The Chris DeBlasio Podcast

Why does Marvel & Stranger Things look so good? Find out on C-Level: Guest Chris LeDoux Crafty Apes

- People look at us like we're nuts and they're like, the thing is, I love it. They're like, well don't you just wanna go home sometime and watch television? I'm like no, I wanna make television.  - [DeBlasio] On this episode of "C Level", I sit down with my good friend Chris LeDoux, founder and VFX Supervisor of Crafty Apes, the VFX company behind "Stranger Things", "Jumanji", "Doctor Strange" and many more. For the very small percentage of people that don't know who Crafty Ape is and who you are, gimme a little of the background. How did you get started, where are you from, what's Crafty Apes about?  - Originally from an island in Alaska called Kodiak Island and that's where I originally hailed from and my family hails from 'cause it's a family business and I had moved to San Francisco in 2004 and did my first visual effects job there for movie called "Sin City".  - Yup, very familiar, yeah.  - And it was fun because I loved it, fell in love with the business and in 2005, moved to Los Angeles. So in 2005, moved to Los Angeles, spent about a year in a random city called Santa Maria, where we made "Pan's Labyrinth" and did some other movies and then went back to L.A. and then in 2007, we started the, sorry, 2011 we started the company. We started in, actually, technically for three months, we started in Venice at this 200 square foot trailer park. Very humble beginnings.  - A lot of people had those humble beginnings.  - It was just me, Tim and Jason and Mark in an office and couple months later, we went to Culver City and while we were there, one of our first clients was Lionsgate and Tyler Perry specifically. So that started drawing me to Atlanta and I started filming here in 2012, 2013 and while I was here, I started learning about the actual tax credit and how it worked and I started, you can almost smell the buzz in the air, feel it. There was like man, there's something happening here and I looked around, there wasn't any other really VFX companies of a certain caliber and went back to California and I told everyone I said hey, I think we should expand to Atlanta, let's go for it and it took some convincing, there was some back and forth but my brother Tim was strongly on board with it and he's the one who actually did the first operation out here. So we got a call in March of 2014 for a pilot and it was a colleague of ours who was doing a TV show and said hey, I heard you guys were in Atlanta and we're like, totally. And we filed the paperwork, Tim and our other colleague Josh jumped in a truck and drove across the country with a bunch of computers and we started downtown. And I'm not even, it was close to underground and close to gunshots and they did the pilot and then I was already doing a TV show that was based out of here but we weren't here officially yet. I started filming in May and I was like okay, we gotta be out here. I called my wife and she'd just given birth to our child. By the way, we're moving to Atlanta. - And pump, here it is!

What is the one piece of advice that an Apache helicopter pilot has for you? FIND OUT on C-Level: Guest Lucas Rice 

- So Lucas tell me, if you were to give one piece of advice to somebody in leadership what would it be?

Is this the future of SOCIAL MEDIA? Find out what U-Space is on C-Level with Chris DeBlasio with guest Tobin Brogunier of U-Space. 

- Today on C Level, Tobin Brogunier, the founder of USpace, stops by. We talk about social media and privacy. Tobin, thanks for comin' by. So we're gonna talk about privacy, social media, a lotta stuff, but tell me a little bit about you first.

- Well, my background is actually in humanities, not technology. I graduated with a degree in English Literature from Oberlin College in 1995, which makes me old officially. And middle old.

- Middle old, yeah, yeah.

- So with a focus in fine art. And my career has been actually in editorial and commercial photography. So that's been the majority of my career. I worked in Brooklyn for seven years. I worked in Minneapolis, Minnesota for about seven years. And then I moved down here and found out that commercial photography had no future and went directly to social media. So I just started creating camera content for social media. And from that work doing social media I, well, I became one of the people working on the backend of the Facebook boosted advertising system, and I became a Facebook, a social media marketing person.

- And so you're developing all this content and you're leveraging social media. So what was this for like ads? How are you putting this--

- So when I, when I kind of, when I moved to Georgia the commercial market, I moved for love so I didn't have my base of, commercial base. 'Cause your network is where you move. And so I moved outside of my network and into a small market. And being inside of a small market what the local businesses wanted was a lot of content. And they wanted, so I would, I would shoot mostly events or I would shoot fashion or whatever and just dump a lot of content onto their Facebook page and then people would tag themselves and they'd use it organically.

- So tell me a little bit about the hat.

- So the hat is, I just wanna, just quick background because I am not a ranger technically, but I'm an honorary ranger 'cause I have friends in north Georgia who are rangers, and two weekends ago they invited me to the ranger open house at Camp Merrill. And it was awesome 'cause I saw guys jumping out of helicopters and I saw four paratroopers land in the exact same spot from 12,000 feet all in sequence about every 20 seconds. It was amazing. So my friend, Steven, who lives in north Georgia, is a ranger and he invited me down. And I've kind of been an honorary ranger for a couple years. So I thought I would buy the hat, but technically, so it's, okay so the ranger motto, to be clear, is lead the way. And I do feel like I am part of that spirit because I feel like, I feel like USpace is pushing, is leading the way into the next iteration of social media. We're social 2.0.

- So, you're doing your photography, you're leveraging social media, so how did you kinda stumble into your concept with USpace?

- So I started marketing, when I became, when I did local marketing I realized that if I'm gonna do all of this backend and go through the labyrinth Byzantine user interface of Facebook's advertising platform that is barbaric and impossible to understand, if I'm gonna go through all of that pain and suffering of non-user-friendliness, then I'm going to market high end items. So I moved to Asheville, North Carolina to work for a furniture company that sold high ticket items, like starting at 1500. So if I could, if you're selling social media and you sell a couple of dinners, the person running that business doesn't care. It's just not enough conversion. 

From Parents Immigrating to the US to the NFL Draft: Hear what Rennie Curran says got him to the top! C-Level with Chris DeBlasio 

#chrisDeBlasio #CLevel #RennieCurran #NFL

- On this episode of C-Level I sit down with Rennie Curran, keynote speaker, author, and former NFL athlete. Hey Rennie, thank you for coming out man, appreciate it.

- Man, thanks very much for having me.

- So I've been actually following your content, and you've been doing a lot of speaking, and man, I really appreciate just speaking life into a lot of these people on leadership and stuff, so for the small majority of people that don't know who you are, give me a little bit of your background, how you got started, how you got into football, getting drafted, all that stuff.

- Man, it's a long story as it always is, man, but my background basically starts with my parents, I always talk about them. Both Liberian immigrants who came here in the early '80s. My mom came here on scholarship to Emory to get her master's in Nursing, around '84, didn't know her way around, typical immigrant story, $10 in her pocket, just worked super hard, man. My father came once she was done. He bought into a shoe repair franchise called Hakky Shoe Repair Shop, actually out in Kennesaw at Town Center Mall, and so I grew up right in Atlanta, off North Druid Hills, Buford Highway, for those of you all listening from Atlanta. We moved to Gwinnett County when I was 10 years old, that's when I joined the GFL Brookwood Football and we didn't even know, we had no clue that this was like this powerhouse football program but I was blessed to be in a great community, man. Met my Little League coach there who just was diehard Georgia fan. His son was the quarterback, I played running back, and he took me--

- So you started out as a running back?

- Yeah started out as a running back. I actually started out as a offensive lineman, I don't tell anybody that. My first year, I didn't know anything, man, I didn't know any better, but as I grew and as I learned I became a running back and we went to my first University of Georgia game and that's when like that dream was really planted, and from then on, I was like that diehard fan, listening to Larry Munson, watching David Greene, and Pollack and Thomas Davis, and that was just my dream to be that next kid out out of Snellville, to be the hometown legend, man, and so, fast-forward to high school. Didn't really get along with my coach my freshman year, got moved to linebacker, got pissed off, pretty much, and started hitting everything moving, and it just--

- It's like Waterboy .

- That's what I tell people, it's like Waterboy, literally. So I just developed this mentality, man, where I just tried to turn myself into this machine and at the same time going through high school, I faced a recruiting whole experience where I was told time after time that I was under-size, too short to play in the SEC, and that just motivated me, that along with my parents, their work ethic, seeing just the struggles that they went through. During the time that I was born, by the way, there was a civil war taking place in their home country of Liberia. So that was a big part of my foundation was seeing all the sacrifices that they made. Sending everything that they made back home. You know, building themselves not just for themselves but for their family, and I took a lot of that with me on the field and was fortunate enough to overcome those obstacles, being under-size, family situation of obstacles, and was able to get that scholarship to University of Georgia, man.

- Well, Angela, thank you for coming out. So I'm a huge, I like to hear people's journeys, and their stories, and where they started out, so tell me where you started and where you grew up.

C-Level with Chris DeBlasio: Guest Jonathan Page from InPrime Legal 

Today on C Level, Jonathan Page, chief legal officer of InPrime Legal. We talk about being an entrepreneur, and the journey and struggles to success. So, I mean, we've known each other for a few years now.

 On this episode of Pitch Chris, if you're a musical artist, how do you become an actor? If you are a PA, what is the best way to get plugged into productions? And how long does it take to become an executive producer? 

Hi and welcome to episode 32 of Pitch Chris. Where you guys ask me questions about the entertainment business and I answer 'em for you. To ask me a question, find me on social media @CHRISDEBLASIO #PitchChris and I'll be happy to answer all the questions you guys have. Let's get started.

  How's it going Chris? Thank you for this opportunity. I am a musical artist from Atlanta, Georgia. Named Lil T3rry and my question is, how can a musical artist transition into acting? 

 - Great question! So we see a lot of musical artists transition into acting. In the case of Tim McGraw or Justin Timberlake, you see Eminem and 50cent, they all made that crossover. The cool thing is, if you're an artist you might already have a platform, you may have a following. Play off of that following, start dropping some hints on social media, that you're stepping into acting. Start building the awareness that you're making that crossover. That'll help you when you start making that transition. But you've got great stage performance, you're familiar with being in front of people, which is a great start. Please do take some acting training, you're gonna need that, because if you're gonna take your acting career seriously, even though you have the experience of being in front of people, you wanna make sure you get professional training. 

  [Pamela S] What can I do to improve my chances of becoming a production assistant?  

So a couple of ways you can improve your chances of becoming a PA. Obviously you want a network, but if you are in say Atlanta, Atlanta has a lot of these programs where, you can do like a PA bootcamp. Which will prepare you for what you need to know, when you're getting called on to become a PA. It's also a great way to network as well. So look for some PA bootcamps, to kinda get you started. But also, not only for the knowledge that they're gonna give you, because you'll prepare you for working on set, but also you'll be able to network with other people in the class. And let's say one of your other class members, gets promoted and gets pulled onto a set and you've built a relationship with them, they might be able to refer you to the next project that they work on. So, networking is huge, but definitely check out some of the PA bootcamps that they might have out there. Quick search online will tell you what's available.  [Scott D] How long can it take to become an executive producer?   So how long does it take to become and executive producer? Well, in this industry, you can call yourself an executive producer. I mean if you're creating your own project and you're putting the whole thing together, you can call yourself an executive producer. However, there are certain things that, when you're working professionally, that would define you as an executive producer. One, if you're financing the film yourself, you deserve the right to call yourself an EP, or an executive producer. 

 #PitchChris Episode: 031   

🎬What do you need to know before you head into a casting office?   

🤔How do you get the rights to your first script?  

👍What is the #1 thing a producer needs to know?   

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#ChrisDeBlasio #Agency850 #CelebrityCEO  

Today on the new, and improved, PitchChris, we're gonna be talking about, what are some of the things you need to know before you step foot in that casting office? Did you write your first script? How do you obtain all the rights to it? And, if you're producing, what is the number one thing you need to know? All that, and more, on PitchChris. Hi, and welcome to episode 31 of PitchChris. Where you guys ask me questions about the entertainment business, and I'm gonna answer 'em for you. To ask me a question, find me on social media. @ChrisDeblasio #PitchChris And, I'll be happy to answer all the questions you guys have. Let's get started. 

 How do I best prepare for an audition?   Being prepared for an audition is extremely important. Especially if you're going out for that big role. So, the couple of things that you wanna know, first, aesthetically, when you're going into an audition, don't wear clothes with like, heavy patterns, or crazy designs, or anything. A lot of times they are gonna be recording your auditions. So, don't do anything that's gonna take away from your performance.  

Recently... Chris DeBlasio met with Chuck Thomas, host of Atlanta Film Chat to speak about what Agency 850 does, the Georgia film business and more. 

Take a listen.