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The Difference Between Good and Great Production Companies
124 Plays4 years ago
Hear what industry veteran Shane Dillon sees as the difference maker between the good and the great production companies.
Shane and his company LightPress (www.lightpress.tv) do post for so many of the big agencies and production companies in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. We thought it would be interesting to talk to Shane about what he sees as the difference maker between the good and the great production companies that come through his shop.
Listen in as Shane talks about how it comes down to 4 basic ingredients:
- Communication
- Hierarchy
- Organization
- Openness to ideas and TRUE collaboration
On top of this, Shane shares some fabulous pointers about getting paid for your creative and managing scope creep. You won't want to miss it!
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Transcript
Introduction to Max Keiser and videopipeline.io
00:00:05
Speaker
All right, we are back with crossing the access, the biz side of video production. I am Max Keiser, your host. I am also the founder of videopipeline.io, also known as Pipeline, the production management platform, an all-in-one platform that you can use.
00:00:26
Speaker
to help get your company organized and profitable.
Shane Dillon's influence on Max's ad career
00:00:29
Speaker
Before that, I spent 15 years in the video production business, and one of the people that absolutely shaped my experience in so many ways, including helping my company to land our first national ad with Zulily, was the man I am happy enough have with us today, Shane Dillon of Light Press TV. Shane, say hello.
00:00:54
Speaker
Hello, and thank you for having me on, Max. Shane, thank you for everything over the years. You've always been someone that has been a great person to springboard ideas off of. You've always encouraged me to aim high in my work, and you've always done the same in yours.
Overview of Light Press TV's services
00:01:12
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit about LightPress and what LightPress does? So we're, I guess we call this a post-production company based here in Seattle.
00:01:24
Speaker
I've been going now for 12 years, I believe, as light press and we mainly do color correction and finishing, but we also scan film still and finish that and do restoration and what I would call invisible effects. And who were your clients?
00:01:44
Speaker
So our clients, we've got a real wide range of different clients. So we finish several features a year for major studios. We also work on a couple of different TV series, title sequences, some which we're allowed to talk about, some we're not. We also have a lot of corporate clients, especially here in Seattle with people like T-Mobile, Amazon, Microsoft, all the usual lot.
00:02:13
Speaker
But we try to spread our clients around, so we're not kind of in one area all the time. So we work with hours at the moment where
00:02:24
Speaker
coming in very early, because we've got some clients based on the East Coast. And it's worked out well for us, really. We've been very lucky. So just for my listeners, you know, LightPress is one of those very high end operations that you dream of doing your post work in. We were lucky enough to work with them on a few of our bigger productions. And it was just a dream come true. You have.
00:02:51
Speaker
the just absolute magicians able to pull off anything with some of the most high end gear that will just blow your mind in the power that these devices have. And of course, the skills that people like Shane and the others, Eric, that work with him there have. But I thought the other interesting thing about talking to Shane, talking to a post house,
What differentiates successful production companies?
00:03:18
Speaker
person would be to talk about the vantage point that you have on production companies coming through because you sort of see them in that clutch time at the end of the project and you see the clutch relationship between them and their clients and I just thought what an interesting thing it would be to talk to you about
00:03:39
Speaker
What it is that you see in the companies that work that don't work that are disastrous with their clients that are great with their clients. What is the difference maker from your point of view for these production companies that you are kind of in this interesting vantage point on. I was just kind of curious.
00:03:59
Speaker
I thought that would be a really good jumping off point for us to talk about. If you had some things that you just saw over the years that you said, when that kind of person comes in as a production company, I know they're going to be successful. Right. Things have changed a lot in the years that definitely the years I've been doing that kind of flew right into this into the kind of mid 90s where
00:04:27
Speaker
and I'm sure it's the same for production that equipment was a lot more expensive than it is today and so you kind of had a barrier to entry as well I would say because just the sheer cost now you know and there's some good things about this you know the cost of equipment has come right down so there's a lot more
00:04:51
Speaker
know, players that are actually in the field. Right. You know, when I first, you know, when I first started now, I mean, you know, with the quantile systems, there were over a million bucks each. So you didn't get even, you know, the wealthy trust fund kids or, or, you know, just freelance people couldn't afford to buy one of those. So it was a select
00:05:14
Speaker
kind of group that use that. And even with the cameras that people are shooting on, you always knew that a production company that had a certain camera rig and certain lenses, that if they have that, then chances are they've done some pretty big projects and know how to use them. And to be honest, they have to know how to use that equipment in order to pay for it. I mean, if they screw it up and they don't get any clients, they're going to have a huge debt hanging around their neck and they're not going to last very long.
00:05:43
Speaker
You know, what I've seen here over recent years, it's, you know, whereas back in the, you know, should we say the early days, you know, you had a lot of big companies and a lot of support people supporting, you know, the main owners.
Communication challenges in modern production
00:05:58
Speaker
That's not really the case now. You know, I've worked at some pretty big productions and, you know, just that there was, there seemed to be a lot more planning
00:06:11
Speaker
than there is now. And so I'm really keen with what you're doing because, I mean, purely, you know, pipeline's a tool for helping with the planning stage of stuff. And one of the things that kind of is difficult for us now is, you know, especially with the pandemic, you know, a lot of people are in the kind of flexi-time mode, but, you know, communication always separates the,
00:06:38
Speaker
for the clients that we have, knowing it's gonna be a good client or bad client. It's just the history whether or not a communication was good. I mean, we used to only have the, let's say, you pick up the telephone call or meet them in person. That was the communication. You could have that and get an answer by calling somebody. Now we still have those options, but you've got texting, email, messaging, Zoom Teams, Slack or whatever.
00:07:06
Speaker
And quite often what I find now is I'll have a critical question and I'll put it out there and you'll see the little dots that somebody's read it and I don't get an answer. And it can be infuriating where people don't pick up the phone even. And I ask often, I say, hey, I emailed, I texted, I called, I did everything. Why don't you answer? And they'll often say, well, I don't have an answer, so I don't want to answer.
00:07:35
Speaker
but it doesn't change the fact that there's a problem that needs to be resolved. And that's kind of, I don't know if it's just a case of a new generation just do things differently. Actually somebody, I've been lucky enough to have a lot of good mentors in my time. One of the guys I was talking to this week to him and said, what he finds is, he goes, you can't outrun the issue.
00:08:04
Speaker
But people these days think they can jog slightly in front of the issue and pretend they have headphones on. And that's exactly what it's like.
Planning and communication for client satisfaction
00:08:12
Speaker
I'm just like, yeah, they're ignoring me. I know they've read this. Why aren't they answering? And so I love that fact. And one of the things, Max, that how I always like to work is, and with anything, it's just saying, OK, very early on, say, what's the plan? What are you exactly?
00:08:35
Speaker
you know, trying to do here, you know, and then, you know, what, okay, what are the rules? You know, let's, let's focus on getting your plan made, you know, to these set of rules you're going to give me. And, you know, that could be a set for us, like, you know, we're marketing this product, this product needs to look good and needs to hit, you know, all these demographics and, you know, hit all these, you know, points, right? And then I want to argue, well, who's in charge of all the stages that we're going to be in?
00:09:00
Speaker
Whether it's the director or producer or even the client, are we involved in a post or do we get to speak and communicate with the client? Because some agencies want to keep the post house away from the client and they just want to use the producer as the conduit between the client and the post house.
00:09:22
Speaker
But I always want to be efficient when the successful jobs that we do. I mean, at the end of the day, if the job looks great and it hits all the marketing points and the client feels that they've got value for money, everything's great. The client's king and they're going to pay and everyone gets paid or whatever. But behind the scenes, Max, it's always how much did it really cost
00:09:50
Speaker
or how much time was wasted because if anybody along that whole collaboration end up doing 10 times the amount of hours that they agreed to do and then get paid for it, there's going to be a bad taste in their mouth and they're probably not going to want to work with that client again.
00:10:08
Speaker
So I, you know, I always look at, you know, things at the end of the job, okay, how do we get from A to B? And then, you know, I love to have communication with, you know, the agency for us, or, you know, for dealing directly with the clients, okay, if we were to do this again, this is how we could do it much more efficiently or improve on what we've done. And really, every single time it comes down to, okay, we can prepare more, and we've just got to communicate. And, you know, the best
00:10:35
Speaker
jobs that I've done on, it's always been you've either got a really, really good producer that said, okay, we're going to communicate, we're going to put everyone on there and we're going to hold people accountable if deadlines are missed or there's a miscommunication, you completely go down a path which is completely wrong for what the client's objective is. So
00:10:56
Speaker
Honestly, Matt, I can't stress it enough. It's just the communication. It's the communication, but it's also that hierarchy. I think that's really important for people to understand is how important a hierarchy can be in the arrangement during post-production and that the hierarchy also allows you to know who you're supposed to be communicating with.
00:11:20
Speaker
And I think it's really helpful for prod codes going into a major post session or even just if they're working with an agency through their own post session internally, just to realize that that hierarchy is so critical. Can you give me an example of what a good hierarchy might look like?
Streamlining production with clear hierarchy
00:11:41
Speaker
Well, it's hard. I can give you lots of examples of bad ones. I mean, it all comes down to
00:11:49
Speaker
on any part of the project, so the total time spent or could be the total time wasted versus what you've actually built for or what the client's paying for at the end. And so usually the fewer people that are involved, the smoother the project comes. And on some of the larger projects, I always remember, actually in Austin, working on the movie,
00:12:18
Speaker
And the director is quite a well-known director, was kind of stressing. He said, well, the difference between a $25 million movie and a $40 million movie, especially if it's like a visual effects movie, can be quite apparent. But the difference between a $40 million movie and a $120 million movie
00:12:37
Speaker
is just that you got a bunch of people that are just going to get in the way and add no worth at all to the end product all they're going to do is say well do you think we can that person should wear a different type of pants or you know what if we tried there and they're just it's stuff that isn't important people are there
00:12:54
Speaker
you know, whether it's on set or in a edit room, making decisions that don't really matter. They're just asking to do something for the sake of doing it. So if you can cut down the numbers, I just want to, you know, have the people that matter because you, and I'm sure that, you know, you remember some of the clients you've had is that you think you're dealing with the person that matters and you're, you know, asked for feedback and you're
00:13:19
Speaker
address everything and give them what they want.
Role of producers in agency collaborations
00:13:22
Speaker
And then, okay, now we have to run it by so and so. And they've got it completely wrong. And it's like, well, we've wasted all this time doing, you know, XYZ or, whereas if we would have just had that communication initially with the person that matters, we could have avoided, you know, these weeks of waste and whatnot. And it's fine if, and from post houses,
00:13:45
Speaker
situation. That's fine if people want to pay for that but if they don't then it's a big problem and the biggest thing is an unbillable time if somebody says hey I'm going to be ready to do this on this day and then they change their mind and you've got either freelance staff you've employed or if you're in production I guess you've rented equipment and hired people and then you can't use them on that day and you've got like a
00:14:13
Speaker
You know you've got to cut off time when you can, you know, cut them off and say hey you know the job is being pushed but if it's like last minute, somebody's got to eat that cost. And that's one of the reasons we, we very very very rarely do.
00:14:25
Speaker
jobs where people can say, hey, how much is it going to cost? Can you do this for this amount of money? We'll say, well, for that amount of money, this is what we can do. We always turn it that way. For your money, this is what we can do. We never say yes to a blanket, everything. And we get clients say, hey, how much is it going to cost to finish my video? And they say, well, how long is the video? We don't know how long it's going to be. I'm like, well, I can't give you even a close price, any information.
00:14:54
Speaker
And so you don't need me telling you that. I'm sure you've heard exactly the same. What's interesting, I think, for our listeners are primarily production company owners. And one of our challenges is working with agencies, right? That's just a challenge. It's an interesting, sometimes it's a matter of
00:15:15
Speaker
Well, who's really in creative control here? Sometimes it's a matter of hierarchy. What situations have you seen where you're like, that's a great example of a production company working well with an agency? Again, I just feel like you have that unique
00:15:36
Speaker
seat at the table to be able to sort of be a removed party from the relationship. And obviously, it's good when they're communicating well, and it's good when there's a hierarchy, and it's good when they're organized. And all those things are good. But the crunch time is in the room with you working through the ideas. And which companies have you seen work well with the agencies? And which companies have you seen get stuck with the agencies and why? Well, some of the bigger agencies, and it really does
00:16:06
Speaker
I said earlier come down to a really good producer and sometimes that producer may be a fabulous showperson that even early on has kind of controlled the narrative with the client and said hey this is this dream we've got, it's a collaboration we're going to
00:16:27
Speaker
you know, hit this and, you know, everything's going to look absolutely amazing and people are going to love it. They're going to love your idea and they kind of sell that whole service. And if then the client feels, you know, at ease with that agency, say, hey, this agency knows what they're doing, they can relax a bit. But what I've seen is that the producer will carry it on and it could be the director that's, you know, doing this, this kind of showmanship, shall we say, where
00:16:57
Speaker
You know, they'll have something, they'll shoot it and you'll have the client action.
00:17:04
Speaker
you know, whether they're previewing it on set. And the guys go, Oh, that looks amazing. You know, it's going to look even better every step of the way. It looks fantastic. That was a really great idea that you had, you know, and they'll, they'll kind of sell that. And then when they come into the edit room, they're like, Hey, look how amazing that looks. I'm so pleased with this. And then you just kind of see these, these guards come down. And if the client feels that they,
00:17:30
Speaker
know that all the people in all these different jobs are really the professionals that they are. They can kind of relax, say, okay, well, they've hired a really good DP. They're choosing the right angles and the right lenses. It looks amazing. I can just relax. The director is getting the action.
00:17:51
Speaker
hire great talent and the director is, you know, making everything look great. My product looks fantastic, whatever it is I'm selling or, you know, if it's a feature film, I'm getting the emotion that's in the script. You know, they're pushing that all the way through. But then even when it comes to finishing, it's just this whole communication the whole way because on the reverse side of things,
00:18:12
Speaker
watching the guys here when they're grading, I mean they've done amazing work for amazing people and the best stuff is where the client even will say, hey, Jeff or Eric or whatever and say, hey, looking at this footage, this is the kind of emotion or the
00:18:32
Speaker
the point I'm trying to get across here in this scene and look at how it's being, you know, filmed in the art direction. What do you think it should be? And you'll see the colorist just kind of open up and go, yeah, okay. And they'll do stuff. And they've got, you know, years of experience and work with different people and they'll do something. And it always looks fantastic. It looks better. But then you get, sometimes you'll get somebody that really doesn't respect the skills at any stage of
00:19:01
Speaker
they've hired and they try and you know take over or second-guess people and just kind of
00:19:09
Speaker
know, they upset them, the professionals in it, and you'll just see, you know, any step, people just switch off. So you know what, this isn't a collaboration. This is just them saying what they think they want to do, or they use something, another project that they're trying to copy and plagiarize. And so you'll see people just, all right, I'm just going to give you what you want to get you out of my face. Right. You know, the color is like, okay, yeah, right. You want it to look like, you know,
00:19:31
Speaker
matrix. Yeah, we're going to make everything green and you just get out. I'm never going to mention that I've done this or show it on our reels and I don't even want to credit for it. And I've been in situations where that's happened so many times and the same thing with the agencies. You can just tell that the client has switched off and they're not happy with the way the agency
00:19:53
Speaker
is handling things, but they've gone down, they know that they've gone so far down, they're like, you know what, we're just going to finish this, but we're never going to use this agency again. This relationship is done. And many times, it's kind of awkward. And you know, the client says, yep, that's good enough. Let's just move on. I don't want to be here any longer kind of thing. And you just have to kind
Agency and production company dynamics
00:20:12
Speaker
of chew it up. And sometimes you can
00:20:14
Speaker
you know, pull something out of the fire and say, hey, you know, we can make something good out of this, don't worry. And then they might relax a bit and have something that they've used. But we've had clients come to us before, after the agency's gone, they say, hey, we want you to change
00:20:30
Speaker
everything. Can you help us with that? We don't want to use it. And it's a real awkward situation. And usually it's like, okay, how do we handle this? And so I'm going to actually call the client and say, look, you know, we didn't, we didn't pursue them under anything. And, you know, we're not going to, you know, promote the fact that we work them separately. You know, they wanted to redo everything before putting it on their own website.
00:20:52
Speaker
And I hope you're okay about that. And it's, you know, it's some people have been okay with other people have been really upset and they don't want to see us all come with it again, right? Right. So, yeah. Well, I'm sure it is. So, so what I'm hearing is obviously communication, then having some kind of hierarchy, obviously being organized and then really being open
00:21:16
Speaker
to ideas and really true collaboration. Absolutely. Really being willing to engage and sort of not be so afraid of the idea that you're not open to how it can grow and change.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah, champion all the time, champion your people and your staff and tell them, hey, you're doing a fantastic job, this is great, it's better than I expected and then and celebrate those successes, push them, say, hey, to the other guy, we just did this job and
00:21:51
Speaker
you know, so and so, you know, he shot the thing beautifully. And, you know, and guess what came in under budget, you know, everything just worked as a since because we, we did this and did this or, you know, we got so much more than we could have expected. And I don't know, I can't remember if I ever spoke at you. One of the clients we had a while back was remember Blackberry. We did, we started off Blackberry, an agency, a very small agency that handled Blackberry approach and said, Hey, we've got this,
00:22:21
Speaker
Started as a web video, a three-minute web video. We went and shot this stuff with these execs using this new device in all these different countries. And we need it to look great and finish this thing. Can you tighten up the edit? So we did all that. And it was so successful for Blackberry. They said, hey, can you cut this down into just two 30-second spots we want to air nationally? Sure.
00:22:46
Speaker
a guy come in, he cut it down, we graded it and did some visual effects on it and it was really successful. The next thing you know, that turned into 162 spots for just that one client. I mean, that was our big client for like 18 months. I mean, it just exploded and it made this agency and they went on and they do a bunch of stuff for Apple and Google and whatnot. But that was just from this one initial idea and it was a fairly
00:23:18
Speaker
small, you know, group of people that were working on this stuff. And they just kind of, you know, it was like, this is what we need to do. And this is how fast we need to do it. And, you know, one of the things about having a, you know, the old school sort of style post had is having kind of, you know, all the tools you might need under one roof, right? But it's not so much the tools, the tools could be the people or the artists and stuff there. So, but again, it's like,
00:23:47
Speaker
I think experience just really helps and keeping those companies going is important. For agencies, they need to or even large or small. One of the things I've noticed is the ones that have actually gone bust and the ones that have tried to
00:24:11
Speaker
you know, either not charge what they should, you know, give everything away. I mean, I always tell people, hey, look, you know, charge, you've always got to charge what you should. I mean, because, you know, if you start discounting stuff, I mean, in my experience, it's always irreversible. You can never get the price that you should get once you've discounted it once. If you give something away once, they're never ever going to want to pay for that thing that you've given away ever on any stage of anything. Right. So I've always thought it's not, you know, it's not worth
Should you lower prices to secure jobs?
00:24:41
Speaker
you know, lowering your prices just to get a job. You know, people will say, hey, you know, then, you know, we get there. If you can help us with this one, you'll get the next big job. It's like, well, that very rarely happens in my experience. So, you know, we tend to say, well, you know, we can't do that, but we can give you, you know, help you out.
00:25:00
Speaker
with certain things. And we, you know, as opposed to always offer terms, you know, for that price, this is what you're going to get, or this is when we could finish it all. This is the deadline that we can, you know, actually keep to. We can't, you know, have you
00:25:14
Speaker
say, hey, I've got this job and want to hold a whole week for like three hours of work. We just can't afford to do that. And we've seen that the other places that have kind of given over to that don't last. And it's just kind of sad. I mean, it's fine to say, hey, we can't help you this time. It's all right to say no, walk away. And even if you, my view is even if you started something and if it's going really, really bad and you know,
Managing scope creep effectively
00:25:44
Speaker
early on that this isn't going to work out. You know, the sooner you can walk away, probably the better for everybody, really. So how do you just change the gears for just a little bit? Scope creep never comes in worse than it does during post. And obviously, you are subject to scope creep like crazy. How do you how do you control it? How do you keep it in line?
00:26:13
Speaker
basically dollar amounts. I mean, uh, when people come in and say, Hey, you know, we need to make this change. I mean, we, we always give people more than what they paid for. I mean, you want people to always look away at a smile on their face. So you start with being really generous to begin with. Yeah. So, but then when people come up and say, Hey, we want to do this,
00:26:32
Speaker
It's okay. So you know what? Yeah, that we can do that change, but that small change is a $10,000 change. Right. And you can explain it that way. Or, you know, especially for, you know, when there's television or features where you have a release date or even commercial that if they bought, you know, ad time, it's like, well, it might not be possible to do all those changes in that time scale that they're asking for. If there is, it's like, Hey, we need to get like another 10
00:26:59
Speaker
people working on this this afternoon, which we can do, but it means you've got to make a decision right now to say you want to do this. And you can't say, Oh, I'll get back to you tomorrow about that. So if you get back to me tomorrow, I need time to get these people ready. And so usually, especially if the person's, if they're in the room with you or on the phone, it's like, all right, I need to know right now. Usually people then will think, okay, is the scope,
00:27:27
Speaker
change worth that, you know, this is something insignificant. Or the other time is sometimes, you know, for post, if it's something small, I usually say, okay, well,
00:27:38
Speaker
The time wasted is gonna be more time wasted and you guys get back to me about whether or not you want to do that change. I can do it both ways and then you can decide with both masters which one you're gonna use. That's the cheapest way of doing it. And so sometimes it's, you know, as you said, even if you're on set and somebody's asking about shooting one way or the other, time you've had all the meters of discussion, you might as well just shot it twice. And be done with it. And I think sometimes experience brings that. I think, you know,
00:28:07
Speaker
There are far too many useless meetings. You want to be a helpful collaborator on one hand, but on the other hand, you know that the minute you start letting the scope start creeping, you're dead.
00:28:23
Speaker
How do you how do you balance that being a helpful collaborator? I think this is where a lot of production companies, especially in the early years, OK, this is where they get into a lot of trouble and they they want to be seen as that helpful collaborator, the yes, man, all or woman. But.
00:28:42
Speaker
how do you do that how do you balance that line between being truly collaborative and helpful but professional and stay getting paid and you know what it really is that as i got back to that having the kind of show person you know on production whether it's a producer or director that can really
00:29:04
Speaker
you know, sell an idea and say, well, you know, this, this is the vision that we have into, you know, this is what we need to do. And then they close to, you know, we don't really need to do that. We've already got the magic in the can. And if we do this, this, and this, it's going to dilute the whole effect of everything. Right. Or, you know, sometimes let's just do it. No, that doesn't work. But I'm glad we tried it kind of thing. I'm glad we tried what you suggested, but it doesn't work.
00:29:28
Speaker
was worth trying and then move on as quick as possible because I mean there's this you know this scope change and of course with
00:29:39
Speaker
what it usually comes down to with us in Seattle with a lot of the tech clients is often, you know, you're working with a product that's still evolving. Yes. And so the product changes and say, OK, well, this no longer does that or the screens look completely different. And so sometimes, you know, with experience when you're talking about this, you know, if you've got a plan already listed as, you know, the plan hopefully has a timetable. So, well,
00:30:07
Speaker
whatever, this part of the whole process and getting everything finished, this last bit at the end takes this many hours. So if you push everything into that, then everything's going to push. And so if you can push your deadline and you have the budget, it isn't a problem, especially if the people are available, and usually they are when you're paying them.
00:30:27
Speaker
in all honesty. But I mean, if they don't have budget, and they don't have time, then it's a new point. It's like, you know, it's not possible without throwing lots of money at it. And you don't have money. Yeah, people are usually pretty, pretty understand. What about when they say those classic words? Well, I can't do it on this project. But if this project goes well, I'm going to get five more. I'm going to bring you guys in on it with me. What do you say to those guys? That's really hard. I mean, we get it a lot with
00:30:56
Speaker
feature films. And you know what, you always believe it the first time someone tells you and then suddenly they get the big directoral job next time and then they're doing it somewhere else. You're like, hey, you promised me we did this, we did it for nothing. And you said we'd get the next big film. But now
00:31:11
Speaker
you know, you're producing in Hollywood and they'll say, well, this might be my only chance to work in Hollywood and the studio holds all the money. And so they get to say where the money is spent because they want to spend it in their own home, you know, the camera house or whatever. So I think it doesn't work. It doesn't work. So we'll say, well, you know, we can help you a little, you know, you say, well, we can help you by, you know, making sure it's done on time. You'll get all your deliverables and you make them the offer that you feel comfortable with.
00:31:38
Speaker
And you'll say, you know what, we'll give you the same offer for the next job as well. OK. Because if you can say that, it's just not worth it. Because unless, I guess, if somebody gives you a contract and, hey, this is a series. I mean, we get to hear, here's the pilot. And then if the pilot gets bought, he gets to do the series of 10 episodes. And you say, OK, well, can you give me that in writing? Because if.
00:32:06
Speaker
it doesn't happen or you go somewhere else, we're going to bill you for that pilot that we did six months down the road. Shane, that is amazing. We're just about out of time. I wanted to say one thing to listeners out there that may have never gone to a post-hast and they may say to themselves, I have all these great tools. I've got DaVinci, I've got
00:32:27
Speaker
You know, why would I ever go to a post house and Shane, I'm going to let you answer that in one second, but I'm going to go ahead and answer it for you, at least from my perspective and what I saw over the years. And the truth is, folks, if if you want to see what
00:32:46
Speaker
you know, you've looked, you've watched television all your life, you've watched movies all your life, and you see things that have that look, that look of professionalism, that look of just looking so tightly finished and all of the teas being crossed and the eyes being dotted and just the coloring and even just the timing, you know, some very, very
00:33:09
Speaker
very minute things that come together to give you that perfect professional pitch production. That's what you get when you go to a place like light press. And even if you don't think you can afford to do it on each and every project, which you probably can't, it is so worth it to do it on a few a year so that you can
00:33:29
Speaker
learn from just watching folks like Shane and Eric work and what they can do with your footage, you will learn how to be a much better shooter. You will learn how to be a much better colorist yourself. And you'll just generally have a much better sense of what that line is that's maybe kept your work from being at that super high level. Shane, what would you add to that? Yeah, I would say, you know, from
00:33:55
Speaker
A client's point of view is nothing wrong with saying, hey, I've got this much
Value of professional post-production services
00:34:00
Speaker
money. What can you do? Because then it cuts out all the dancing about asking for every variation of everything, because sometimes it might just be, hey, for that we can just take your finished locked spot and polish it. We can spend an hour and it's going to look 100 times better. Yes. And that's that might be great. I think that was all I could ever afford to do. And it did. That's exactly right. And it worked out fantastically. Totally. And sometimes it's like, OK, well, I've, you know, I've got this film.
00:34:25
Speaker
but i don't you know you got six months to work on it great will we can help we can help you with this because we got six months to work on it but you know you can't expect the same level of service i need it by you know the end of the week to submit a film festival so and in terms of if somebody's learning a craft i mean
00:34:42
Speaker
All the successful people I know have had really good mentors. They learn why you do something. It's often just because it has a button that says you press the button, it does this. Sometimes knowing why the button does that and technically why it's happening, technically why you can use it, it helps you so. And you can always talk to anybody anytime to give you the advice before you start. If you can plan stuff, it's going to save you loads and loads of
00:35:09
Speaker
money down the road because we've all heard that I will fix it in post. I forget it's expensive. We've got the money to fix it. That's fine. If you can prevent that, then prevent it.
00:35:22
Speaker
Well, thank you Shane so this has been so fantastic that Shane from light press TV. Go check out their work but more importantly, take some work their way if you can because you won't regret it you will you will have a fantastic experience your product will look great at the end of the day and it is more achievable.
00:35:42
Speaker
than you often think. Of course, they do tons of super high-end work, but you'd be amazed. And it can be that thing that takes your work up just the next level. So I really encourage it. But Shane, I love it just talking about communication, about hierarchy and organization, charging what you're worth, and being open to true collaboration with the folks you work with. Those are all incredible tips. Thank you so much.
00:36:12
Speaker
I really appreciate you coming by and I look forward to hanging out with you real soon, Shane. I look forward to it soon. Take care, Max. Okay, you too. Thanks.