Creatives Grab Coffee - Adapting to Change (ft. Bouche Media) | Creatives Grab Coffee 78

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

In episode 78 of Creatives Grab Coffee, Dario, Kyrill, and Nicholas Coombes from Bouche Media dive into the evolving landscape of video production. From the challenges of maintaining relevance in a saturated market to adapting to new tools like AI and addressing shifting client expectations, they discuss how video professionals can navigate a rapidly changing industry. The conversation touches on the role of freelancers, the impact of the pandemic on business models, and the growing importance of internal and external video content. Packed with insights and candid anecdotes, this episode offers valuable lessons for both seasoned professionals and newcomers to the industry. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to Creatives Grab Coffee 01:00 Challenges of updating company websites 03:30 Are showreels really for clients or other production companies? 06:00 Nick shares his journey with Boosh Media 09:00 Transitioning from freelancing to starting a company 13:00 The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on video production businesses 19:00 How this podcast helped Dario and Kyrill overcome business plateaus 23:00 Current trends in video production and client expectations 28:00 AI in video production: Opportunity or threat? 31:00 Navigating client technical issues in virtual productions 33:00 Corporate restrictions on AI tools like ChatGPT 35:00 Deepfake technology and its implications 39:00 Working with sports teams and sponsors in video production 44:00 The role of freelancers in the video production industry 50:00 London’s competitive video production market 53:00 Final thoughts on adapting and thriving in a changing industrySPONSORS:Canada Film Equipment: www.CanadaFilmEquipment.comAudio Process: www.Audioprocess.ca🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9🍏 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 🎞️Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comTo learn more about the show, visit: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/

Welcome to Creative Scrap Coffee, the podcast on the business of video production. Creative Scrap Coffee is hosted by Dario Nuri and Kirill Lazerov 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?

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And now, let's begin the show. Hold on one second. Nice looking website. Man, I really gotta fix ours. Oh, I got, I have nightmares about it. It's five years old. Nice looking website. Man, I really got to fix ours. Oh, I got to have nightmares about it. It's five years old. It's awful. It looks better than ours.

If that is awful, then I don't know what is amazing for you, then. Well, I guess what I mean is that in terms of clients will have seen it. They'll be ready for, they'll be noticing that it hasn't changed for a long time. Well, at least I am, anyway. Your clients go on your website constantly

to check to see if you change it. That's a big- I like to think they do. That's what we all think. They don't do that. Every morning. Every morning they wake up, first thing, still no blog post has been two weeks.

He hasn't refreshed. Like we need to know what's happening with Boosh media every second of every day. They haven't put the killer show reel on that Nick keeps talking about. Guaranteed every client has looked at the website once, like all of our websites only once for like 10 seconds, and then that's been it, never, never again.

I think most clients have looked at our websites for half a second, scrolled right down to the contact form, and that was the first and last time. Yeah. Yep, and that was the first and last time. Yeah. Yep. And that was it. It was like, let's just talk to someone. Who might have not gone all the way down to the bottom.

You know what it is? Websites are more so for other video production companies nowadays. It's like, oh, what are they doing? What are they doing? Okay, cool. And I think showreels as well. I don't think anyone really ever makes showreels for the clients because clients don't even have a clue what they're looking at. I think they'd like, oh, some pictures there

in video. That's fine. Especially if you're dealing with corporate clients, you know, they, they, they, they, as long as it's good quality and that's all they need to see, then that's, that's fine. They'll, they'll reach out. What they, they, what they can do, what they think they can do. I think that's it. It's better than an iPhone. Then you're, you're good in this industry. That's it. Sometimes there's sometimes when I'm doing my sales intro calls and everything, and I know I have to introduce my company and what we do and everything. And then most of the time, I just go like, they should have looked at this because it's all on the website. I feel like I'm

just repeating the same stuff. So sometimes I just like speed run to the end and say like, it's all on the website. I mean, you definitely did your due diligence, right? Yeah. Or you ask why they've come to you and you think it's because, oh, we love that, you know, the way you did the focus pull on that, whatever. And actually someone just said, try these guys. Try these guys. Yeah.

Hey, try these guys is actually a lot more helpful to understand than you were number three on Google. You were on the list, you were on a list that we reached out to one of like 15, 20, 30 quotes, you know. Have you ever had it where like you get the contact form entry and it's got like another company's name on it? Yeah. And you're like, I know they just copy pasted on like the first three like pages. You want to be singled out for your brilliance and it's yeah, it doesn't always happen like that. You know, one day you should just pretend to be that company as like throughout the whole sales process just to see if they notice, you know, that the email handle is

a little different. It's like, oh, oh, wait, who are you again? Yeah. Or just present to them as you are that company or something, yeah. Oh my God. I think we've been sent decks from other companies when they, because they're clearly they finished with one company and they're trying another and they send you like a PDF and in the corner

it's like a logo of another company or something. And that's kind of interesting. I've had that as well, like mostly with people that I know like personally, like within my network where they've been like, hey, like mostly with people that I know, like personally, like within my network where they've been like, Hey, we need a video project. This is like a client or the company that we've worked with or like here was a previous brief that we worked with. And it's like, Oh, so that's who you were working with beforehand.

Okay. Good to know. Yeah. Yeah. And you think it's kind of interesting, but then you think this is just the cycle. And then in a few years, you know, you'll be passing on our deck to someone else or something. They'll see, oh, you're working with those guys.

Yeah. But Nick, let's start with who you are, your company. And so let's get the episode started. Not what's in between my teeth. Yeah, exactly. You got some salad there, by the way. Yeah, really. I'm messing. It's the start for me.

So my name is Nick and I run a video production company called Boosh and we are based in West London and we've been running for about 12 years so we started in 2012 officially. And we are I guess what you call a corporate video production, and we sort of work across live action and animation motion graphics. Increasingly, we find ourselves doing a lot of productions that combine the two, which is good for us because I like working with both. And we've got a kind of our traditional kind of main clients are in a kind of mix of finance, sort of FinTech and commercial real estate. Because a lot of the work I think came through my contacts initially because I used to work

at Bloomberg, so a lot of, you know, it helps get you in with those kind of companies because they know the reference of where you work. And yeah, and now we sort of work with some big companies like sort of HSBC, you know, big banks, but through to smaller agencies and the sort of PR world that deal with all that, all the bigger companies. So it's quite a nice mix of sort of direct to corporate, but also working with marketing and creative guys in agencies. Three good industries, especially on the commercial side. Yeah.

Oh, they seem to, I think, you know, they've, they want kind of creative support and they've, you know, they've always seemed to have some sort of projects on the go, which is great. There's always a need for different kinds of content. That's why those are good, good types of industries to be in is to find that have clients that have like a wide range, not only external, but even sometimes internal because there's, it always seems like there's something that needs to be done, you know, and there's always more internal. Yeah. Like a big, big big interview or it's just sort of some small graphics pieces or something.

12 years, that's a long time. We've been doing this for 10 years. Just flies by. But isn't it, it's weird because it doesn't, it's a bit like, I guess how old you feel, like you feel, I sort of know it's like more than five years, but it doesn't feel like 12, like if it was sort of six or seven that probably feels about right yeah yeah same here but yeah ten years and that's quite a long time weirdly in in sort of in digital media is it what you know in terms of how things how quickly things move on isn't it yeah what were you doing at Bloomberg before so I did it was called multimedia, but it was basically working on TV interviews and putting them on their website.

So our team, I mean, you know, extremely uncreative, but we were basically just chopping up the interviews and you'd sort of, you might do seven or eight a day and you would write about them. So you would just, you know, isolate them from the feed like this, you know, you'd have like a 20 minute interview and then you would just watch it, write about it and put it on the website.

So what then made you leave that job to then start your own company? What made me leave was them making me leave. Me not having a job there anymore. So I joined... The most conservative way to answer that question. Yeah, exactly. They said I didn't have a job. So I joined in 2008 during the

Lehman Brothers. I didn't really know much about what it all meant at the time, but joined when all that was kicking off. Okay. And I was only there for six months. You know, I was barely finished my probation. And I don't think so. I joined in the autumn and then was out by sort of spring, January, February sort of time. Wait, in the same year of 2008? No, so 2009 that was so I joined in autumn 2008. Oh okay. Left in early 2009. Because at the time they had a sort of load of European TV channels in their office in London. You know we were the sort of British bit, English bit and then there was Spanish, French and stuff. And as part of all the cuts they just got rid of all their um foreign language, I think this got rid of all their foreign language, I think

this is right, all their foreign language TV channels and then just went down to English. So quite a few people went in that sort of thing. But I mean, they said it wasn't to do with the credit crisis or anything, but I don't know. So that was it really. And it was at a time when online video was sort of a new thing or fairly new. And because I've done a bit, people started saying, oh, could you do this for me? And sort of little bits here and there kind of grew and grew.

Yeah, and then my boss from Bloomberg moved to HSBC. So that was great, because that was one of the things that made we had to sort of formalize our offering and sort of become proper, as it were. So you had a three-year gap though between when you... Yeah. Well, I was doing stuff. Yeah, I was sort of, I guess it was freelancing.

Freelancing, yeah. Okay. Yeah, making and sort of working with freelancers I knew and sort of crew and, you know, editors and stuff and doing... I mean, to look back on it, you think three years, that's quite a long time to be doing that and I think what really was I doing for three years? But I think it was starting to work for bigger companies, but I think it was just 2012 when Boosh was created, it was just the formalization of creating a limited company, giving it a

name, moving from your own personal website to a company website and stuff like that. So what caused it to go to that next step for you? Well, it was it was, you know, certain clients were saying you need to be a limited company to be on a, you know, be a supplier. Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah. Is that different from because I don't know what a limited company is there because here

we have like just sole proprietorship or partnership and then corporations. So what's the same thing? Yeah, I suppose the nearest in America is probably well, I know you're Canadian, but sole proprietorship or partnership and then corporations. So what's the same thing? Yeah, I suppose the nearest in America is probably, well, I know you're Canadian, but America will be sort of LLC, I suppose. It's sort of, so the company is the sort of entity, not you.

So I suppose the company is insured. And if I do something or the company does something bad, the company is the liability, not me. Yes, it's, it's corporation here in America. There are production companies that have LLC in the name or something like that. But that's not common here in Canada. Here's really corporation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's tech. It's the designation like LLC is like the designation for it.

They don't always include it in the names. No, no, we wouldn't do it either. But yeah, you know, when you fill out forms and stuff. Yeah. And I think you can even choose whether you're limited, written out in full, or LTD. That's part of your name on the government site. But before that, you're a sole trader, which is your official category, I think. I like that sole trader instead of sole proprietor. It's very old school kind of style. It's like you're going to the market to trade with other people. Yeah, to set up your stool, peddle your wares or something.

Yeah, especially with- I got memory cards to trade. Yeah, memory cards, memory cards for lenses. I got videos to trade. Yeah, and my services for your goods. Yeah, so that's how it started really. And yeah, I've sort of been going since. And it's funny how you say look back at 12 years and what's the things of

and you must have your company as well must have spanned, you know, a nice selection of crises as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. The big one is obviously the COVID one. Yeah. But we obviously had like other issues like we had Uh cash inflow problems and everything because for a long time it just felt like carol and I were just collaborating together as freelancers under a name Yeah, and then we were hitting plat we hit a plateau actually right before the pandemic because we just weren't growing

I think it was like period of two three years. We just weren't weren't making any changes and then pandemic happens Was that bad? I don't know. I don't know how it was in the UK but here they closed everything. Yeah. I think our province in particular was like one of the last places on earth to like finally open up so. Yeah and it took like six months. So sort of way beyond when most of the world you were a bit like New Zealand I think kept it going. I swear to God, we were the last ones. Sort of rioting in the streets. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think what happened for us. I mean, some of our people I know in the industry were really busy all the way through COVID, I think, once the sort of initial things going, especially the some of the animators and the sort of people who could, who had clients who just had to make stuff. I think especially brands and things who

had to keep going. I mean, they were flat out, but we definitely, ours sort of fell off a cliff really, our work. I think a lot of us, especially with banking clients, all moved from the usual kind of routine of doing stuff for their customers to all into sort of crisis management and everyone was sort of pulled into working on customer support lines and all sorts of stuff. So all their kind of regular activities sort of froze. I on customer support lines and all sorts of stuff. So all their kind of regular activities sort of froze. And I think a lot of our clients just didn't already know what they were doing. And obviously, yeah, they were all, they didn't know how long everything was going to go on for. So a lot of our work really dried up. So it was

quite a sort of frightening period. Do you have a big team? No, we, I mean, at the time we were even now, you know, I mean, at the time we were, even now, you know, we're three, but at the time we were sort of four or five. So, you know, pretty small, but it does, you know, and like these things, you don't, it's not so bad if you know when it's going to end. But it's knowing how long you've got to keep going on your sort of burn rate of like, okay, there's no work, how long can we keep going?

And the time we had to shrink the team because there just wasn't the work. And the government did do, I don't know how it worked in Canada, but they did do loans and stuff. They did that here too, but actually a friend of ours was saying that they applied for it and it took forever to really. Yeah, it didn't really, I feel like it caused more problems later on for a lot of companies, especially in our industry, than it really did to kind of help or so. Like a lot of the people in the creative industry here either quickly downsized or downsized and then later kind of rehired to kind of bring in the people once the work kind of came back.

But the ones that really were able to kind of weather the storm easily were people who were just, you know, as nimble and as small as you or, or as us, right? Like for, like for six months after that, we had no work. And the only reason we were able to kind of get through it and then actually basically revamp the entire business was because it was just the two of us, right? If we had, if we had like a studio or if we had people on staff, you know, beforehand, it would have just... We were this close to actually leasing out an office before the pandemic. Yeah, we were like this close. We would have been so screwed, Carol. Oh my God.

Yeah, so many what ifs, aren't there? And yeah, I mean, we had a thing. So there were loans. And actually, there's a whole thing about the government here because they made these loans really quick and easy to get. But as a result of that, there's a lot of fraud and people setting up companies. Tons of it here, too. People then going bust and taking the money. But they also did furlough, which is this sort of, again, like an old word no one had ever heard of.

So they paid people salaries, which was great. But they don't pay the direct, if you're a director of a company, they're not paying your salary. If you take, I don't know how it works in Canada But we you know, there's a way of paying yourself So you your income is based on the performance of the company you take a minimum salary and you take profit out and that's taxed differently Whereas interesting. Yeah, whereas, you know employees will take a salary and then in the sort of traditional sense The government paid that so the government would pay people's yeah, the sort of traditional sense. The government paid that? So the government would pay people's, yeah, the sort of employees' salaries.

No wonder inflation like went... Yeah, exactly. Now we wonder why the government is like trillions of pounds in debt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my god. No, they didn't do anything like that here. No, here it was like for people who had no jobs there was like a thing that was called Serb where everyone would get like a certain, I mean, there was two different ways of getting it, but the main one was you just get like a flat fee of like 2000 a month. Yeah.

Was it every two weeks? It was a month. It was a month. It was 2000 a month, just so that people can kind of keep the lights on for a certain while. I think they did that for about a year at most, and then they got rid of it. That's funny eh? They make you lose your job and they only give you two thousand a month in a city that you can't live in. What sort of salary is that?

I don't know. Is that a sort of... I don't know what... how two thousand Canadian dollars... is that like an American dollar or is it... That's like twelve hundred pounds. That's like 1200 pounds. Okay yeah so it's absolutely like it doesn't really cover anything but you can buy some food and pay some bills kind of thing. That's it. You could buy a McDonald's here. Yeah. Yeah it's funny all these different countries and how they did it and I think even in America they did they would just get you just get given grants I think some companies just got like given money. Yeah that was it. I don't think they even gave any ordinary citizen anything

I think they I think they did after a certain point. Yeah, it was a lot of dollars like a lot of hundred dollars. Yeah Let's just spend it on. Yeah Missiles and stuff instead American approach isn't it's the stuff. It's like, you know, no health care, but we've got amazing amazing Each missile costs 1 million dollars best I can give each citizen is a thousand bucks American approach, isn't it? It's the stuff, it's like, you know, no healthcare, but we've got amazing, amazing. Each missile costs $1 million. Best I can give each citizen is a thousand bucks for forever. And that's it.

Yeah. Anyway, but yeah, it was really hard, wasn't it? And it's amazing sort of looking back on it and you sort of think, well, at least we got through it because, you know, people didn't even do that. So we, we came out of that stronger than ever before. Yeah. After, but that was also thanks to this podcast because we learned so much and we just applied the knowledge. Yeah.

But we would have, I think if it wasn't for the pandemic, we would have never started this podcast. And if we never started this podcast, I think we would have still been at a plateau. Really, it's been. Yeah. Yeah. We could have even like at one point gone our separate ways afterwards and seeing a plateau because it's

It's it's not easy to run a business and even if you don't know how you're running the business because we weren't running a business That's that's what I mean. It wasn't really a business. We thought it was and then Talking to other actual business owners. We realized oh, that's what it means to run a business Now we have to we have to do things a little differently. So. But you're right, and the skills you learn in that, it's funny how, I mean, we didn't, podcasts were a thing that we were making for companies,

or in fact, actually just editing their content they sent over, but it's funny how that's become embedded in sort of culture now, isn't it? The sort of, and it really kicked off, I think, during that. And you must have learned lots of skills and being stuff that clients wanted to do, and you knew how to run them for them I don't know if that's how it worked, but you all of a sudden you were sort of experts Yeah, it did it did help us a lot. Like we I mean we have

Two two or three clients right now that we're doing podcasts for and like this Like the pitch basically Yeah, and it's made and like some that I guess all the tech got really good because we I'd never heard of zoom before I know you're using Riverside but our accountants used to use zoom and do all these video calls and stuff and it was always seen as a bit weird and like why are you bothering you know and now and now it's just you know it's normal. They understood the importance I think that the best thing that came out of the pandemic was that everyone understood the importance of video. Yeah. Before it was always like an afterthought after photography.

Yeah. And it became just as important because of it. People always talked about the stats of it, right? You know, it's like, oh, you get more engagement like this and like that, which was true and they knew it, but I don't think they really registered as much until it started to affect them personally. Cause I think, I think a lot of the times when you hear like a lot of stats or anything like that

in the marketing world or any kind of product world, you know, of how to get engagement, you understand the importance of certain mediums like video and how it's helpful, but you can't relate to it. You can't relate to it as much, right? Until you experience it fully for yourself personally, it's like, oh, this is how video has helped me in my day to day.

This is why it's so important. And this is why we have to continue investing in the medium. And which is why there were a lot of companies that were extremely busy during the pandemic because they had clients that understood that and went forward with it. But unfortunately in Canada, and we've covered this in some previous episodes before, the marketing budgets here are not as high

as in other countries, especially in the US, because these are like Canadian offices, right? So- And we're also 10 times smaller, so- 10 times smaller market. So the marketing budgets for Canada just kind of disappeared right away, which is why a lot of people here struggled. But many companies that we talked to in the

US or maybe even in the UK, as you mentioned, were busy right throughout the pandemic and had and they also didn't really close down there either. That's the other thing. Yeah. Yeah, that is state open. They stayed open a long time. How was how's the market in the UK? Let's let's kind of bring it to present day. Like what's the market like over there? Well, I mean, so do you mean kind of right now or over the last six months or something? Like right now? Six months. Yeah. Yeah. Now in six months, because this I mean, we're all.

Our both of our economies are going through a hard time this year. It's hard in periods. Yeah, I'm curious to see what it's like there. And I never know when I'm trying to sort of think what whether yeah whether I give you an answer to like how we're finding it, what like the headlines of all the papers are saying. I mean I think definitely since for the last two years it's been very kind of up and down a real mixed bag you know you have a few months of it being really busy and then there might always be projects in the background but things will suddenly stop and you might have a few weeks where there's no new inquiries coming in

and you're just working on existing stuff. And I think after COVID, we had a year of where we were flat out doing stuff. But I think ever since then, it's been a real mix of all sorts of things. And I think the consistent activities of certain clients seem to stop. And I think they're all now doing

The world is much their their environment is much more of a mixed bag of things You know, they'll do where in the past they might have done everything with a video company and various levels They might now they're doing their own stuff on iPhones And then they're doing a bit with this company a bit with that company and all sorts So it's the scene is much more sort of varied, I think, for our clients. That got normalized, actually, where they film stuff and do stuff themselves during the pandemic, because they had to do that, right? And even nowadays, every now and then, we would get a question from Elite saying, hey, we shot something that we did in the office on an iPhone. Can you edit something out of it? Make you make it good? Make it look good.

And it's like, it's not that the iPhones suck, is that they're not experienced people, right? Well, they don't even know if they had data lighted or anything, so yeah. But you know, that's changing too now, because yeah, exactly like that. Yeah, just as like- Yeah, the glasses, they always have the glasses like this.

Yeah, and do you find that no matter how good your document is, you send them like a thing, don't do this,'t do this do this do this and this and then you get someone records themselves next to a fountain You know with the sun behind them You know, why did I bother? oh That's changing to like them having like their own social media people on board. That's also changing because now they're Tightening their own internal budgets now they're tightening their own internal budgets and they're finding that, okay, I don't have enough work to give to this person.

So they're getting like, it's almost going back to... All the stuff at the bottom, let's call it the sort of stuff at the bottom, it's sort of smaller stuff they need more often of, more you need it more frequently, all that stuff they're doing themselves. So and occasionally they might give it out, but often they've got people who can handle it up to a certain point now they'll use Canva or something like that and so in a way it's great as you said video is much more common and important than it used to be but the only you know the downside to that is that it's so much easier for

them to handle themselves is that you know it's it's a much more usable I've been I've been hearing that it's changing from that now too really because now there's not even because again they're looking at their own much more usable. I've been hearing that it's changing from that now too. Really? Because now there's not even, because again, they're looking at their own budgets and they're cost cutting. Yeah. It doesn't make sense to pay someone like,

like the average salary here is like 50K, right? Right. In Toronto, to just do like social media videos a couple of months, doesn't make sense. It's almost cheaper to outsource it again. Or what they might, or what I heard they do is what I heard they tack it on to other people's rules. Yeah, yeah. So there's like a graphic. I've seen that because my girl is a graphic designer. So I was seeing like she's trying to apply for some other jobs. So she was seeing the

requirements and it's like they want them to be like five different roles. For like $40,000. Graphic designer, graphic designer, animator, videographer, editor. I was like, that's four different roles that they're asking for in one job. It just takes two of them. If you're lucky, yeah. But here's the thing, here's the thing that is funny.

They can ask for that being the skillset, but the one benefit for the worker is that there's only so much work they can do at once. So they might do one month where they would do a video, another month where they would do like say graphic design. I know this cause also my wife was working in this one role many years back where it was a similar thing.

She was there for one particular job, but because no one else was doing any kind of video stuff, she would maybe one day have to go and just set up a camera to record someone speaking in front of other people. It's like, okay, she's doing that, but she's not doing the other job. So it's, you know, they are losing at the end of the day.

Yeah, so if she's gonna be there working on that, like sure, you could ask all these people to have all these skills and be able to do it. But there's also the element that people don't, that these people hiring don't realize is that, much time do you think is going to be devoted to each one of those roles? Is that really going to be helping the organization? At the same time, they don't care. They don't care. They have to hit the numbers. Yeah, I've seen all those posts on LinkedIn. I don't know what your sort of networks like on LinkedIn, but all the sort of people who are

complaining about, you know, ranting about people advertising for four, four role jobs and all. It's crazy. And I think you see that a lot on Instagram. Yeah, exactly. Like office culture videos and salaries. But yeah, it's a blessing and a curse, isn't it? There's way more work. There's way more content around, but equally there's sort of, there's lots of different

levels of which you can work and you know, who, who does the work and what level it needs to be at and all that sort of stuff. What do you think could potentially help kind of change that down the road, you know, for either a company itself or in the industry itself? You mean how's that going to change next? Yeah, like what do you think would be like, where do we go from there? Or like, is there something like video production companies can do to kind of help, you know, make a shift in that? I don't know. But I mean, do you mean like get more of the work?

I mean, I certainly think like, you know, all the AI everyone talks about whatever that's like the end of the world, but all the All the platforms are gonna use more and more AI in them, aren't they? Like for us we see it in Premiere every sort of few weeks as a new feature or whatever that helps us. And I think all the tools like Canva that sort of, let's say, sort of an average marketing person understands quite well will just get really, you know, will become better at processing video and doing all sorts of stuff with it. I sort of think it's going to become easier for non-skilled people to make better video,

I guess like it always is, you know, a whole time, like all the apps, the sort of Instagram makes it easier, you know, by the day TikTok and all these apps will make it easier. And I guess it'll just mean that we'll be more potential and but equally our skills and our potential will just increase too because we'll know more about all the stuff it can do so and we can also use AI to a better effect yeah exactly we'll understand the tools that we've got access to won't be the same AI tools that they've got access to because they're not interested in paying whatever it is or whatever and so we'll cost-cutting yeah and our job is just to stay on top of it all and know the stuff

that they're not haven't got the time to deal with. So I don't think it's, a bit like, you know, Zoom and iPhones weren't the end of video production companies. I don't think AI is gonna be the end of us. We'll just use it, won't we? And there'll have to be new ways of doing it, like we'll just become better prompt writers or whatever,

Premiere or something like that. Well, there's gonna be the AI fatigue kind of similar to when people had the Zoom fatigue. They got sick and tired of seeing people doing constantly Zoom content, you know. Yeah. Because it's the same content all the time. Sure, different topic, different this, different that,

but it's still someone on a swear talking at home, usually bad lighting, bad setup, because it was very rare during the pandemic to be talking with people where they had good setups. So we had to like create these kind of like guidelines for people that we would be recording virtually, like we'll like sit in front of a big window, make sure you have this and that.

And for like one of our clients right now where we're doing like this virtual podcast as Dario mentioned, we had to create this kind of like mini package that was like in a small Pelican case that we would send out to each interviewee with the simplest gear as possible. I remember when we were talking with them, we said, okay, what do you think would be doable for people?

They're like, make it up, it plugs in and that's all they need to do. Because obviously we would love to have one big light like we have right over here. We would love to have a mic like this, but to send it to people so that they could set it up themselves, it's not always easy. And even with simple plug and play,

sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes they can't get it to work. There's always technical issues. The most random issues too. Yeah, so it doesn't matter how simple. Makes you think about your instructions because you're like, you write out anything, oh, they won't know what that is.

And then you have to, you know, you have to sort of think of it's a real like user experience lesson for you thinking about what does that mean? But you just have to say like, take mic, into into computer. I don't know how much simpler it can be sometimes. Sometimes it's like stuff like they just need to restart the computer to fix the issue.

It's like one of those weird things. Yeah. And a lot of times they use like work laptops that are not Macs. Oh, that's the yeah. So you're using PCs, which are like. And if you don't know. And if you're in a complete Mac world, I don't know, we are, I don't know about you, but you sort of completely don't even understand

what a PC is, I wouldn't even know how to begin sorting out. So then you'd probably have to buy one or rent one and then work out how to test it on that. Well, the thing with a lot of these, especially like corporate clients, when they have these work computers, there's a lot of these, especially like corporate clients, when they have these work computers, there's a lot of red tape and a lot of security clearances that need

to be administered. And sometimes those security softwares that are on those computers don't detect the camera, they don't detect the microphone because it is flagged as a foreign entity that can't go into the... Yeah. And then it can't save the footage entity that can't go into the... Yeah, and then it can't save the footage or you can't transfer it. Exactly. So you guys were talking about these people using,

or clients using AI and everything, but I just remembered something about how a lot of our financial corporate clients, they're not even allowed to use like chat GPT for their day-to-day stuff. so it's probably gonna be the same stuff for their video content as well right they can't use them they're not legally not allowed to use it no but I mean some of it tends to be actually only the market one or two marketing people say in a bank would would be able to use some sites like you

know obviously most people can't even get near YouTube but the marketing people can and I guess they're just gonna have special dispensation. But I mean, I guess that's the whole challenge of things like AI, isn't it? It's like, how do you adapt it? You need it to be useful, but at the same time safe. And I don't know how banks are gonna deal with all that. Imagine this scenario.

They're gonna have to create their own stuff. Imagine this scenario though. For example, an overworked marketing department, they have a low level, not intern necessarily, but kind of like that. And they say, we need you to create a video with our CEO and figure out what you can do with it. So what do you think that they're gonna do?

Maybe they'll take the, some clips of the CEO, put them through those AI softwares and then get them to say exactly what they need. But now there's that security risk where that CEO is in the AI ecosystem and can be made to say whatever he wants, whatever he wants. If there's any picture online, he's already in the AI ecosystem. But it's like the sound, the voice and everything like that can be in the ecosystem. YouTube's been training their models. It's wild where it's getting, how it's gotten to that point now.

Because, yeah, at the end of the day, you could technically get anyone to say whatever. But then people are going to be like, oh, is this real? Or is this that? It's not really happening with Trump. They've done it with loads of people, haven't they? And there was loads of stuff of... They're pretty good, too. Like, if you don't pay attention, like, they look legit.

And only if you look really, really closely, like, I don't know if you follow your football fans. We had the Euros here in the summer. Yeah, yeah., and you know, Gareth Southgate is our was our manager Oh, I've seen the video. Yeah And I think if you weren't really paying attention you'd sort of and you know, you were being really naive you think Yeah, what the hell's going on? But actually it's already there, isn't it? Yeah, the only reason we knew it was fake was because it was a little bit outrageous for someone to be saying that on the press. Exactly, because there have

been some with a lot of British managers in the Premier League even saying their post-match interviews, and usually they give these BS responses like, you know, we have to be a better team, we have to be more equipped and work from the back, where there was this one AI video for this one manager where they were saying, obviously we were shit, you know, our defense is shit. And our wingers were shit. And like, that's all we can say. Maybe I'll get the sack, maybe I won't, you know,

who knows what's gonna happen. It seems to be everybody wants to hear. Yeah, it's like a much more realistic. You probably already know which manager I'm talking about as it is anyway. No, well who did it? It was at Ten Hag. Ten Hag, yeah, yeah, there we go. Yeah, I like your Dutch accent. You know there are certain things that we got to do. Yeah, but you can imagine him saying that

because he's quite blunt on the whole, isn't he? He's so blunt, that guy. I'm tired of listening to him though. So are you a Man United fan? Oh, he guessed it, he guessed it right there. Yeah, difficult times. Terrible time right now. I try not to talk about it right there. Yeah, difficult times. Terrible time right now, I try not to talk about it too much. Yeah, but the good news is you know hopefully it'll get, you know, I don't know who you could get but it should eventually all start to get better but I don't know when that's going to be. Yeah, we'll see. What about you? Who's your team? I support Nottingham Forest, I don't even know much about them. Ah, Forest, yeah you're a Forest fan. I have a buddy who's a Forest fan, yeah. They're doing okay.

It's quite a nice club. Things are slowly getting better, so it's good. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully we've had our, you know, our bleak patch and hopefully we can stay in the middle of the league this year. Yeah, Daria, if you don't know this in the Premier League, for a lot of smaller teams, it's a big achievement

when they're aiming to be a mid team in the table because there's just obviously the big Because just staying in the Premier League. Yeah, once you're promoted There's like big money and just being in the league even if you're doing not so great in that league because I think it's like 20 million 20 million pounds just just for broadcasting rights in your team Yeah, and obviously where you finished at the end of the season depends on gives you Defines how much money you get and the teams that go up usually are favorites to go down again because they're you know especially if they haven't been in the Premier League

so they haven't got the money and it's just really hard to stay up there because everyone's got so much cash. Who pays them? The broadcasting companies. There's a lot of money in it. Sky, yeah they sell all the rights you know because it's such a global product. The TV fees are incredible what they get for it. So I'm actually curious, being in that being in the like, working in Britain, and it being such a huge part of media, do you find that a lot of production companies find their way, like working in some way with the sports world? Or is it

like a monopoly of like a few big ones? Cause that's what it's like here with like the really big teams. There's like a hand picked few different companies that handle a lot of the content and not many other smaller production companies can kind of find their way into working with some of these bigger brands.

Like, is it a little different there? Do you find it? You know, I haven't got direct experience but from what I understand it's's sort of the kind of fix. The broadcast element is all sort of like a closed shop. Of course. Because you've got all the sky, the TV, the satellite company. I imagine they arrange all the crews around the grounds.

And then all the clubs. Aside from that, yeah. And I think all the clubs now will have their own kind of in-house video team. That's what I've noticed. Yeah, who produce all their content and that's just churning it out week after week, you know, doing everything they can with the players and all the games and stuff and making all the sort of social stuff. And then I think the football clubs will also do stuff for their sponsors, for all the brands that sponsor them. And that's probably where all the external production companies come in and work with ad agencies

So I've got a few from some of the freelancers we work with I think occasionally I see they're doing stuff like with Arsenal or whatever because it's a London team So you'll see them, you know doing stuff for the day and doing I guess social content or stuff for the sponsors But that's where the the main interaction I think comes up with the sort of external production companies Yeah, I think that's the same. It's your old scream right there, working with those clubs. Yeah.

Yeah, it's cause these are like, they're like here as well, like each club is like its own business and there's like an entirely massive structure to it, especially with the bigger ones. And the way you framed it, Nick, it makes me realize also that's kind of how it is also here where a lot of the time,

if you find yourself working with any of the big sports teams, it's usually through a sponsor in some way, shape or form. It's never really directly with them. That's really the only way a lot of smaller teams could, people can kind of find their way working with them. Cause I know like a lot of people that jump into this industry are always saying,

like the standard thing people say, I wanna do a a Nike ad, I want to do an Adidas ad, I want to work with this NBA team or that. It's like you can, but it's going to be indirect, you know, with some other channels to kind of get there. And you're going to need a lot of luck. Lot of luck. An amazing idea. Yeah.

But yeah, that's how it works I think. But it's amazing how, not sophisticated necessarily, but how good I think the club's content is getting. I think they're getting much smarter and some of the ideas in the sort of production values are brilliant and the way they use graphics on their social stuff, I think it's really cool. Yeah, I think it's really impressive how the lengths that they're going to, and I think they realize how important it is for them to have like a good video presence. I think it's really impressive.

Yeah, I've been following some of the different creatives that are working directly with a lot of these clubs, just to kind of see how they're turning out the content, some of the behind the scenes, and it's really a huge production now, what it's become. And it really does make sense for a lot of them to just have people internal that they can train, that know the brand and kind of work for.

Like, that's, I mean, that's kind of how it is with a lot of corporate companies that they're trying to do, you know? But I guess the difference is that a lot of people may not be as passionate about, you know, the stats numbers for XYZ Corp than- Corporate banking, yeah. Yeah. With the football teams, they've got like no, like everything they for XYZ Corp, then... Corp for banking, yeah. Yeah.

With the football teams, they've got like no, like everything they do is interesting and exciting, isn't it? Yeah. It's like nice colors, football, which is exciting, you know, loads of these cool young people. Like everybody's got an interest in it somehow. You know, all the age groups, you know, you want to be the player, you follow the club,

you think they're cool, whatever. It's all, and all the lifestyle brands. I mean, it's like a, just every angle of it is sort of, has got potential, isn't it? There's a saying in Toronto where like, because we've noticed this, where some companies that, or ad agencies know that when they're working with say a cool brand, you know, or maybe like a sports team, it gets reflected in the budget where it's so low that they call it the cool tax, you know? Yeah, like a music video or something. It's like, but you should be doing it for free

or fashion because it's fun. You're lucky to be here. You get exposure. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's like, oh, like you'll be there courtside with the NBA or with the Toronto Raptors, you know, filming this. It's like, oh yeah, great. What's the budget? Nothing. Five dollars. I can't pay my rent with nothing. Yeah, you're essentially paying to be there.

Yeah. Yeah, it's an expensive ticket. I'd rather just buy the ticket on it. It's like, I'm trying. What else they do that in, yeah, music videos or fashion. They say it'll be good for your portfolio. Yeah, there's no that in music videos or fashion, they say it'll be good for your portfolio. Yeah, there's no money in music videos. It's funny that once in a while,

I don't know if it's the same for you, but get an email through the lead pipeline being like, hey, I got a music video that I need to shoot next week. The budget is $200 and I need you to provide this, provide that, you need this. And I'm like, did you not look at the website? Yeah. It's a bit like, if someone asks, your friends ask because you're in video, they think you do all sorts of things. They say do you do weddings as a sort of joke and stuff?

There's just no way. And some people I know would do that kind of stuff. But yeah, music videos, weddings and stuff, it's not for me. I couldn't get involved in it. Did you do weddings when you were getting into it? I think I've done one or two and they're not. You got traumatized? You have a look in your eyes, like that thousand yard stair. That was PTSD hitting him.

He was zoning out as he was talking. The thousand yard stair. Bad memories. Yeah, back in Larm. Yeah, it's not. I think it's, yeah, it's just, they're a bit like a corporate event, but you know, in a way they're worse because they're sort of generally less money and more stressful. Did a bride yell at you? Is that what happened? No, I don't, I try to think what it did.

I think I did my brother's wife. Did your groom yell at you? It's just, did someone yell at you? Did you say I gotta think of what I did? What did I do? That was the phrase. I'll tell you what he did. He forgot to hit record on the Brighting Room speech. I have done that once.

He hit record, at the end it started recording. Yeah. I was pretending something was wrong with the camera so we didn't get it. I just think it's too stressful. I think either we charge so much money to make it worth a fee so obscene that they wouldn't do it. And they call him out on it. They're like, okay, we'll pay it. He's like, oh, now it's really stressful because that price tag is also on. Yeah, they're like, what are we going to get for all that?

Yeah, it's a downward spiral if you go in that route. It's like, let me overcharge so I don't get the gig. But then when you get it, you have to really make it good. You know? Yeah, it can't just be, yeah, and everything. But anyway, no, why are we talking about this? Events, OEMs, things that people want you to do for free. Yeah, no, I remember doing it. I think in the early days, I think, you know, in those three years, you said after Bloomberg and before starting out, I remember doing some really low paid jobs, which I think you know in those three years you said after Bloomberg and before starting out. I remember doing some really low-paid jobs Which I think at the time I didn't mind because you sort of I guess you have no more Yeah, and you haven't got the overheads of a business and you're sort of you think well for a few hundred quid

I'd actually don't mind that and you know, it's it's getting us along the thing But one thing I did do was get one of our clients now is a big property conference in Cannes one of the things I remember doing was going out there, like shooting stuff ourselves and doing these kind of on the, you know, at the event, Vox Pops and stuff, you know, all paid for by us. And that eventually got us the work. So, you know, occasionally it does work doing things for free,

but it's just, you can't rely on it. I think that's. But you gotta also want to do- What was paid for? What was paid for by you? So we went out and so there's this, I used to work at a do what was paid for by you. So we went out and so there's this, I used to work at a property magazine before I went to Bloomberg and there's this big property event called MIPIM in the south of France,

which is a sort of world real estate sort of, you know, I guess the whole thing, the whole world goes out and all sorts of companies go there and it's like a big thing. And we, because I knew about it, I went out there with a cameraman and we did all the, you know, we did some sort of Vox Pops on the streets and sort of made these daily rap videos to sort of promote it, even though it was all unofficial, just as a sort of way of boosting my portfolio and stuff. And I think also to say to our clients, we're going out there as a way of, you know, staying in touch with them all.

And then I sort of sent it to them and over a kind of year or two, we eventually got in there and now we do the work for them. So nice. So it's good and actually yeah you think sometimes that sort of stuff does pay off but you've just got to be in a position where you can afford to not get paid for it and hang in there. But yeah looking back on it you know we sort of went two or three times you know got the train all the way to south of France and did it. I guess it helped that it was somewhere nice to go but yeah we were paying to be out there, and I was paying a cameraman to follow me around and shoot stuff.

Nice. So now you got three. But you? Me plus two. Yeah, we're a tiny amount. So we have a junior producer level person who works across all the projects, I suppose, and is sort of support for me. And then we have an animator, motion graphics person, who helps

sort of create stuff but also work on you know I guess mopping up projects after they've sort of officially closed and that kind of thing. Is he also an editor like your editor or does he focus specifically on animation? Sort of really basic editing and we can do editing to the point of prepping rushes and making amends to stuff but on the whole we outsource our editing too. So that means you must get a lot of animation work then if you have like an in-house animator? Yeah, well it really ebbs and flows and if they're not on a project then we get them to do internal marketing stuff.

But I think often for really big projects we work with freelancers too who can sort of scale internal marketing stuff. I see, okay. But I mean, for really, I think often for really big projects, you know, we work with freelancers too, who can sort of scale up to this stuff. But as you say, it's very hard to keep the flow kind of absolutely perfect the whole time. Even in video production, you know, you gotta have those four different roles all packed into one, you know?

It's not just the corporate world. We're talking smack about that. We're talking smack, it's like, oh, if he's not animating, we'll get him to do this. We'll get him to do that. I was just thinking, you can do Photoshop. You can do exactly. Exactly. I do it all.

You know, one of our PAs, Olivia, who's a trooper, like sometimes we have her help us with different things. Like she comes in as a PA, but she's helping us with teleprompter gaffing. Yeah. It's like, I know you didn't sign up for this but you're now gonna do this. I need you. Yeah.

But I think that's, I think up to a point it's okay. I think as long as people aren't doing it, you know, you're like, I signed up for it as an animator and now I'm like, paid it. Look, you also reward people like for being able to be that flexible. We're not saying that we wouldn't reward them, right? And that's probably what you do as well.

I think it was an understanding where it's like, this is your main role, but maybe occasionally we might need you to be able to do this and that. And if that's what people are pushing in the corporate world, I think more people would be understandable. People would think that. But they're not.

They're just saying, no, you have to be the best at photography and the best at animation and the best at editing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, okay, how much do I get paid? 50 big ones. Yeah. Dollars. $50. Yeah. An average salary for doing four jobs. Average at best. What's the, Nick, what's the freelancer world like over there? I think it's very, I'm trying to get the right word to describe it, there are lots of them. I think it's, I was talking to some this morning, I think it's a huge thing and I think the whole industry sort of, you know, absolutely survives because of freelancers. And it's great in a way because, you know, there are so many of them and there are a

lot of really good ones and everybody needs them. But equally it means the network is very powerful and there's a lot of work that they get, I think, that in the past would have just gone straight to a bigger company. But I think freelancers now are so sophisticated and the tools they can use mean that they're so flexible and adaptable towards the things. All sorts of permutations of one person scales up to three or four and they can do the work of a bigger company. I think it's a really not complicated ecosystem but very detailed or whatever the word is. It's a huge network of freelancers doing all sorts of things and I think they basically run the, I sort of feel like they run the country in a way, which is good in a way because they're out there

and there are ones you like to work with and ones you sort of think well actually they wouldn't be my first call. But I think that yeah they're everywhere and I think it's, we were at an event yesterday called In Motion, I don't know if you heard it, it's like a huge, I think it's, we were at an event yesterday called In Motion. I don't know if you heard of it, it's like a huge, I think it's Dutch originally, you know, they sort of mainly work in Holland, but they had a day yesterday in London and it's just full of motion graphics and animators. And there were sort of, you know,

thousands of them queuing up to get in. And you'd think there won't be that much work for all of them, but they're all there. And it's just, I think the standard is just so high that it's such a competitive market. Yeah, I wonder how it would be to run like the rates will definitely be decent Like in terms of competitive. They're very they're probably very competitive and that's that's why I'm like wondering if there's like as you said, there's 15,000 Corporations video production corporations registered in London. So that could be one person registered as that but that okay

So but that's like entities, I suppose, you could go to to get a film made if you wanted to. Yeah. So yeah, and then I guess on the freelance side, like a lot of them that might be doing a lot of work would be putting themselves up as an entity. I mean, when you think about it, a lot of our smaller video production companies,

it's almost in a way the same situation as them, just under a company name as like the face of it, right? So it's just a different way of slicing the work. Yeah. And yeah, you exactly call yourself, well, I guess I started out and it was just me, it was Bush, you know, and then you just get more people. But it's a lot of the freelancers we work with

have a company name and they will, you know, their invoices come from a company but actually you know it's just Andy down the road or whatever who does it. How did you find out there's 15,000? Somebody told me, I think it was an agency guy giving a talk and he was just saying, or maybe I read it on LinkedIn, the world's blur. They were saying, I think he was maybe someone who do deals with branding or business development and you know trying to help you find your your niche

or something he was just saying you know you don't this is how competitive your market is and you've got you know over 15,000 companies all pitching for sort of the same work as you're trying to get in London or like in Britain I think that was the UK oh the UK oh that's not too bad then for the whole of the UK no yeah but I mean of those probably 10,000 are in London or something. Yeah It's heavily skewed. Wait, is it London or like the London greater area or greater GLA? The Greater London is sort of Yeah, it is the sort of I don't know if you learned London, but there's a sort of motorway around it called the M25 Oh, okay

Greater London sort of means everything within that I think, which is like however far across, but London is a huge city. But also Brighton, I don't know if you Brighton is sort of on the coast by now or south. And there's a lot of, it tends to be also a lot of animation and graphics people are down in Brighton. It seems to be like a hotbed of sort of spin-offs or, you know, people go down there because it's slightly cheaper than what it used to be. It's a beach town. Yeah, it's a beach town. They want to live by the water and just animate and sort, you know, people go down there because it's slightly cheaper than what it used to be. And it's just a beach town. Yeah, they want to, they want to live by the, they want to live by the water and just animate and edit, you know, I completely get that lifestyle. But a lot of companies we work down there and also Bristol, I think, but yeah,

Brighton is like a hotbed of creative sort of companies at the moment. You know, when I was doing research for, cause we focused a lot on American cities this year and there were a couple where I was like, wow, there's like no companies here. I think Albuquerque is watching Better Call Saul. So I see who's around there. There's like three companies. We had one of them come on. Paul from Moji Cinema.

Yeah. Yeah. The but that's it. It was him. And there were two other ones. There's like no one else there. Some places are small. Have you found, have there been differences between the different, I don't know how many, what the range of cities or areas you've spoken to?

Are you noticing that there's people from a certain area all saying the same thing and that's completely different to the scene in another place? In terms of what? Well, I don't know anything. I suppose anything like you've noticed that, you know, production companies from London always have the same complaints or like they work like this. And actually that it's interesting because in America it's completely different and this wouldn't work or, you know, I don't know all the rates, you know, we say our freelancer rates are 350 a day for an editor graphics person and upwards. But you know, it's interesting to know like the fees are way more here or I'm

interested to know if you've I guess noticed. I think we did. We did a shoot in the in London and I remember the rates were pretty good compared to here. Like in terms of like they it was good for us to hire because they were very reasonable. But you guys did one thing that was very interesting I don't know if you do that or if because I got a couple of quotes from a couple of different companies then I was surprised to see you guys charge per like equipment like each equipment is like

But yeah, some people do that. Oh like like each piece of gear was low Bro, they had the they had the tripod. I put like 50 pounds on like for the track like It was weird to see that right? But that's what I saw there. But yeah, I don't know if they don't they don't I yeah I tend not to like it but we have some freelancers who will do that Like the DAP guys that and some people would say this is my fee and providing it's not something really unusual It's everything is for my fee where some people go like, you know, oh, here's a battery. That's you know, ten pounds Yeah, I know it's it's weird like I get it. Yeah, but at the same time I'm like

Okay, I guess cuz we're used to the Toronto market in here. Yeah, cuz there's a lot of people It's kind of included as part of the yeah the pack like it sometimes They'll add an equipment cost to it Like if you get a DP or whatever if it's a small it's like a request as well And there's like a lot of equipment that's needed but yeah it's like a lot but it's one total cost over there it's like per item like you could look at it and it's like the basic stuff and I was like all right like kind of need a tripod plate at least yeah it's depressing isn't it it's

sort of I always think it sets like just makes the whole thing a bit you know it feels a bit mean at the beginning. And then you think, well, I didn't use that. So can you take it off? And then like, well, yeah. I'm going to be looking at the DP the whole time. It's like, ah, did you use that bass plate? I don't think you did.

Yeah, it didn't come out of the bag. Take that off the table. Put the camera on a table. Boom. Saved us a tripod. No slider, no slider. No slider. Just put it on a book, boom, saved us a tripod. No slider, no slider. No slider, just put it on a book and move it around.

Yeah, I have a joke with one guy. I said, he goes, Nick, you thought about the tripod, therefore I'm putting it on the thing. Just the fact you've even talked about it is worth it. You can charge you for that. That's good. But there are differences. There are differences.

That's the one I can think off the top of my head between like us and London. But in terms of like, isn't other stuff like there's other places where like they maybe it was harder for them to source freelancers like just thinking because we were talking about freelancers earlier. But for me personally, the main difference I noticed was that a lot of the American companies have way stronger portfolios compared to like the Canadian companies. And I haven't done too much outreach in London, but so I'm not going to say too much about that.

But compared to like the Canadian companies, I noticed the American portfolios were very strong. And more variety. The main reason is because there's a lot of variety and bigger, bigger stuff, way bigger stuff. Because if you look at it, there's a lot of different ecosystems in the U.S. versus in Canada because a lot of like the main hubs are Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and maybe Alberta here and there. So it's like, it's like four or five hubs in Canada, whereas in the US there's like multiple, like

50, dozens, dozens of hubs. That's a good point. The other point too is that more things are privatized in the US, which means that they're all private entities. It's easier than dealing with publics. Public, what does that mean? they're all private entities you can it's it's easier than than dealing with publics public uh what does that mean it's so like again like um if everything's privatized they're all individual entities and they they they basically get more money because they're not sharing it all from one

from one source which would be the government right so here if it's public you're basically dealing with very limited budgets because it's all coming from federal budget, right? It's just the private sector is just much bigger in America. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like more things are privatized there compared to like here in Canada Right. Yeah, and their market is huge. So they've all got huge huge. Yeah. And again, they got the American dollar Like every single fortune 500 American dollar, every single Fortune 500 company is headquartered in the states, which means that they'll be creating more content and they'll have bigger budgets to create that content, right? Yeah.

I think every now and again, I hear about one of the production companies in the UK starting up in New York and stuff or whatever. I think for them, it's just a huge market. If you can get the formula right and the mix right, I think it could be huge. But as you say, because the market is so much bigger than the UK, I think once you've got it right in one area, you can just roll it out across the country. Yeah. And again, also, if you're trying to make that next big move as a company, that next

step is breaking into the US market. You can't be like a massive company and not be headquartered in this, or have a position in the States, right? Cause that's the biggest market. A lot of production companies in the US also, they're very, they kind of even work remote. Like some of them work remotely in one state,

but then have clients all over the country and they fly out to all these different cities to conduct their work as well. There are a few, there was like one or two guests that we had on the show that had that kind of work workflow set up. And it works for them as well, because it really is easy to just hop on a quick one hour flight. It's almost like commuting in a way, right? And I completely understand because like, what's the point of like living, for example, in LA three thousand four thousand dollars a month for a tiny shack when you can when you can essentially live in I don't know I don't know what's like a good example but another state where you do most of like your day-to-day stuff you fly in you've hired local crew maybe and then that also works too. Yeah. Speaking of Carol why do we spend three thousand in a shack in Toronto?

I don't really know, honestly. We should take that our own advice at this point, you know? Cause it's the same everywhere. That's the problem in Canada. It's like, you spend the, here's an example. Say you spend three or like $4,000 a month for a house here. Yeah, sure.

Go to another smaller place. A lot of people thought of the same idea. So instead of 4,000 is 3,500. It's not that big of a difference Yeah, now you've got a commute to where you were. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there you go. So three hours to get to the city Yeah, I think that happened here. Yeah Before it used to be everybody in London now you get all these you speak to all these producers or whatever and they're all around the country, but I'm in glad hello, I'm in Glasgow, whatever or I'm in Bristol and And they just fly down for shoots as and when they get them. And you think, well, why don't I do that?

And then you think, well, I just would end up getting the train to London three times a week and spending a few thousand pounds a year on a season ticket or something. That was a buddy. That was a buddy. He lives in Scotland. He was working in London like twice a week or something.

Yeah. So he was flying in every now and then. And I know those train comm working in London like twice a week or something. Yeah, so he was flying in every now and then and I know those train commutes in London because I have family that live in or just outside London and they live around the Bromley area. Okay, so kind of nearly south, yeah, Kent nearly. Exactly, so the commute from there is like probably like an hour, hour and a half sometimes with the train so and you have to do that daily. It's not easy to do that constantly. And the trains are really expensive in the UK as well.

I don't know all that. Yeah, they were very expensive, I remember. And once you get, I don't remember specifically, but it's like, if it started to add up, it's gonna be quite a bit. And once you get to like King's Cross station, like that place is a massive hub with so many people like the rush hour time is not fun there yeah lots of people trying to do things in different places is it worse than

Union well they're probably like five I don't know how big Union is but they're probably like five or six unions in London or something like that yeah yeah well it's like everyone's doing that. Everyone, everyone commutes in because like there, there's no, it's hard to live in London. It's so expensive that it just makes sense for most people to just live two hours, one hour outside of the city and they're just cheaper to come in through the train. Yeah.

I mean, I've often, you think about, do we need to be in London? Because as you say, so much of it's remote. And client meetings can be remote. And I don't know. I mean, we're still here for now. And I think I like it because it's sort of nearer to the clients and when shoots happen. But I mean, you could easily set yourself up three hours away

and just come in and spend the night in London and do our shoes and go back. But I think it's more about for us, remote working. Once, it's easy to sort of have the immediate team around you, but once it creates a huge amount of back and forth managing projects completely remotely, I think it's all right for a certain level, but I wouldn't want to be doing everything remotely.

I think that would be exhausting. In-person is good. I mean, Kierl and I can't currently do do in person too much because we're working from home. But I think if we had the opportunity, I think I would have pushed for an office. But it's an extra expense that we're trying to avoid for the time being. It's a bit like once you've got it, it's okay, but it's hard to sort of create it when it wasn't there before. Yeah. If you're already set up and you have a good system kind of going, then you're great. Because startup costs for having some in-person kind of studio space or office space is the thing

that usually is a little bit crazy. And then on top of that, having to be stuck on a contract for many months, especially when you've put so much money into these spaces because a lot of like studios basically have to spend 50 grand, 100 grand, 200 grand to set up a whole massive studio space, but it's on a lease. So if the lease holder decides to cut you out, boom, all those costs to set it up the way you wanted, gone out the window at that point, right? But I guess-

I think for us is the transit is a pain because we live far from each other now, like 30 kilometers. So it's like we'd have to meet in the middle somewhere. And yeah, I don't know how I don't know how it is in London, but traffic in Toronto is like the worst in North America. Oh, we wouldn't drive, you know, it would be it would be the train, you know, the tube or whatever. Yeah, you wouldn't drive, you know, it would be the train, the tube or whatever. Yeah, you wouldn't drive.

But yeah, on the whole, I mean, I find certainly that it's sort of it's enough work to sort of communicate with freelancers and sort of brief them and review their work. That's enough. But to do it with all the team as well. I mean, not all the team, you know, the employees that we have, the staff that we've got, I think it's nice to be able to not. It's just one less email to send, isn't it? And have conversations about stuff immediately.

That's true. Yeah. It's endless. When we were talking about how it's, you know, the briefing of freelancers and reviewing their stuff, it's a bit like prompting AI. You know, it's about the quality of your, it's the quality of your instructions. So important. That's pretty good. I'm still on that one. Well, I realized that's how AI is going to work, isn't it? It's how well can you brief a freelancer? How well can you prompt AI? And it's just tiring and you've got to get it right.

And when you start on an edit, you've got to get everything ready the day before, brief them so they know what to do, and then be on hand during the day as stuff's going on. So remote working comes with a huge amount of sort of unseen kind of add-on admin, not admin, but sort of prep work. Yeah. Opportunity costs mainly as well, because you're spending more time also on that

aspect rather than actually closing more deals or running the business. Yeah. And you're, you're, yeah, you're having to make sure that they're doing the right thing. Are they, are they briefed? Are they on the right track? Have they got everything they need? You know, getting all the assets together for freelancers is sort of skill in itself.

With some of the, some of the freelancers that we work with very often I Find sometimes just giving like a quick phone call just to kind of go over a bunch of things very quickly is a lot easier You get everything ready and you have a kickoff phone call at the beginning to sort of talk through everything explain what but I mean It's sort of you know the more to sort of talk through everything, explain what, but I mean, it's sort of, you know, the more, and the more contact you have, the better. Absolutely, you gotta do all that. And obviously you want people who know the brand

or hopefully, you know, you go back to certain guys who know the brand and know that client, so there's less sort of briefing you need to give them because they understand how it'll work. It's the best. There's like one client that we've worked with on this animation project for the last three years. And it's always around the same time in January when it comes.

And I just today, for example, was, was emailing the main animator that's worked on the project every year. And I said, Hey, just letting you know, I'm going to should be, we should be getting some contact soon about this. So just get ready for round four. You know, he's like, all right, perfect. Let's do this. You know, and it's, it's straightforward, you know, perfect. Let's do this. It's straightforward. We know the brief.

It's usually the same deal. It's like an annual conference. Freelancers who know the brand and they can deliver it first time and they're worth a huge amount. Yeah, because otherwise then if you have to bring in another freelancer, if they're not available, and Then you have to kind of reteach what the whole deal is you got to resend all the branding guidelines Be like make sure you do it like this like that. It's a huge. I mean, that's that's the cost of remote work is that Isn't it and so that in a way, it's great. But equally it just comes with a whole amount of you know issues exactly and sometimes like um sometimes we get requests from clients for certain edits and smaller projects because uh where uh we decide to take it internally and I

just do it uh internally rather than send it out to an editor because I know it's going to be a lot faster if I just take care of it in this particular sense rather than spend the time to teach someone else then they send it back. It's like, okay, it's not great, you know, and then it's not exactly how it needs to be. So then I have to ask it again. Because like, but then on the other side, people say, oh, but you got to, if you want to work with more and more editors, you got to teach them, you got to do this.

And I do agree. But I think on more important things, right? If it's, if it's something that's super super simple that can be done in like a couple hours, unless you're teaching someone who's brand new, you know, like in the industry and you're trying to like groom them to be like a really good editor for your team for the long term, that's one thing. It's another thing where it's like, you're not going to give your most senior editor this one project that's going to take a little bit of time to go over it with them, have them work on something a lot bigger, that's going to provide more value for you

rather than just give them that simple thing to do, right? You have to, it's always like, you see what projects are coming through and you have to kind of like Tetris it and figure out, okay, it'll be good if I give this one to them, I'll do these two little ones on the side just so that can kind of get it out of the way. And then they can focus on this particular project or, or whatever, or vice versa. So yeah, I think that's a real skill, isn't it? It's knowing when to spend money on, on superior talent and when,

when to think this is good enough without wanting to give your clients something that is below the standards that they should be getting. It's, I think that's a big skill of, that's the kind of producer role, I suppose, increasingly is that, isn't it? Yeah, like know what not to waste their time with in terms of like, it's not wasting time necessarily, but like to occupy their time, sorry.

That's the right way to say it. If you're occupying your best editor with a lot of little projects that are, sure they're paying the bills or whatever, but then this really big one comes through but they're busy with those, now what? Now what are you gonna do, right? So it's always a balancing act.

I think one of the things we do, because often, also, there's an element of, especially with bigger projects, you want the really talented people on it, but you know the client might not be interested in paying. There's that flip side, yeah. Because if it's a huge project, the editors spend a lot of time going through the rushes, getting all the prepping at all. And so we'll do a thing of we'll sort of get it all ready internally.

So you'll sort of get to the point where these are the bits we want to, this is the stuff to focus on. These are the selections and the interviews that we want you to look at. Because you know the client wouldn't wanna spend the extra three days of sort of super talented guy going through all this stuff. Which is something that we can do because we know the shoot really well. I think there's sort of the art of knowing

how to deploy your resources versus someone else's and sort of where to spend the time and money. Exactly. Yeah. Well, we're at the one hour mark, so I think this might be a good spot to end, but before we end off, just tell us how you came up with the company's name.

Yeah, Bush. Is this the question everyone gets at the end of every? Everyone, everyone. Everyone has a company. So I went to a boarding school and I have three older brothers and we all went to the same school. And it a nickname that we all like inherited off each other so when one leaves you know you become bouche.

Wait what? And I don't know why the first my first eldest brother got the nickname oh we don't know why that is but it's just What's it mean? In French it means mouth. Yeah exactly so that's how it's spelled not because there's a TV series here called Mighty Boosh Which is like a weird offbeat kind of comedy series, which is spelled double O SH and this is Boosh spelled with them As in mouth like the French way mouth media

The French way and it's funny when you have French clients because they're like, you know in England, it's just nice or UK It's nice because it just sounds like a nice word to say but but in France they're like, why are you called Mouth Media? You know, but. M&M, you know. Yeah, bad for them. But no, that's it. That's just a nickname. And actually, I think at the time when you're looking for, you know, you're selling for

business, a lot of it comes down to the URL, you know, what website is for it. And you go through all of them and all the sort of standard ones like, you know, really great video.com, all that kind of stuff has gone. Really? Hold on a second. I'm going to check if that one is available right now. And then over there in the UK, we have a lot of animal descriptive names like, you know, flaming giraffe or hungry hippo or not like that. But, you know, things like that because you're combining two names.

So immediately you've got more chance of finding it free. Really great media is not available but .ca is available. Oh nice, reallygreatvideo.com was there. What about.uk? Yeah so that's it really it's just a nickname and the website was free and I figured with a nickname you you know, if people like saying it, then people that we are happy to say it. So that's it. Nice. Yeah. I like it. Bush media. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, that's not a bad one. I still don't know how you guys came up with Bush as a nickname. No, I know. It hasn't really answered the question, has it? I wonder 100 percent. We wonder if it's just maybe because he was really kind of, you know, what we'd say mouthy or gobby, you know. Yeah, that's what I was kind of getting, you know,

it's like someone would have to say like Fermé la bouche, you know. That's what I was thinking. Well, maybe that's, yeah, we think our newsletter should change to being, you know, Amuse Bouche, like all these, you know, like a food offering andi LaBouche can be at the end or something Like a sign off. Yeah It's the final slide in all your pitch decks now, right? Yeah, we can do a nice little animation of the lips shutting or something with the mouth shutting This should be the logo just like Yeah, just like the Rolling Stones, you know, they're sort of

Just like that, right? Yeah. Nice. I'll go and send an email to a branding guy and get it done. We'll get your editor to create the animation for it. Yeah. There you go. For the six rolls that he does.

Yeah, exactly. Nice. Okay. Alright, well guys, if you want to see Nick's website, go to bushmedia.com. So B-O-U-C U C H E media.com. And he's based out of London. So if you have a shoot out there, make sure to reach out to him. And yeah, thanks again for coming on.

And I think your socials. Thanks, Nick. We end off. Let me just do a shout out for your socials as well. It's the same thing. Bush media. No, Instagram is the only one we really we don't do. Tick tock. But yeah, it's Bush video dot com. So someone took media. No, Instagram is the only one we really we don't do TikTok. But yeah, it's Bush video.com. Sorry, just someone took media. Hey, yeah.

Well, I think what happened actually originally we did have media and then. Something happened to the Instagram account. We lost it. You know how I don't know how sometimes you get locked out of it and then you you can't get it back anyway. So it's a video. Yeah. Oh, that sucks. Bush video is the Instagram handle, not Bush Media.

They're imposters. I don't think there is a media anymore. I don't know, or it's just dormant, or lots of frustrated fans sending us messages trying to say, where's all the content? They're like, why didn't you update the website? Why didn't you reply to me on Instagram? Yeah. Well, we'll find you guys on Instagram

too and hopefully if our new website ever gets made for the new year or something we can have a talk about new websites and showreels and stuff as well. That's a whole new podcast probably. Sounds good. Anyway, thanks a lot guys. It was great chatting with you. Thanks Thanks for listening to this episode of Creative Scrap Coffee. Please make sure to follow and engage with us on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and your favorite podcast app. Creative Scrap Coffee is created by Laps Productions, a video production company based in Toronto, Canada. Creatives Grab Coffee is also sponsored by... My name is Mehran, welcome to Canada Film Equipment. We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto.

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