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Creating a TRULY Creative-First Video Production Company
141 Plays4 years ago
Max interviews creative director, writer, director, production company-owner Tony Fulgham of All is Well (www.alliswellstudios.com) about how to create a truly creative-first production company.
Tony shares a huge amount of great advice here for anyone looking to make their production company creative-first, like:
- The importance of writing
- The importance of getting paid for creative
- Tony talks about getting work and the state of industry
- Setting the tone with clients about how you work
- Only way to stay creative is to do things that “are not for sale”
- How to work with the client and share the process of “how you’re getting there”
- How to go from the Pitch Creative to the Actual “Shot” Creative
- Talking about “Experiments” (stuff you and your team creates on the side to explore creativity)
- What you have to go through to get what you want to see made
It's a fabulous episode where you get to learn from a soft-spoken master who you normally would never have access to. Take a moment, and listen...
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Crossing the Access, the biz side of the video production, biz side of video production, film production, what have you. Today we have a very special guest that I am just so excited about. We have Tony Fulgram of
00:00:23
Speaker
So many things from world famous to now his president operation all as well. He's a writer, he's a director, he's a musician, a commercial director. He's worked with T-Mobile, Washington Lottery, Nordstrom, Nokia, Budweiser, Brooks, Pemko, the list goes on.
00:00:39
Speaker
But in addition to doing all that, he's also written and produced a number of short films to get an acclaim and laurels from everywhere from Sif to Nashville to Brooklyn.
Inspiration and Education
00:00:49
Speaker
He's truly the exemplar of someone that is doing it all on the commercial and the I don't know, the the the private, the creative, the the original content. There you go. Original content side of things. There's Tony and Tony. Thank you for for joining us.
00:01:08
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. It's always nice to get an intro and someone like digs in and does some research and is like, which parts of my life stick out? Whichever ones you put on your website. Right. That's pretty much how it works. Whichever ones your biz dev guy puts on the internet. Your LinkedIn profile. I don't know. Yeah. Well, let's just turn it over to you. How did you get into this? Music is how I got into this. Yeah.
00:01:38
Speaker
I played in bands in Seattle from 1987 through, I guess in 98, I got into a band and I got turned on to Tom Waits. Like I knew who Tom Waits was, but I really got into Tom Waits in my late twenties. And someone said, Oh, have you ever seen the movie Down By Law?
00:01:58
Speaker
And so I watched Down By Law the same month that I watched The Ice Storm by Ang Lee. And those
Career Milestones and Founding World Famous
00:02:05
Speaker
two movies were basically the reason I went to film school is like when I saw Down By Law with Jonathan Lurie and Tom Waits and Roberto Bintini, I was like, someone's actually making the kind of movies that I would like to make. Right. Yeah. Not the kind of movies necessarily that I like to watch, although Jarmusch definitely makes those.
00:02:23
Speaker
You know, at that point in my life, I was like I was the only one of my buddies that like watching the weird indie shit. And when someone and someone pointed out that movie to me, I was right around the time I saw a New York Film Academy ad on the back of Movie Maker magazine. I had been fussing around with Super 8 and VHS films, making them with, you know, just art films with the bartenders I worked with. And but when I saw Down By Law, the timing was right. And I went off to New York for a summer.
00:02:52
Speaker
and when I came back I fully intended to go back to bartending and maybe you know pick up some uh just just basically do little indie shorts and things like that but
00:03:02
Speaker
I stumbled into the job of head editor and eventually director, was directing stuff at Digital Kitchen. And from there, I did Digital Kitchen for two years. Palma Theis was a huge mentor for me and gave me an opportunity when no one should have, because I couldn't even turn on a computer at that point. And within two years, I was editing and directing. I moved to LA.
00:03:30
Speaker
did a two-year stint at imaginary forces, and then I freelanced around L.A. for a while, you and company and fuel and all the really design-heavy creative shops. Yeah, yeah. And then I got offered a job to be one of the editors on The Matrix 2 and 3. And
00:03:53
Speaker
which would have been a path towards exactly where I wanted to go, but my daughter had just been born and the guy was really honest with me. He's like six days a week, 18 hours a day. And I was like, can't do it. And my wife and I talked about it. I was like, if I can't do that, then why are we in LA? So we came back to LA and I, I don't know, within a year I started World Famous and ran that for 10 years.
00:04:18
Speaker
Well, I'm so glad that you skipped out on matrix two and three. Cause if you'd edit those, I think we could have just quit right now. Those are just terrible. I'm really excited about the new one though. The new one, I don't know. I thought the trailer for it looked really cool. So I'm kind of.
00:04:36
Speaker
I might be, I might be an indie, I might be an indie film lover and love the, the high auteur, uh, you know, Oscar winning, you know, actor performances, but I love Keanu Reeves. Me and my 13 year old kid, I mean, my, my 13 year old kid, he's just like, Keanu is just, he's just different dad. He's just cool. And his new look is cool. I'm like, what do you mean? His new look, his old look. And I'm like, yeah.
00:05:05
Speaker
he's got a good old look as well as a good young look and hey did you go to was it nyu that you did your summer no i did it i did a three month summer program at new york film academy and back then it was um it was uh before they were accredited and putting in putting out full ground
00:05:25
Speaker
for your programs, but when I was there, it was basically day two. We had a 16 millimeter camera in our hand. We were loading it, going out and shooting. And it was just all about writing and shooting and actors. It had very little to do with the movie business. It was all about getting a story from your head to the paper and paper to the screen.
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, I did NYU summer program exactly exactly the same. We're shooting with the old area, like tanks, you know, and and I really I encourage people to do that. If film school is too expensive or anything, these little short programs, exactly, they cut right to the chase and you just start making stuff and it gives you kind of the basics to get get just making stuff. So I don't know. I kind of think film school is more about networking and learning how to make movies. You know, if you want, you're paying for a Rolodex.
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's probably that's probably worth it. I probably should have done that. But yeah, I mean, I couldn't afford it. And I do. Exactly. Exactly. So so now and so now you've you've you've landed on on all as well.
Creative Philosophy: Writing and Content Creation
00:06:28
Speaker
And and all and so tell us a little bit about and before that you had before they had world famous. So how is how's all as well different from world famous? Or what have you founded all as well on the on the sort of premise of
00:06:42
Speaker
World Famous was definitely built on the back of where
00:06:49
Speaker
me and my ex-business partner had come from, which was very After Effects, design, RISD, SCAD, very much motion graphics, very much about pretty pictures. And while it was very successful for me, it was very difficult to get things to steer back towards my roots, which was my roots as a writer. I, of course, don't think I really realized that until I was
00:07:16
Speaker
in the position to start a new company. But, you know, before I, you know, before I went to film school, I was writing songs and I always just thought I was a singer and that I was writing lyrics as an excuse to sing. And then I started writing screenplays and I figured I'm just a director. I'm writing screenplays so that I can direct. And before I started all as well, I just realized that no, actually what I am as a writer and all of the best work
00:07:42
Speaker
that I'm the proudest of and the best work that I see out in the world started with a really good script. There's tons of forgettable, beautiful things out there that had crappy scripts. And so when I was, when I was starting out as well, I left,
00:07:59
Speaker
I sold out of world famous after 10 years and then spent another three years kind of trying to decide what was going to happen next. And I had some very specific principles for the company. And one is that everybody needs to consume and generate good writing. I mean, if you're a producer and not a writer or then at least be a
00:08:26
Speaker
A really good critical reader and. So we you know and there's a reason for that I think that I think that in writing.
00:08:37
Speaker
that's where you find out things about yourself. That's where you find out things about other people. And so at that stage in the game when you're not worrying about how to accomplish something, where you're just getting the story out of you and onto the page, it takes a lot of practice. I don't think it's easy, but it is where you find the humanity in anything that you're building, right? So
00:09:01
Speaker
So if you're going to write a screenplay, even if it's a cheesy action film, if you don't have a connection to the to the individual human stories in there, it's worthless. I mean, you can take something as stupid as Point Break or Die Hard. You know, I'm just going to go back into the Keanu Reeves thing. Point Break is a dumb movie and it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Right. And it has some reason. You give a crap.
00:09:25
Speaker
about the
Visual Storytelling and Sound Design
00:09:26
Speaker
characters. They're written just well enough that the relationship between Johnny and Bodhi means something, right? Like, yeah, it really is like, um, and if you translate that to a commercial production, uh, it doesn't matter what stupid widget you're selling. Um, I'm not interested in doing it unless I can find some, some humanity in it. And that starts with the writing.
00:09:47
Speaker
Right, man that that that sounds amazing and you really see it in the work that, you know, I first of all I know what you mean about motion graphics and visual effects going down that road can just eat you up right I mean it can just suck you in and suddenly that's all you're doing it's what you're known for. I mean a niche is great, and it can be very financially successful but be careful.
00:10:11
Speaker
It does start directing. We for a while at Handcrank had this incredible visual effects guy, and we were getting all this fabulous work, but soon enough, they didn't want the rest of us. They all just wanted the visual effects work. So watching, looking at all as well as current work, it obviously reflects exactly what you're talking about. I'm thinking about the Budweiser campaign, where they're really just these wonderful stories that are really
00:10:36
Speaker
painted very beautifully. And one thing I noticed about your work, it's funny, you know, you talk about being a writer, but it's actually, I see so much your work that's actually, there's not actually a lot of talking in a lot of it. It's quite visual. There's amazing sound design as well. But, but you definitely do. And there's that one, the one short film, now I'm going to jump in all over the place, that has very, very little, the one with the
00:11:00
Speaker
The guy with the record and the couple breaking up outside his window. I'm sorry. I don't remember the name of it. Secret. Yeah. And you really rely heavily on the visuals to tell your story. So it's not necessarily the dialogue, is it?
00:11:17
Speaker
No, dialogue is maybe the last 3% of writing. If you read a Raymond Carver short story, who's a huge influence in the way I write screenplays, I mean, I would say Secret, that Raymond Carver would be the biggest influence on Secret.
00:11:36
Speaker
He has long, long stretches of very compelling narrative in his stories. No one says a thing. There's one one of his short stories where a guy is sitting staring at a payphone because he has to go make a hard phone call and and nothing said, you know, and but you can see what's happening. Todd Hito is a photographer that I love. And very rarely are there even people in his photographs. And still he manages to
00:12:04
Speaker
put together a narrative in his photographs that don't have human interaction. So you can find your humanity in silence, sometimes even more so than in dialogue. I mean, I think generally speaking, we talk to hide something rather than to find something. We actually do an act to find something. Whereas- Which I understand in a short film, but that can be awfully hard to translate into an ad. How do you do that?
Client Collaboration in Creativity
00:12:36
Speaker
Well, it's easy to translate into an ad if you have time. If it's branded content, if it's a long form, what's harder is to convince a client that it's a good idea.
00:12:51
Speaker
You know, I think that the thing that's wonderful about design is it's shiny and you can show it to somebody. But, you know, with writing, it's like you explain to them the thinking process you're going to go through to get to the great the best part for their for their brand. And that's a big leap of trust because I can't I'm not going to give you an example. I'm not going to write your script for you.
00:13:16
Speaker
uh just to prove that we can because that's the thing that we do right like we we build the creative from a writer's standpoint you know it's not um and it takes time and it's hard right uh but i think if the proper thinking goes into writing a campaign or a spot for somebody even if it's a comedy spot uh
00:13:41
Speaker
you can get to the point where if somebody is saying something, it's doing double duty or triple duty. Like you're not always just, and that buys you a lot of time if your sequences are well written or even in documentary stuff. Like when we're doing our documentary stuff, we write it out as though we're scripted. Like here's what I think this story is going to look like that we're going to go out and shoot. And then it's just a roadmap. It's not a, it's not a rule book, you know, but it's a roadmap. And we, of course through documentary, you end up discovering things.
00:14:09
Speaker
But the writing is a huge part of it. Like we write the story before we head out to shoot anything documentary, even I would say that I'm trying to think of the most silent ad that we've done. It would probably.
00:14:26
Speaker
It would probably be. Yeah, I don't know. I even think of the windows phone one you did with the couple, you know, the one you said the couple had just met that morning and like it's pretty quieter. The dialogue is sort of throw away to a feeling or but I mean, yeah, the dialogue mixed out of the under the music. So you're really mixed out. Yeah. Yeah. And that conveyed that closeness of the two had that seemed to be the idea that the phone was a conduit to their relationship. Yeah, I think that that one was really
00:14:57
Speaker
That one was kind of the birth of how I wanted to work with actors. That was an amazing opportunity because basically the clients said we need to put an anthem together. So it's just examples of people all over the world using the phone. And I was like, that's a great order from a client.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yeah. And so we did go all over the world. That one was actually shot in London. And I was like, but I don't want to go shoot essentially stock footage to throw into a montage. So I wrote scripts for
00:15:32
Speaker
Oh, God, five or six of them. And we would cast people for those scripts. And the scripts were very loose. But I would sit down. I wouldn't meet the actors until the day of when they're in the makeup table. And I would just interview them real quick. It was like, all right, we're going to we're going to I'm going to write a short film right now while you guys get our makeup. I'm going to go in and put this thing down and then we're going to work through it. And and so like the.
00:15:54
Speaker
The not safe for prime time version of that spot is something I would love to go back and recut someday because it really is an amazing bit of actors using dialogue that I wrote, but also improving about she wants to have a baby. He doesn't. And then she.
00:16:15
Speaker
sees her pregnancy test. And to her, it's good news, but you don't know if that means it's because it's negative or because that's good. And, um, and the actors totally dove all the way in, man. I mean, it was, it was, it was good stuff that was way outside the scope of a windows phone spot. Um, but you know, we weren't asked to write spots for that. We weren't asked to direct spots for that.
00:16:39
Speaker
um but totally informed the montage and they ended up using them they're like holy crap that's what you did to get our montage footage it's like yeah i'm not gonna go sit in a apartment for three hours just shooting stupid stuff shooting people playing on phones right yeah i mean we shot that whole thing and
00:16:57
Speaker
I don't know. I think we shot that thing out in three hours. Like we lit the bedroom, shot the bedroom, went into the bathroom, shot the bedroom, the bathroom, and it was done. And we had a 30 second spot. I think she think that's a 60 second spot. And yeah, we ran it. So I mean, that's awesome. So now.
00:17:13
Speaker
You know, for you, your company is they say your company is your game. It's your rules. It's your plan. It's what you want to do. Clearly, that's what you've done and are doing with all as well. You know, in this idea that you've got to be creators or ingestors or critics of of the written word of creativity and so forth. That's great. And that's the easy side of it. How do you how do you translate that to the
Balancing Creativity with Commercial Demands
00:17:37
Speaker
clients? How do you get the client? I think for people coming up
00:17:41
Speaker
and trying to, you know, that are in commercial and corporate work as part of the journey, part of the road, perhaps to being feature filmmakers, whatever might be laying out further for them. The part of the grind that I think wears people down is they wind up making stuff that they really don't want to make, they really don't believe in and so forth, but it's so easy to fall into that trap.
00:18:07
Speaker
How do you protect against that? How do you keep your game in your rules? How do you start getting the clients to play by those those rules and by that game? Well, I mean, I think you're talking about, you know, the part that we hate is the hustle. And I and I think that the the struggle is getting worse and worse. There used to be a time where.
00:18:35
Speaker
I mean, it's always been a struggle, but I think there was a time where there was companies that are selling things didn't perceive themselves to be the experts in creativity. And so they would hire creatives, right? Come in to help them sell their brand. And more and more of these others, internal marketing departments and internal creative departments, and they do actually hire creatives, but there is, um,
00:19:03
Speaker
On the one hand, that makes it easier to speak creative to the client. Yeah. On the other hand, they give very, very locked into the guidelines of their upper management because they're only ever working on one brand and it's the brand that they work at. So there's, so that, that communication level is tough for people coming up. How do you sell, um,
00:19:28
Speaker
your rule book to the client. First and foremost, you establish early on, if at all possible, that it's not free. You can't give your creative away.
00:19:43
Speaker
Cause you're just driving everything to the bottom and then you're hustling and hustling and hustling to do a mediocre version of what you gave away for free because then it's theirs and they manipulate it and they, and I don't want it to be, I don't want it to sound adversarial. I really enjoy collaborating with clients. Um, but with anything, a marriage or rock band, whatever good communication is the very first thing. It's like you set the rules of the engagement and you start
00:20:09
Speaker
working in a collaborative form. Like I love having clients in the edit bay. I love doing scripting sessions with the clients in the room and then going and writing on my own or having our writer go off and write on their own. So keeping clients engaged early and all the way through the process, but very quickly setting the tone for whatever it is you're working on
00:20:34
Speaker
in a realm that you think that you can do your best work. Yeah, I mean, go ahead. Yeah. And that's and so and so in the end, I mean, in the end, you're still you're still selling shit to people they don't need. Right. So you're not going to you're not going to write the Godfather for Gillette. You know, so I mean, knowing what it is that you're making is really important. And I think that
00:20:59
Speaker
uh as far as staying creative you got to do stuff that's not for sale you have to stay you have to stay in the zone where you're not making stuff for sale or you have to create space for that right yeah if you're gonna i mean i love first of all i just want to read i just love that thing about you gotta you gotta sell you gotta make the get paid for the creative it sets the tone for everything and it's it's a wonderful feeling too actually it's a really really nice feeling when you because people will pay and they'll pay quite a lot actually
00:21:26
Speaker
was what I learned along the way, and someone had to teach it to me. I was definitely guilty of giving it away in the beginning, and they'll pay well, and it sets the tone from the very beginning about why you're there. You're not just a guy with a camera. But I also think, don't you think, that certainly on the All is Well site, you've obviously made some very specific decisions about the type of work
00:21:51
Speaker
that you show. So when you come to the table, obviously they've all looked very closely at your work and so forth because they're about to spend a fair amount of money on working with you. They kind of know already, I mean, you've already, by what you put out there, and part of that is your short films and so forth, you kind of are establishing the game to a bit, wouldn't you say?
00:22:12
Speaker
Yeah. And I think the biggest, the biggest challenge with new clients is, um, getting them comfortable and that, and they think that what they need to be comfortable is to know where you're going. And actually what they need to be comfortable is to know how you're getting there and to, and they need to know how we're getting there and that their voice is going to be an important voice throughout the process because to tell them,
00:22:41
Speaker
to show them what they're getting in order to buy, to, to hire us, they're getting a cheap, small version of it because you haven't taken the time to collaborate with them. You haven't taken the time to get to know them and you haven't taken the time to build what is going to be good creative, which takes time more time than you have been in a pitch. And when you're, and when you're just like writing this pitch, you know, this fake creative for them, uh,
00:23:07
Speaker
you don't actually know all the problems that you're solving for them. Whereas if you spend two weeks working with them after they've hired you.
00:23:16
Speaker
when you finally have the script or the work or the plan, they're gonna be like, holy crap, not only is that really awesome, my voice is all over it. And that way the client has been heard and their needs have been translated into art and they can see that. And I don't care how much credit they take for that. Like it doesn't matter. Like all I know is that I took their needs, put it through the ideal filter and then as a writer was able to write it out. And then of course,
00:23:45
Speaker
as a production company and with talented directors, we go out and execute on it as well. Yeah. Well, but but we're a fear based society. And so, you know, that's that's the that's the I just described utopian ideal. And the and the reality is, like with new clients, there's often you can see a long term opportunity there.
Fostering Creativity at All is Well
00:24:08
Speaker
We are
00:24:09
Speaker
And so you give away creative, right? And I hate it. I hate it when we do that. Cause it's never as good as it should be. We're trying to move away from that as much as we possibly can, but you need, you need success stories to convince new clients. And I think we're at a point now with all as well that, um, the success stories are solid. I mean, I don't know the short film, the claw that's on the website. That was actually commissioned by the, uh, by visit Seattle. That was a commercial commission.
00:24:37
Speaker
Oh, wow. That's incredible to get to get paid commercially to do that. That's the dream. I mean, that that's and that's marrying so many of you. I mean, you basically get to make a story about a small band. So that's your heart right there. Right. I mean, that's yeah, that's a really big part of that. I mean, that that was late.
00:24:54
Speaker
Oh, that was, that was low Rogers, he wrote, co-wrote and directed that I was, I was just, I was just the guy that made it possible. Not, not to say that's not, that's not worth quite a bit now, you do these things called experiments within the end and this gets to like okay so that's.
00:25:09
Speaker
You establish the rules. You say we're going to be this kind of company. How do you make the rubber hit the road within the company? And the experiments are something I believe you also did something like it at World Famous as well. But tell me about the experiments and how you use them. Well, the experiments are definitely an evolution of
00:25:29
Speaker
the assignments that the executive producer and I launched at World Famous. And the assignments were all process oriented. It's like, you have to do something. It doesn't have to be finished. It doesn't have to be good, even. It just has to be the process of having an idea and executing on it and sharing it with your peers and taking critique. That was the whole idea around the assignments. So when you looked at the assignments, it was a
00:25:58
Speaker
a full body of work. Nothing individual in there should have been awesome. We didn't have the, we didn't develop, we didn't dedicate the resources to it. So it was its own sort of, um, very successful, uh, program at that company to keep people creative. But when I started it all as well, I was like,
00:26:21
Speaker
I wanted to focus it and get it more into exactly what we were talking about doing it all as well. And so the experiments, the way that works, and we've had them on ice just because through the pandemic and stuff, because, you know, everybody's got stuff they got to focus on. Yeah, right. But we're bringing them back. And what it is is it's just a weekly writing assignment. So we would come together every Thursday.
00:26:43
Speaker
with a new one-page script. They had to be 60 seconds or less. The only criteria for them is that they are well-written and they ladder up to the final thing that you see, which is an animated logo that says all is well. So it doesn't, you know, so like that can be sarcastic, it can be a non sequitur, it can be completely abstract or whatever, but all of those experiments are essentially
00:27:13
Speaker
commercials for a company that
00:27:16
Speaker
thinks that writing a good script is the key to what we do. So how do you show? So connect the dots with like, okay, let's take one. You got a kid running through the sort of snowy woods. I'm not sure where he shot that maybe around here. And he's kind of just in wonder, right? He's like, he's like in wonder of like the beauty of nature. And then he's just like staring at a tree and then it's like all as well. Yeah. So there's two ways to look at that. There's that one, which was the mode that your interpretation of that was probably
00:27:43
Speaker
um where it ended up the intention of that was shit scary and you can but still when you turn around and look at it it's beautiful right so it's a lot about contradictions um and uh but you know there's no dialogue it's a it's a sequence and music um and you know the thing like i wrote
00:28:04
Speaker
wrote the music on that and recorded it and it was very minor at first and then it went very major and then I tried to find someplace in between because I didn't want to hit the scary aspect too hard. I really wanted the hopeful aspect to be more. I spent more time
00:28:18
Speaker
around the music than I did shooting and editing the thing, right? But yeah, I think that that's exactly, that's a perfect example. I think the other one that I'm really, there's two more that are good examples, the one where the two explorers are trying to find something.
00:28:36
Speaker
And they're having this big argument on the way. The dialogue is really well written. It's very funny. It's well acted. The young, the lower guy reminded me of that guy on Billions. I don't know why, but. Both of them are named Ian. They're both fantastic actors. The tall one was the bass player in the claw, right? So that one is just a really good example of
00:29:06
Speaker
love and hate in 60 seconds like these two men clearly love each other because they've just traveled up a mountain and they hate each other because one's of one's hubris and one's willingness to give up and a big aha I told you so at moment at the end and we don't know what any of it is right all we know and all as well so it is just this writing exercise this snippet of
00:29:29
Speaker
of humanity. Well I took away from it that I thought that other guy that wouldn't go up to the top of the mountain probably wouldn't kill himself or something like that you know just at the very last minute and he could he almost was there but you're more optimistic fella he he made it over the top of the mountain and found the promised land so I mean they just are wonderful bits that open I love their openness to interpretation I can't help but think that
00:29:54
Speaker
potential clients and forgive me for going to the mercenary side of this, but I don't just see it as a great vehicle for potential clients and say, you know, get this new truck and we got to get some kind of different in here. We don't have the same old shit. And so, you know, we need it. We need to be like, if you can see it, you can believe it. You can do it. This is what the trucks all about. I put another truck ad, but, uh, and, and some guy sees this and all of a sudden you're, you're working on that as your next piece. And you're already at the helm creatively from the very beginning. It's a,
00:30:22
Speaker
very cool way to go. I mean, really, kudos to that idea and that thinking and the discipline, because I think that's what people don't realize, the discipline it takes to actually get down and make the fuckers, right? Like, I mean, that's, that's hard to that that explorers one was, I mean, I think I ran boom up on that one, right? Like,
00:30:45
Speaker
And, you know, and we drove to the top of quartz mountain, which is no easy mountain to get to, but I knew that what Lael was looking for was at the top of quartz mountain because I spend a lot of time in the mountains. And, uh, and so, you know, we used everything we had to go up and shoot it. Yeah. Didn't cost much in anything other than a lot of sweat equity. And yeah, it's, you know, you got to really want it. Um, right. Yeah. You'd be surprised how many new clients mentioned the experiments first.
00:31:14
Speaker
I'm sure they do because it's something that really separates you and makes it clear what your priorities are. Folks, if you haven't seen, you got to go to allswellstudios.com and you have to take a look at these as a way, you know, so many times people gripe to me about the business. Oh man, it's just a grind. It's just grind to me. It's just working me down. And I so often think it's, it's because you're letting it grind you a little
00:31:36
Speaker
bit, you know, and you got it, you got to just like, you got to take home creatively, you got to take home in how you're moving forward in your in your commercial and paid life, you know, and this is a beautiful way to do it. I'm sure it really brings your people together tremendously. Am I right? Like, yeah, it does. I think that. So there's
00:31:59
Speaker
Yes, so retention of really strong creatives means that you value and support and create opportunities and space for them to be creative as often as possible. It's more important for me to create space for our creative directors to go do their experiments than it is for me to go do them, right? As much as I love going out and shooting them, as a business owner, it's my job to foster
00:32:28
Speaker
and create space for true creativity to grow unfettered by client restrictions, you know, and it's, you know, it is a commitment and it's, and it's one that I look forward to getting back to. And we actually have some, um, we're actually expanding them outside of our network. We're going to start doing experiments with people who don't even work for all as well. Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be fun. Um, yeah. And I think that, uh, I mean, it's,
00:32:58
Speaker
Building a creative company, staying creative, making money at it is so many of the angles of all of those things that you need to accomplish are in conflict with each other all the time. And it's very easy to just stop taking care of the things that don't have a direct line between making it
00:33:26
Speaker
And yet they're the heart. They're the thing. That's the whole engine. The reason for being why you're doing it, et cetera. So, I mean, like, honestly, I'm, you know, I'm a socialist who works in advertising, right? So the, the, the contradiction there.
00:33:49
Speaker
If it's not obvious to anybody that's listening, it should be. Advertising is the propaganda machine for capitalism. We know what we're making. We're not fooling ourselves into knowing what we're making. We live in a capitalist society, in a capitalist world, a global economy that is based in capitalism.
00:34:13
Speaker
all of us, no matter what we're doing for a living, are involved in that situation. And I think that the way we move it, at least in a positive direction, if not for, you know, socialism, the way we move it in a positive direction is to make sure that any of the things that are being generated under the umbrella of that economic system have humanity in them and remind us about of our humanity. And so that's kind of our goal. And to do that, we have to keep working on
00:34:38
Speaker
Purely creative stuff, so we have to remember that the stuff that doesn't directly generate revenue is as important as the thing as the ad we're writing for.
00:34:49
Speaker
You know, Gillette. Absolutely. So OK, so we've got to wrap up. What are you excited about right now? What's going on
Original Content vs Market Trends
00:34:57
Speaker
right now? What are you looking for visually story wise? What's turning you on that you're seeing out there? What new projects? I know you've got a couple of things in the hopper, some some series or even a feature film. Can you just tell us a little bit about that?
00:35:11
Speaker
Yeah, we're in development on three different feature scripts and then Lael, our creative director who started the company with me, she's got a really ridiculously dark short film that we're in pre-production on.
00:35:28
Speaker
and it really takes a stab at influencer culture, and we're really excited about that. You know, it's a bit of biting the hand that feeds us, but I think people like that too. We're able to fix one of ourselves. Yeah, so original content, like really getting some stuff made, I think we're optimistic that a feature film will be in production by,
00:35:55
Speaker
How do you feel about the market for that stuff right now? I don't care. Making movies is no different than making commercials when it comes to someone has a bucket of money and they want to get something out of it and I have an idea that I want to see on the screen. The market has always sucked for it. Commerce around that is just vicious and cutthroat and not
00:36:18
Speaker
um and not pleasant but if you want to make stuff you got to go through it so i think that uh listen i played in a rock and roll i still play rock and roll bands the last one that the most successful one i was at in we could sell out our local clubs we got to open up for sunvolt and you know do all the the fun stuff play on the radio and things but never were we going to be rock stars and the mantra was we want to be successful enough at it to keep doing it
00:36:42
Speaker
And when it comes to original content, sure, I'd love to win an Oscar and make billions of dollars, but the bare minimum is I want to be successful enough at it to keep doing it because doing it is the reason to do it. You know, and absolutely, you know, I mean, just seems like there's a lot of, I mean, it just seems like today there's just a lot of avenues that just need a lot of content.
00:37:02
Speaker
Like there's just so many channel stations, all kinds of stuff. So I just met like, is there maybe a little more opportunity in some ways, you market yourself as a pragmatic optimist, which I think you kind of have to, and I'm kind of, can you define that real quick? Just what does that mean? You're a pragmatic? I actually believe in the best of humanity, but I'm also not a Pollyanna or full of toxic positivity. I mean, some, you know,
00:37:29
Speaker
uh sometimes shit just sucks and um i'm optimistic that we will be able to get around it and i'm also optimistic that i'm gonna you know if i'm gonna celebrate the end of the world as optimistically as i can but i'm not a fool to think that it's not gonna happen right you know like yeah uh
Philosophy of Pragmatic Optimism
00:37:48
Speaker
Yeah, pragmatic optimism is just like, see things as they are and approach them with wonder and hope. I mean, that's love it. Yeah. You know, Chris Donaldson, we mentioned him, one of my best friends, a past partner at Handcrank, he started a group called radical optimists. And I want to get you both on the show and sort of debate radical versus pragmatic optimism. I think that would be a fabulous show.
00:38:08
Speaker
There would be more overlap. I think there would probably be more overlap, but the place where we would diverge would be very interesting to have a conversation. That's what I'm talking about. I think it'd be really cool because I'm showing optimism myself. I think it's like, yeah, if you're not an optimism, just go jump off the building right now.
00:38:23
Speaker
But yeah, this has just been fantastic, Tony. I just think you're such an example to folks that you can, you can bridge it, man. You can do it. You know, and I know it probably doesn't feel that way every single day, but honestly, looking at it from the outside, it gives me a lot of hope that you can both be
00:38:47
Speaker
original content, as you say, and also be able to make a living, do commercial stuff that's actually quite humane and quite beautiful as well. And I think that for a lot of folks starting out, it's easy to get trapped in feeling that you've got to just produce one more talking head and be role piece for no really good reason, and that there are other ways. And sometimes it just takes folks that are out there like yourself
00:39:16
Speaker
that have shown, hey man, this works. You can make it this way. So I really appreciate you for being that. Thank you very much. And again, I appreciate that. That's nice to hear. Yeah. And thank you. So folks, allswellstudios.com, you can see the experiments. You can see all kinds of stuff there. And you can also look at Tony Fulgram. What's your personal site again? It's like
00:39:39
Speaker
Oh, unmaintained is what it is. There you go. Well, that's pretty cool. It's Tony, it's Tony full gym.com. But I think that you'll, you'll probably learn more about me as well as well as well as well as the place what's going on. Yeah, cool. Well, we'll be looking for that stuff from you coming up. And again, thank you so much for, for joining us from my pleasure. Yeah. Appreciate it. All right. We will, we'll talk soon and see you around. So thanks a lot, man. Talk soon. Bye.