Crossing the Axis - The Commercial Side of Film Production

This must-listen episode welcomes Nate Barr to help you navigate the very difficult path of using your own original narrative content to attract client work. Nate knows what he’s talking about too, with over 20 years of experience in all aspects of content making from producing narrative films, to operating his own creative agency, to leading the client side of many marketing initiatives for brands. The insights and tips Nate generously shares are critical for any production company owner balancing the desire to make work for clients and for themselves.

Meet Thig Gishuru, a creative director with over 10 years of experience in both the agency-side and client-side of advertising; primarily creating, producing, and marketing content in fashion. In this episode, Thig candidly shares his story, needs, and tips about what he wishes he heard more often when being solicited for projects.

Meet Justin Hooper and Steve Williams, partners at Undnyable, an advertising agency with a reputation of turning heads with their funny, creative and sometimes outrageous client campaigns. In this episode we hear about their creative approach to client work, their criteria for choosing production partners, and how production companies should sell to agencies.

Max introduces James Keblas as the future host of Crossing the Axis. Get to know James and how he plans to lead the show moving forward. Max shares his thoughts and observations on the video production business after three years building the Pipeline tech-tool for video production companies and running his own video production company for over 15 years.

This week we interview Alan Nay of the Seattle powerhouse World Famous. World Famous  works as a full-service agency with Nike, Wendy's, T-Mobile, Microsoft - you name it. But! World Famous started out as a production company - just like you. Today, we talk to World Famous founder Alan Nay about the choice to go from production company to agency. What's worked, what's been tougher than expected, and how in the heck you deal with your current agency clients when you've decided to become an agency!

If you've ever thought you might like to take your production company to the next level, Alan has some great insight for you about this big move.

I sit down and talk to Chris Donaldson and Julien Scherliss of Moment.film (www.moment.film) about what it takes to regularly put out great, personal creative work outside of the daily grind of our production lives.

Moment.film, during their first 2 years in business has put out a ton of commercial work for Seattle agencies and beyond but at the same time they've also produced a 10 minute and 20 minute pair of short films and a 10 minute documentary.  AND they've paid for it all with profits from their commercial work.

We touch on - 

• Being sure to have profit in your company to pay for these creative endeavors
• Why keeping it "lean and mean" can help set you up to be able to pursue outside creative
• What you do and don't get out of these creative forays
• How the creative you do on the side often defines who you are as a company

Channel Your Passion into Client Success

Max talks to Caleb Young, creative director at world-class video production company, Hand Crank Films of the Pacific Northwest.  Learn how Caleb went from someone who thought doing corporate video was “selling out” to someone who learned to love the process of turning his passion for film into beautiful videos for his clients that are anything but typical “corporate”.  Caleb creates over a million dollars of revenue a year for the agency that owns Hand Crank AND stays true to his soul and vision - listen in to find out how.

Also included: 

• Talking deal making and how to win the game of “Budget-Chicken”

Disclaimer: Hand Crank Films was the company Max started nearly 20 years ago, and sold 3 years ago. 

You seriously need to take budgeting seriously.

Basically, budgeting is the activity that makes or breaks your operation. How you handle it makes all the difference whether you're just getting started, or you've been at it for a long time.

Take a moment to listen to Max & Jake's tips for making this process fast, efficient and productive.  You won't regret it.

In this podcast we breakdown how great budgeting will:

• Get you more work
• Get you BIGGER budgets
• Get you in the door with agencies
• Get you off the hamster wheel of making the same financial mistakes again and again that are holding you up

Today Jake and I got to sit down with Ryan Koral, the head of Studio Sherpas.

Studio Sherpas is advertised as "Everything You Need to Grow Your Video Business" and they are not kidding. Ryan has dedicated a sizeable chunk of his career to helping video production folk become more successful and happy in running their companies.

Ryan hosts a podcast which has over 420,000 downloads!  

In addition to just kicking back and telling us how he got started, and what Studio Sherpas is all about, Ryan shares a number of quick grab gems of useful information that make it easy to understand why the Sherpas are so popular.

For instance, here are just a few things you may not have thought of:

• How making a personal video to go along with a pitch can help seal the deal 
• How you can actually charge your clients to just put together their production plan (no shooting necessary, and yes, this works!)
• Assorted ways to add value to get those jobs you REALLY want with out shortchanging yourself or cutting your budget

Tune in, you owe to yourself!

John Sherman is the CEO of StoryFarm out of Baltimore, Maryland. John and his team have been (very) successful creating a host of different types of videos for clients like Dell, McDonalds, ExxonMobile - you name it. The unique thing about StoryFarm? In this age of decentralized, on-demand video work, they've decided to stick to the old ways of doing things and keep all of their employees salaried, and in-house.

In this episode, we talk with John about why this seemingly old-fashioned approach to business management actually yields some surprising advantages in market, and how it has helped them grow to over $2.5M in revenue.  We discuss how they are better able to serve their clients, how their potential clients love knowing their work is going to be all in-house, and how sometimes it's more about journey than the destination when it comes to video production work.