Creatives Grab Coffee - #108 Competition, Clients & Creative Freedom (ft. AK Films)

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

In this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee, Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov speak with Amr Khani, founder and creative director of AK Films, a Dubai-based production company operating at the intersection of high-end corporate and creative work.Amr shares how he built a successful production house in one of the world’s most competitive creative markets, what it’s like running shoots in the UAE, and how Dubai’s film landscape has shifted from cinema to corporate over the past decade. He also dives into the realities of pricing, international collaboration, and why strong systems matter as much as creative talent.Topics Covered:00:00 – Intro & background of AK Films05:00 – How Dubai’s film scene evolved over the last decade10:00 – The decline of film festivals & rise of corporate media15:00 – Industry diversity in the UAE17:00 – The reality of competition and pricing in Dubai25:00 – Why most clients are international31:00 – How AK Films structures its in-house and freelance teams36:00 – Scaling to a 7-person production company41:00 – Finding the right time to hire permanent staff47:00 – Client education and self-sabotage in production49:00 – Inbound vs outbound lead generation52:00 – Long-term goals and returning to filmmakingKey Takeaways:Dubai’s production market is booming — but competition is relentless.The corporate sector has overtaken cinema as the main driver of production work.Strong business systems and communication protect creative integrity.Local partnerships are essential for foreign productions due to legal structure.Balancing creative ambition with sustainable operations is the key to long-term success.🎥 Guest:Amr Khani – Founder & Creative Director, AK Films📍 Based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates🎧 Hosts:Dario Nouri & Kyrill Lazarov — Lapse Productions, Torontohttps://www.lapseproductions.com🎙️ About Creatives Grab Coffee:Creatives Grab Coffee explores the business of video production, featuring candid conversations with studio owners and filmmakers around the world on scaling, creativity, and industry evolution.👇 Follow & Subscribe:Website – https://creativesgrabcoffee.comInstagram – https://instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffeeLinkedIn – https://linkedin.com/company/lapseproductionsSPONSORS:Canada Film Equipment: www.CanadaFilmEquipment.comAudio Process: www.Audioprocess.ca#CreativesGrabCoffee #videographyhacks #videography #videographer #videoproduction #businesspodcast #videoproductionpodcast #lapseproductions #videomarketing #videoproductioncompany #videoproductionservices

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, the podcast on the business of video production. Creatives Grab Coffee is hosted by Daria Nuri and Carol Lazaroff from Labs Productions. Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences from video production professionals around the world. Whether you're a freelancer looking to start your own business or a seasoned business owner aiming to scale your company, this is the show for you. Join us as we develop a community of like-minded creatives looking to learn and help each other grow. Welcome to the business of video production. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee.

Before we get started with the show, let's go over today's sponsors. Do you have a shoot in Toronto? Do you need crew or a strong production partner to help you with your project? LAPS Productions is one of the top production companies in Toronto and your go-to video partner. With our strong creative skills and extensive network, we can help you achieve your goal. LAPS Productions is able to offer you production services, white label services, or finder fees for project handoffs. Reach out to us on our website at LAPS Productions.com to learn more. My name is Maran. Welcome to Canada Film Equipment.

We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes. Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you are a production house and you're looking for lighting, camera packages or lighting and group band packages You can see our contact information in the link below. You're more than happy to help you guys out Make sure you follow and subscribe to creatives scrapcoffee.com. Thank you Thank you Hey, what's up everybody? I'm Matt. Welcome to Audio Process. We are a boutique audio company doing location sound, sound design, post-sound, ADR, fully, we service equipment,

we do all your audio needs here in Toronto. We got you covered, come on down, audio process. . Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and all of the other internet things to creativesgrabcoffee. They'll be waiting for you, I'll be waiting for you, and we're all going to have a real good time. And now, let's begin the show. All right guys, welcome back to another episode. Today we have Amir Kani from A.K. Films, and he is our first guest from Dubai. Amr, welcome to the show.

Dario, you got to restart it. We just mispronounced his name. What do you mean? Amr. We were just talking about that, but I'm good. You said it as Amir. Did I say Amir or Amir? You kind of said it as Amir a little. Oh, really? Take two. Now, this is staying in the episode.

Actually, I would love to start with that. I'm happy to start with that. You know, the thing is, I'm not wearing my glasses right now, so I see his name on the bottom left. So I'm going to blame it on the glasses. I don't have the glasses on right now. You're going to blame it. But anyways, I'll do like a quick restarting here.

But guys, welcome to another episode. Today we have Amr Kani from AK Films. And again, first guest from Dubai, Amor, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you, Dario. Thank you, Carol. for inviting me so excited to be a part of your podcast we were going really international right now because we did all the english speaking countries now we're going to do all the non-english

speaking countries yeah now conquering Dubai who knows it making over the middle east yeah you're our first stop there yeah well tell that's an honor later in the future they would say and that show that took over the middle east started with america exactly exactly give us a little kind of like back story into you and your company over in Dubai okay well how far back do you want to go because I'm a mama I would I would not stop how your parents met let's go with that the original Bruce Wayne story guys all right yeah so I am all right let me try to summarize as much as possible without going on side talks here. So Anonymous Night Films that also have my initials, yeah, that was in purpose,

okay, on purpose, and started officially like around 2017, 2018, around that, before that brand name was circulating around because I was a producer back then using that name as well. So I kind of had like a future long-term plan that i'm going to start a company and and for that i wanted to circulate the name first and uh officially like 2018 we we started and got hot and operational around you know the pandemic time before things went down a bit um myself um i come from like around years plus of experience in production and I come from even from back school experience if you want to say it but not not film school so yeah let me save you the time to ask the question I haven't went to film school I'm a filmmaker who who done it on

his own I think many are and I got into this industry around 2015 I started early at college years, but then switched back to my field of study, which is computer and communications, so I'm an engineer, and then couldn't take it. This is where my heart is, so I went back and started off here in UAE, and now here we are. I call myself the creative director of Anonymous Knight Films, and I'm a filmmaker as well, so I'm a director and writer. it's interesting it's like a very similar time frame as like when we started but also very similar kind of as we say origin story you know you're in one program and you're trying to make that work but it's like nah it's like this little tug you know it's like let me try to pull you into like video production I call it there is an itch yeah you yeah something's wrong I got to scratch the itch exactly so I guess for us over here we're a little bit curious about like what the market is like over there in Dubai because I mean we focus on corporate work and like what's it like over there and what are the main industries like well you you named it Dario it is more of a corporate work around here let me so I'll put it

on a kind of time scale just to to simplify it here in the Gulf not just not just Dubai but in the Gulf region in general Cinema has kind of started losing its place bit by bit, being replaced by media and commercials and corporate productions. So the main industry when it comes to production in UAE is corporate productions. Of all forms, even the most creative one, it still falls under corporate productions, where cinema is kind of losing touch. over years

for many reasons you feel like even even the government kind of bailed on it a bit of course I'm talking specifically Dubai Abu Dhabi is still trying their best to bring big titles in

and to co-produce and to be part of the big cinema march but for Dubai if you see somebody who is in production 99% his in media in corporate work and doing great. Now, what makes it cool

is that it is of highest standards. So I'm not sure about what's the case in Canada, but given that it's Canada, I would pretty much be positive about that it is of high standards over there as well. So you would be surprised that even though it's a small country, but it's way developed in this industry.

Like, latest equipment are always here. Top-notch studios are absolutely here. Latest and, like, most fiery technology when it comes to production is here. And, yeah, like, let's say skillful professionals are here as well. So every day, I've been in UAE since 2012, and every day I meet someone who just, surprises me of how skillful and how knowledgeable he is even though it would be like oh

that's that's weird where did you learn all that so out of a sudden it's just new new tech yeah so that's how it is in the you've pretty much like grown with the the video and film industry with in dubai because i remember the very first time i saw any kind of media or content that came out from Dubai was that Mission Impossible film where the film Tom Cruise on the side of the Birch Khalifa. Absolutely.

I think that was in like 2010, 2011, something like that. And then I think after that, I started seeing an explosion of content on YouTube from like a lot of independent YouTubers and filmmakers that were early adopters, like going there, filming a lot of content.

And then obviously all of Hollywood and media just started like blasting through there. And you pretty much grew up. grew with the industry. So, like, how did you see a change in that sense? That's a great question. And, yeah, it's the most famous, but actually not the latest. So there are many recent makes and, like, you know, motion picture productions and titles were made the... But, of course, yeah, this one where Tom Cruise himself did the stunt on Boris Khalifa, this is going to be something for people to remember.

So, okay, I'll explain it in a kind of, again, historical fashion. This is the way I see it. So 10, 15 years ago, there were three major film festivals in the area. And I'm talking, when they say area, I mean you're a golf film festival, Gulf International Film Festival, Abu Dhabi International Film Festival, and Dubai International Film Festival. 10 years, we moved forward to five years. So 10 years from now, we lose Gulf International Film Festival. Then three, four years in, they completely shut down Abu Dhabi International Film Festival.

And six years ago, or five years ago, they shut down Dubai International Film Festival, which, by the way, it was an Oscar qualifying festival. so it was kind of a powerful one and it is indeed the festival when it comes to UAE when the days of the IFF happens like the whole country is talking about it you know it's a festival where all big names all celebrities and stuff all big titles come over and again it's listed as an

Oscar qualified film festival so it's something but today we have none so all three are no no film festivals no only some local domestic ones like there is a laen film festival there are some small ones right but the main ones the big festivals aren't here anymore so i grew with it for sure and i saw i witnessed it demolishing in size i did it breaks my heart because i live here my my life is here my family is here and I want to have to do more cinema in the country that I have in but at the moment it's more focused on international names like recently or most big names that

gets filmed in UAE actually go to Abu Dhabi because Abu Dhabi is also pretty known for for their sand dunes and desert and so for example the latest dunes for by his name René Villeneuve So it was partially filmed here It was actually

Not partially, it was mostly filmed here Because it had to be In a proper desert But it happens only on Co-producing capacity It happens on rebate capacity By the way

which is pretty interesting because that's how they encourage big titles to work by offering rebates and stuff but the benefit that comes behind it because there is a huge benefit is that local talents and local

production companies get to work on big titles because of that so there are big names here like for example on top of my head film works one of the biggest production houses here film works is actually involved in many big titles that were filmed anyway Star Trek and the list goes on

so cinema is a big thing here but it has lost the touch of making films here and focus more on contributing to films where they actually you know are being made so instead of focusing on making films here or pushing the talents here now by the way there are still films that are being made don't get me wrong

recent one Ali Mustafa is one of the famous directors here and he was just doing one that is called City of Life so now there is a second episode that's called City of Life too so there are films that are being made but not for the focus of having as I mentioned international film festivals

and not for the focus of being big around the world and trying to attract big names no working with whoever is available so you can think of it as indie films give or take yeah let's uh let's kind of go a bit more into corporate because that's what we like to focus on a lot Like, what kind of industries are pretty much predominant there for the corporate industry? Can you explain more? What do you mean? Yeah, like, so, for example, like, here in Toronto, it's pretty diverse in terms of, like, the different types of industries that a lot of the production companies do work for. I know in some of the American states that we've had on, like, there was a big nonprofit industry.

Like, what's it like over there? Is it diverse, or is it, like? Very much diverse. Very much diverse. Actually, when it comes to corporate productions, you never know what kind of industry you'll be working with, but you work with everything. So it's not mainly focused on some industries.

Everybody now wants a piece of production, with the introduction of social media, it has turned into a must. Even if you run like a socks fabrication factory, you've got to be on the internet. that's what people say you got to you got to promote and for that you got to hire people who make productions so yeah diverse pretty much so now it's there's been kind of like a boom in the corporate sector like as you mentioned because like the film industries have kind of like lowered down it's

become now a huge focus on the corporate side of things which yeah i guess i mean it's obviously good for anyone who's working in corporate video production in dubai because you know there's a lot of money to go around and to kind of help the businesses thrive good good bad because now you have all the other people. But also there's the competition. Yeah, I was going to say because like that was the one thing about the boom with Dubai. It almost became like a like a destination for a lot of companies to try to create content there. Like in a lot of brands are probably coming into Dubai with their own teams as well. I'm guessing. I'm not sure. Like do you find it that there's a lot of international competition coming in or also what is the local

competition like in Dubai? I love the question, Carol, because I actually. I Actually, this is one of the hardest things to cope with living in this part of the word. Competition is actually the slogan, if I want to call Dubai, the slogan will be competition is here. Because, yes, it is a hot point for everyone from around the world. And I mean it literally. You can see it when you post like a job role on LinkedIn and you see people from all around the world wanting in. even if it's as small as being an office admin for crying out loud. So competition is actually becoming a bit of a burden because, yeah, it allows for freshness.

I always give it to competition that it actually filters away, the non-competent ones, which is good. And it allows for only the good ones and the pros to float on the surface and yet also provide. provide great work. But what happens with that is I'm pretty sure people in the industry who would be looking at this would resignate much with it, even though many people would hate to say it. So I'm going to be very blunt and transparent about it. Competition has introduced a kind of noise because now you have kind of like two markets in one market. Market one is the pros who work in companies, professional media production houses,

who are more experienced and who have the know-how of doing things in a proper way, the B-to-B style, because production is not only related to how creative you are, it's related to how can you get this creativity through to your client, who can be of any sort of industry. So they don't necessarily have to know much about creative.

but there is the second thing which is independent freelance and why would that be appealing to industries coming off some cost expenses so one of the things

that you might want to know about UAE is that it's not a cheap country when it comes to production it's pretty much on the higher part when it comes to the rates so what can be for example, in North America, what can be a day shoot of, I'm not sure about the numbers,

but I'm just going to make an assumption, what can be a 1K per day for a pro, let's say, professional in any sort like a cameraman, for example, videographer, here it's kind of like 150% of that or even more. So it is a high pay country and yet it is an expensive one. So when it comes to professional, pro-professional, it's pretty expensive. And this doesn't always work because 90%, or just to be accurate, I don't want to be saying numbers, that sounds really crazy. Let's say 75% of companies in UAE are SMEs, small to medium enterprises. And for them, cost is kind of everything, especially that they have to pay a lot

to get some production going. So when they can't cut it through production houses, they have to find other means, and these other means are mainly freelancers. Now, freelancers are great in this country. Many freelancers work with us, actually. But the noise they introduce allow for many noise for many incompetent personnel to flee the market or like flood the market.

So this is where, like to summarize it, to put it in a real life scenario, for example, a company A, A.K. Films for some reason, hi guys, we need this, blah, blah, blah, discover it. Okay, quotation. That's too high. Thank you. they go and hire somebody they come next time hi eka films blah blah blah we want the same project can you code for us yeah it's the same code okay great let's go for it you know the the kind of the scenario where shut up and take my money and and it would be while we know why we get to know them work with them we're like what happened uh did you you didn't go through the project or so no we did

But we had to work with freelancers. Now, not all freelancers are bad. Actually, most of them are good, so I'm just clarifying that. But they lack the business skills kind of things. So that noise that is introduced in the market makes its way to the decision makers. To be very skeptical about making the final call. it takes time to get a project approved it takes time to kick it in because of the competition so

i may have just took you through a bit of a crazy journey on that but because actually that's what happens the competition makes that market it slows the process has like a like you know a heartache or something they don't know what to do so they have to go back and forth back and forth that back up with you. Yeah, it definitely slows the process for companies that are looking for these types of services. And you basically introduced a lot of challenges that are being faced all over the world as well, which is essentially a lot of small to medium sized businesses. Their budgets are getting tighter and tighter, more constrained. So they're trying to find the best potential bang for buck. And unfortunately, as you said, because all the really high

quality and really good people are going to have a baseline that is much higher than normal. Anyone new coming in with a smaller budget, you know, like it's like low enough that companies are going to start to look into that. But then they face that same problem, like you said, you know, not enough business skills, not enough like experience to kind of execute on that. It's a roller coaster and a dilemma that we live by every day nowadays. And it hasn't been like that over the years. So yeah, it kind of like now it maxed out.

We can see it happening more. And this is because of the international talents being attracted to the market. So too many people are working. Actually, we receive emails, messages, WhatsApps every day, every day from people coming from out of the country saying that we are here, we want to collaborate, we want to work with you, and we're coming from this and that and that. And there is no country, name the country, people always want to come. here um i think financially the the whole world still have some issues not only ua so people try to look

for higher paying places and yeah this place is famous for that so are they uh companies that like want to move like relocate to there or they just have a shoot there and they just want to connect for that just for fun um relocate i don't think so i think they they just reopen here as a hub But actually, when you talk about shooting particularly, we work with many companies from outside UAE. Actually, most of our clients are from outside of UAE. Believe it or not. Believe it or not. I mean, we believe it.

Why would we not believe that? Sounds like, I'm challenging you. Believe it. No. But literally, that. That's the case. Many of our clients come from the outside to handle shoots for domestic companies. Right.

Why is that? There's enough competition there where the price, I mean, you could probably find people within your price range, right? So why do they have to go outside? 100%. Now, I think the main reason is that even companies who are here, the ones that I told you about, the open hub. here. They open just a like UIE branch just to be in the Middle East because geographically UAE is like in a center place. So it's good for companies that want to actually, you know,

expand their reach around the work. If you are in the U.S., you're far off. But with a small office with four or five people, maybe that represents you in U.A.E, you have a chance now to connect to the best part of the world. So I think these companies that are here that are hiring companies from outside to come and hire us back to do the shoots are basically incapable of doing that here. They are understaffed, they don't have anybody

who they trust, they don't know what rate. Because, again, small offices, they are not the main branches. They are not HQs. So they have to go and deal with companies that they know in their own. own countries in their mainland and then these companies because they are they are production houses or agencies or marketing houses who know their way around the world have fixers everywhere come and find a local provider and work with them yeah right i have a question i heard this

from another guest but is it true that um because what i heard from those guests is that if you get hired by like an agency and Dubai to go do work there you as the production company would need to front a certain percentage of the total cost of the project which you would then get back after the shoot is done is that true again explain that to that

I am 100% sure it sounded weird to me I don't even know if I'm explaining the way you're I don't even know if I'm explaining it properly but basically they told me that if you're not a local company from Saudi Arabia and you get hired by an agency to go there and do a production a local agency no so for example if you are a company in Canada like a production yeah and you get hired by an agency in Dubai to do a project there oh okay you would have to front like a certain percentage of the cost of the project of which you're getting paid for is that true or

oh okay not if you put it that way but let me tell you the legal way of it so if you want to do a production anyway you got a commission a local company

ah okay so for example you guys are Warner Brothers studios let's say and you want to come to the way let's dream big and you want to come to the Why? To shoot a film, you can't get the permits. You don't have, you are not legally allowed to.

You have to commission a local production house that has to do all the paperwork for you. Even if everybody you're getting is from outside the country. It's like you don't need crew, you don't need equipment, you don't need staff, you don't need anything. You have your locations, you have your everything, you just need a local fixer, a domain. mystic company that represents you, then in that way, in this case, yes, a local company has to represent you in front of an UAE. And with that, of course, you've got to be paying them. But you're paying them for a service. It's like more of like a facilitation service. But when you put it in a way that you have to just offer a percentage or so, I don't think

that's how it works. No, it's a way under. light that crazy stuff like that would be caught easily so yeah no one wants to jeopardize it by making it crazy like that they want people to to want to come here they want people to come and want to shoot here so yeah the only catch is actually they try to encourage or let's say add value to the to local production houses by making them the only go-to when it comes to international productions and i think it's only fair because If you see an international production house coming in and shooting and no one is involved, and you are a production house who's looking for some work, you feel like, oh, come on, come on.

So it makes sense. But that's the extent of it, no more than that. I'm actually also curious, because you're talking about all the production companies in Dubai itself because of also how expensive it can be to hire teams and stuff like that. and people, even just to bring them on as staff, like, would you say that a lot of the people in your competitive network are a small to medium-sized business? Like, I guess the first question is also,

how big is your team right now? Or is it just you as, like, the main person and then you? No, no. We are a small team in place. So a couple of, like how many people? Around seven, eight. That's not small. That's pretty big for a production.

That's a, yeah, I was going to say. It is. It is. Let's call it full. That's medium. That's a hard medium. We don't want to raise now if we say something else. That's like standard medium-sized business because... Yeah. Yeah. I want to say seven, yeah. But we do rely on contractors. And I'm never ashamed to say that because there are many reasons.

Number one is that good talent is never... never on permanent terms. This is, this is not only like, you know, exclusive to E. I believe it works everywhere. A powerful talent would never want to be a part of a company if he's number one making good money, number two is creative and he doesn't want to stop anywhere. So good talent is always for hire and we work, we try to work with the best, always, try to secure the best. Let's say we call them freelance, you know, freelancers who would work on contract basis with us. But we also retain some certain kind of in-house

for different size of projects, especially that, as I said, you have to sometimes work with multiple-sized projects. It's not always the same size. Being a small company, you land big projects, you land sometimes medium-sized. Now we try not to land small ones because they are more time-consuming

then creative and then productive but if needed then yeah and second reason that plays a major role is seasonality and at least industry industry wise our industry is kind of very seasonal and seasonal in a crazy way like okay July August September you're safe to to go anywhere, take a vacation and leave. You're not going to miss a lot. So these particularly, these three months are kind of like the official creatives vacation. That's why everybody just flee the country.

But also around maybe two months post-Christmas to maybe February. It's a Muslim country. So also Ramadan. It's kind of like not much work to do type of months. And what comes after, like Eid and so. So we calculated it. I think out of 12, you have seven working months.

Oh, wow. Five of just working on deals, securing proposals, doing some submissions, but not actually shooting. Right. For us, it's July and August, our slow months. And then September, everyone comes back from their summer vacation and there's a lot of year-end stuff. So it's busy, busy time. January is also sometimes quiet, depending on. But there's a lot of stuff that's like being prepped in January.

Yeah, it's for, it's all pre-production and contract making. So, yeah, it's like not much shooting in January, but a lot of admin and selling. Well, yeah, a lot of admin. Admin is all the time because that's one of the differences between here and maybe Europe. I'm French, by the way, also. So in France, Oort or August is kind of like a no-brainer. Companies actually lock their doors and leave. It's not like some employees are there.

No, they all leave together. You call them, no one is answering. So we don't have that here. You have always people that are placing people while they are away. So business is always going. And throughout the non-season, like out of season, we do admin work. We do kind of all proposals and stuff. Yeah.

You guys are in production so you know that 70% of the work is pre-approval. Once they're approved, it's easy-peasy. Yeah, okay, got it. Yeah, let's start creating. Let's do the script. Let's go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Shoot, done. But most of the time was consumed by, like, the back and forthing of what's happening with the client.

Let's kind of see how you got your company to, like, seven people. Like, what was that process like for you? Because, I mean, you started, later than last, you started 2017, right? You said? Yeah, around 2018, yeah. 2018 so to go from in the span of seven or so years like to seven employees that's that's pretty impressive like how how did you find yourself growing to that stage did you have any like accelerator moments or was there something you need your contracts um okay so first when

I started I wanted to start with a small team and me as a creator first so even I used to be shooting myself because I did grow in this industry and I'm a director of photography one way or another so when I used to film I consider myself part of the crew and for that I needed to secure first my post-production team so these are the only people that I can't actually rely on freelance I have to have the team who understand understand the style, understand the work, understand the kind of footprint that we walk by.

So these are always the first team members. And then, of course, admin work needs to be done because I try always to run away from it. So this is where we look for our second mother. And that's always our main booking coordinator, And then she has to be, she has to be a woman because we need someone to take care of us, old boys. It's a balance. Exactly, it's a balance.

Can't be in just a locker room, you know. Throughout the years, so around 2020, one of the biggest talents that I worked with, his name is Smile, came to me because I worked with him for a long year. and he's a creative, crazy photographer and photographer. So I used to work with him on project basis first, and then one day we became good friends, and then he came and told me, I want to be part of it and not just work with you on contract. I want it in. I want to be part of it.

I like the way you guys are, I like the way you run things. I like the way that this is built, and I want to be part of it. And I couldn't have been happier to partner with someone like him because one thing that starts me a bit from partnering with investors is like I like to partner with someone who understand industry, not just understand spending on the industry, understand the challenges, understand that, yeah, someone to go to where you're so frustrated from what's happening, for example.

And he was it, so now one more person added to the team, and then some changes through the year. years. I don't remember all the milestones, but I think it was it was a journey where we built up. So I don't want to go through the kind of cliche in terms of being a family and whatnot, but we're friends. We're trying. We're all friends. It's how it should be. Like for example, no one, we don't we don't go to office. We have the office, but whoever wants to go to office, go to office. No one is asked to go to office. We actually try to make it all easy for everybody to access whatever they want, especially that we deal with footage. So we have a lot

of servers to upload and offload footage from and you know what footage are like. So it's always like work to your convenience and work on your task. Don't stop at anything. And like own your, on your, like, your responsibility. Be accountable. And this is where everything really flourished for us. So it's never about who was responsible for this, who was responsible for that. This is your task, you know what it is.

You deadline it, and if we are good on deadlines together, then the rest is yours. So it's more of, no one feels like they're trapped, with their job, but more of, they love their job, even though it comes with a lot of difficulties. So it's not a walk in the park for sure. No, it definitely sounds like you've gotten a good unit put together. But like what we're curious also about is how you got it to the point that you were able to bring in these people, right? Because the one thing that a lot of people in our industry is always toying with, especially like, you know, if you're starting your own business, is like,

now there's one or two of us maybe, you know, we're getting a lot of projects coming in, we're hiring freelancers, but what were the business decisions or the business factors that allowed you to make the decision to start expanding into bigger teams? Like, what was the big push? Always the feasibility. So any particular task that was assigned to, let's say, a temporary or, a freelance that was jeopardized for some reason. The decision always follows with,

this has to be done by a team member, not by someone from outside the company. So a quick example, you work with a great editor and that editor one day stopped responding for some reason and you're in the middle of a project. And yeah, it happens because freelancers, number one, they tend to, suddenly lose grip of some stuff.

And sometimes they get involved in personal shit that they don't even inform you about. It barely happened maybe in my life, but it happened. And when it did, I was like, okay, so this is where I'm not in control. The company is not in control. And we lose face. We don't only lose a project.

Losing a project is always easy. You can always bail in the middle of it and return back your pay and save yourself from the whole hustle. But when you do that, you lost face in front of your client. You're done. So and and and and and and what hurts you is that you guys are not like that. You're not reckless. You care. The only thing that you lost control if or you the part where you lost grip is where you

relied on someone who wasn't as involved as yourself. So for that particular reason, we started, like, I was always thinking of, okay, what are them, the areas that I can't just keep relying on outsiders or outsources. These are the areas where I have to work with people, even if, I know where you're coming from, also having to be stuck with, like, a specific responsibility and having to to always be sustainable with payroll. This is not easy. A small company that works on seasons, it's problematic.

Seven months. It is. But on the other hand, yes, if we just maybe found our formula, I think. The formula did work. It's not always raining roses. There are many difficulties that we pass through and, yeah, even cash flow issues sometimes. as long as

we know the kind of formula that keeps the ship moving I think we're called yeah you need a small area to take care of you especially when it comes to separating creative from

client fronting this is one of the problems that I developed a knowledge of over my career you gotta separate your creative from your client frontend you gotta Because clients sometimes, because of an urgency or because of lack of knowledge,

they disrupt the whole creative process without knowing. They actually self-sabotage the project, their project, because of stressing on small things. Like, for example, stressing on the delivery has to be after an hour, not tomorrow morning. why because this is what what it this is how it has to be but just that creative is stuck somewhere needs to just fix a small thing to give you that perfect like result it's not always it's not always scientific it's not one plus one equals two in creatives mind block is is problematic let's say mental state is a lot of is it plays a big part

So having a team is mainly just to create a small shield. So even if some of our creatives, many of our creatives, are outsourcers or our freelances that are pros that we work with here, but having a small team shields them from having to work or to deal with small stuff and allow, and also, your team, when they learn about you, they are part of you, they learn how to take, let's say, how do I put it? Okay, so briefs, okay, in production, we call it briefs or inquiry, many terms. client brief is never a brief

it's short from a brief it's more of casual talk over the phone they never give you all the information never actually you receive minimum information that I find it surprising that many people are okay or are capable of budgeting over a call as impossible I need a lot of information to do that

So having a small team that has the know-how and build it over years shields you from mistakes like that. And I'm talking about mistakes that happened to us a lot, a lot. Over-budgeting, under-budgeting, plus, you know, because of misunderstanding or because feeling, being under pressure from the inquirer to give up figures. you know it's always like if you give up the number you either win or lose it's a kind of a flip a coin type thing yeah so yeah this is not going to happen if you don't have your team that cares and that's that's what i know that we need that even a small team but we need a small team to to take care of it i really like

how you said the client self-sabotaging the project it's such a good way to word it because that happens so often so true it happens always yeah sometimes they come into inquiries with like outrageous demands when they really don't need all that. Then you quote for that and then that was it. But in reality, they needed like maybe 20% of what they were demanding. 20% sometimes is a overstatement. Yeah. It's like they wanted the moon and back in terms of production level.

And then in the reality, they were like, oh, we just needed like a quick talking head. It's like, why didn't you start with that? my my example for this is always they call do you have like you know the big sword for like the end of times war and we'd be like yeah okay we need it because we want to butter a bread oh my god oh my god that's exactly how it's good that's pretty funny that's pretty funny i like to call it hunting trying to swat a fly with a bazooka that's that's what i like to 100% yeah that is that is the sample yeah um i'm just wondering do you uh like in terms of sales uh do you do a lot of outbound stuff or do you rely a lot on inbound that is a great question

and mostly inbound we we work digitally mostly on inbound channels um you name it all the kind of inbound channels, mostly organic because it's kind of misleading. It doesn't work well with our industry. Now, because we are a very B2B entity, and when I mean very B2B, we receive inquiries from individuals for productions that we don't take. And not because we hate to work with them, actually. We usually encourage them not to work with us because we tell them, like, this project is more personal.

And you're going to be hit with a big bill. So I don't think that's what you want. And we sometimes end up giving out some freelance numbers for them to reach to because they only want some small stuff. So being B2B, we work with the 9 to 5ers. We don't work with whoever is awake at every time. We work with people who go to work and come back from work. And we usually are operational only with them.

Even we never found the necessity to work in the weekend where many production houses do. But we never did. We work with the people in executives, people who work for companies. And for that, inbound is the thing. Now, of course, we do some kind of outbound. We have our own social work to do. But mostly we, that's the decision that we had to make a long time ago, which is we are content creators. what kind of content should we create for ourselves?

That was the question, yeah? Because, yeah, we create content for people. And, like, should we just leave it open or should we find a way? And the answer was always because we create content for others. We felt that it would just be weird for us to create content, like, no proper content for us. Our content online, which is kind of like awareness raising of brand awareness work or stuff, outbound channels as possible. It's always just either showcasing work in categories, in project bases, or behind the scenes. People love behind the scenes.

They love to see the fuss around equipment and stuff like that. But yeah, actually most of our leads, new leads, are digitally generated. We don't have, let's say, a physical or like a sales force that go out. We rely mainly on digital channels, inbound digital channels to generate leads, yeah. Like Google and SEO type stuff mostly? Yeah, this kind of stuff. That's how I found you. Yeah, well, it's working.

It works. It inbounded a podcast. that wasn't on your bingo card for this year maybe it was maybe yeah all right well I guess

like what's next for you what are you looking at doing the next a little while what are your big big goals or like over the next year or two years or great

okay business wise I want well I hope for us to grow and to sustain and to be larger than life, if possible. But personally, on business capacity, I would like to distance myself a bit from anything but creative.

That's why. My title, by the way, was, okay, funny story. I started off as a CEO, and I downgraded immediately. I found that, oh, my God, there is a lot. So I'm like, no, I'm no CEO. I'm head of production. And then over the years, I was like, okay, still too much for me.

How about creative director guys? And you take care of the rest. It changes. It changes. It changes. So, yeah, my long-term goals is to distance myself from anything but creative and focus only on creative. Guys, one day he's going to reach his goal of being a PA at Anonymous NightFell. Exactly.

Keep it very simple. I want to be the anonymous night if I may say. You know, that's a good idea for like one of, you know those like hidden boss TV? Undercover boss. Yeah, undercover boss thing. You know, an anonymous night. Yeah, dress up like completely different.

It's like, this is our new PA for the day. Actually, I actually think it'd be best if he dresses up as an actual night and no one knows who it is. No one knows. It shows up on set. He is the anonymous night, guys. I would love to be anonymous. But personally, I'm also, well, one thing that business took me away from a bit is filmmaking.

So my last film as a director was in 2018. So, I kind of, like, yeah, I was taken away by the new responsibilities and by the leading chair. And this, well, I did some films throughout the years, but I was producer, I was a director of photography, I was part of multiple films, but I wasn't on the seat that I live for, which is basically the director's seat. So this year, fortunately, I am, we are in the making of a new film. And it's going to be the hit, hopefully. So yeah, hopefully we're starting by Jan. We secured the cast, we secured the crew. And that's what I see myself doing more in the future.

I want to go back to where all this started. Actually, this started a long time ago. I made my first film as a director when I was in college. second year and I'm not talking about a small like a hobbyist film talking about a film like a feature film not a feature it was a short but a long form short around 35 minutes I produced but when I like full crew full ass crew and stuff like that so I was I was fortunate enough to be picked up for such a role I'm not going to hide it I was fortunate and lucky enough to be picked up doing so.

Someone noticed my talent and allowed me to do so. But on the other hand, this is what I lived for ever since. This is where, as an engineer, one day I found myself telling them, oh, chow, guys, I'm back to filmmaking. But, yeah, I do miss being on that seat, going back to that scene. I really can't believe you were in engineering because that is like the complete opposite. Not only that. Take this. I am I worked as a Microsoft certified solutions expert. That's a long time. That was my role for three years here in UAE. I was so into at IT and systems and I was certified at many capacities like Cisco ITIL and you name it.

so I was a consultant in that and then one day I found myself stuck I was I was writing a film that because of how many things I have to do a full year I couldn't finish it so I was like yeah this is it went to my manager to her hi I'm out to like oh no you're kidding

I'm like no I'm not kidding I'm out for good oh look at you now look at you now look at me regretting it regretting it ever since it was hard hard being successful in Dubai you know

entrepreneurship is absolutely dark as hell but yeah I enjoyed every bit of it even though it was really hard over the years yeah no it definitely is like a rewarding path wait so you went from

you went from You had a secure full-time job, and then you just, did you go straight into freelancing and then start your own thing? Yeah, I had no other option. So when I left my job, I was, well, I had some, a couple, like two titles in my name. I told you I started doing films back at school. So I wanted to enter this industry, but I had nothing in my name. I'm a director that is barely considered a starter. and I write stuff, I write films, but again, this is not enough to make ends meet in this industry.

So what should I do? What should I do? I spent a full year on my savings after learning, you know, video production, video editing, color correction, and grading. I had to buy my own equipment and start making short films myself just to get something. rolling. And a year after, or like 11 months, particularly, I was hired for my first freelance job. Amazing. Yeah. That's great. It sounds like you hustled the first year and I hustled for many years. But, like, yeah, we're all still hustling. We are all still hustling. Yeah. It's the tip of the iceberg. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. All right, well, I think we can probably ended here

so oh actually the anonymous night I guess because you wanted to get the how did you come up with an anonymous night was it just random words that fit the initials of your name no it wasn't random so here's the thing anonymous

kind of stuck with me since V for Fondetta long time ago oh okay okay yeah and it got stuck with me that name on its own an English word that sounds so cool for me. It's like anonymous. It's, you know, it's hard. It's big. It's anonymous. And it's anonymous. I like being anonymous. And back then, when I was a freelance first years, you know,

the years that I told you about, I was working under my own name. I was Ameri Kani. And even my website back then, as a freelancer was Amurkani Films, literally.com. I think we lost ownership of that domain now. So, and my email was Amr at Amurcani.com, Amurcanifilms.com. It was the weirdest thing ever. I hated when people ask me, what's your email? It sounds so funny and so full of myself. Say it twice. And so when I was coming up with the name, I was also asking people around me.

I had a small team, even though they were all freelancers like me, but I tend to create teams around me always. I'm always a good coordinator. So I was like, okay, guys, so I like the word anonymous, but anonymous films sounds, you know, sounds just too blunt. And they were like, oh, you're not going to go with Ameri County films. I'm like, I don't know. That's, again, too full of myself.

People wouldn't like that. A company that is named after me is never going to pick off. But I like the idea of having my initials in it. So AK. And they were like, yeah, but AK, it has. a no meaning. I said, who said, has no meaning. It has a meaning. It's anonymous night. It works, right? There you go. Just like that. Is it around the time the dark night was popular, you know?

Exactly. Probably around that. And also the word night itself is kind of, for me also, is a very powerful word because it sounds like night night, but it's, with the K, silent K, which is pretty awesome. So, yeah, it came together just like how many creative thoughts, the best creative thoughts in the world, came

out of nothing, right? Just blue. Of course, I'm not saying that the name is that brilliant. It's a normal name, but yeah, that's the story. Initials, wanting my initials, but didn't want it just to mean one thing. I wanted to mean more.

And funny enough, my son, my only son his name is Adam so I'm he's only three now but I'm thinking of like yeah one day he's going to take it

he can take over grew up and say well it was named after me and I'm going to be lost in lost in dirt yeah there you go Adam nights I can see it in the future

where he's standing there and saying well being Adam Kani that's pretty much what's the company about and I'll be from the other word looking at him and I'm like no no no no it's funny yeah all right oh my thank you so much

I got to do the social shout out so if you guys want to find Amher on Instagram go to AK Films A.E so that's at AKfilms A.E and then his website is A.kfilms. A.e. We're all about A.com. Not dot com. We're expanding past.com now, okay? These are unsurringing past.

Different words at the end. We're all dot Aet in you now, yeah. It's shorter, so. Chorter, sounds better. Yeah. But yeah, Amar, it was great to have you on this show. Yeah, we appreciate you sharing your origin story and how anonymous night came to be.

and yeah thank you for inviting me actually thank you for allowing me to express many of like you know the thoughts that are hidden because yeah let's face it there aren't much times where you get to go back and say it all and yeah i'm a talker so thank you for listening to me as well that's good it's good it saves me the saves me the the the editing no no just having to come up with the words you know the effort of having to come up with the words he just went off and I'm like perfect okay we ask one question he answers three other ones absolutely yeah that's me I take over clients must be happy at that listening to me and for having me and I really love what you do I had a chance to go through many of your podcasts and I really

feel I really appreciate that I'm now one of you our guests. Thank you so much. Yeah, making Creatives Grab Coffee history. Thank you. Part of the collage now. Thanks for listening to this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. Please make sure to follow and engage with us on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and your favorite podcast app.

Creatives Grab Coffee is created by LAPS Productions, a video production company based in Toronto, Canada. Creators Grab Coffee is also sponsored. Bye. My name is Maran. Welcome to Canada Film Equipment. We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes.

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