that are trying to get their content stuff out there. You need to start building those relationships and focus on the super fans, because that’s where the real dollars are.

Larry Jordan: Scott, for people that want to keep track of what you’re thinking, where can they go on the web, to learn more?

Scott Page: My Twitter handle is @Iamscottpage, that’s my communication tool of choice, and you can also find me at iamscottpage.com.

Larry Jordan: That website is iamscottpage.com, and the Scott Page himself has been chatting with us. Scott thanks for joining us today.

Scott Page: Thanks Larry. Talk to you later.

Larry Jordan: Here’s another website I want to introduce you to. Doddlenews.com. DoddleNEWS gives you a portal into the broadcast, video and film industries. It’s a leading online resource, presenting news, reviews and products for the film and video industry. DoddleNEWS also offers a resource guide and crew management platforms specifically designed for production. These digital call sheets, along with their app, directory and premium listings, provide in depth organizational tools for busy production professionals. DoddleNEWS is a part of the Thalo Arts Community, a worldwide community of artists, filmmakers and storytellers. From photography to filmmaking, performing arts to fine arts, and everything in between, Thalo is filled with resources you need to succeed. Whether you want the latest industry news, need to network with other creative professionals or require state of the art online tools to manage your next project, there’s only one place to go. Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan: Eric Trabb is the VP and group publisher at New Bay Media’s broadcast and video group. He oversees some of the industry’s leading brands in the professional video marketplace, including TV Technology, Digital Video, Video Edge and Government Video. Eric’s been in the industry for nearly 30 years, and I am delighted to say, hello Eric, welcome.

Eric Trabb: Hi Larry, thank you for having me today.

Larry Jordan: Eric, I was reflecting, just before we began this interview, that the first time we met was about 12 years ago at DV Expo. The industry has certainly changed a lot over the last decade hasn’t it?

Eric Trabb: It has indeed.

Larry Jordan: As you look at the last decade, what’s been the biggest change, from your perspective?

Eric Trabb: The biggest change that we’ve seen is the transformation of the way the business community has embraced or transformed their marketing efforts. I think you see that from every size organization, from a big diversified company to small entrepreneurial companies, everybody is trying to analyze how they can better market their products to this industry, and try frankly to do more with less. That mantra has cut across every fabric of our business, our readers are trying to do more with less with the tools that they have, and our customers, our sponsors, our advertisers, are trying to do more with less to sell their product. You know, New Bay Media provides a conduit of information to those customers. We try to build partnerships between advertisers or marketers and the end user. Our relationships today are a lot more collaborative perhaps than they were maybe ten or 12 years ago.

Larry Jordan: Well in tonight’s show we’re talking about marketing specifically marketing films and creative projects. How would you define the difference between advertising and marketing?

Eric Trabb: That’s a good question. I think that it’s going to require a few different points here. One is I think that most marketers now look at their short and long term business objectives. It’s no longer just advertising and marketing. The marketplace is a lot more sophisticated. They’re looking at larger integrated marketing program Larry, and inside that program there’s a couple of tenets. There’s owned media, there’s earned media, there’s paid media, and then there’s shared media. Then on top of all this are other ways to reach the audience. There’s events, so let me give you an example. Inside of owned media are owned elements. You know a company for instance might have to figure out their branding strategy. They have a website that they have to publish. They need sales tools to give to their sales people. They need collateral, they need to develop a booth for a trade show. They need other content, they need videos. All of this is part of owned elements. That’s all underneath this marketing umbrella, and years ago, a lot of these things you didn’t even have. So the bucket of marketing has gotten a lot bigger.

Eric Trabb: Then, if I may, you also have things like earned elements, and that’s anywhere from press releases to articles that we publish, that companies give us that we publish. And thought leadership articles and user reports and case studies and then they have press events at shows and they do interviews and there’s all of this that goes into this entire big marketing story. For example, we have coming up for NAB this year, New Bay Media does the NAB best of show awards, so a good marketer is going to say, “Hey, getting an award at NAB is a feather in my cap, and I want the ability to promote that.” So they need to enter as many things as they can to help elevate their brand, for instance, entering an award program is one way to do that. So those are a couple of different ways that marketing has changed quite a bit.

Larry Jordan: Well one of the terms you used earlier that I want to pick up on is the word relationships which is something we never heard ten years ago. Why are relationships so important?

Eric Trabb: Every business is built on relationships with customers right? So, I think it’s important that when you meet with a customer, whether it’s us, New Bay Media talking to our advertisers and sponsors, or a video production house, a creative producer, the first thing that they have to do is understand the customer and what the customer’s trying to accomplish. If you look at marketing you want to ask very simply a couple of easy questions. Who are you trying to reach with your marketing? Have you reached them before, and how did you go about doing that? I think understanding the customer and building that relationship is what it takes in today’s environment. You can’t just go in and say “Hey, do you want to buy this?” I think today our partners are much more sophisticated and they want us to help them understand how to go about understanding their customer and how we’re going to measure success along the way. We help them do that. We help them understand the customer, and then, whatever program we work together with them on, how they’re going to measure their own success, because at the end of the day, you have to be accountable for this. I think that’s how we build good relationships and that’s how our customers then build good relationships with their customers.

Larry Jordan: When I was reading your intro, one of the words I used was the word professional. You oversee your brands in the professional video market place. It seems to me that the word professional is defining people differently today than it was a few years ago. How are you defining professionals?

Eric Trabb: You’re absolutely right. With the amount of content that’s being generated and distributed through all the different platforms that we see in the world today, I think that professional line has got quite a bit blurry. Across the tools, to help quote unquote professionals deliver that content has come down which I think has made that professional line more accessible for more people. But in general, our rule had always been that if you made money producing and delivering content, then you became a professional. But I think there are people who don’t make money doing this anymore, that are producing very good content.

Larry Jordan: Which means it’s even blurrier than usual.

Eric Trabb: It is, and just do a quick search on Google or YouTube and you’ll see how many videos there are.

Larry Jordan: Shift your focus for just a second, away from your magazines and to the people who read your magazines. The professional video person, however we’re defining them. If they’re trying to get the word out about their film or their project, what marketing is available to them? What would you recommend they focus on?

Eric Trabb: Funny you say get the word out. That notion of getting the word out is what people used to say a few years ago to us when we would have that kind of introductory conversation and I’d say, “What are you trying to accomplish?” and they’d say, “I just want to get the word out.” Today, I would encourage my customers to think beyond just getting the word out. I would take that “Hey we want to get the word out,” and I would say, “What specifically do you want to achieve with this message?” I’d say “Do you want to create brand awareness? Do you want to create thought leadership? Do you want to generate leads for your product? Do you want to drive traffic to your site? What is it specifically that you are trying to achieve with your investment?” because that’s important.

Eric Trabb: Beyond magazines Larry, we have a lot of different triggers we can pull to help our partners and to help small independent video production companies. I think this applies to them as well. There’s a lot of different mechanisms you can engage in to get a different result, and if you want to build awareness you would do one thing. If you want to generate leads you would do something else. It’s very important for us to be able to understand what their goals are beyond just getting the word out. So if a company wants to generate leads, we would typically tell them that a way to do that would be to create some really good content and create some kind of program around that content, and then help them ignite that content to generate leads. So, the industry is very much peer to peer, and people respect other people’s opinions, and so creating good content and then igniting and promoting that content is one way that companies are generating leads. So we would want to be sure that we are matching up the need of that customer with the right option, and that’s part of the whole customer experience I was talking about.

Larry Jordan: One of the pet peeves that I’ve got is that when I visit a new company on their website, the website itself is using language that is unintelligible or filled with jargon or as hard as I try, I cannot figure out what the company does. How do you advise your clients when it comes to writing about themselves?

Eric Trabb: I would say if a company can’t say very quickly what they do and how they do it, and how it’s going to benefit from the customer, that’s a problem. I think you can spend all the money in the world to drive traffic back to your site, but when they get back to the site if there’s a disconnect on your unique selling proposition and how you separate yourself from your competitor, that’s a fundamental problem. But I think that keeping it simple and helping them understand how your product or service makes a difference in their life, how it helps them solve a problem, and just going back to those basics. How using your product or service is going to help make my job, my life, what I have to do every day, easier or better or more efficient. I think if you can just go back to those basics as a marketer and try to articulate that on your site, then you have a good starting point to engage the traffic that comes to your site.

Larry Jordan: I will confess that if I read the words ‘world class customer focus and customer driven’ one more time in a first paragraph of a company I’m going to throw up.

Eric Trabb: Everybody’s world class at something. I agree that world class and leading are a bit overused, and they don’t do enough to separate one company over the next, but I think that marketers are very fond of using adjectives, and trying to embellish a little bit on their products or services. But you know what? It’s part of the buyers opportunity to wade through that a little bit, and make informed decisions. It’s just a little bit of marketing.

Larry Jordan: I think a marketer has never met an adjective that they don’t like.

Eric Trabb: Right.

Larry Jordan: Which gets to my next question. How long shall we allow for a marketing scheme, whether it’s building relationships or getting the word out, or focusing on a particular audience, how much time should we allow? Does it happen instantly, or takes two years, or what?

Eric Trabb: Again, I think that depends on the individual objective. I think the biggest thing that most marketers fall short of is their lack of commitment to stay the course, and I think it’s important with almost any marketing program, to be consistent and to continue it often. And that’s just about with anything that you decide you want to do, whether it’s paid elements, shared elements, earned elements or anything throughout the entire journey that a buyer might take, it’s important to be consistent and to do it frequently.

Larry Jordan: Eric, for people in companies that want to take a look at the tools and resources that New Bay provides, where can they go on the web?

Eric Trabb: The best bet is to go to newbaymedia.com and there you’ll find all of our editorial calendars, and that will give you an idea of the magazines and websites and events that we publish. I’d also invite other listeners who are end users to subscribe to our newsletters. I think most are familiar with our brands of Digital Video and Creative Planet Network, and so please take the time, if you’re not subscribers, to subscribe to our newsletters. We feel there’s some valuable tools and tips and tricks in there to help you stay abreast of the latest techniques and products to help you get through your day. And of course, manufacturers, we’re eager to help you and tell your story to this market.

Larry Jordan: That website is all one word newbaymedia, and Eric Trabb is the VP and group publisher at New Bay Media’s broadcast and video group. Eric, thanks for joining me today.

Eric Trabb: Larry, as always, thanks for having me.

Larry Jordan: Marketing is a complex issue, compounded by the fact that all of us are getting hit with far more messages than we can deal with. So just as our audience, we tend to tune things out. This makes it increasingly challenging for us to capture the attention of an audience, yet it’s more vital than ever that we reach out and connect with them in order for our projects to be successful. It is a never ending puzzle.

Larry Jordan: I want to thank our guests this week, Sadie Groom of Bubble & Squeak, Andy Marken of Marken Communications, Scott Page with Ignited Networks, Eric Trabb with New Bay Media, along with Jonathan Handel from the Hollywood Reporter and James DeRuvo with DoddleNEWS.

Larry Jordan: There’s a lot of history in our industry and it’s all posted to our website at digitalproductionbuzz.com. Here you’ll find thousands of interviews all online, and all available to you today. And remember to sign up for our free weekly show newsletter that comes out every Friday. Talk with us on Twitter @DPBuZZ and Facebook at digitalproductionbuzz.com.

Larry Jordan: Our theme music is composed by Nathan Dugi-Turner with additional music provided by Smartsound.com. Text transcripts are provided by Take1 Transcription, that’s Take1.tv to learn how they can help you.

Larry Jordan: Our producer is Debbie Price. My name is Larry Jordan, and thanks for listening to The Digital Production Buzz.

Larry Jordan: The Digital Production Buzz is copyright 2017 by Thalo LLC.

HOST
Larry Jordan

GUESTS
Maxim Jago, Director, maximjago.com
Max Votolato, Director / Producer / Editor / Researcher, Freeway City Films
Richard Wright, Photographer, Winter Quarters Production
Griffin Hammond, Documentary Filmmaker, www.hey.film
Chris Sobchack, Co-head, Wraptastic Productions
Michael Horton, Co-Producer, Supermeet
Dan Berube, Co-Producer, Supermeet
James DeRuvo, Film and Technology Reporter, DoddleNEWS

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Larry Jordan: Tonight on The Buzz, we are talking financing, distribution and making money on your film. We start with Maxim Jago, a producer director who is currently financing two films. Tonight, he shares his experiences on how to get the money to enable production to start.

Larry Jordan: Griffin Hammond is a documentary filmmaker who completed his film three years ago. Today it is still turning a profit and he explains why he decided to self distribute his film and what he did that worked.

Larry Jordan: Richard Wright and his partner create short historical documentaries. He explains how he’s making money on his projects, and his plans for distribution.

Larry Jordan: Chris Sobchack and his wife created Please Tell Me I’m Adopted, a short form comedy series designed for the web. Chris also decided to self distribute, but took a different path than Griffin. Chris explains what he did, and how it worked.

Larry Jordan: Max Votolato is the producer director of Freeway City, a film which he completed a couple of years ago. Unlike other guests, Max decided to release his film for free. Tonight, we find out why he did it and whether he got the results he expected.

Larry Jordan: All this, plus Mike Horton and Dan Berube with a preview on the upcoming SuperMeet at NAB in April and James DeRuvo with our weekly DoddleNEWS update. The Buzz starts now.

Announcer: Since the dawn of digital filmmaking – authoritative – one show serves a worldwide network of media professionals – current – uniting industry experts – production – filmmakers – post production – and content creators around the planet – distribution. From the media capital of the world in Los Angeles, California, The Digital Production Buzz goes live now.

Larry Jordan: Welcome to the Digital Production Buzz, the world’s longest running podcast for the creative content industry, covering media production, post production and marketing around the world.

Larry Jordan: Hi, my name is Larry Jordan. This week, as you’ll hear shortly from James DeRuvo, we’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of Adobe Premiere Pro, the program first released in 1992. Back in 1992 we were still deeply involved in shooting standard definition images, and recording them on video tape. Technical specs for HD were still two years away from being finalized. All our video was interlaced, and the industry leading camera was Sony’s Digi Betacam which created uncompressed video at 30 megabytes a second.

Larry Jordan: Most hard disks in those days were FireWire 400, which wasn’t fast enough to support Digi Betacam playback and for those of us with money, we started experimenting with RAIDS. Storage was expensive, and measured in gigabytes. I personally remember spending $15,000 for 20 gigabytes of storage, spread across four five gigabyte drives, attached via FireWire 800. That formed the core network storage for a 20 person production company.

Larry Jordan: When it came to computers, Apple had not yet made the switch to Intel processors. Most of us were working with either Macintosh Quadras or Performas, with CPUs that maxed out at 33 megahertz running on a Motorola 68030 chip. 1992 also saw the first release of Macintosh System 7 and Windows 3.1.

Larry Jordan: Times, technology and media have all changed, and so has Premiere. Adobe is celebrating with a brand new contest called Make the Cut, and here with the details of Adobe’s contest, along with a wrap up of industry news, is James DeRuvo with our weekly DoddleNEWS update. Hello James.

James DeRuvo: Hi Larry.

Larry Jordan: So what have we got that’s news this week?

James DeRuvo: FiLMiC Pro is about to release their new version 6. It’s completely redesigned with an interface that includes these really cool arc sliders that come in from either side, you just slide in. It’s very intuitive, and it gives you minute control over zoom, focus, shutter and exposure. You also have control over focus peaking, Zebras, and false color control, and you’ll be able to shoot in log in 4K. So FiLMiC Pro is already the standard for mobile filmmaking, but this latest update, I think it ensures it stays at the top of the pyramid for some time to come.

Larry Jordan: James, what’s FiLMiC Pro?

James DeRuvo: FiLMiC Pro is an app designed specifically for the iPhone, but recently they also relaunched it for the Android platform, and it gives you access to all those manual controls that you have on a cinema camera, but only for the mobile platform.

Larry Jordan: What else we got?

James DeRuvo: Vimeo has finally joined the 360 and virtual reality party with Vimeo 360. It will enable you to upload 360 video at up to 8K resolution with 4K streaming options, two pass transcoding and monoscopic and stereoscopic support. They’re going to have a curated special channel which will have staff pics and open global market place with which to sell your downloads, and for those just beginning in shooting 360 video, they are going to have a 360 film school which will have tips and tricks. They’ll review all the latest 360 degree cameras and just help you to make a better film in the round. With its coming late to the party, there’s no denying that Vimeo is the filmmaker’s streaming site, but if you’re serious about shooting 360 video and you’re not really interested in just getting something up there to get the views, Vimeo 360 may be the best professional choice.

Larry Jordan: This early in the career of VR, I’m not sure late to the party actually applies. I’m curious to see what Vimeo comes up with.

James DeRuvo: I’ve always considered Vimeo to be that niche marketed streaming service where you put your very best video quality because they tend to have a better streaming video than YouTube, even though YouTube gets most of the eyeballs. It’s going to be interesting to see what they bring. Right now, I really like what they’re doing.

Larry Jordan: I understand we’re celebrating a party?

James DeRuvo: Yes, we’re celebrating Adobe Premiere Pro’s 25th anniversary. Can you believe it’s been 25 years that we’ve been cutting on Adobe?

Larry Jordan: Oh my goodness.

James DeRuvo: It was launched in 1994, the groundbreaking non-linear editor was the first offer broadcast quality video editing on a personal computer. And by 1996, they were actually editing 4K film frame sizes. Crazy. The early 2000s though found Premiere to be a bit bloated and difficult to use and it was crashing a lot. But by 2009, Adobe had completely rebuilt the app and relaunched it as Adobe Premiere Pro and now with Adobe Premiere Creative Cloud, it really has become the gold standard for PC editing.

James DeRuvo: Adobe is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Premiere Pro by launching a $25,000 video editing contest called Make the Cut. Working in partnership with the rock band Imagine Dragons, budding editors will be able to download unedited footage and cut together their own music video, and they have a chance to win a part of that $25,000 prize, year long subscriptions to Adobe Creative Cloud and a host of other really great prizes.

James DeRuvo: It’s hard to believe we’ve been cutting on Premiere for 25 years Larry, but with Creative Cloud’s groundbreaking features driving the industry now, I can’t wait to see what the next 25 years is going to have in store.

Larry Jordan: James, where can we go to keep up with the latest in the industry?

James DeRuvo: All these and other stories can be found at Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan: James DeRuvo is the senior writer for DoddleNEWS and joins us every week to provide the DoddleNEWS update. James, thanks for joining us today.

James DeRuvo: OK Larry, thanks.

Larry Jordan: Thinking about making news, Mike Horton and Dan Berube are co-producers of the legendary SuperMeet at the NAB show in Las Vegas. This is their 16th year producing this event, and I want to learn more about what they’re planning. Hello Dan, Hello Mike.

Dan Berube: Hello Larry.

Mike Horton: Hello Larry.

Larry Jordan: So Dan, when and where is the event?

Dan Berube: The event is once again at the Rio Hotel on Tuesday April 25th, inside the wonderful Pavilion Ballroom.

Larry Jordan: Michael, what you got on tap?

Mike Horton: So far this year, we have Blackmagic Design who has been with us for all of 16 years by the way, and we can’t do these things without them. Then of course Adobe will be there. We have OWC, and for the first time, we have Final Cut Pro X Works, FCP Works, HP and NVIDIA is also going to be there, and we’re working on a keynote. We won’t be able to announce that for a little but until that’s cemented, but we’re going to have a real good diverse group of companies. Of course, they’ll be user driven and it won’t be so much about the tools, but about using the tools.

Larry Jordan: So Dan, what’s got you most excited about this year’s event?

Dan Berube: Larry, the fact that we are doing this once again, it takes an incredible amount of energy, passion, community oriented resources and that we’re doing it in our 16th year, still in Vegas, and still having a great time bringing people together, that’s what excites me most about this.

Larry Jordan: Mike, same question.

Mike Horton: Yes, it is. Dan put it really well, it does bring people together, and that’s our home mission ever since the beginning is to first and foremost make this a networking event. That’s what it is, especially that part before the show actually starts, and during the break. That’s when everybody comes together and those people who have the courage to come up and meet some stranger and shake their hands, and say, “Hi, my name is…” you never know as we always say, if that person might change your life. But you got to have the courage to shake their hands.

Larry Jordan: Mike, getting back to you, when are you going to have the courage to release the agenda?

Mike Horton: It’s always a difficult thing to put together and it’s also a difficult thing to get the people that we have signed on to send us a paragraph so we can put it on the website and tell everybody. So that’s one of the reasons, but as always it’s going to be a great show, and more importantly it’s that chance to get together with other like minded people who can hopefully solve any problems that you might have.

Dan Berube: I got to say Larry that I wouldn’t want to be doing it with anyone else but Michael. Michael, you’re the best. I know we’ve been through a lot over these 16 years, but we’re going to make this happen.

Mike Horton: We’ll make this happen, that’s for sure.

Larry Jordan: Dan, where can people go on the web to learn more?

Dan Berube: The best place to go is at supermeet.com.

Larry Jordan: How much is a ticket?

Dan Berube: Right now, we have our early bird tickets on through March 27th. $10 for general admission, and $7 for students and teachers.

Mike Horton: It behooves you to get your tickets now.

Larry Jordan: Well I have already got my ticket because I would not think of missing the SuperMeet. Dan Berube, and Mike Horton, co-producers of the SuperMeet, gentlemen, thanks for joining us.

Dan Berube: Thanks for having us on Larry.

Mike Horton: Thank you so much Larry.

Larry Jordan: Enter the new digital eco system of media, entertainment, and technology, where behavior and business have merged to redefine content, workflow and revenue streams. It’s the M.E.T Effect, a cultural phenomenon fuelled by hybrid solutions and boundless connectivity that’s changing the very nature of how we live, work and play.

Larry Jordan: Join more than 100,000 attendees from 160 countries at the NAB show. Conferences are April 22nd to the 27th and exhibits are April 24th through the 27th, at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Let’s thrive and I’ll see you there.

Larry Jordan: Maxim Jago is a film director, a screenwriter, an author who splits his time between filmmaking and speaking as a futurist, especially at events celebrating creativity. He’s also the chief innovation officer at filmdoo.com and a mentor for new filmmakers. Hello Maxim, welcome.

Maxim Jago: Hi there Larry. It’s great to speak to you.

Larry Jordan: It is wonderful to have you back with us. I just realized the last time we spoke was September last year. So at that point you were working on two films, what’s the status of them?

Maxim Jago: Well it’s been fascinating. We’re developing a project in direction, so we’ve actually got three films and a short now and some technology projects. What we’re finding is that the distribution landscape has pretty much finished changing now, but we’ve been talking about it changing for a long time, and talking about the way it’s been watered down, that we’ve got all these metrics now, we’ve got all these modes of tracking audience behaviors. But you’ve still got this fundamental problem of how do you convince the public that they want to engage with a story? What we’re finding is that actually it really comes down to cast, and that’s very much our focus at the moment.

Larry Jordan: It really comes down to what?

Maxim Jago: Casting.

Larry Jordan: Really?

Maxim Jago: The names, the international names. If you are part of the studio system, where you’ve got a reasonable budget for a film, and that incorporates a budget for your talent, for your casting, then it’s no problem. But if you’re working on projects, then really who is in the project is absolutely critical.

Larry Jordan: So if casting is the most important, how can you cast without knowing what your budget is?

Maxim Jago: Well you do have a budget. It’s one of those funny things about production. You could make it for nothing or you could make it for whatever it is now, a million dollars. But, ultimately, you’re going to name a number and you’re going to come up with a budget for that number, within which you know you can produce the film. But of course, it’s critical that you have casting in place, or at least some aspirations for casting, because without that you can’t estimate your revenues, and without the revenues you can’t estimate how much you can get to make the film. So it’s a sort of a chicken and egg thing.

Larry Jordan: I would say absolutely. Well let’s pretend, just for the conversation, that we have a film and you’ve cast it. How are you going to finance it? Where does the money come from today?

Maxim Jago: Well, I’m speaking very much as an independent film director here, but the route would be to begin discussions with sales agent, distributors. These are the people that can look at your approximate budget, the genre for the film, the territories that they’re looking at distributing in, and importantly, the names that you have attached to the project. Based on that information, they can forecast some revenues, and that’s really the next stage. Once you’ve got those from somebody credible, you can go to potential sources of finance and show them that you think you’re going to make tons of money.

Maxim Jago: But I think that there’s an ethical dilemma for filmmakers, because if you were producing the equivalent to this, which would be a business plan for a new company, you’d have very simple metrics to use to look at how you’re going to make money for the investors of the company. How long investment needs to be in the company, whatever it is. But with a film, there are just so many variables, and as far as I can tell now, if you produce your reasonable budget, in a reasonable time scale, and you distribute worldwide in all media, it’s very likely indeed that you will double your original investors money. If the music sounds OK and the story is alright, you’ll make back the investors’ money. Of course, if you do have a famous name in the film, you’ll have some better metrics. People will be more attracted to the film, you’ll get a better distribution, and you’ll probably make more money.

Maxim Jago: But you do have this challenge if you don’t have names to convince people to see the film. And I’m reliably told that if you … investor that you will just double their money, but you’re confident you’ll do that, and you have the potential to make ten, 20, 30, 40 times their investment, it … good enough. Investors in high risk investments, generally want to know that they’re going to get five or ten times their investment back, or it’s not worth it. So you have another Catch 22 trying to raise the finance for your film.

Maxim Jago: Ultimately, I think the solution is, if you’ve got a cause that people care about, if you have people that care about you that want to invest in your career as a filmmaker, that can help. But the alternative is that you begin to estimate revenues based on the cast you hope you will get if you get the money, so that you can then have a deal memo with your investors. For example, let’s say I’m trying to get Johnny Depp for a film. You never know, it could happen. I can say to investors, “If we cast Johnny Depp, you’ll commit the money, and here’s the revenues that we’re expecting.” With that deal memo in place, you can probably begin to have discussions with agents.

Larry Jordan: Well where does Kickstarter and Indiegogo factor into this, because you’ve been talking with traditional funding sources, not crowdsourcing?

Maxim Jago: That’s right and I looked into things like Indiegogo and Kickstarter, in fact we really researched and explored running a Kickstarter for one of the projects I’m working on. What I found is that ultimately, what’s going to get people engaged with a crowdfunding campaign, is a prior commitment, a prior connection to something to do with the project. Now an obvious one is going to be, once again, having a star involved. That means that there’s a significant number of people who have a prior connection with one of the characters or one of the cast. Another connection would be, again, a serious issue. There are some big social issues that we need to raise awareness of, and if you have a social issue and a new way of approaching it, then you may find that you can get a big commitment from people for your crowdfunding campaign.

Maxim Jago: Another option is if there’s a story or a narrative, a book adaption for example, that many people have read. One of the projects I’m working on now and developing, is Illusions, the book Illusions by the American author Richard Bach, and we’re looking to try to put together a film project based on that book. 40 million copies of this book were sold, and it’s a real life changing story for many people, so we’re optimistic that there’s an audience, and certainly a new generation waiting for the story.

Maxim Jago: Now if you’re on a funding campaign and you can show that prior commitment, you can get that connection and you can get a lot of people to contribute to it. But at the risk of sounding a bit depressing and on a downer about this, I think that if you have no stars, no social issues, no book adaption that people are already passionate about, then from what I can see, and I’ve spoken to quite a few people working projects in the same way, although you will get the outliers, like the … film for example was an amazing example of an outlier. No significant names in it but it was just an awesome project that did incredibly well. If you remove those outliers from your assessment, realistically, you’re probably going to raise somewhere between five and … that you can use to produce your film. Now you can step the process, so some people will raise finance for development, then for pre-production, then production, then for post production, and then for distribution. And each one of those is a separate crowdfunding campaign. But if you wanted to raise $100,000 or $200,000, I don’t think that’s completely realistic without that prior connection …

Larry Jordan: Let’s shift gears, because this show is talking both about financing and distribution, do you need to worry about distribution this early in your process? And if so, what questions are you wrestling with?

Maxim Jago: That’s a fantastic question. I think that most of life works better if you plan backwards and so absolutely. You want to be basing it on your distribution, and there’s some great news in this territory. We’ve now seen really good adoption of what people call OTT, let’s say multiple mediums for distribution for films and television and episodic content.

Larry Jordan: OTT, which stands for ‘Over The Top’ would be Amazon or Netflix or Hulu or something of that sort?

Maxim Jago: Right. I never liked the name, it just means a box next to your TV I suppose, but people don’t care if they’re watching a film now on a laptop, on an iPad, on a phone, on a TV or a projector. It doesn’t matter. This is great for indies, because the big challenge of course traditionally is if your distribution outlet was broadcast, TV, cable or theatres, you’ve got a problem because those distribution mediums are very carefully controlled by large organizations who have a flow of content that they are in control of. But now we’re starting to see a much more open landscape for distribution where the key challenge of course … you’ve still got to have people discover you, but the discoverability is improving.

Maxim Jago: At FilmDoo for example, we’re getting three or 400,000 visitors … We’ve focused on particular … but we’ve got a great search system. iTunes of course, people used to search, and it’s easier now than it was historically for you to get a film onto iTunes, and they’ve got 800 million plus users. Vimeo Pro … content. There’s YouTube where in some situations you can charge for content, and we’re beginning to see this opening up of the online landscape. Not just in terms of filmmakers being able to put their content out there, which is great, but also in audience acceptance.

Maxim Jago: I think this is very interesting for the smaller budget productions where you put together something that you’re passionate about, you want to create, and you want to monetize that so that you can move at least towards what a friend of mine, Kevin Flowers is an experienced filmmaker. He describes sustainable filmmaking. You don’t need millions of dollars, you just need to earn enough money to make the next one and to pay the rent, so it becomes a reasonable replacement to your day job.

Larry Jordan: So to sum up, for someone that’s just getting started with their project, assuming they have a good story, assuming they have the technical skills to pull this off, what advice do you have for them to make money on their project? What are the top three things they need to keep in mind?

Maxim Jago: Oh my goodness. First of all, remember that this is a visual medium, and so begin with getting drawings, getting art work. If you possibly can, shoot a scene, make sure there’s something that conveys the mood and the atmosphere of the project, because that will convince people more than anything else. Secondly, I would say, it’s critical that you get represented by somebody reputable in the industry. The bottom line is it’s not cool for you to tell people that you’re cool, but it is cool for somebody to say it and so you need someone who can big you up and who is respected, to make those introductions and get you those opportunities. Ask around, ask your mentors for recommendations.

Maxim Jago: I suppose the third thing I would say is that realism is beautiful, and it’s great to have imagination and dreams and aspirations. Try to couch those aspirations in a meaningful road map from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow, and just begin crossing those stepping stones. If you don’t have a reputation, you can build a reputation for free, by getting your friends together and producing low budget content that’s high quality. The tools are so accessible now, you can do it. And once you’ve built those smaller pieces, and built up your reputation, you can begin to cover the ground and to work on bigger projects.

Larry Jordan: Maxim, for people that want to keep track of the ground that you’re covering, where can they go on the web?

Maxim Jago: Well I have a strange name of course, so just Google Maxim Jago, or my website is maximjago.com. I’m always happy to answer questions and …

Larry Jordan: That website is maximjago.com and Maxim Jago himself is the voice you’ve been listening to. Maxim, thanks for joining us today. This has been fascinating, thank you very much.

Maxim Jago: Such a pleasure Larry, and looking forward to the next one.

Larry Jordan: Bye bye.

Larry Jordan: Griffin Hammond is a documentary filmmaker based in New York City who’s known for producing do-it-yourself filmmaking tutorials for indie filmmakers and his award winning documentary, ‘Sriracha.’ He’s worked for Bloomberg TV and MSNBC and is the brand ambassador for the new Panasonic GH5 camera. Hello Griffin, and welcome.

Griffin Hammond: Hello Larry, thanks for having me.

Larry Jordan: You know, we are talking about marketing and distribution in today’s show and you’ve written a lot about this. But before we jump into that, tell me what ‘Sriracha’ is about.

Griffin Hammond: It’s a film about the hot sauce that is very popular in the US. I love sriracha and so I decided to make a film about where it comes from and the story behind it.

Larry Jordan: Sorry my mind just exploded. A film about hot sauce? Alright. Cool. How did you decide, once it was done, to market it?

Griffin Hammond: I was making it to go to film festivals, that was the point, but it became pretty clear that I had an audience for this film, and so it just seemed silly not to try to release it on my own. So I self distributed it, and just tried to see how many people I could get the film to.

Larry Jordan: Now what does self distribution mean?

Griffin Hammond: There are several platforms where you can publish the film yourself and receive revenue directly from consumers like Vimeo and iTunes and Amazon. You can publish through a middle man, called an aggregator. So really, I’m just putting my film on these commerce platforms, and they each have different revenue shares. Vimeo is the best one, they give you 90 percent to the filmmaker. So I just have the film on several of these places and people can buy the film and I get most of the money.

Larry Jordan: So rather than looking to put it in theatres, or sell it as a DVD, you’re posting it online at these three sites? With Amazon and iTunes and Vimeo?

Griffin Hammond: Yes. It did play in a few theatres and film festivals and I did sell some DVDs and blu-rays, but the majority of my audience for this film, it looks like it’s been around 700,000 people so far have watched the film, it’s almost entirely online in these self distribution systems.

Larry Jordan: So what did you learn doing self distribution? What worked, what didn’t?

Griffin Hammond: Well I made one mistake that turned out to be really good. Because of my limitation as my own distributor and marketer, I could only release on one platform at a time. It was too much bandwidth to try to release it everywhere. But it turned out that was really smart. That’s a strategy called windowing, where you release it on one platform, you have a big premiere there, and then a little while later you release it somewhere else, and it gets more excitement around that premiere as well. So I released on Vimeo first, then I think eight months later, I put it on iTunes and Amazon and it got new press, and a new audience when that happened. Even sales on Vimeo went up when I released it on another platform. All the platforms benefit from a new release on another platform.

Larry Jordan: Is it possible to make money on a documentary? I mean, traditionally documentaries are labors of love that nobody ever makes their money back, but can you make money on a doc?

Griffin Hammond: I did and I wasn’t expecting to and maybe I only did because I was never planning to make money. I mean I feel like indie documentaries are not supposed to make money, and I was doing it as a passion project. I just wanted this film to exist. But somehow I found an audience for it, and I was able to sell it through these platforms, and it’s actually made a pretty significant amount.

Larry Jordan: I know you’ve shared both expense and revenue numbers on your website. Can you share them here?

Griffin Hammond: Yes. So the film cost me about $12,000 to make, and that was mostly travel expenses. In the end, after three years since the film was released, it’s earned about $136,000 in revenue, and around $30,000 of that I’ve never seen. That’s money that goes straight to the platforms that I’m selling it on. But in the end after my expenses and the cut that they take, the profit for the film has been $78,000 in three years.

Larry Jordan: That’s pretty incredible when you think about it?

Griffin Hammond: Yes, I definitely was not expecting this, and it’s been nice. I can’t believe that people are still buying it three years later and it’s still making a little bit of revenue every month.

Larry Jordan: If you were to do self distribution again, what would you do differently?

Griffin Hammond: Maybe I would do more of the self distribution myself. I have two distributors. One has done a great job, and one of the things they did is they put it on Hulu which turns out is a platform I could have put it onto. So, I guess if I had spent more of my own time and energy I could have distributed it there myself, and I wouldn’t be losing a cut for that distributor. And then I have another distributor that actually has kept money from me. So, maybe self distribution would be the way to go entirely.

Larry Jordan: Which gets me to my last question. For somebody that’s thinking about distribution for the first time, what should they consider?

Griffin Hammond: That your job on this film doesn’t end when the film is over. You still have a lot of work to do, and it’s still a full time job just marketing your own film and figuring out all these different platforms. And just staying with the film, you have to maintain it and be customer service for it. So, either find someone or just recognize that you’re going to have to put in a lot of hours yourself.

Larry Jordan: For people that want to keep track of you and your films, and upcoming projects, where can they go on the web?

Griffin Hammond: If people go to griffinhammond.com they’ll find the film ‘Srirarcha,’ they’ll find this blog post where I share all the revenue numbers, and they’ll also find my podcast which is about filmmaking.

Larry Jordan: Griffin Hammond is the voice you’re listening to, documentary filmmaker and the producer of do-it-yourself filmmaking tutorials for indie filmmakers. Griffin, thanks for joining us today.

Griffin Hammond: Thank you so much Larry.

Larry Jordan: Richard Wright is both a still photographer and a filmmaker. On the film side, Richard creates short films about the North American Gold Rush and the people who came together in that social, cultural cauldron. It’s called the Bonepicker Project. Hello Richard, welcome.

Richard Wright: Hello Larry, how are you doing?

Larry Jordan: I am delighted to be chatting with you. I’ve heard about the Bonepicker Project. Tell me a little bit more about it.

Richard Wright: Well you summed it up quite nicely actually, you did a nice little log line. But we look at it as picking at the bones of history, trying to uncover those stories and the links between people from for instance our area in British Columbia, down to Arizona and even Mexico, California, that kind of thing. And trying to show that a lot of them actually knew each other. They might have known each other up here in Barkerville, and then they ran into each other down in Tombstone or previously in California. What the films try and do is show the importance of place in the stories. I’ve been telling those stories in print for quite a few years but print doesn’t really give you a sense of place the way film does.

Larry Jordan: How many shows are you planning for the series?

Richard Wright: That’s a good question. We figured there was probably six to ten, and we’ve already got eight out, and I’ve a database of stories and people, and I just did a search the other day and saw that I had tagged 375 peoples with stories. There’s no shortage, and once we hit the road, we find more stories as we go which is the fascinating part of it for us.

Larry Jordan: Well having a potential 275 part series is going to require some level of funding. How are you financing this?

Richard Wright: That’s a really good point. Well we were fortunate in that right off the bat, a local historical society kicked in a sizeable amount. They saw that this was helping to fulfill their mandate, that’s the Friends of Barkerville Historical Society, and then we did an Indiegogo campaign and got a bunch of private individuals who think the same thing. And just this last fall, Barkerville Historic Town, it’s a historic site, they decided to come on board as well. So that’s paying the expenses. It’s not paying the time, as we so often find in this business.

Larry Jordan: We’ve got it financed, at least enough to get you started. How are you distributing it? How’s the audience going to see this?

Richard Wright: The main way is through Vimeo and through physical showings of it. In other words, they can click onto the Bonepicker Channel on Vimeo and watch them there, but we also show them in the historic town and we’re now getting some interest to travel with the films to places where we’ve made them, and show the films there. We have a pretty good Facebook following, not nearly as many as we would like, the same old problem. But that’s the main way at this point. There is a little bit of interest from some broadcasters, and that may come to fruition, but I’m not counting on it.

Larry Jordan: Do you have someone helping you with marketing or distribution, or are you doing the whole thing?

Richard Wright: I’m doing the whole thing. My partner gives me as much help as she can, but she’s also a full time actress, so it doesn’t always work out. I’m just the push behind it.

Larry Jordan: Richard, for people that either want to contribute or learn more, where can they go on the web?

Richard Wright: The best place to go is HYPERLINK “http://www.bonepicker.ca” www.bonepicker.ca. We have a Vimeo channel, Bonepicker, and on Facebook Gold Rush Backstories is where you can find us.

Larry Jordan: That’s bonepicker.ca, not .com and Richard Wright is the filmmaker behind the Bonepicker Project. Richard, thanks for joining us today.

Richard Wright: Thanks for talking to me Larry.

Larry Jordan: Take care, bye bye.

Larry Jordan: Chris Sobchack is the co-founder and executive producer of Wraptastic Productions, the studio that created the web series Please Tell Me I’m Adopted. Hello Chris, welcome.

Chris Sobchack: Hi Larry, it’s great to be here with you today.

Larry Jordan: Chris, we’re talking about distribution today, but before we talk about distribution, describe ‘Please Tell Me I’m Adopted.’ What’s it about?

Chris Sobchack: ‘Please Tell Me I’m Adopted’ is about two sisters, one of whom has her life together and is married to an architect. And her sister, played by my wife, Nicole Sobchack, who is basically that loveable innocent hot mess on fire. We all know that person. She loses her job, her place to live and her boyfriend all in one day, and moves in with her sister, and chaos and comedy ensue.

Larry Jordan: I can just begin to imagine. So, once you’ve got the series complete, what criteria went into deciding how to distribute the series?

Chris Sobchack: Truthfully Larry, we really obviously wanted to make sure we were on a proper streaming service rather than just throwing it up on YouTube, and the fact the quality was what it was, everyone said “You’ve got something here, you can’t just toss it up on the web. No-one will notice.”

Larry Jordan: Well there’s a number of options. Why did you decide to pick Amazon?

Chris Sobchack: Initially we sort of had our eye set on Hulu, but Hulu decided they wanted to change their business model to be a licensing system, similar to Netflix, and in fact they went offline. They were not accepting new content for something like three and a half months. And in that period of time we realized that Amazon was making huge strides. They’ve got Oscar winning movies, the new ‘Grand Tour,’ and their intent is to be in over 200 countries by the end of this year I believe.

Larry Jordan: Did you do this on your own, or did you work with an aggregator?

Chris Sobchack: We actually did use an aggregator, and obviously there’s two business models for that as well, and I think there’s positives to both. We used Kinonation and one of the things with Kinonation that’s really spectacular is, you pay nothing up front. They do take a percentage of your profits, but for me personally, they become a trusted team member. Because of that, we felt much more comfortable that they were going to work hard to get us placed and help us navigate, making sure that our German version and our Japanese version were correct.

Larry Jordan: How much of a percentage were you giving up, both to your aggregator and to Amazon?

Chris Sobchack: Amazon actually give you a flat rate for Prime viewers, based on the number of hours viewed. And then you split the revenue for anybody who just buys the series, like a non-Amazon person can go on and purchase an episode or series. You split the net revenue, and then obviously, the aggregator will take 20 percent, which 20 percent of nothing is nothing as my wife loves to say.

Larry Jordan: If you were to do this again, would you work with an aggregator? Or would you do it yourself?

Chris Sobchack: With everything that we went through, I would go with an aggregator again.

Larry Jordan: Why?

Chris Sobchack: They really helped us and facilitated, making sure that all of the contents for filming, which we did ourselves, was spot on. We knew we didn’t have to worry about QC at Amazon tripping us up. They walked us through every step of the way.

Larry Jordan: Would you work with Amazon again?

Chris Sobchack: Yes. I really think their business model is brilliant heading forward.

Larry Jordan: What are your current plans for distributing the show, are you going to stay with Amazon or move to other distribution outlets or what?

Chris Sobchack: I think at the moment we’re going to stick with Amazon for the moment. Ideally we want to see how we go, and then in theory of course, we’ve already gotten some lovely comments and reviews saying, “Oh my gosh I want more” and “I wish this were a 30 minute episode.” At a certain point, if I can get some financial backing, that may be the way to go. At which point, it really does open up more avenues or even potentially network.

Larry Jordan: So are you personally focusing on distributing this show? Or are you focusing on putting a new project together?

Chris Sobchack: We actually are doing all of it at once. My wife is an amazing screenwriter so we have a paranormal thriller that she is just putting the final touches on, called ‘Lore Harbour.’ We also just optioned a screenplay called ‘Fall Out.’ If done right, it could be a real Oscar winning type of film. It’s basically a cross between ‘Silkwood’ and ‘Erin Brockovich.’

Larry Jordan: Cool stuff. For people that want to keep track of the work that you’re doing, where can they go on the web?

Chris Sobchack: Obviously the easiest thing to do is to go to Amazon and actually watch the show. Type in ‘Please Tell Me I’m Adopted,’ it’ll pop right up. You can Google search us. We have an amazing Facebook page that has all kinds of extra content and we’re like a rash on the web right now. If you just search ‘Please Tell Me I’m Adopted,’ you’ll find all kinds of nuggets.

Larry Jordan: The series is called ‘Please Tell Me I’m Adopted’ and Chris Sobchack and his wife are the co-founders and executive producers of the show. Chris, thanks for joining us today.

Chris Sobchack: Absolutely Larry, it’s been a huge pleasure.

Larry Jordan: Here’s another website I want to introduce you to. Doddlenews.com. DoddleNEWS gives you a portal into the broadcast, video and film industries. It’s a leading online resource, presenting news, reviews and products for the film and video industry. DoddleNEWS also offers a resource guide and crew management platforms specifically designed for production. These digital call sheets, along with their app, directory and premium listings, provide in depth organizational tools for busy production professionals. DoddleNEWS is a part of the Thalo Arts Community, a worldwide community of artists, filmmakers and storytellers. From photography to filmmaking, performing arts to fine arts, and everything in between, Thalo is filled with resources you need to succeed. Whether you want the latest industry news, need to network with other creative professionals or require state of the art online tools to manage your next project, there’s only one place to go. Doddlenews.com.

Larry Jordan: Filmmaker Max Votolato has lived in Los Angeles for 14 years with staff jobs at a number of major media companies around town. His latest film, Freeway City, is the story of Gardena, California, the onetime poker capital of the world. Hello Max, welcome.

Max Votolato: Hi Larry, how are you?

Larry Jordan: I am talking to you, I’m doing great. You know, I was just thinking, the last time we spoke was December 2015, just after you completed ‘Freeway City,’ so bring us up to speed. What’s the movie about?

Max Votolato: ‘Freeway City’ is the story of Gardena, California, the 85 year history of the town which is very multifaceted and the constituencies of the city that it deals with. One of the themes that’s strongest in the film is the story that Gardena had poker clubs and still does to this day. Almost 80 years of poker clubs and all of the challenges that that’s posed for the city, and benefits too.

Larry Jordan: How did you finance the film? Where did the first money come from?

Max Votolato: I self financed the film. Kind of on a pay as you go basis I would say, and I also raised some money for the film early on after I’d finished shooting it, and I was beginning post production. This was back in 2009 so it pre-dated the Gofundme, Kickstarter era. I set up a GoDaddy website to receive donations online, and I contacted the local news. I wrote to first a newspaper in South Bay called the Daily Breeze, a major Los Angeles newspaper and they were very taken by the fact that someone was doing a story on Gardena because nobody had ever done a film on Gardena before. They interviewed me and lo and behold, it was the front page story one Sunday morning. A big color photo and I was blown away and it really inspired me with their reaction, so I wrote to local NBC TV news affiliate, KNBC and got in touch with a reporter named Cary Berglund and he came down to Gardena and did an interview with me and Brian O’Neal who did the music for the film and talked about our fundraising efforts for the film. And it was on the six o’clock news on Memorial Day 2009. Couldn’t believe it. So that gave us a bit of a jump start but even all of that publicity only garnered a few thousand dollars in the end, so it took a long time, another six years to see the film through to completion in 2015.

Larry Jordan: If you were to do another film, would you self finance again? Or how would you do your financing differently today?

Max Votolato: It’s tricky. I think I would try to raise money again. I have an idea for another film and just like this film, it’s a film that’s attainable, it’s a local Los Angeles subject. I don’t have to travel to do this, I have my own studio and equipment so I can go and find these subjects, and interview them. But there are always costs, and that has a lot to do with why I chose to release Freeway City for free online in the end. I definitely would want to raise money to pay for some of those hidden costs at the end.

Larry Jordan: Let’s flip to the end. The film is done, it’s edited, it’s complete, and now it’s time to distribute. You decided to distribute it for free, rather than try to make any money on it. Why that?

Max Votolato: Yes, it was a tough decision but I took a chance. By the end of my post production process, I still had a number of outstanding expenses, and those were mainly to do with clearances for photo and stock archival footage. This is a documentary film so there were many of those. I was looking into an errors and omissions insurance policy to satisfy distribution requirements for a lot of the distribution avenues I was looking at, and then even the cost of creating a DCP master for festivals was another cost. I stacked all that up and it still seemed to me at the time so out of reach, and without a real guarantee of a return on the project, it prompted me to decide that it was more important to have people see this film than to try to go after at least an immediate return on the film. That was a bold move but I was looking at the DVD market at the time which was really not what it was when I started making the film back in 2007.

Max Votolato: So looking at the landscape of films being put out on the internet and of particular at the time there was another filmmaker named Al Profit who had put his documentary about the history of Detroit out on YouTube and he created a real strong following. I was looking at how he was using multi platforms, YouTube and VHX to market that film and others that he had in his catalog. So I decided rather than try to chase more money to come up with these finishing costs, I’d put a fair use disclaimer on the end of credits of my film to spirit the clearance issue, and I’m putting it out for free, so nothing from nothing is nothing. And I just took a chance and I put it out on Vimeo and through my own website. But that’s where the next story begins, because then I have to distribute it.

Larry Jordan: Well before we move to the next story, was the reason for doing free simply to avoid final expenses, or because you wanted more visibility for yourself or you wanted to just get it out to the audience? There must have been a hidden motive there somewhere.

Max Votolato: Honestly, I had a fear that this film could sit on the shelf for a very long time while I tried to get to the point where I could actually release it, and there was no guarantee that a distributor was going to come along and take it. I had been putting my toe in the water and I’d had a lot of success getting press … but not an immediate bite. There was nobody waiting for the film, I didn’t have anybody lined up. So it was looking like it could … wait, and I just said, “I’ve put so much into this, it’s so important for me to have this seen, that if I can get this out in the way that I’m seeing other filmmakers put their work out online and promote it, that I can get eyeballs on this and really create an audience and it’ll be a calling card for me. Maybe it’ll pay off in some other way.

Larry Jordan: Well let’s talk distribution. How would you distribute it today if you were to do it again?

Max Votolato: The same way.

Larry Jordan: Really?

Max Votolato: Yes, and I’ll tell you why that is. I basically came up with a very grass roots strategy that I devised myself which was to build on the publicity angles that I had during the making of the film. I would write to different magazines online and basically constituencies that related to the topics of my film. For instance I found this website, Poker News, the biggest poker website in the world and I was able to tell them about the film, get them interested in it and they did a big story. When they publish a story like that on a big website, all of the other smaller bloggers and websites around the globe translate that story. They rip it off and rewrite it, and so it generates a lot of news.

Max Votolato: At the time I had a release date. I was out 15 weeks before my release, so they were plugging a release date for this online release. Now this is a Vimeo film going up on a website, so I was starting to build some anticipation. Facebook was a really powerful tool as well. I created a series of Facebook accounts surrounding the film on my own personal account, and started to join different user groups that related to the film like the user groups for Los Angeles and Gardena and surrounding cities and California history. All sorts of subjects, and started to post content that I had from my vault , which is photographs, archival materials, trailers for my film, articles about my film. I’d make little shorts, anything to promote the film and that release date and I started to grow followers and correspond with this audience that was out there. People remembered it from 2009 and said “Oh, we wondered what had happened because we heard a lot of news about it and then it died out. There was nothing out there for a while, so we’re really happy that you’re finally putting the film out.” So it created a lot of excitement and it continued after the online release of the film. In fact it got into LA Magazine and Curb Mag, Curbed LA did a story on it and The Digital Production Buzz had me on, so it all helped and contributed to the promotion effort for the project.

Larry Jordan: So to help with the promotion, where can people go on the web to learn more about the film?

Max Votolato: Freewaycity.org is my website, and I think there’s another piece of this which is that I’ve got a book deal out of all of my promoting of the film, and I have a book coming out on June 19th which is Gardena Poker Clubs: A High Stakes History available at Barnes & Nobles and through the website Historypress.com.

Larry Jordan: Very cool. Max Votolato’s website is freewaycity.org. Max is the filmmaker behind Freeway City and Max, thanks for joining us today.

Max Votolato: Thank you Larry, pleasure.

Larry Jordan: Take care, and great success. Bye bye.

Max Votolato: Bye bye.

Larry Jordan: What’s fascinating to me is the variety of ways that we have all found to fund and distribute our projects, and our guests today have illustrated some of that variety. I want to thank our guests today. Filmmakers Maxim Jago, Griffin Hammond, Richard Wright, Chris Sobchack and Max Votaloto who have covered the range of getting money to start production to figuring out ways to distribute it in a variety of different sources and different destinations.

Larry Jordan: I also want to thank Mike Horton and Dan Berube, co-producers of the SuperMeet, and as always, James DeRuvo with DoddleNEWS.

Larry Jordan: There’s a lot of history in our industry and it’s all posted to our website at digitalproductionbuzz.com. Here you’ll find thousands of interviews all online, and all available to you today. And remember to sign up for our free weekly show newsletter that comes out every Friday. Talk with us on Twitter @DPBuZZ and Facebook at digitalproductionbuzz.com.

Larry Jordan: Our theme music is composed by Nathan Dugi-Turner with additional music provided by Smartsound.com. Text transcripts are provided by Take1 Transcription. Visit Take1.tv to learn how they can help you.

Larry Jordan: Our producer is Debbie Price. My name is Larry Jordan, and thanks for listening to The Digital Production Buzz.
Larry Jordan: The Digital Production Buzz is copyright 2017 by Thalo LLC.