Creatives Grab Coffee - #111 Filming Under Fire (ft. Highlight Films)

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

In this episode, we sit down with Noam Shalev, founder of Highlight Films, to discuss a side of the production industry few get to see. Based in Israel, Noam’s team handles everything from high-end corporate shoots to gritty news coverage in active conflict zones. We dive into what it really means to be a "fixer" , how remote production technology has allowed directors in LA to direct crews in Tel Aviv , and the massive logistical pivot Noam’s company made on October 7th—shifting from seven corporate productions to managing 15 news crews overnight. Noam also opens up about the emotional toll of documenting history , the safety protocols required when filming under fire , and why, despite the chaos, he refuses to leave. Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 00:21 - From Doc Filmmaker to "The Fixer" 02:08 - Defining the Role: What does a Fixer actually do? 02:45 - How COVID changed remote production forever 07:17 - Why Noam started doing corporate work 11:09 - October 7th: Pivoting from corporate shoots to war coverage overnight 15:56 - Safety Logistics: Walkie-talkie apps and missile alerts 17:22 - Storytime: Hiding tapes in underwear in Iraq 20:55 - The emotional toll of interviewing survivors 34:55 - The impact of political instability on the tech sector 37:40 - Managing a business when staff are called to reserve duty 43:12 - Why stay? The pull of "Home" vs. moving to LA 47:51 - "Real Chaos": Why cameras are treated like weapons 50:47 - Building a reputation without advertising 56:01 - Protecting the business: Deposits and spotting bad clients 1:05:40 - Closing thoughts🎙️ About Our GuestNoam ShalevFounder & Creative Director — Highlight Films🎧 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

All righty. Welcome, welcome to another episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. Today we got Noam Shalev from Highlight Films, who is based out of Israel. And Noam, welcome to the show. Thank you. Good to be here. So before we kind of dive into the conversation, give us a little backstory into who you are and how you kind of got into the industry. I came to this industry a little bit more than 30 years ago, started as a documentary filmmaker. And then, uh, I came to this industry a little bit more than 30 years ago, started as a documentary filmmaker. And then I produced and directed documentaries for the local Israeli channels. In 1998, almost 30 years ago, I initiated a documentary film that nobody in Israel wanted to buy. It was about news cameraman covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from both sides.

And I didn't know what to do. I was quite heavily invested in it. I was left with no money. and then a group of producers from Channel 4 in England came to Israel and wanted to hire me as a director cameraman. And I said, listen, I'm an okay director. I'm not a good cameraman. You have to take a real cameraman.

But if we meet here, let me show you something. And I showed them just a short clip of my footage. And they said, okay, you are coming with us back to London. And that began my international career. It was a special documentary for Channel 4 in England. And after that, and since then, I've been working only for international broadcaster and streamers doing documentaries. And after a few years, I realized that everywhere I go, film markets, film festivals,

people ask me to help them arrange things in Israel. Can you get an interview with these? Can you get me a camera crew for that day? And I realized, hey, I'm all for doing favors, but there's a market here. And I established the first company in Israel that professionally provides production services. And that's what we've been doing until now. Amazing. So it kind of became like a fixer in a way.

Yeah, the fixer, yeah. Like a fixer. But a fixer is, it sounds derogative and it is derogative, but that's the term that everybody uses around the word. It's sort of line producers slash production manager slash local journalist and researcher. And now I have in my company more than 10 professional fixers. This is what they do. Some of them specialize in documentaries, others in news, yet others in corporate videos. And I think I'm still not leaving it in with this term, but you can't use all the

all the pronouns needed to describe the fixer's job. And we are doing it very professionally. And, you know, as an established company, we have protocols for everything and what are you doing in an emergency? And how do you handle a crew from a certain country coming to Israel? And many of our productions now, and it began in COVID, basically, are done remotely. The director is in L.A., the producer is in London. My camera crew is in Tel Aviv.

and they all talk to each other. The director can see the footage live from the camera, make comments, tell the cameraman, can you pen to the left or can you pull out a little bit? And everything is working fine. And this is the greatest thing that COVID brought to our lives because people couldn't fly here, still wanted to do films. And these technical solutions, which are,

when we look back on it now from 2026, it seems so simple, but it didn't exist. until then because everybody wanted to come to Israel, and grab a flight and come to Israel. And COVID changed it. So suddenly it became a business in which you don't really have to meet the client. The client stays at home and still doing a full collaboration with the local crew. Even podcasts like this.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's too cold in your hand. So I'd rather stay here in Israel and talk to you. Yeah. You're better off with that kind of weather. there but um i'm i'm curious what has been like uh some of the big challenges of like having this huge demand of people coming in like what are some things that you're noticing that people

are coming in like are there people that know how the process would work or is it people who are new to like you know working remotely like that like how is that evolved the first time is quite hard for everyone doing their remote production because even if it's a very experienced director or and he sits somewhere around the world and getting the feed live from the camera or seeing two or three feeds at the same time. It's hard to talk to someone who's not near you

when you are used to working with the cinematographer, you know, just touching your shoulder and suddenly you have to talk to him, you don't even know how he looks. But, you know, after a few minutes and after a few requests and answers, they realize that, hey, it's a piece of cake. I just have to say, and it happens.

Yeah, there is a delay of two seconds or one second, but it happens. And people who start doing remotely don't go back. They keep on doing remote jobs. We have clients who are working for on a weekly basis doing shoots in Israel remotely. And now they're so used to it. They don't even remember that there is an option of going on an airplane and coming to Israel. From London, it's a five hours flight, and you can be here, do the shoot and go back at the same night. But once you get used to it, it is so easy and so comfortable.

And you can get as many angles as you want. Even with a three-cum shoot, we can add another small camera or GoPro to take the entire set. And then the director can, you know, open a side window and see what's happening on the set. Who are the people working? What are they doing? Where are the camera based in relation to each other? So it makes life much, much easier. And everything is immediate. You don't have to spend time on travel.

You don't have sleeping hotels. You just make the shoot and get it. That was funny. You said like you have a camera that shows the entire set for the client, not just the final shot, which is what most is what we usually do. We show the final shots with the video stream. We've never shown like, oh, this is what literally everything looks like. This is a position.

This is where the bags are. We deal direct with the client. That's why, right? Like he's dealing with that. director. Yeah, yeah, you can see, you can see a set. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. For us, they just want to see the final shot. We just need that to sign up on the final shot. I'm kind of curious about like, again, going back to your early beginnings. Like you started off as like a documentary filmmaker and then you kind of found an opening and like news content. How did you kind of make the jump from that also to doing corporate work? I actually never liked doing corporate work.

It seems for the way of thinking of a documentary filmmaker, I thought it's boring. I didn't understand the challenges and the satisfaction in doing a nice corporate shoots. And Israel, as you know, is not the most stable place on earth in terms of security, politics, and the challenges of reality. And we had last decade, we had a few instances in which there was no work. Nobody could come to Israel because of different wars, first in Lebanon than in Gaza.

And we didn't have any work to do. It worked before the beginning of remote services. And I said, I have the personnel. I'm paying the salaries. I have the equipment. What can I do to fill in, you know, at least some work that we can rely on, even in times of wars and military operations. And then I started going into corporate videos.

And actually, I never marketed it or tried to sell it to clients. It just came. Once I put on the website that we're doing corporate shoots, the corporate shoots start coming here. A lot of return customers, big high-tech companies that film all over the world. And for them, I'm their guy in Israel and in the Middle East. And at a certain point, I realize that, hey, it's quite satisfactory, you know. When you do a good corporate shoot, the client is happy, the footage looks great,

you manage to, you know, to say what you want to say and everybody's happy with it. Fantastic. Let's go home. We don't have to hear sad things or cry in the end of the day in order to make it a satisfactory day. Besides, a lot of the corporate videos we do are documentary style. It's not only your suit sitting in a corner office and talking about how great their cooperation is. It's a lot of documentary, run and gun, interviewing different people in the company without a script. And more and more companies are doing it in recent years, both for internal users in their organization. and in order to show that, hey, there are leaving people behind the products and services that we try to sell.

Yeah, there's two things I thought I want to touch on as we go through this conversation. The first one was kind of like, I'm kind of curious how you kind of navigate a situation where it's like there's war and it's unstable and whatnot. And there might not be work for prolonged periods of time. Like how do you kind of navigate that type of situation? It's hard and I always try to base the company on freelancers. It doesn't always work. I need regular staff who knows the work, who know what we're doing. I cannot, when the company was still small, I controlled everything.

I was the first one who answers the email, the last one who sends the bill and doing everything in the middle and getting hourly updates on what's happening on the shoots. This can be done when you have one or two shoots a day. But when you have 15 or 20, you cannot. So I have to delegate and I have to trust people. And I need these people to be trained and able to cover for me, talking to the client and solving solutions without warning. And in the end, you have to gamble.

But then reality comes and, you know, gives you a slap. That's what happened to us on October 7, 23. we were before the most complicated corporate production week ever. We had like seven big corporate shoots beginning on Sunday, October 8th. And I had, you know, throughout the Friday, I was working on who begins where so they don't meet each other in the facility house because there's going to be traffic jam over there. And how do I arrange everything?

and then October 7 came. In the morning, we saw the news, we saw what's happening down south. And one by one, I got the email saying, we're sorry, there will be no shoot tomorrow. By noon, I think. Everything was canceled, except those who live in the West Coast.

It took them a few more hours. But then on October 8th in the morning, we had 15 crews going out for news. So instead of the seven corporate shoots, We had 15 new shoots, and this number turned to 20 and 25 during the first weeks of the war, because everybody wanted to come to Israel and film it. And there were flights to Israel, so we had journalists coming, landing in the airport, a fixer waiting for them.

The crew is already waiting in the car. He jumps to the car, they drive south to the fighting area. And it continued from October until Christmas or New Year's that he, So it was three months of very intensive work, only news, only after that we began doing the documentary work, with people from all over the world. Some of them coming to Israel on a short notice and asking us, tell me a little bit about what's happening. I understand some terrorists came, but who are these terrorists? Who are the Palestinians? Where are you fighting? What's happening? They had no idea about what's happening. and when I did my rounds between the crews in the southern front,

I often sat down with the reporter and I wrote his or errors a pistol camera because they had no idea what's happening. It was dangerous. It was stressful because we had rockets and shells and ammunition exploding all over the place and very hysterical people. Yet, you know, you have to tell them, okay, that's what's happening now. Tell them ABC. and in the next broadcast in two hours,

let's do a personal story about somebody who saw the action on Saturday. It was quite complicated, very challenging, but very satisfying. And I'm not talking about an Israeli who wants to show the Israeli propaganda. I'm not working for the State of Israel. I'm working for myself.

But it's always good when you see a client doing a live broadcast, telling the truth and telling a good story. And they don't lie and they don't invent and they don't twist the reality. They're saying it as is. And it's my job, my people's job, to bring them to deliver the opportunity to interview people, to see stuff, to be by themselves when something happens, suddenly a rocket falls on the next building.

So once you experience it and you report it, everything looks. much more authentic and real. And it also affects the state of mind of the reporter or the journalist on the ground. They're not just coming to be a pretty face in front of the camera. They are doing real journalistic work, and there were black jackets because it's dangerous.

It's not, they're not just modeling protective gear. So it was stressful, but it was one of the best times I remember in terms of knowing that we do it right. and knowing that between my clients every night, we are broadcasting from Israel to around one billion people throughout the globe and telling them what's happening, what is the biggest news story ever to come out of Israel? Man, to be able to basically change company on such a pivot,

like on such a once-in-a-lifetime type situation like that, like from corporate to immediately turning into like news broadcast to kind of flip that around. I can't imagine what the logistics must have been, especially if you said there was 15 crews that you were managing. Like I mean, like one of the things I would probably be thinking is also how do I make sure that the crews are safe in a situation like that? Like what was that kind of like thinking or process like in terms of relaying that concern? When you have one crew in a dangerous zone, you can arrange.

for them to get the alerts immediately. When they drive in the south of Israel and later in the north, when the war started there, they are not allowed to hear radio in the car. And windows must be at least a crack open. So you hear the siren if there's an alert outside. But what we did in the first day of the war, I assembled a, we called it a back office coordination unit

and it's people sitting at homes, connected to each other but getting all the updates live and each crew going out would share their exact location so if we know that in the next 30 seconds they're going to be a missile attack on the city of Ashkelon

in South Israel then my coordinator knows which team is in Ashkelon or on the way to Ashkelon so she calls them actually in the first in the second day of the war we couldn't use the cellular network It was so malfunctioning that we switched to apps of walkie-talkies,

and they work brilliantly because then you don't have to dial and to wait for somebody to answer. It's instant. So she just pressed the button and said, guys, say cover now, in 20 seconds, you're going to get shells. And they stopped the car, ran outside, lie on the ground, waited for the shell to explode or for the rocket to hit, and back to the car and continue. But it's risky.

I am proud. touched wood that I have never lost the crew. I was in one dire situation. One of my crews was in one dire situation years ago in Iraq, during the war with the U.S. in 2003. We had a very complicated shoot with the U.S. Army, and my crew were on the way to take a flight from Baghdad airport to Amman Jordan.

And we had protocols at the time because Baghdad was kind of messy. So they took the camera out to parts and hid them between clothes and the tapes, we didn't use a storage card. The tapes, the cameraman put it in, the cameraman, the cameraman, in their underwear. And they used to make fun of me and say,

listen, I don't put tapes in my underwear, I'm gonna put it. And they did. And they were stopped by an armed gang on the way to the airport. just in the entrance to the airport, they robbed everything, everything, but they couldn't get the tape

because the tapes were in the underwear. And then they wanted money, and my orders are always, if somebody robs you, give them everything. Try to leave the tapes or the memory cards to the end, but give them your money,

and the cameraman gave them their money and made a joke, and he said, can you leave me like $50 for some whiskey at the airport and in return they sprayed the car, the rental car with bullets and my sound man was

heard bleeding from the hand. They were scared totally scared and that's a lesson for you. If somebody is robbing you, you don't really need to use humor at this time. Give them the money, just get the hell out of the. Don't joke.

Humor doesn't always work across criminal activities. But in Israel, we are very careful. There is no situation and no shot that's worth risking human life or risking somebody's health. I'm saying it to everybody, to my cameraman who can be very enthusiastic and I want to be the first one there. I want to film the action. You film the action, but you stay safe.

I don't want to go to your funeral and say, I told him so. Nobody should die during this work. We're doing it. In the end, we are part of the entertainment industry. We are not changing the world with our images. This is something you learn in the university and journalism courses. We are not changing reality. We are doing it as part of entertainment,

of part of the information that people around the world consume. Don't be killed for it. It's not worth it. How do you... I mean, you're dealing with some pretty crazy situations. Yeah. The worst we get here is like, you know, I accidentally stub my toe in the morning. But like over there, you got bombs falling over. Yeah. And it's very cold here. That's like the worst that gets over here.

But like how do you like mentally, how do you stay focused and not let all these external stressors like kind of like affect your your mental well-being as like a business owner too? Because you're running a pretty, I mean with 15 freelancers, you're running a pretty big operation, right? 15 fixers In addition with the camera I can give you a very convincing answer but it will not be truthful it deeply affects you

not news necessarily during the news part the first three months I was very focused I you know in the end of the day I set on the budget excels and on planning the next days and I was

really into work. I started taking it inside and being affected by it only the second phase of the war when we started doing documentaries. And one of the first projects that we got was from L.A., the USC Shoah Foundation. Shaw Foundation is a public fund established by Steven Spielberg in the 90s, with the purpose of interviewing as many Holocaust survivors, possible. And they have interviewed more than 55,000 Holocaust survivors, each of them sat in front of the camera and

told their life story, where they grew up, where they were sent to the camps, which camps, what they were going through their hours of interview. And then on October, I don't remember 8 or 9, I got a phone call from the Shaw Foundation in L.A. saying

we want to start filming in Israel again. And I tell them, guys, we are in the second Holocaust now. Is it really the best time to discuss the original Holocaust? And told me, no, no, no, we don't mean the original. We want to start the same thing as we did with the Holocaust survivors with the survivors of October 7. And within a few months, we have completed 400 interviews

with survivors of October 7. People who sat at home and suddenly terrorists raided their villages. people that have seen their family members killed right near them. Others who were taken by Hamas' hostages and later returned to Israel. Injured, briefing families, everybody. And this was the hardest experience for me, because when you sit with someone for a couple of hours and they share with you the most horrible experiences they experienced.

And it's, it happened last week. It's not something that happened 50 years. It happened last week. I had one case of people coming back from the funeral of the sun and sitting and talking to us. And you cannot, you cannot disconnect from it. You cannot say at the end of the day, okay, let's do the Excel.

Let's work on the budgets now. The day is over. It stays. And I did the same thing. After a year, I was hired by the Museum of Foursem. tolerance in Jerusalem to direct a museum exhibition. And I took 40 women, Israeli women, Jews, Muslim, Christians who experienced the war. And I interviewed them for between two and five minutes interview.

It's like testimonies. Give me a summary of what happened for the museum exhibition. And, you know, I found myself a father of two daughters. standing in front of a mother who lost both her daughters on the same day in the Nova Party in the South. And she's talking to me

and she's not crying. And I'm listening and I'm crying because how can you even fat on it? How can you understand what's happening to these people? I know if something like that happened to me, I wouldn't get out of bed ever. I won't be able to continue living. and you carry it with you and you take it with you.

It's not something, it's not the kind of baggage that I can go to a psychologist and talk to them for a few sessions and it will go away. It's always there. I try to balance. I try to read things that have nothing to do with Israel and wars. I try to watch sitcoms at night before I go to bed. It's in a way to create this content mix between, what you've done during the day and what you're doing before you go to bed.

But it stays. It became part of me. I was never a sad person. I'm not melancholic. But when you're dealing so intensively with sad stories and with people whose entire world was destroyed. And you can't just, you know, say, okay, that was yesterday's job. Today we're doing working on a comedy. It should be fine. It stays with you. So yes, like many people in Israel, I'm traumatized. Maybe in the change between traumatized and

post-traumatized, we all are. We've seen horrible things. Israel as a state, and I'm talking about the local media now, the media is also post-traumatic. So we're They cover it by the chase after events. They didn't happen yet. I'm talking about both TV channels and the big websites and the radio stations. In Israel, in the past month, the only talk, the first item on every news bulletin was, will the United States attack around today or later this week? And everybody's talking about it all the time.

So when you talk to someone and tell him, listen, we're going to talk to next. Sunday, he answers you, hope it's going to be after the war or during the war. Everybody's... Now it didn't happen yet. There's no war. There's no attack. But the media is so busy with it. Talking about it all the time, as if

the war has begun already. No, it didn't. In Polly Market, the bets on an American attack on Iran are still 3%. Relax it. In Israel, nobody's relaxed. It's the feeling

that something terrible is going to happen any minute now, it exists. And it took me a short one-week vacation in Aruba. I returned from it last week to realize that, hey, people live their life calmly. They enjoy life. They don't think all the time about the next imminent attack. If there's an attack, we're going to hear about it. It's fine. But they don't deal with dangerous and risks and threats and existential threats.

And this is part of the very basic malfunctioning of the Israeli society. I try to stay above it. I try to not to throw all the frustrations of being in this time and age on my clients, but to explain to them more methodically what's happening here. And yes, to scrutinize what's coming out from the Israeli media because the pace is unbelievable. I was to tell a joke 20 years ago in the beginning of the century,

we had a lot of terrorist attacks. And almost every morning, between 2000, 2003, almost every morning there was some kind of a terrorist attack, a suicide terrorist, a bomb exploding on a bus somewhere. So, you know, when something like that happens in England or in the States, in the 5 o'clock, and then the 7 o'clock or 8 o'clock news you hear. Yes, this morning a terrorist went from here to there, shot, fired, killed.

In Israel, if the attack took place at 7.10 in the morning, at 7.30, they would say 20 minutes ago a terrorist exploded himself in a bus station. At 8 o'clock, it's not news anymore because everybody know it. They start the 8 o'clock bulletin by, as a reaction to this morning's terrorist attack, The Prime Minister said that ABCD, because everybody knows the news already. The news cycle is so fast. And within 20 minutes, 30 minutes, the entire country knows what happens. And let's talk about the reaction now.

It's not a normal way to live, but it's something that was developed over the years, over a very chaotic and very aggressive living in this country. I was very hopeful that it would change. in my lifetime and I was for many years I tried to do anything I can to bring peace between Israel and its neighbors these attempts were all stopped in October 7 not only by me by many others we realized that there will not be peace not because of them or because of us because of everyone it's impossible to make peace when you have such deep bleeding wounds in both sides, on both sides.

And my company for many years have been a symbol of peace and cooperation. In addition to my Israeli crews and fixers, I have Palestinians cruise and fixers in the West Bank. And I had the Palestinian cruise and fixes in Gaza. Now I have only fixes

left. The two cameraman who used to work with us were killed. I don't have any more cameraman in Gaza for now. My fixers in Gaza, these are people I never met because I'm not allowed to go to Gaza. They're not allowed to come out.

We only talk on the phone or sometimes on WhatsApp video. I know them very well. I know their families. They know me. We trust each other. Although it's really in Gaza? Israelis look at me like, you have employees in Gaza?

And you paid them? I paid them. And they trust me with the money. And I trust them with the work. And we cooperate in full. They talk to my people sometimes. when we had to bring international clients cross the border. So the Gaza fixer speaks to the Tel Aviv fixer over the phone,

and everything is fine. And they live in a terrible reality there, and I feel very bad for them. And I remember one of the first calls I got on October 7 was from my Gaza fixer, and he told me, Noam, it's a terrible day for you, but it will end in a terrible year for us. for the Gazans, and he was so right. I didn't even think about it at the time, but I just thought about what happened to us,

what happened in Israel, the slaughter that took place on such massive scale, but he understood that what's going to happen next. And now he and his family live in a tent on the seashore of Gaza. It's still winter, mind you. They have no idea what's going to... Where they're going to live?

They don't have a house. His entire family doesn't have a house. There are refugees for the second or third time. And nobody's solving this problem. I'm not going to go into politics, the Trump plan and everything. We cover it on a daily basis in our reports. But there's no future. And there's no future if you plan to have kids or grandkids.

Why shall they grow up in a place that's soaked with blood and has only wars to promise its children for the future? And many Israelis are living and going out to Europe, to the States, to Canada, many Palestinians, if they can, they live and go to live somewhere else because this burden is way too much. On the other hand, it makes this area very interesting, brings us a lot of clients. We always have people from all over the world coming here and they want to decipher the Israeli reality to tell the world what's happening here, to explain this. complicated story and you throw into this mix the history of Christianity the history of Judaism the history of Islam and you get a place that's always interesting so that's basically after all this lecture this is what makes me

continue thinking every day I it is so interesting really it's so interesting I can deal with the Gaza War at 9 o'clock in the morning and then at 10 o'clock I have a two hours doom about the latest archaeological finding in Jerusalem and then at 3 p.m. a medical video about the latest innovation in MRI and so it's so great it's so varied it's so interesting and you're allowed to live with the sad parts and you know to continue with it well you've been in it for so long and you've experienced it not only there but like you said also in Iraq with your teams there and like it's it It's crazy to imagine like those types of challenges.

I mean, like we all think about what we do here in the Western world in terms of like corporate clients. As Dario mentioned, you know, some of the things that we think about here as challenges, you know, not that big a deal. You know, you typically leave your work. You don't bring it home all the time. But like in your case, it's one of those difficult things where you have to learn to kind of adjust with it. And you mentioned also before you were doing a lot more corporate work. Do you find that you've kind of gone back to doing a bit more of that now? Or is it because now that there's so many stories that need to be told in Israel,

a lot of people coming there for that type of content? Is that more so now where highlight films has kind of evolved into focusing? It's even more complicated than that because Israel is undergoing now some kind of a legal revolution in which the government, the Netanyahu government, and it's a member of coalition who are fanatics from their right, wing are trying to turn Israel into something else. As a result, many high-tech companies are living Israel. Many startups that began here are moving elsewhere. We had several shoots in London. I sent the crew from Israel to London. And on the same plane, we had the company management

flying from Tel Aviv to London. We rented for them office space in the city of London. And we filmed everything there because they didn't want to go toward to Wall Street or to investors as an Israeli company. They'd rather be looked upon as a British company because of what's happening in Israel right now. Now, the beginning, in the first year of the war, we had zero corporate shoots, nothing. First of all, because many Israelis were not at work,

they were in the army, so you can't really film companies with empty office space. The second reason is that nobody wanted to come. here. The third reason was that the economy itself, you know, grinded to a halt after the beginning of the war. It took a year to start going back into some kind of a routine of corporate troops. And now it's full on, except for the many companies that left Israel. But we're still in the middle, you know, the Gaza war has not ended officially. They're still fighting. The Iran imminent war hasn't begun yet.

It will take place, I believe, in the next few weeks. And we're going to have to wait and see what's happening to Israel after that. Which airlines are going to continue coming here? Which companies would like to produce videos about themselves internationally and say, hey, I'm a great company. I'm based in Israel. Many of them don't want to say it anymore. And if I were a CEO of such a company, I guess I would do that.

the same. I would just take my management and my development team and move to somewhere else where the investors believe that an investment would be good for them, not in a dangerous place that tomorrow can explode and then whatever you invest, you're going to lose it. I didn't even think about the fact that a lot of people are also, they would also be soldiers and whatnot. So then like the offices would be, I didn't even think about that. Now, in Israel, there is a law that you cannot fire an employee who was called to reserve duty. And I have a family member. He's 28 years old, working in a startup company.

And between October 7 and today, a little bit more than 200, two years, he served almost 500 days in his reserve unit. So, yeah, they didn't fire him. They didn't promote him either. Because how can you promote somebody who's not in the office? And he's coming, every three weeks, he's coming for like three, four days, staying high, getting some updates about the projects that he began two years ago and I've already ended. There's no future in it. So, yeah, he keeps on getting his paycheck, but you can't go to school like that. You cannot complete your academic education.

You know, one semester, yes, two semesters, no. You cannot be promoted at work. And not to mention what it does to families where, you know, the spouses have to share between them responsibilities. And suddenly the man is gone and there's only a wife, a mother at home and she has to do everything.

In some families, it's the other way around. I know a woman, a female doctor, emergency doctor, who's been in the reserve duty for 600 days. And her husband quit his job and he's taking care of the kids because there's no other way. Now you can't,

you cannot say to the army, hey, guys, relax, I'm not coming. I've given you what I'm supposed. I'm not coming. You cannot do it. From the very simple reason that if everybody would do it, we would be left without an army

and we will, I don't know, die. And the second thing is that people will look at you as like, what do I mean you are not going? If you are younger than 40 and you're healthy, you're supposed to go. But then you cover stories of those who went to reserve duty and were killed or, you know, lost a limb or got heavily injured. And you understand that it breaks a family. It would never be the same reality again for them.

So it's very complicated. And that's why I said earlier, I believe Israel is still in the trauma phase and we didn't evolve to the post-traumatic phase yet. It would take time. And something has to end for this, at least some of the wars we are running against. What I'm wondering about is like, okay, you're in this obviously very difficult situation. As a business owner, how do you kind of like prepare your business for these types of situations where, you know, some of your freelancers or your fixers might be.

I don't know, actually, if your freelancers or your employees are also reservists as well. Like, how do you kind of like figure out how to navigate that? On October 8, I booked three fixers, new fixers, who worked in the past, but they're not regular stuff as of us. And two of them called me back after an hour, two hours saying, hey, I'm sorry, I just got the phone. call. I'm going to the army. And it happens. Most of my fixes now, I at least 35 years old. And usually in Israel, at 40, unless you volunteer, you don't do reserve duty anymore. But yes, it happens all the time. We had it with drivers in the beginning of the war.

I couldn't get drivers because the drivers were also called with a vans to reserve duty. It happens all the time. You just, you learn to live with it, but you can't. you cannot plan ahead. And it's not only wars, it's also training. You have a production planned for six months already, and then a couple of weeks before,

the AC calls you and say, hey, I'm sorry, my unit called me. I have to go to this training. And I said, can you postpone it by two? No, no, I can't. It's the army. They don't, I have to go. I'm sorry about it.

And that's it. Go find an AC now who will be available to take, all the information or all the training that we've done and all the preparations and will be available on the dates and do it but that's part of life we you know when you ask the question it took me some time to reflect on it because it's still so you know embedded in our daily schedule and routine that yeah people you make appointments and then he calls you there I have to go to the army so it's not

available I for a moment I forgot that it doesn't happen everywhere around the world like that, that people can keep promises even if there's an army in this country. Wow. I'm curious also because of all these different uncertainties and potential chaos and wars that are happening, you know, and these are real unnatural business challenges to navigate. You know, like most challenges businesses face are, oh, why don't we have enough clients, you know, or anything like that or how are we marketing lost it well in this situation it might be a little too literal unfortunately but lost all the clients yeah like have you ever thought has it ever crossed your mind that maybe you might want to move somewhere else where it's not as as difficult

or challenging or have you just gotten so used to it that you know how to navigate it and you feel like you want to stay it's an interesting question When I was 22 years old, I was discharged from the regular military service. I went to New York, and I lived there for nine years. I went to school in New York. And I came back because I realized that I want to have a family. I'm not rich enough to have a family in Manhattan. I don't want to live in the suburbs.

And Israel seemed like the right place to go back. In the end, I'm Israeli, my entire family, here. And then a few years ago just before COVID I got a proposal to move to L.A. and get a very nice job with a huge production company

in L.A. And I loved it. And the idea was great and the money was fantastic and I really thought for a day about selling my company and moving out there with my family. And then I realized that

I can't. I'm I'm rooted here. It's my place. It's my language. I dream in Hebrew. I speak English all day long with my clients, but I dream in Hebrew. I'm part of this country.

And it's hard, and sometimes it sucks, yes. And it has so many downsides, but in the end, that's why I am. I want to leave here. I don't agree with the majority of Israelis about politics. I hate this government that we have and what they represent. I keep on telling my clients that what I'm telling you now is the explanation of the government of Israel,

but don't believe it. After that, I'm going to tell you what the reality is. But I don't see myself moving to another place now. I have grandchildren now, two grandkids, a year and a half years old, and I can't even think about not seeing them every week, you know, and meeting them twice a year. I don't even, I can't even think about it. And besides, it's,

Israel is actually a good place with a lot of bad vibes. But the good sides, sometimes, you know, they cover, and the bad sides, sometimes they're dominant. I'm trying to live in between. I'm watching American television, I'm reading books in English. All my clients are international. All my employees are Israelis and Palestinians. I somehow create a balance that allows me to continue working

and having satisfaction at my job, but I can't dream about going to somewhere else. Even on the week in Aruba, and I had fun, it was great. I want to come home already. It's hard to explain it, but it's something, you know, when you get to a certain age and you realize you pass more than half your life in a certain place, you say, okay, I guess I belong here. I don't feel like that all day long, but I guess I belong here. So that's the long and convoluted answer that I have to this.

There's no place like home, right? Exactly. Exactly. In the end, yes. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, this has been an interesting. podcast. I don't even know what to ask. Like, you kind of like, my, my typical questions are like,

okay, how did you scale up at the beginning and stuff? Challenges, but your challenges are like so different from like the average gifts we've had on here. And this is just a call on Wednesday. You know, we can talk next Monday. It's going to be totally different. Yeah, but it seems like that's that's become like your normal of like being able to navigate all this, all this chaos. You know, like, you know, they talk about the chaos that is on set. Yours is very literal chaos, you know. Client chaos, now I have a client chaos now I have a very different lens focus, you know, where they would, if they panic and because they don't get a line right or something like that

and then are not happy with it, it's like, okay, don't worry. Like, we have friends in Israel who have literal chaos happening on said, okay? I can give you a concrete example, even on the most straightforward corporate shoot. We check the gear in the facility house. We make sure everything is there. And when we go from the facility house to the van, there is a battery in the camera. There's a V-lock back battery connected to the back. There's a memory card, and we are ready to shoot.

And there's always, always a zoom lens on the camera. even when you're using only primes on the set. Why? Because it's Israel. You don't take a camera without a lens and a battery ready to shoot when you go on a van. You don't know what's going to happen. We're not ambulance chasers. We're not looking for, you know, hey, somebody is fighting, let's film.

No, but you always have to be ready. One of my fixers is describing it. It's like taking your M16 without the magazine and the bullets. A camera is just a heavy piece of metal. Makes sense. You take the whole thing and you're ready to go, even if you're going to do now a corporate shoot about vitamins. Be ready. It's Israel.

You don't know where you're going to end. You don't know what's going to happen. So, yes, reality brings us a lot of surprises. I think most of them, more than 50% are nice. Around less than 50% are not so nice. But at least it's interesting. You know, just imagine living dull, boring life. It's horrible.

It's the most horrible punishment a person can endure. And I'm happy, you know. I have, every day I have a new client, a new job, and you shoot. People who are asking me questions that I can explain to them and I can share my memory with them. I have not intentionally, but I have a huge network of people I know around the world. I have returning clients. I had the other day, somebody emailed me. We worked together 15 years ago.

I don't know if you remember me. I didn't. But I remember you were a great young fixer. And I'm like, yeah, okay, man, I'm not young anymore. I'm trying to be great. Yeah, now I remember you. At the time, 50 years ago, you're very young. And I said, no, no, I'm not young.

I just look young. It's fine. But you leave your mark with people, not in order for them to say, hey, Noam is amazing. Because they came to a new place, a complicated place, and you helped them navigate between agendas. You explain to them what life, what does it mean to live in such a place? And this is a great, for me, it's a great satisfaction. You're that problem solver for them.

Yeah. That's what we do in video. We're essentially literal fixers. We've fixed challenges and problems in your case in a very literal sense in terms of like the work you're doing there. And I guess you kind of answered one of the business questions I was going to ask, which is how have you kind of established yourself as like the go-to company for that? Is there like a big market of production companies in Israel? Is there like just a few big players there? But like you did mention that you have obviously a lot of.

of you have a huge network, you have built relationships, but you say that there's always new people coming in, like, how are they finding you? Online presence, mostly website, some social media, but it's less effective. The website is still the biggest source of newcomers. Many, especially Americans, by the way, are coming through referrals. I spoke to this guy and he told me your name. spoke to that guy and he said, you're the best, some like that. Europeans are mostly coming through the website.

And people ask around, both in Israel and abroad, who do you think I should work with? And we have, I think, quite good reputation in Israel. We don't really have competition. There are other companies that provide production services in Israel. No one in our business scale and no one is dealing with all kinds of productions, from commercial shoots to feature films and an IMEX production that we did in Jerusalem.

So we're the only one who are really in all markets. And I don't advertise, we never did advertise. We don't feel we have to. But the website is a very good source. We're also using it for documentary clients who need archive. So we have a very big archive of ours. And then, you know, I can have the first conversation with somebody who can't have from the website. And he already tells me, listen, I saw your archive, I want this and that, and we start talking about details already.

But marketing-wise, I admit that I'm a bit spoiled. I don't have to sweat for that. They arrive. And I take, it depends between 16, 80% of the jobs we are offered. We have some red lines that we don't cross in terms of clients we do not work with or projects we don't want to take on. If it's serving an agenda that is coming in order to harm either Israel or its neighbors, I don't want to be involved. And neighbors, I mean Palestine, basically. If the motivation for the shoot is out of the...

a wish to create effective propaganda for somebody's ideology, which we don't accept on a ideological or humanitarian level, I will not do it. If it's aiming to damage Israel, I don't want to be there. It's my country. I'm not the spokesman for the government, but I live here. Don't come and tell me that I kill children. I don't kill children. I never killed a child in my life, and I don't plan to. So I don't want to take your money if that what you're going to say in your film. Of course, this problem doesn't exist in corporate shoots, in commercials, in biographies, in documentaries, it does happen. We do have jobs that we get as an Israeli company saying we want to shoot in Palestine, in Ramallah, or

Bethlehem, we want to work only with Palestinians. Fine, no problem at all. You're going to work only with Palestinians. Yes, the company belongs to a proud Israeli citizen, but you didn't It does because the owner, you know. So we're going to give you the best professionals we can give. We're going to take your money. We're not Palestinians. I never lie about that. But the crew is going to work with you is going to be Palestinian.

That's perfectly fine with me. And other productions that we don't work with is, it sounds funny, but I'm quite spoiled in terms of collections or debts. I have zero lost debts in the 30 years that the company has been existed. And it happens in the world. I know from stories, from colleagues who got screwed up by a client, and final bill was $50, $100,000, and they did get it. The client went bankrupt, something happened, company went Chapter 11,

and they lost their money. Touchwood, it never happened to me. But if I fear that this is the financial stability of the client is doubtful, I'd rather not take it. I'd rather not deal with that. Start collecting money. No, no. Let's do safe projects. It's better than, you know, gamble on somebody's ability to pay.

How do you figure out if the client, or if the lead might not be able to pay? Like, how do you figure that out? If we don't know them, we ask immediately for 50% advance on the shoot. Somebody who cannot put on the first 50% will not be able to deliver the second 50%. That's, I guarantee. And others, if it's just an independent producer, I ask, they have the budget for it.

Do you have to take the footage that you're going to film with me in two weeks and show it to your investors, and after that, they decide if you give you the budget. People don't just lie to that, unless they're crooks, and luckily I didn't admit such. But people will tell you the truth, yeah, we're going to shoot great stuff, and then I'm going to edit a teaser, and I'm going to show it to my client,

and then it's going to give me the rest of the money. And I'm like, well, no. It's not reliable. I don't want to be in this situation. Yeah, I'm not looking for investors. If you are, it's your problem, but come to me when you have the money for the money, shoot. But it's not a recurring motive. It's a it happens once in a blue moon that you feel

that hey something is not safe here. And I'd rather be saved than sorry in this business. You know, it's not that we're making 80% profit on a production. We're making, I don't know, 15, 20, 30. It's not enough to be to be screwed over an issue like that if somebody doesn't have the money. Not to mention, you're basically responsible for a lot of people. Like, these fixers are literally putting their lives on the line of the time to get this content to create this work, you know, like something that not other people do. And they need to be taken care of.

And you want to make sure that your people are taking care of. It's like in any business as a business owner, like you want to take care of the people that work for you. You want to be a source of reliability for them as well. So I want to make sure you find ways to, filter out those those bad apples that would be coming through yeah yeah and i i i want to i want to pay everybody quickly i don't i i can't imagine a situation which i'm calling my dp and telling him listen yeah i owe you a few thousands of dollars for last month's truth but the client didn't pay me

yet so you're going to have to wait no it doesn't have to wait you have to pay i never understand that i never understand production companies or producers who do that we've i feel like everyone has waited for a producer to pay them in the past, saying like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, I'll pay you once the client pays me. It's like, what do you mean? That's not how this works, you know? It's like, I don't care what your deal is with X, Y, and Z.

It's like, I did my work with you. Like, I should, you should be coming through for me on that. Exactly. I was curious, though, because, like, with that, with probably the chaos of all these journalists and people that were coming through, how did the billing process go in that sense, you know, in terms of, like, wow. How do you price that? How do you price? Yeah, I'll go into a war zone for you. Yeah, but it's like, like, for him, for you know, I'm, it's normal. But for us to be thinking like, you know, like, yeah, my day rate will be like, say, a thousand bucks. But I'm going in a danger zone. Like, how do you? It's almost like time and a half, I guess, right? Is it time in double, time and triple? Like, oh my God. If it's, if it's only AK 47 is 20%. If they took quarters, then we have to double that.

Wait, literally that's what it is? No, no, I'm joking. Oh, okay. See, we don't know. We don't know. I admit that in the beginning of the war, there were two clients. I forgot to build them. I forgot everything about them.

They came. They worked for a few days. They left and it was messy. And I forgot. And I got this such a nice email from this lady with a French news department, finance. and it was translated from Google Earth, by Google Translate, from French. Dear Noah, ma'am, you may have forgotten to send us a bill. Can you please send us a bill? We really, really want to pay you.

And I'm like, wow, yeah, man. That's a good client. That's a good client. But I tried during the war, we never raised our rates. It stayed as if you filmed a month before the war. It stayed the same. The only additional cost was to bring everybody fleck jackets. By the way, I have a normal production company. One storage plays for lights, one from camera and grip,

and another one for fleck jackets and helmets. Like you guys have at home, right? Yeah. And flag jackets, by the way, they were one of the major factors in deciding how many productions to take, because there was a shortage in the beginning of the war. I had 13 sets, and I didn't plan for more. And on day two of the war, we wanted to buy more.

You couldn't get them anywhere, because the army didn't have any. So in the first two weeks, the army got what they needed. And then I started buying both used and new, and got some sent from Syria to Israel. And so we had enough. but that was the limit I could take up to a certain number of productions because I cannot send somebody without a flag jacket to a war zone. So, you know, better stop the production than send somebody, you know, naked in front of bullets. Do you guys also have like helmets?

Yeah, you have to. Flag jacket with Kevlar plates and a metal helmet. I don't know why this comparison just came into my mind, but it's like, it's, like, it's. It's amazing how like, it's crazy to think about how like when there's a need for something that's literally life-saving that it's almost impossible to get it. I was thinking back to what COVID hit. And the biggest concern people had was they didn't have enough toilet paper. And I'm like, what a stark contrast in terms of what people found dire in certain crazy situations, you know? And it's just the masks, too.

Remember the masks or the N-94? Oh, yeah, a lot of stocks. Yeah. Yeah, I remember driving a cloth was 100 bucks. Exactly. I bought N95 or something like that, COVID masks, and I paid a fortune to somebody who smuggled them in a cardboard box, and we met at the edge of a parking lot.

They are not worth anything, but that's life, you know. Demand, demand. Yeah, yeah. That's wild. One thing I'm curious about is because you deal with a lot of companies that are international. How do you, like, legally protect yourself in those situations? Because, like, you know, a lot of our contracts, like, if you look at the fine print,

it really just protects you if it's another company in the same country. But international, they could always just, like, ignore you. We've never had this issue. Yeah, exactly. Like, we've never, luckily we've never, not gone with, luckily we never had this situation before, but, like, have you encountered that or, like, how do you kind of protect yourself from that type of situation? You can't. You can protect you.

Yeah, okay. There's been in the back of my mind whenever we've done like international projects. I'm like, I think they're good. But there might be a chance, you know. I think reputation is a big thing though, Dario. Exactly. And especially with, with noam. Like he is the go-to guy in Israel.

If someone decides to screw him in any way, they're never going to be able to work in that country again, right? Oh, yeah, I guess. But, you know, there's people that burn bridges, you know. People are always going to be. be people who do that for sure. And there are crooks. I heard so many stories about all kind of people coming to Israel, to a facility house. Hey, I want to rent two cameras for five days. Here's my credit card. They take the camera. The credit card is a pony and they disappear. And you can see the camera after two hours. It's been sold already to somebody else.

I hear about these people. You cannot, you cannot sue internationally unless it's more than, I don't know, three, four hundred thousand dollars. It's not worth it. But it's a matter of trust. It's a matter of, you know, I spoke to so many clients and potential clients. I can feel it already. If somebody is trying to bullshit, I sense it in the first call and I decided I don't want to work with them. Because in the end, in our business, it's so easy to see if the person you're talking to is for real or is just pretending to be somebody who's in the business. And touch wood. No, no, seriously.

I think experience, you're absolutely right. Experience comes big into this. And I find that a lot of these stories of people getting screwed over something that happens earlier on when they just jump into the industry because they don't know how it works. They don't know how people act. Like, behavior is a very interesting thing. Exactly. Exactly.

How they communicate via email. Like, don't get me wrong. Sometimes clients can surprise you out of nowhere. You know, every now and then there can be a random rugpole that happens out of nowhere, which is unfortunate, but even to this day, it still happens. Absolutely. But. Cool.

I think that's a good point to end off the episode, I think. Yeah. No. Do you have anything else you want to share with us or audience? I enjoyed talking to you. I believe I shared more personal stuff that I meant, but you guys, you are quite experienced in that. And you're doing good interviews, I have to say professionally now. And I felt, I felt good talking to you about stuff that I usually don't talk, especially not to clients.

but yes I know that I live and function in a very strange stressful environment but as I told you I enjoy it really I don't want to do anything else I guess in a way you live on it you live on it right

and you have this great energy as well that I feel like you need to to be able to push through all those crazy things and you know kudos to you because someone has to also do that. Someone has to cover these stories. And it's a challenge. It's a challenge.

Great. And thank you very much for having me, guys. It was a great pleasure. No, of course. And again, it's such a different world from ours. Yeah, I know. The way you're explaining all this. I'm like, wow, like this is so different.

But really interesting at the same time, right? But no, this is a good episode. We appreciate it. for coming on. Great, guys. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee.

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