Zero Fluff

I’m pretty sure that most people like the behind the scenes content more than the actual film, so we just decided to only make the behind the scenes content so, here you go. That’s a joke, by the way.

A few months ago I wrote a short film called The End that means a tremendous amount to me. I’ve had endless conversations trying to think it through and refine it. Then finding the right actors, location scouting, bringing on crew, all the normal hard things it takes to make something you’re proud of. Then, this past weekend was the actual day of the shoot. Our lead actor flew in from New York City and we spent some time hitting it off and then began to talk through the role. Now prior to this we’d been sending rehearsal videos back and forth to refine the character so he was pretty much ready to go but we still talked through the details of his look and the other nuances that were hard to do long distance.

We arrived at the location mid afternoon and crew began setting things up as we stepped through the script. The sun set and we started to dial in the lighting and the overall look of our scene while our lead was in makeup. It took a little while to get going, as it often does, but this shoot was different. See several days before I had checked the weather and to my great concern, rain. Now there was no rain before our call time or after we had planned to wrap, but rain all during our shoot.

We brought rain shelters to protect gear and crew, but with the rain came wind, and a ton of it. At times we were paused on shooting just to keep shelters from flying away and at one point one of the shelters literally took flight and we had to jump up and grab it. Eventually lakes began to form under the tents and in the trench where all the shooting was happening.

The night continued to devolve as we abandoned the vast majority of our shot list outside of our lead actor Nathan, who had to fly back to New York the next day.

In the end we only got maybe a third of what we set out for, but I also got to watch something incredible. Amidst the stress and discomfort of what we were enduring, I never heard a single complaint from anyone. The challenge brought us together and we problem solved from one issue to the next, deep into the night. We had planned to wrap at midnight but by the time it was all over I ended up in bed at 6am. I almost fell asleep on the way home! To many this night would be a failure, and in a way it was, but in another way, a much more satisfying and real way, I got to spend time with friends in a storm fighting the elements to try to make something awesome. And, I know we’ll figure out how to complete the film despite our setbacks, it’ll just be a slower process than I had planned.

Creativity always has to bend to reality, but when you run into something immovable, I hope you’ve got a team like we had, because succeeding is awesome, but the process of failing can surprise you. I also hope you don’t waste your energy being upset about the things you can’t change, because when you choose to ride the ride it starts to feel like a roller coaster, going up is nice, but going down, while terrifying, can also be way more fun.

Like I’ve said before, success for me is not defined by what you get at the very end whether it’s money or accolades or whatever. It’s about the friendships you make along the way, and nothing builds friendships better than adversity so in my book this shoot was a success. Even though we don’t have a film to show you we still have some rad BTS and really that’s what everyone wants anyway so, who cares. By the way there will be a film coming at some point so keep and eye out for that, just not right now.

People really don’t know your potential until you show it to them. I can’t expect anyone, and particularly a prospect client, to hire me for something I’ve never done.

In the video-creation world, you can’t just shoot interviews and corporate videos all day long and expect a record label or a band to see that and think of you as a good candidate for their music videos. If you don’t remember anything else know this: Whatever work you’re doing, is advertising for you to do more work just like it. Because when you put out that content, whoever it resonates with is likely someone who can relate to whatever it is your making and will come to you to say, “Hey I saw that thing you did, and we have a need for something similar.”

Now this is where we get into the duality between art and money. Often times it’s really hard to make a living just chasing the art and this is why people end up doing boring stuff that pays the bills and forever get lost in that world. No one chose to shoot interviews because that was their absolute passion. It’s because someone offered them money. The problem is, the better you get at doing boring work, the more in-demand you’ll become as the person who does boring work. So how do you break the cycle? And answer is spec.

Spec work is work you do on your own dollar in your own time. The better you get at making whatever it is your passionate about, the more in demand you’ll become for what it is your passionate about, but it takes a tremendous amount of hustle. Because if you’re stuck in a cycle making a living doing work you don’t care about, you have to do overtime to create work you do care about in order to attract a new kind of client.

And here’s the bottom line, people just want to see what you’re passionate about. No one wants to hire someone who doesn’t care about what they make. They want to hire someone who is going to do an awesome job, not just because they’re getting paid, but because they love what they do. That’s the real question, are you passionate about what you’re making? Because if not, don’t expect people to see what you’re doing and think, “Man I really want this guy working for me.”

A good friend of mine back in the day was a super talented photographer. We both loved to skate and he used to shoot tons of shots of us at our local skate park and of different adventures he would go on, and once he was interviewing to shoot photos for a really nice country club. He showed the owner a catalog of photos he’d taken of different interior shots, and some corporate portraits of people. All things he thought would really appeal to this guy and his business. The owner then said, “That’s really great and all but, can you show me photos you're actually passionate about?” Then he pulled up a bunch of photos he’d taken just for fun, and that’s when he got the job. Your clients want you to care. And sure, not every project is going to be super exciting, but remember, every project is advertising for you to do more projects just like it.

There’s a great quote from Francis Chan where he says, “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.” He’s talking in an overall life sense but just thinking specifically about the work you do, be careful you don’t get really good at something you don’t really care about, because all you’re doing is asking for more of the same old thing. Show us what you’re passionate about, and we’ll see your potential.

One of my most influential mentors is a guy named Joel and he’s developed the nick name Indiana Joel for a reason. His family and mine lived together in Jerusalem years ago. We were there making documentaries regarding archaeology and linguistics regarding the Bible and its history. And I’ll never forget one spring near Passover, we had heard a rumor that some Orthodox Jews were going to perform a lamb sacrifice, which, wasn’t something they really did publicly for a few thousand years as far as we knew. So that evening Joel just walked out the door with a camera and said “no idea if I’ll find anything but, here goes.” And he left. Hours went by and we heard nothing. Finally that night he burst back through the door with an insane look in his eyes, walked over set the camera in front of me, popped open the viewfinder and hit play.

Apparently what had happened was he walked to the super ancient part of the city knows as “the old city”, through a labyrinth of stone and at one point he saw a bunch of Orthodox Jews go into a building together, so, he just followed right behind them, he said one guy was holding a little Metal brief case and he suspected maybe it had the knife in it. He continued to follow behind them until he found himself in a grassy courtyard in between apartment buildings. We’d navigated through the city countless times and never knew this place even existed. Joel kept his distance at first but suddenly he noticed a man holding a lamb in the middle of the crowd, so he moved in closer, no telling why they let him but if he didn’t try he’d never know, but Joel walked up within 2 feet of the lamb with his camera in hand and captured one of the most powerful land ancient traditions in human history. I was shaking as I sat there in our apartment staring at the tiny viewfinder of that camera. And a few years later that footage eventually became the centerpiece of a documentary we would later work on about sacrifice.

This sort of thing with Joel didn’t just happen that once, it happened almost constantly. And the stories I have from that time in my life living with Joel are endless. It’s because he just tried stuff, he went for it, sure lots of things he tried didn’t work but even then they almost always led to an understanding that opened other doors he wouldn’t have known about had he never tried anything. You can easily spend an entire lifetime wondering about the what if’s and we talk ourselves out of so much. If you really want to move forward, grab your camera and walk out the door.

When you have extra money, what do you spend it on? Typically for me I have a list of things prioritized, but the question is how do you prioritize them? I’d like to suggest that you prioritize them by impact. Sure there’s all kinds of things I could buy but the question is which things are going to make a difference my audience will experience? I don’t know if you’re noticing a theme here at all by I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder against production. It’s just such a big hairy beast it’s easy to lose sight of one thing in particular and it’s that one thing you can’t afford to lose sight of, the person actually experiencing whatever the crap it is you’re making.

But back to the money. Lets use a real world example, I’m talking about situations where you could either make your process more convenient or use your money to do something different that you couldn’t have done otherwise, like as a filmmaker spending let’s just say $300 to rent a dolly vs using that same $300 to rent a system to wirelessly monitor the footage from the camera to an iPad. Which one is the audience actually going to experience? The dolly. Because when we push the camera forward or backward the audience is actually seeing and feeling the impact of that shot. The camera movement communicates a ton to my audience. And on the flip side, no one in my audience knows or cares how convenient it was for us to monitor the footage on set. And sure, if you’ve got the budget for both then do it, but all I’m saying is don’t sacrifice impact for convenience. It’s an issue of priority, and there are countless decisions like this to be made.

It’s a big deal because we as artists don’t just serve ourselves. We also serve a whole world out there full of people who we have the potential to impact with the art we make and it’s really important not to lose sight of that and let materialism run the show and rob everyone of what could have been if our priorities were straight. And I realize I’m talking about filmmaking because that’s my world but this applies across the board into any kind of art form, do you work for your tools or for your audience? That's the question. Who are you working for? Because personally I don’t think anyone really cares what you have, they just care what you make with it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this in recent years. When I take a look around and think about what many of us filmmakers are doing for work, and then asking myself, is this what we got into this to do, most of the time it doesn’t line up. I think most people got into filmmaking because they watched movies and thought about how awesome that would be to make them, but once you dip a toe into production, especially in cities that aren’t known for making movies, idealism quickly fades and you find yourself shooting commercials and interviews and a few music videos at best, or worst, depending on how you look at it.

The reason this has been on my mind is because several experiences I’ve had over the last few years have woken me up to the work that I really love, the work I got into this for, and now that we hire more people and I’m meeting more people all the time I begin to wonder those same things about those who work for us. And I want to continue to create opportunities for people to do more of what they love.

I’ve also seen some interviews with directors like Peter Jackson and Christopher Nolan in particular that really opened my eyes. Peter used to fabricate all kinds of insane props and camera support equipment and he even baked molds for alien costumes in his parents kitchen oven in his home in New Zealand, he literally did everything himself, look t up on YouTube, the movie he made was called Bad Taste and it’s hilariously campy. And Nolan used to work on corporate videos, haha, how weird is that? I bet they were the trippiest corporate videos ever. But anyway, both of these were so eye opening because they made me realize that the separation between what I’m doing now and what I ideally want to be doing quite possibly just comes down to decisions. The limiting factor may not be some uncontrollable force, but it may just be making decisions to push in a specific direction, and counting the cost of those choices vs continuing to do what is known and comfortable.

I really think it just comes down to what you want. Because if you don’t know what you want how do you know which way to point yourself. The things you want may not be as unrealistic as they seem, it just takes time to get there, even for Christopher Nolan, he didn’t just wake up one day and direct Inception, that movie is the culmination of millions of decisions and a lifetime of hard work that lead him there, and the same goes for any of us. The work you’ll do later in your career, whether it’s filmmaking or any other craft, will most likely be the culmination of the direction you’ve been heading the entire time. And it’s not to say you can’t pivot along the way, because chances are you will, what I’m really getting at is, the thing you’re doing right now, is this what you got into this for? And more importantly, is it fun? Because if it’s not, what are you gonna do about it?

It’s not enough to just be really really good at what you do, you have to be really really good at how you do it. Since the beginning I've based our business model off of an ancient proverb that says “do you see a man skillful in his work, he will stand before kings, he will not obscure men.” And I’d like to break that down. BUT FIRST a word from our sponsor, JUST kidding this is freakin’ zero fluff so let's look at this in terms of what separates you from the pack, what is it that would cause you to “stand before kings” rather than obscure men.

Well your skill obviously, and honestly that whittles it down quite a bit, the better you are at whatever it is you do, the better. It’s kind of shocking how rare simple competence is, just doing exactly what you say you're going to do. I mean, when we hire someone for just about anything, and they do what we expected them to do for the price we agreed upon, aren’t we usually kind of surprised? Almost feeling like they way exceeded our expectations? Why is that? It’s because a lot of people kind of suck at their jobs. And I don’t know why anyone things incompetence pays well because definitely does not. So it’s obvious that you should be competent at your craft, but take that even further and be exceptional, work hard to hone your abilities, dedicate time and money to sharpen the knife so to speak, to go above and beyond the expectations.

But like I said off the top, it’s not enough just to be really really good at what you do, you have to be really really good at how you do it. From my experience that looks like not just my artistic skill set but my people skill set. If you’re not just good but exceptional at communicating clearly with your clients, being a good friend to them, treating them with respect, and being honest with them, you’re going to make their entire experience working with you something that’s rare to find just about anywhere. Like I said in the episode about Friendship, you’re clients are people just like you, and they want to enjoy who they’re working with, so be enjoyable, and that means clear communication, respect, care, honesty... you get it.

So if you’re awesome at what you do and are good people to work with, you’re already in a league of your own, but I want to take it am even bigger step further. The bedrock of it all, and one of our company FrameWork’s core values, is integrity. We do what we say we’re going to do. Because we could be lovely people who are super talented and work hard, but if you can’t depend on us, who gives a crap. Often times with the projects we work on there is a ton on the line, a lot of time and money and the ramifications of failing to come through are huge. When we accept a job, we’re saying come hell or high water we will see this thing through. You can depend on us not just to do our job, but to carry any load we might need to pick up along the way to get it successfully across the finish line. It matters in a larger sense like I’m describing and it also matters in setting expectations and not just meeting them but exceeding them, even in the little things. For instance, we work hard never to say things like “I’ll get you a rough cut of the video soon.” but rather “I’ll get you a rough cut of the video end of day Thursday.” And then, we deliver end of day Thursday, if not earlier. And I know it sounds super basic when I say it, but it’s shockingly uncommon.

Take these three aspects of your skill set, your craft, your people skills, and your reliability, and I honestly believe you will stand before Kings, rather than obscure men. Again, it’s not enough just to be really really good at what you do, you have to be really really good at how you do it.

Good enough. Ok so this one is probably going to get me in trouble… I can just smell it. So at risk of being thrown out a window, I have this philosophy... That anything in production that does not help your audience experience what you want them to experience threatens everything you're trying to accomplish. Anything that slows production down or makes it more complicated is taking away from your ability to tell the story well. Now I know that sounds benign at first but hear me out. Creativity is inherently not a patient thing. All it wants to do is pour itself out as thoughts and ideas flow. This is where the idea of Good Enough comes in to play.

One of the biggest factors that inhibits the speed of production, in my experience, is our beloved gear. (GASP) Our cameras and rigs and lighting and lenses. It's all important but we have an industry where historically everything just moves slow because there's a ton of crap everywhere on set and it's all big and heavy and expensive and that's just what you do because that's how it's been done. I don't want to function that way. I want to go faster. I only want tools that are Good Enough. Sure a bigger nicer camera and lenses and all that may on paper give me better image quality, but can your audience tell? Maybe you can tell but are you making this for you or them? And do they even care? Not in my experience. And the last time I checked people weren’t pausing their movie to zoom in 400% to see how much noise is in the shadows. Certainly your image quality needs to be above a certain threshold or it'll take away from their experience so it does have to be Good Enough, but anything beyond Good Enough comes at a very high cost. An expensive diminishing return of money and time and ultimately the experience for your audience. Again speed fuels creativity and slowing down for small and unnecessary improvements more often tends to have a greater negative effect than your tiny improvements are having a positive one.

My most important tool for production is my journal. It holds ideas, sketches, diagrams... It's light weight and inexpensive and all it does is feed production. I've shot so many videos with a Good Enough tripod head as a shoulder rig and no matte box and Good Enough lenses and no one who was ever impacted by the final product ever cared. Keep it simple, keep it Good Enough, and focus on doing work that matters... because ultimately if you’re not moving your audience you’re wasting your time.

Now if you think that everything I just said is total nonsense then leave a comment and let me know, I’m totally open for the conversation.

As creatives we’re constantly honing our craft. We watch, study, experiment, we invest hard work into being good at the things we do, but I have a question: Do we invest and hone our ability to create ideas in the first place? I think the great artists do. Often when I’m in an early production meeting, the most valuable person in the room is the one with the best creative input and ideas, because without them we’re all just staring at each other thinking, “hmmmm.” (Moment if silence)

Now I’m sure everyone’s process is different but let me share one of ours with you as an example. A while back I created something we call the FrameWork concepting worksheet, it’s something we send to people we’re working with to get them to think about the project in ways they may not have realized are relevant to production. It asks all of the key questions I as the director want answers to, but it also asks all the key questions they need to be asked for their own sake. Questions like, “What are you trying to accomplish?” And “What is the primary emotion you want to evoke?” But here’s the secret, we didn’t really make this for our clients, we made it for us, and it was so helpful that we began to share it with everyone we work with. Because every time I go into a project there are a million questions I want to be asked about all the little details regarding the concept and who is the target audience and who is the protagonist and what do they want and fear and to map out the basic structure of the story and so on, and we even have different worksheets for different types of projects whether it’s a music video or a brand... The point is, this is a way we’ve found to help ourselves be better at coming up with good ideas. And beyond this, we actually regularly practice coming up with ideas and refining them. I mean, for every good idea there are hundreds left in some ethereal half finished idea twilight zone floating in the back of our minds. And this is why I don’t mind submitting treatments for videos that may never pan out, because every treatment is practice, and over the long game, that practice adds up. And let me just say for the record, ideas are the greatest commodity to the creative process and I believe that ideas are what will separate you from the pack. There’s a sea of filmmakers who can make a pretty picture, but if that picture doesn’t say anything real, then what’s the point? Don’t just invest in your ability to execute good ideas, invest in your ability to come up with them in the first place.

So within the past month or so I had a realization that has completely reshaped the way I see all of my work. And that is this idea that the true reward of all of our passion and creativity and hard work is friendship. If I work for years aiming only at money, there’s enough evidence to assume I’d probably be disappointed if I got it. And if I worked for years to attain accolades or fame of some kind again again I suspect I’d be tremendously dissatisfied. Because, I just spend too much of my time on the journey toward my goals for it to just be about what I receive when it’s all over. The true reward doesn’t happen at the end when you arrive it’s happening all along the way, and that is the friendships we forge as we strive toward those goals together. And until I realized this and focused on enjoying the process I was incredibly frustrated.

The weird thing about friendship is it doesn’t exist on its own. It needs those other interests and passions to ignite and fuel it. But at the same time, ask just about anyone and they’ll tell you that their friendships are far more important than the things that brought them together.

And this goes for everyone I work with, those I work along side of and those I work for. I mean, let me ask you: are you a good friend to your clients? Because the reward there isn’t money either, it’s the friendships you’re building. The money is just a great way of appreciating you for how well you serve them. Aim for the money and you’ll have a few pay days but, aim for the people and you’ll have long-term friends who love appreciating you with their dollars. Because just like anybody your clients also want to enjoy their jobs and the people they work with. And from a business standpoint they want to work with people they trust.

Don’t get me wrong, your business is important. Just don’t be tricked into thinking it’s what you really want, because money and fame aren’t good enough for your hard work and creativity, but your friends are.

Zero Fluff, why on earth is this podcast named zero Fluff, well, first of all because as you may have noticed it’s about eighteen and a half minutes shorter than most short podcasts. The reason for that is to cut out everything you don’t want to listen to. Like, for instance a lengthy intro where we say “aaalllrrriiighttt so welcome to the podcast.” And other stuff that’s obvious because you’re already listen to a podcast (Joe Rogan I love you). Or sponsorship or random banter or whatever. Many times when I send a podcast I think is interesting to someone I find myself saying, “yeah just skip the first 10 minutes where they talk about nothing actually relevant to the thing the podcast is about.” Now of course there are people who just want some background talk in their daily commute but for all the other creatives there’s Zero Fluff, a podcast about hard work & creativity and nothing more.

The term Zero Fluff also refers to a storytelling thing. It’s the thought that everything in your story should be directly moving your plot along. There shouldn’t be anything that’s irrelevant. None. Zero. Thus, Zero Fluff.

And that’s a good reminder for all of us creatives. The story you're telling your audience, is it really as dense as it can be? At times I’ve referred to the art of storytelling as precision manipulation, because every little thing in your story is a tool to get your audience to feel what you want them to feel. Taking filmmaking as an example you don’t just have plot choices, you have choices of color, every little wardrobe choice, infinite camera choices from position to movement to the way it’s lit to the way your actors deliver lines or subtle looks, I could continue to list a billion tiny factors but the point is your audience's emotions are like an animal you’re trying to coax out of hiding, and every little bit of irrelevant information threatens to scare them away. Make every single thing count. No distractions, no unnecessary creative choices, Zero Fluff.