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Production at Scale with Alex Portera
91 Plays2 months ago
In this episode of Crossing the Axis, we’re joined by Alex Portera from Rally on Media, a powerhouse in the production world, to uncover the secrets of running productions at scale. With over 100 projects completed each year, Alex knows a thing or two about keeping the gears turning smoothly. He’ll share his approach to managing this high volume of work, from planning and logistics to execution and client satisfaction. If you’re a production company owner looking to scale your operations, you won’t want to miss the insights Alex has to offer.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
You're listening to Crossing the Axis, the podcast that explores the commercial side of film production with your host, James Kevlis.
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome listeners and thank you for tuning into the show. Many
Challenges of Scaling Production
00:00:30
Speaker
production company owners dream of taking their operations to the next level by scaling up to handle more projects while simultaneously keeping a sharp eye on profitability. It's kind of a holy grail, expanding the volume of work without sacrificing quality or margin.
00:00:45
Speaker
even when the budgets are tight. Achieving this balance requires not just ambition, but a well-oiled machine, teams that function seamlessly, systems that keep everything on track, and a vision that ties it all together. That's why, today, we're diving into a topic that is as essential as it is complex, production at scale.
Guest Introduction: Alex Portera
00:01:01
Speaker
Picture this, a production company that produces over 100 projects a year, each one demanding creative development, quality execution, and a fast go-to-market timeline. Sounds daunting, right? Well, not if you're Alex Portera from Raleigh On Media.
00:01:14
Speaker
Alex has built a powerhouse in the production landscape, mastering the art of putting together teams and systems that have caught fire in the startup tech world. Now they're leveraging that muscle into the advertising space, tackling campaigns with more blue chip corporations and agencies. Today, Alex is here to spill the beans on how Rally On keeps those gears turning smoothly. We'll unpack the strategies behind managing a high volume of productions, the importance of having the right team, and the tech tools that make it all possible. So Alex, welcome to the show.
00:01:41
Speaker
Thank you, James. Really excited to
Alex's Career Shift: Wall Street to Media
00:01:43
Speaker
be here. I appreciate that. That was ah a, is it titillating? The right word to a titillating introduction. Thank you. You're welcome. So I got to say, I remember when we met and you were telling me about rally on and you said how many productions you do. And I so i didn't believe you. I had to see it with my own eyes and you showed me all of the stuff and all the platforms that you've worked in the startup and I just couldn't believe it was like you made all of this because the quality was so high and the production was there and I was just so impressed. So I thank you for coming on to talk about how you do this and how you got into it and how this whole system works. I appreciate it.
00:02:21
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate it. I honestly, I couldn't believe it when I calculated it as well. I was like for a ah social media post I was making and I went through numbers like this can't be right. But yeah, it's nuts.
00:02:32
Speaker
Well, we're going to dive into all of that. But I always like to establish some credibility with my guest and talk about how they got here. I think that's an important kind of lead into the story. So tell me about you. Did you always aspire to be in production and filmmaking and advertising and all that kind of stuff? Not even close. um I would not have ever imagined that I would be running a production company. I love it. And I'm so excited I ended up here. But I actually started my career on Wall Street.
Mongol Rally & Career Transition
00:02:59
Speaker
I was a management consultant. Along with my co-founder, we worked at Deloitte Consulting for our first kind of three and a half years after college. I studied economics and psychology, looking at business opportunities, and actually didn't even fully feel like a very creative person. And so yeah, I was consulting for large corporations, doing like business strategy, kind of mostly doing Excel models and PowerPoint presentations on a day-to-day basis for, you know, 70 hours a week. And kind of got tired of that and kind of fumbled my way into the world of production. Did you get fired or something? What happened? I did not get fired. No, I didn't get fired. So one of my friends loved to travel, and he had always been trying to get me and my co-founder to do something called the Mongol Rally, where you drive a car from London to Mongolia. A few hundred people do it every year. You're supposed to drive a comically small car that's not suitable at all for some of the most rugged terrain you will ever encounter. And we said, well, we're never going to do that. We're never going to all quit our jobs at the same time and go to Mongolia together. And then we actually all were ready to
Early Filmmaking Adventures
00:04:00
Speaker
quit. And we said, I was like, I'm going to quit in like the next few months. And Brian was like, me too. And we're like, why don't we not quit just yet and wait and go do the Mongol rally?
00:04:07
Speaker
And so, so Brian is my co founder at rally on and we decided to do the Mongol rally. And we ended up leaving our jobs at Deloitte kind of and doing this drive, which took us about two and a half months. And as we were preparing for the drive, a friend was at a barbecue with his uncle, like around on Memorial Day and told him about the trip we were doing and that uncle happened to be consulting on a TV show about people going on adventures for Lonely Planet. And this individual also happened to be well known in the production world for teaching people how to basically be an entire production company by themselves. He's told us his nickname was the Angel of Death at news companies because he would basically show them how they could do an entire production company's worth of work with one newscaster, basically filming, editing, scripting, everything. He met us. He said, can I give you some cameras? Can you go film what you're doing?
00:04:55
Speaker
We said, sure. He gave us two days of training with like the Canon XF-105 or something, was the camera that we were using. He gave us two days of training. Day one's training was we were in midtown Manhattan at his office, and he said, go make a story about trying to get to Staten Island. And we said, sure. So we walked outside. Brian and I were 25, 24. We walked outside, and there was a guy loading a truck. And we were like, all right, let's start this. And so I turned the camera on. Brian goes up to him. me He's like, excuse me, sir. Can you tell us how to get to Staten Island? And this dude looks at us and says, get that fucking camera out of my face.
00:05:25
Speaker
And we were like, all right. And we're like, this is New York. Here we go. And so we we made that. Had one more day of training. Went off and did this crazy adventure. And when we got back, this producer looked at the footage and was like, this is really good. Do you want to go on another trip and make ah make a real show about this? And so we did another trip, spent a year driving from New York to Patagonia, and filmed every single day of it and made this kind of like unstructured reality show about us living in our car, traveling the world. And that's how we got into film. Yeah, could not have planned that.
Building a Documentary Audience
00:05:54
Speaker
That's a great story. I am so glad that I always do these background parts first because they oftentimes connect perfectly. And obviously this one here is the company's named Rally-On. We just found the source of the ride. that that's That's why it's called Rally-On. Yeah. I didn't even know that. That's great. So you um you you found a talent, you and Brian work well together. did Did you actually make something that then got sold or what happened with that? No, the project didn't really get anywhere. It was it was not the best handling internally of the assets and the company basically the only planet like changed ownership a few times and like the footage. I think it's now the most interesting show that's ever graced the dusty halls of Dropbox. It lives ah and in a Dropbox somewhere and it never really went anywhere. Basically what we did, I thought I was going to be the next Anthony Bourdain.
Securing Projects with Grubhub
00:06:42
Speaker
And we we got back from these travels and I was 26, 27. And I was like, I really love this filmmaking thing. I really love telling people stories. Like the camera, what what I fell in love with was while we were traveling, we'd have the camera, people would ask about it, we'd tell them, and then they would just like invite us into their lives.
00:06:57
Speaker
And so along the journey, we we built a yurt with Mongolian nomads. And in Nicaragua, we stayed at a fisherman's house and he took us on his boat at four zero in the morning to go out into the end into the Pacific Ocean to catch fish. You know, like we slept in many mechanics lots along the way as our car would break down and we just met the most wonderful people and we met them largely because of the camera. And so when we got back, we said, how you know, if we're going to be Anthony Bourdain, great. He's like, while while they're editing the show, maybe we can kind of help them sell it by creating an audience for our show when it goes live.
00:07:27
Speaker
And so we said well what do we love about traveling it was meeting people telling their stories and so we decided to launch a content series and which was content series which was like documentaries kind of day in the life documentaries about people interesting people around new york city because we live basically in a city that is you know the most diverse place in the country. All the people that we were meeting on the road in their home countries also live here. And so we can, there's so many interesting stories, kind of, it was both like build an audience. And I was also like, okay, if I'm going to be a filmmaker for the rest of my life, I got to get good at this. There are 15 year olds with iPhones, you know, who are better at filmmaking than I am. So the only way that I know how to get good at something is work really, really hard. And so we committed to making a documentary a week. For two years, we made it like a five to 10 minute documentary about someone without missing a week. In that time, we got really good at telling stories and built an audience of about 250,000 people who would tune in to watch our watch our documentaries. And like we kind of that's where we really developed our like kind of hardcore storytelling chops because we would spend 80 hours working on a doc and post it. And if we didn't make it really good, no one would see it. And so we like had to develop a way of engaging people really quickly so that our you know work wouldn't go to waste. so
00:08:30
Speaker
yeah Once again, there's this connection where you start producing volume. You're doing a doc a week, getting a muscle going through this kind of discipline and rigor and creating something. So you do that, but then along the way, someone asks if they can give you money to make a project for them. Like, where where did this go from like, hey, we're creating our own original content, we're developing this skill to, would you make something for me? And it becomes a rally on media business and it's a thing.
Growth via Crowdfunding Platforms
00:08:58
Speaker
So these documentaries, we weren't making any money from them. And we were spending, you know, it's three of us who were doing it was Brian and I and actually one other friend who we were traveling with, it was a lot of effort. And so we were freelancing on the side, I was doing freelance copywriting, Brian was doing freelance web design, and then like we would spend an additional 40 to 50 hours a week working on these docs.
00:09:16
Speaker
At some point we kind of burnt out and we were like we we we either the the show wasn't selling and we like kind of realized that it wasn't going to happen. So it's like we either get jobs or we like really go all in on making this our career. And so Brian and I said let's try and make this our career. We we we posted on social media saying like hey we're doing videos now for companies and we actually got a few clients that way of like entrepreneurs who were following our content who said like, Oh, yeah, I would love to hire you to do that. And we got some pretty cool jobs from that. But like our biggest kind of opportunity came when we actually Brian cold emailed a the the like head of social media at grubhub um and said like, Hey, we have always wanted to do a documentary about a delivery driver.
00:09:52
Speaker
in New York City, do you want to sponsor that? Through that cold email, they got back to us and said, yes, we'd love to actually sponsor a video. And so they paid us a few thousand dollars. We made a video about ah a delivery driver, which we posted on our own channels. But then they internally loved the video and they actually played it at Grubhub's All Hands meeting. And the CEO who had been running the company for 20 years said that he was like, that's the best story we've ever told um in the history of this company. And so they basically said, hey, that was really good. Can you do that for us?
00:10:22
Speaker
And they like sign we signed a contract to make 15 documentaries about restaurants around the country. And that's kind of that was the most money Brian and I had ever seen in our lives when we signed that deal. I remember like we we were in a house in San Diego. like we had we We didn't even have a contract. We hadn't gotten paid, but we already
Building a Scalable Production Model
00:10:38
Speaker
started the work. So we flew to San Diego to shoot our first docs. And we like got ah we got the contract. And I remember jumping up and down in in the kitchen of an Airbnb because we were no longer broke.
00:10:49
Speaker
ah That's so good. Okay. So you have a client, you have a real client, the one that pays real money and you can start hiring teams. And at what point did you start getting more into this startup tech thing and this kind of finding the platforms that you got on and all of that stuff? When did the volume piece start happening in that client way?
00:11:09
Speaker
Well, Grubhub became volume very quickly, not in the like systematized way. We start we we did hundreds of videos a year for them. And it was like largely Brian and I just were working our asses off like really just working really, really hard because they kept giving us ah new opportunities. We were run and gun solo doc filmmakers with a started with a Canon 80D upgraded to a Canon 5D Mark IV, right? Like just running running around with that as we kept doing like work for them, they would say, Hey, can you shoot this commercial for us? And we we're like like, a very small budget commercial where we needed to hire like a gaffer. and We were like, we don't know what a gaffer is. um And they were like, you need to hire like a director of photography. And I was like, I literally don't know what that is.
00:11:47
Speaker
But like we figured it out. you know And we so we would say yes to every opportunity up to the point where we were doing scripted, produced, directed, their Olympics commercials that aired during the summer and winter Olympics of 2022. And those were like those were the largest jobs that we had done up until that point. And you know we were filming on mountaintops in the Swiss Alps. and And that's how we became a real production company, where it's like we learned what it takes to deliver high-end creative work. But as I mentioned, it was just like it was just Brian and I hustling.
00:12:15
Speaker
So at some point during this process, someone reached out to us who worked at a crowdfunding platform where like startups raise capital and they said, hey, you know we saw some of your work, can you help us out? I talked to them and they were working with a wind turbine company
Efficient Production Management Tools
00:12:30
Speaker
that was trying to raise a few million dollars and they needed a video to kind of pitch their what they do and why this is a great investment opportunity to the crowd. And so I met up with the founder, we told this story,
00:12:42
Speaker
They went on to raise $9 million, dollars which is a very large amount of money in this type of crowdfunding. And they said, that was cool. Let's do it with another company. And that company raised like $1.8 million, dollars which was also really way beyond what anyone expected. Like, that was cool. And we worked with another company that raised $20 million. dollars It was like working really well, but it was just me doing it. And at some point, they they were working with like five other video companies at the time. They said, hey, what you guys are producing is just It's out producing what our other partners are creating by like a long shot. So can you just become our exclusive video partner and scale up to work with all of our companies that are launching on our platform? I said yes. Sure. Not knowing. I was like, yeah, of course we can. Obviously, it was just me and Brian in the company at that time. I was like, how many companies is that? And he was like 25 a month.
00:13:27
Speaker
And so then it was like time to build. um And so that's when we started hiring and kind of went through this really intense sprint where I basically built a system to run a business with processes, SOPs, project management tools, templates, tools, technology, et cetera, hired a whole bunch of people who are still working with us. I hired like 15 people in three months to like do various roles and kind of plug them into the system I built. And it worked. like Clients were happy. The production quality stayed high and we continued to deliver results. And so we kind of grew from there. So from the course of when you're just starting out to now, how many productions are we talking about in a year total? I mean, last year we did 116 campaigns.
00:14:07
Speaker
Right? The number of videos is multiples of that because each campaign has multiple deliverables. But yeah, we did 116 last year. I think we will probably top that this year. And that's just the crowdfunding. That doesn't count like all of the other stuff we're doing.
00:14:21
Speaker
I want to get into the nuts and bolts of how you actually do that. I thought about it when I did the introduction about like many dream of, well, that's me actually. um've' just Um, and so what, what are the most important elements that you see that make it work? Um, logistic tools, strategies comes
Client Onboarding & Collaboration
00:14:41
Speaker
to mind. Yeah. There's a lot of things that come together to like make this type of system work.
00:14:46
Speaker
you know There's different phases of a project. right So you've obviously got pre-production, production, and post. And so it's like thinking through what are the steps for each of those. And so like if you kind of break it down, it's like, OK, well, first of all, we've got to onboard a client. So we've got to get their information. We've got to understand who they are. We've got to understand what they want.
00:15:02
Speaker
And so like if you just kind of niche into like the upfront part, how do we bring them into our systems? How do we get them set up internally in Google Drive? I have a whole file structure. Every time a new client happens, there's ah a specific file structure in Google Drive. I built a Slack ah integration where I type in, it's a channel called New Clients, and I enter the name of the client, and then it automatically creates a whole Google Drive structure with that for that client. and And within that, it has all of the templates for every phase of the process. We do that. We have kind of our invoicing process. Then we have our so kickoff call, which we call story finding. We have like a very specific document where we like start that call. We run that call the same way every single time. And I've done it hundreds of times where it's like, first we introduce the team that they're going to be working with. And then we like recap what they signed up for. So they know the scope and we reset expectations for how long everything's going to take and what it's going to look like. Then we jump into the story.
00:15:51
Speaker
and we talk about and why we have very specific questions to like get the information we need as we're like wrapping up we reset expectation again what's happening next and when are we going to do our production and it's like all of those things then that information gets immediately passed off to a copywriter who's already been staffed in the process copywriter takes it they have a specific document that they write their script in they do that And this is all listed in a project management tool. We use monday dot.com. like They take it, send it to our copy editor who reviews it. Then our copy editor sends it back. And there's a back and forth. Then they send it to our the like lead producer on the project. The producer reviews it. Then we send it off to the the client. And like we kind of do all these all these parts of the process. I could probably spend an hour just talking about the specifics of it. But I can probably take it high level for you if that's going to be helpful.
00:16:33
Speaker
I think going up and down is important because getting specific into the actual um nuts and bolts of it, I think is critical. Like when you're talking about the integration with Slack that then makes the, you know, the entire folder for the client and Google Drive. I think that's really important for people to know because it's understanding integrations like that, that make things fast and make things replicable. But one of the really important things that I, that people need to really understand that you just did was you have a process for onboarding clients. And I think that Oh yeah. A lot of times production companies don't think about that. I learned that skill in in tech, and I think that's probably where you learned it too, where onboarding is really critical when you're bringing on customers to your tool that you've made in tech. Applying that in production is very, very useful. Clients love it. They feel like they're being led and they can trust. And it also shows that you know what you're doing because in order to have a process, you've had to done something a number of times in order to develop a process. And that is an indicator to clients that you've you've been here and seen this many, many times. and so you can guide them well. Yeah, I mean, we spend as much if not more time on like how we service our clients, then we do the production itself, we it's really critical to how we do everything. And I think for for me, it's just like, I started my career in client service, like at working with executives at large companies.
00:17:46
Speaker
That's like the one area we're having a consulting background. it's like you know we were just It was hammered into us that like we are representing the entire company and we would like work in the client's office. And so with the way that we appeared reflected on everyone. And so when we think about onboarding a client, we spend a lot of time and we're in this right now because we're rebuilding our processes. How do we build a system where... like What is onboarding supposed to do? It's supposed to make the client feel comfortable. It's supposed to make the client feel excited. And most importantly, it's supposed to make the client feel like they're in capable hands and that like the people that they have signed, its it's like reinforces their buying decision and makes them feel like, okay, I'm in good hands. I don't have to worry because as critical as we've all had clients where it's like they're micromanaging, they're like trying to change everything. It's like a nightmare project. And often that happens in the onboarding, like onboarding process where like you didn't properly like settle them into what you're doing. And so they don't trust you enough to actually let go. They can't see what's around the corner. Right, exactly. And so if they know what's coming, if they know that you know what you're doing, they'll let go and let and let you do great work. I'm so i'm so glad that we established that because it's really, really critical as the foundation for the whole thing. I think that you're saying that as well. I believe that. So with your teams, you're now you're decentralized,
Managing a Decentralized Team
00:18:55
Speaker
right? You're all over the like North America, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's a fully remote production model. So we have filmmakers all over the country.
00:19:02
Speaker
And you have specific teams in certain places that have ah particular skill sets and particular ways that they go about it. You can, you call on this one for this type of thing. How do you keep tabs on all of them? How do you wrangle this team on this big continental scale? On the main way that we do things. So the core person in our process is our producer who is, who is like both a video producer.
00:19:23
Speaker
They're kind of the director, they're also the project manager, client account person, and they run the project. And so I give them basically the keys to run everything and they go off and do it. These specific productions aren't super complex. We're we're hiring a single filmmaker, a small crew, like four people at at most typically. And so that lets us kind of like, we we have to be pretty tight with what we're actually filming and and the scope of that.
00:19:44
Speaker
So one producer can handle that. And so they basically tap in. We have a ah list of every filmmaker we've ever worked with that we like working with. And that does a good job. And that also is good with clients on set. Since we're not on set, whoever we hire also represents our company. So we're very specific about that. um But we have a list of every city, every state that we have filmmakers and we go to those people first. And then if they're not available, we have a specific process for how we vet new filmmakers using various you know online staffing tools like StaffMeUp.
00:20:10
Speaker
What's in your tech stack to make the whole production
Production Tools Overview
00:20:12
Speaker
work? Project management, we use Monday dot.com. For our like documentation, we use Notion a ton. That's where kind of all of our processes live. So when someone wants to know how to do something, they can just go look it up in Notion, whether that's how to hire a filmmaker, how to write a script, how to like specific emails to send to clients. We build processes and flowcharts in a tool called the whimsical, so we can kind of like visualize how we do things.
00:20:34
Speaker
We pay our filmmakers and onboard our film, our crew through wrap book. We communicate to our team in Slack. You got us on copper for our CRM. Uh, we do contracts through Panda doc. Then for like production specifically, we edit in premiere. We do all reviews in frame IO.
00:20:52
Speaker
We have our portfolio on Vimeo. We do file transfers through a tool called Massive, um which is basically like since we're doing remote productions all over the country and our projects often, they are like four weeks, three, four weeks. So getting that footage over to our editor fast is really important. So we use a tool called Massive, we're like pay per gigabyte or something. And then we have like a bunch of stock tools too. So we use Motion Array, Artlist, Soundstripe, Storyblocks, Film Pack.
00:21:16
Speaker
and think And then you know increasingly, we have a lot of AI tools that we use ah kind of across the board. Claude is are my favorite for writing. But we also use Adobe's like AI but voice enhancer. We use 11 Labs. is if you have If you've never used 11 Labs before, it is brilliant. Basically, you can upload someone's voice and then create base make say them make them say whatever you want, which is really helpful for us because we move really fast. And sometimes a client will get the edit and say, oh, I wish I said this. And we said, ah, we can make you say it. And it's really great. Yeah.
00:21:46
Speaker
This is so helpful. Thank you for sharing that information. In terms of margins, how do you manage this? because So i'm I'm assuming these aren't multiple hundreds of thousands of dollar campaigns, right? These are tech startups that are lean and they're trying to raise money themselves. So how do you work with these tighter budgets and still make enough money to make it worthwhile?
Budget Management Strategies
00:22:08
Speaker
They're definitely not definitely not huge budgets for these projects, so it we do have to really keep a tight eye on margins. I think, first of all, like for the size of these projects, we kind of need the scale that we have to make this worth it. If we were just doing like a few of them, we wouldn't have enough business to actually run a business.
00:22:23
Speaker
So we have to run it at scale to make it work. And the way that we manage our margins is basically like we have a ah budget for each type of project that we sell since they are kind of fixed packages. Within that package, I tell my team exactly what everything needs to be. So we have the rate that we pay the filmmakers. We have hourly rates for everyone on the team. I kind of tell them what their hour targets need to be and kind of where they need to end up. And then our producers are just in charge of managing it, right? So that's another like just core producer job is managing a budget. And so we also put them in charge of that.
00:22:52
Speaker
they hate that more than anything. And like one of the things we have to chase them the most for is like at the end of a project, they have to fill out a project financial form. And then we take that and we have a tool where we or it's not even tools like Google Sheet, we made where we upload all of those. And then that gives us kind of a dashboard of like, where's our time going? What's our profitability look like? Who are our most profitable producers and who are most profitable editors and things like that. So we can get some insights on on how the team is doing from a financial perspective.
00:23:16
Speaker
ah What about with the clients? um you know Making sure that they understand that they can only make what they're paying for and they're you know they they might be wanting more, asking for more, but you have to control that. Is there any tips and tricks that you have learned on managing that side of the transaction?
00:23:32
Speaker
It varies. For these projects that I'm talking about, I'm just like very clear up front. We have a slide deck. It's like, this is what you're getting. These are the deliverables. And we have like, it's very productizing this way where there's add-ons, where it's like, you want other things, here's what you'll pay.
Creative Quality in Scaling
00:23:45
Speaker
And we've done this enough where I know what people are going to ask for, and I know what they might want. And so we have most of them kind of pre-priced out. And so when they say, like oh, can you can you throw in the raw footage? I'm like, oh, that's actually priced here. This is how much we'll charge you for that. Here's the menu.
00:23:58
Speaker
Exactly. I actually this is the thing that I like least about this kind of like scaled model is that it can feel like too much of like a menu um and it can lose that personal touch. So we put a lot of effort into making sure that it doesn't feel just like we're like a McDonald's basically.
00:24:14
Speaker
I was skeptical about what you were going to make. You know, like when, you when I, when you told me about this, I was like, Oh, I bet I can predict what this is. And I was shocked that it was better than that. It has a compelling narrative that goes along with it. It's not just your basic, there might be some level of formula to it in order for the scale to work, but there was more to it than that. And I really appreciated that. Thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah. So, okay. You productized this offering, which is amazing. Now what?
00:24:41
Speaker
Yeah, we're kind of like growing in two different directions. So we've got this fundraising side of things um that we're continuing to grow in. And we're actually expanding our service offerings, mostly because like our clients have been asking for it.
Expansion into Full-stack Marketing
00:24:51
Speaker
They're like, Hey, these videos are so great. Can you just do other things for us? So we're actually growing into doing kind of full stack marketing, we're building websites, and we're actually running advertisements on meta and on Google to like get data on how our ads are are creatives performing which is a new thing for us and i'm really excited about because you know i want to be creative but we also are always keeping in mind like the business results that our clients are hiring us for and so now we're gonna be starting to like get that data first hand and i'll feed into the creative that we develop. you know it's it' it's still it's It's an art and a science is what we're you know building into it. So that's really exciting. We're building that out there. And then you know we're continuing to grow what we call our brand studio, which is more of just like our larger branded commercial work. We just sold a really exciting project. We're going to be doing some like holiday campaigns for and a really lovely, awesome company. And we have a month to do it from start to finish before Brian goes on his honeymoon. So we basically got 30 weeks to do a pretty big shoot. Yeah.
00:25:44
Speaker
How are you introducing yourself to this ah new market of you know advertising and stuff? When I'm talking to larger companies, I typically won't lead with like the scaled production because I think that's like a value add once once we they see what we're capable of. I think generally what we have found, and since we're a smaller company, is like when we meet a new company that wants a so larger commercial job, The way that we approach it is like we want them to know as much as possible about what we can do but to like help us win the job before we ever sign anything. And so like this job we just did, we actually start we start the process before we sell sold them. So we did our story finding session with our client for like an hour and a half, dove deep into their brand. And then we created a bunch of different concepts and draft scripts and kind of like came to them with that with like everything
00:26:27
Speaker
basically fully developed and said here's your here's what we can do for you and that one is the job cuz they were really blown away with like the depth of the kind of creativity that we brought to them now once we do that hopefully we knock it out of the park and then they'll say okay well we've got all these other things to do and we'll say well we just like plug it in and like we will like run with it and so we can go from doing this one thing to doing as much as you possibly need us to do and more than you thought.
00:26:49
Speaker
What do you think your past Wall Street version of yourself would say about your current self now? ah You're so creative. you you Earlier you said, I didn't, I didn't even think of myself as creative. And now you're really getting into creative development strategy and all of these other film techniques.
00:27:04
Speaker
it's It's wild. I actually like, why I'm so happy ah I'm here is that there was a period of time where I was like, I would journal every morning and I would just be like, I just wish I was creative. I just wish, like I would say like, I i like i want to just be a creative. I just want to do creative work. Just that vague of just like, I want to be doing something creative. And like, yeah, now I spend most of my time doing creative development, doing storytelling. Like that's the core of everything we do is just like telling really great stories and in various formats. And so it's pretty awesome and that this is what we get to do now.
00:27:30
Speaker
That passion comes through in terms of looking into the future. Are there any things that you're mindful of, things that you're excited about, things that you're worried about as it affects production?
AI's Impact on Production
00:27:41
Speaker
There's obviously AI is like a whole piece of this. I can't ignore it. And we are trying to incorporate it into as many parts of our process as possible.
00:27:49
Speaker
I kind of believe, I've gotten some pushback on this, but I kind of believe like the production company of the future could just be like a really great editor that like knows how to tell stories because so much of production I think will actually get pushed to post when these tools get even better where it's like if you can just kind of like cut frames together and manipulate them really, really well and you know how to tell a story, I think you're going to be super powerful.
00:28:08
Speaker
Um, and so I'm keeping my eye on that. I'm not an editor. So I'm like, am I going to just work myself out of a job? But I'm paying attention to that quite a lot. I see, you know, a lot of companies have asked us like, Hey, can you just like do all of our ads um as like a baseline offering? I've said no to that because I think there's a race to the bottom that's happening. I'm just like people just like churning out.
00:28:26
Speaker
advertising content. And I think AI is actually going to eat that whole industry for lunch. So our whole approach has been like, how do we kind of just like stay elevated and push ourselves into like higher stratospheres? Because I think that's the area it may, I don't know what will happen with AI. But I believe like that's a realm where you still need to have like, you know, higher thinking skills, higher levels of creativity, um and people expect more. And that's also where like, relationships matter more as well. So I'm trying to stay as as far from the bottom as possible, despite being a scaled production company.
00:28:54
Speaker
So anyone thinking about getting into this kind of high scale production, any final thoughts or anything that we've missed here that you think that they need to be
Storytelling Essentials
00:29:03
Speaker
aware of? Well, I think the most important thing and what makes our system work, besides like having the systems built, having processes, everything's really well documented, is like knowing what the things are that you really need to spend time on. My belief is that it's all about the story. like we could We started this work for a while. We didn't have we couldn't afford cameras, so we were just filming on our phones, and we made documentaries on our phones that were viewed millions of times. And so production value is obviously really important, but the story is the most important thing. And so like we focus on that and spend so much time getting the story right. And then it's like, how do we do everything fast? But we try not to kind of like rush that part, try not to like productize like storytelling, which is why when you watch one of our videos, you're like, oh, there is a real story here because we spend time on that. So I think like know what in your business that you do needs that TLC and then where you can actually just like speed things up, productize, systematize,
Conclusion & Future Participation
00:29:55
Speaker
et cetera.
00:29:55
Speaker
Alex Portera, thank you so much for coming on the show and being an open book and kind of ah just sharing all of the things that you've learned and your story and your process. It's really fascinating to watch. I'm intrigued by where this is going to go and as you start going kind of up market. Thank you very much for being on the show. Thanks so much, James. This was fun.
00:30:18
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Crossing the Axis with James Keblis. If you're interested in joining the conversation or have a topic you'd like covered, please drop a note at keblis.com. That's K-E-B-L-A-S dot com.