Creatives Grab Coffee - Internal Growth and Strategy (ft. Black Box Productions) | Creatives Grab Coffee 21

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov. Our goal is to make the video production industry smaller by creating a sense of community. Whether you are a creative, an entrepreneur, or a professional there is knowledge for you to learn. Join us as we have industry professionals from around the world come on the show and share their insights on the industry and business. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Welcome to Video Production.This weeks guest is Josh Usheroff from Black Box Productions. Black Box Productions is a Montreal and Toronto based Video Production company that creates branded content and marketing videos for advertising agencies and corporate clients.To view the post for this episode, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/internal-growth-strategy-creatives-grab-coffee-21/To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/creatives-grab-coffee/Subscribe and follow for future episodes!Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee https://www.instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffee/Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comInstagram: @lapseproductions https://www.instagram.com/lapseproductions/

Welcome, everyone, to Creators Grab Coffee. Today, we have Josh from Black Box Productions. Black Box Productions is a production company based in Montreal and Toronto. So, Josh, great to have you here. Super glad to be here. So, why don't we just start off with a little intro about yourself. Just tell us, you know, how you got into the industry and basically how you got to where you are now. Sure. So, I've been running Blackbox

Productions with my business partner, Ben, for a little over a dozen years. I always had an interest in video production and studied communications at Concordia. After university, I was working a freelancer as a camera operator for different production companies and decided that once I'd saved up enough money to buy my own camera, that I was ready to, you know, go into this full time. So I contacted Ben who was living in Toronto at the time, and he was working as an editor at CBC. And the two of us, you know, got together and started working full time on Blackbox from small beginnings, but slowly, slowly with a focus on just doing better and better work until we're at where we are today. As soon as the digital revolution started, you guys have seen the slow and steady growth of it becoming difficult from starting to be difficult to create content to make to being virtually easy. You know, something as simple as a Zoom video now, right?

Yeah, I mean, I was getting into it like for some context around the time that YouTube was sort of becoming a popular format uh and that you know between that and the what was it the canon 5d mark 2 that really changed the game in terms of the look uh of the video content that was getting shot and um so we've been doing it for quite a while yes was there more to that question uh no that was pretty much it like essentially you've seen you've seen like all the progression that's happened throughout the years uh what is like probably one of the most, uh, craziest change you've seen, uh, that maybe someone might not have, uh, noticed over the, over the last decade or so. Well, when we were starting out, you know, companies were not relying on video as much as they are today. And so, you know, I think there was a lot more of an argument for why video at the

time, like we had to sort of convince people to a certain extent that they could benefit from having a video on their website, talking about their company or their culture or the products that they sell. I mean, obviously there's some larger, more established companies that already had marketing budgets and were doing things on TV and starting to experiment in social spaces. But these days, I don't feel the need, or at least not with our clients, to convince them why video. I think the research is there. Video has more engagement than so many other formats. And so now, at this point point, you know, our clients are coming to us and it's really like, how can we use the video to best achieve their goals? It's gotten more so from like, you guys just need a video to like, you guys need more strategic videos to help with your

marketing purposes. Exactly. I mean, so much of it is just figuring out what are their clients' objectives and who is their audience. Those are like from any new client that we're working with, those are the first two things that we ask is really like, what is the purpose of the content that we're trying to create and who is it geared towards? And then from that, that is going to inform the creative treatment, but also the distribution platforms or whether or not it's going to be, you know, on social or YouTube or broadcast, you know, all those things come into consideration. How involved do you get on that front?

Like on the strategic front of like where they should be or what type of content they should be creating, where they should be posting it and all that, because it's easy to kind of get a little too involved with that. And then at that point, it's like, are you doing more marketing services or video? Because it's like, there's like a fine line that we tend to kind of tread kind of closely at times. Right. Well, I think that in many ways, we are a strategy first production company in the sense that like, we have to have a clear understanding of what the objective of the content is before we go into the creative and the execution. That being said, most of our clients at this point are sophisticated enough

or have the resources that they know what the distribution channels are going to be. And then it's just a matter of making sure that our creative fits with that. So we do not handle after the, the content is created and delivered. We don't handle the, the, let's say, digital, uh, marketing side of things where we're actually placing ads or placing the content. Uh, often we're either working with agencies that have those capabilities, um,

or, uh, our clients have other partners for that so we're focused on the video production side of things that being said like you have to have the right format for the right medium so that's where that kind of strategy informs the the work that we're doing so So essentially, most of the projects that you guys work with are like projects where the client has already pretty much figured out the marketing. They have the plan. They know what they need to do. They just need to get the video created and they come to you to kind of execute that and like help figure out the creative for that specific project, right? No, not always. In fact, I would, so half of the clients that we're working with are certainly like when we're working with an agency, the agency has already done a lot of that strategic legwork and often creative legwork. They know more or less

what the project is going to be. And then yes, they're relying us mostly for our technical expertise, for our ability to sort of, you know, deliver on the on the creative and make sure that it looks good, sounds good and, you know, ticks all the boxes. But we're we also work with clients where they give us a general brief. We have a new product. Here's what it is. Here's who we think our audience is going to be. How do you recommend we create a video like what video is going to resonate best? Sometimes they'll know what the distribution channels are going to be, how do you recommend we create a video? Like what video is going to resonate best? Sometimes they'll know what the distribution channels are going to be beforehand. I'm thinking of like two separate brands specifically that we worked with. One was Yokohama Tires, and they really wanted to develop an awareness campaign.

So we helped them to find out specifically who their customer was who the audience they want to target is what does the awareness campaign mean to them and also like how much are we going to incorporate product features into it another campaign we were working on was with mattel for a toy called breakout beasts which was like a an action a build, I don't want to say action figure, but a buildable toy that has slime. And each one is a different beast. And so and that target audience is like young boys, mostly like seven to 10 year old boys that are going to be adventurous, love slime, have lots of energy, that kind of thing. So for that campaign, again, it's figuring out like, what is the

story we're going to tell to get these kids excited about this toy and um and so we built a whole backstory about like um this kind of indiana jones type character that's like exploring through a cave and discovers these eggs the toy comes in a plastic egg covered in slime and then like or cobwebs and then opens it up and, you know, is excited playing with the toy. So it's not just like, here's this toy and here's how you play with it. But like, what, what, what story can we build around it to achieve our client's objectives of, you know, announcing this new product launch and, and getting kids excited about the product. Did you keep in when when coming up with the creative for that,

did you kind of refer back to like the nineties toy commercials that were around where it was like extreme zoom ins, you know, wham, bam, kaboom, you know, like just action. And for like 15 to 30 seconds. I mean, we've, we've done a fair bit in the, in the toy space. I think we'll get to that a little bit later when we start thinking, talking about business stuff, because we're sort of launching a new venture specifically for the toy and gaming industry. But, you know, yes, attention spans are short. This was a 20 second spot, you know, no one frame lasts more than three seconds.

Probably it's average is about 1.2 seconds or something like that. So it's definitely fast paced, but you know, we are not necessarily throwing back to an aesthetic that's, that's nineties. Like we're using the, the current toys and, um, by toys, I mean the camera equipment that I get to play with, but like probe lenses and, you know, stop motion, building up the toy and all kinds of things like that. So, uh still making it sleek and contemporary, but definitely like fast paced and fun. Interesting. Why don't you tell us a bit about the relationship you and your business partner have? Because it's often we don't find a lot of other companies that have like a partnership. It's usually just sole proprietorship that maybe expands later on. Or it might be like, I think we've either just seen that or we've seen like three plus

partners. So Ben and I have, I think a bit of a unique story because we met when our parents were pregnant with us. Our parents met going to like mommy and me or some kind of like prenatal class together. And they lived on the same street, just like a block away. So we've known each other and had play dates

literally since we were born. And- So you're not partners. You guys are brothers, basically. It's pretty close to that, yeah. And so like we were friends for a long time and our interests sometimes overlaps. And he was studying filmmaking in Toronto. I think it was at Ryerson at the time. Oh, we're Ryerson. Congrats.

And and I was studying communications at Concordia. And then he was working in CBC News, as I mentioned, and just like an incredibly fast editor. I got to sit in on the on the in the newsroom with him, basically, as he was getting the clips that are going to air in the preview of the six o'clock news, you know, like tonight's top stories. And so we were hanging out there for a little while and not much was happening. And then I think like 20 minutes before air, someone came in and was like, okay, here's the story and here's what we're going to do. And he would pick the highlights and chop it up and send it on the server. And like, it was on air, you know, seconds later, basically like, like 60 seconds before he finished the edit or after he finished the edit, before he finished the edit or after he finished the edit it was online or on tv so um i was like super impressed by his uh editing skills storytelling ability longtime friend we share like a lot of similar interests so um when i wanted to go into this more full-time we started talking about like how can we turn this into a business that we work in together so how did you

guys turn it into a business like what was that together. So how did you guys turn it into a business? Like, what was that like? Well, in the beginning, we were just sort of saying yes to everything and figuring out what it was that we were going to do. I mean, within our organization, at this point, at least, I am the producer on most of the projects. I help coordinate things with clients, establish that strategy sort of off the top. And then I'm also the cinematographer. So not everything, but most

of the time I'm the one lensing behind the camera responsible for the visual aesthetic. And then Ben on the other hand is very creative and much more of a storyteller. So he focuses on like the content when he's the director of a project usually. And so he's getting the performances out of the actors. And so while I'm kind of like not listening to what they're saying during the interview, but making sure that there's no weird reflections or shine, he's focused on the content and doesn't have to think about the aesthetic as much. Um, and then he also leads our post-production. So he's often editing on our bigger projects, but then we have a team of editors that he oversees as well. Um, so yeah, when we were starting out, um, we were trying to

find our way and find some gigs. I can tell you a couple stories about like projects in the early days that, you know, we achieved like only by hustle. So the first one was there was someone who posted online looking for a Steadicam operator for a shoot. It was on Craigslist. This is like how I was finding work in the earliest of days, right? Someone posts on Craigslist. This is like how, how I was finding work in the earliest of days, right? Someone posts on Craigslist, they need a Steadicam operator. I'm not a Steadicam operator, but I wrote back anyways. And I just basically said something to the effect of like, I'm not a Steadicam operator, but I do have a very steady arm. Would you like to discuss? And he brought me in for an interview and we talked for a bit. He was starting up this like home and garden style show.

It was like half hour episodes. And I realized that he probably didn't know what a Steadicam operator was anyway. And I had more production experience. He was kind of had like this vision for the production. So we he agreed to work with me. He realized that we could get the shots without a Steadicam. And then shortly after, Ben got brought on the project as well because he needed an editor and a director.

So we started working with a few other people. So that's like my first story of just kind of, you know, an ambitious, like knowing that I'm not fit for the job. I didn't lie. I wasn't going to pretend that I was a Steadicam operator if I'm not fit for the job. I didn't lie. Like I wasn't going to pretend that I was a city cam operator if I'm not, but at least like trying to get our first foot in the door in different places and, um, and, you know, not being afraid if it wasn't the perfect fit, as long as you're sort of straightforward about what your skills are, that project worked out in the end and, and got us like, we were working pretty consistently for probably the first year on that project. So that was a good sort of start into production.

Another thing that I did was I went to like a salon de mariage, which is like a wedding conference, basically, where couples will go to find their photographers and videographers and limos and that kind of thing. And I went to the different photographers that were there. And I said, you guys offer video services, I can shoot video for you, and found someone who was doing wedding photography, but didn't have a video team. And he started sending me work. And so that was like another just sort of like pounding the pavement hustling in the early days trying to find our first gigs everyone starts in the wedding scene yeah you know weddings are a really great way especially for documentary uh camera operators to have a sense of like focusing on what's important or getting the shot that's right in front of you but have a situational awareness about everything else that's going around

you. Like if you're doing, I don't know what shots of bouquets or cutaways of whatever. And then you see this beautiful moment with the, the flower girl and the bride, like you've got to be aware enough to stop what you're doing, grab that shot and like capture all those moments. So yeah, I haven't shot weddings in probably a decade, but it was definitely a great way to sort of get started and, um, and hone your skills as a camera operator. It also like really, uh, teaches you how to make like, like you said, the, the quick

decision-making, which is so important across other aspects of the business, you know, whether you're shooting at that moment or anything else, because, you know, situations constantly keep changing. Nothing's ever always going according to plan. You can pre-production the hell out of a project. There's always going to be at least one little thing that kind of is like a, like a wrench in the engine, you know, and you have to be able to adapt very quickly, make decisions that not only sometimes, you know, fix that solution, but also excel past it. And that's like a good kind of, and weddings are like that foundation for a lot of us where we first, that was like the first time we actually started to kind of get a sense of how to do that problem solving. So yeah, it's, it's always funny to hear

that it's like everyone, most people have at least started or at least 90% of us, right. In that scene. Cause it's stable work, right. You know 90% of us right in that scene. Cause it's stable work, right? You know what your dates are for that thing. Like, and it's pretty consistent too. So that's why a lot of people get into it at the beginning. Plus it's a great place to test your gear. Yes. New lens.

Boom. Let's try it out guys. So after weddings, what was kind of like the next pivot for you and um you said like that's kind of like one of the first few things especially with that other project what was kind of like the first transition for kind of getting more consistent uh like maybe corporate or commercial type projects sure like i said like earlier on we were really just saying yes to everything and trying to figure out where it was that we fit in. And then over time, you know, I was even from the beginning, I wasn't in a rush to be overnight,

like the commercial production company in town, or really even figure, you know, sort of a rush to go beyond the slow and steady incremental improvement improvement that we were at and basically um my attitude was do good work and it will lead to more good work and so um you know slowly but surely we started working more with um with agencies um in fact um you had ian from Notch Video on the first season of your show. And Ian and I worked together quite a bit on projects. And I think they were starting Notch around the time that we were starting Black Box. And Ben had worked closely with Ian. And then Ian and I had gone on several shoots together. We went out to Las Vegas for, uh, with Samsung during CES. Um, we

went out to Austria for a skiing video with sport check. Um, so Ian's a totally great dude. And, uh, you know, notch was probably one of the other production companies that we work with are agencies that helped us level up our game and, um, and work more in the commercial space and working with agencies. And then I guess over time, good work leads to more good work sort of ended up working out. Our portfolio got better. That would attract new clients. I'm not sure exactly how we've done it, but we have fairly good SEO. I i think if you google video production montreal today we're probably on the first page and so uh that's how i found you guys when i was looking for guests in montreal that's that's exactly where the video production montreal and now you're right

there open up a bunch of pages there you go yeah i was actually i was curious to see how you found us but that's exactly right so a lot of the people that are finding us these days, you know, they're searching for a production company, probably for a specific project in Montreal. They see some of our work and they like what they see. And so they reach out and we start working together. Did you do a lot of work for SEO or did you just do a little bit and over time, it just kind of accumulated to what it is now? I don't know that we specifically did any work for SEO.

There were a couple of projects that we worked on over the years, including like a film and some other things that would get press. And then that would lead to inbound links from reputable news sources, which I think helps with SEO. inbound links from you know reputable news sources which i think helps with seo um we do occasional blog posts but not nearly as often as i would like or as we should have definitely got a backlog of things to post um so uh i can't say i can't say for sure exactly why it is but um i don't know for some reason google likes us and I don't want to change that. No, that's great. How would you say in terms of the kind of inbound leads that you have, is it mostly through referrals or people you've worked with in the past? Or would you say that the SEO has really kind of helped you guys generate new business?

Yeah, in terms of new projects, I feel like a good chunk of that comes from inquiries through email or from our website. They've seen our work and they want to get in touch. Obviously, we have a fair amount of repeat business with either the agencies or the companies that we're working with on an ongoing basis. And I suppose, although I don't really track it, some referrals as well, but from like the out of the blue who've never heard from them before,

and they don't know who we are. It's, it's mostly through our website. For, for the ones that are contacting you on your website, how did you, do you have a good method? Because you are on the first page, so you must be getting a lot of inquiries. I'm just wondering, do you have a good method for filtering out good leads versus bad leads? I think it's pretty obvious from the inquiry coming in.

pretty obvious from the inquiry coming in like if if it's a one-line email that says i have a new product and want to do a 30-second video how much does this cost that's usually a pretty low like low potential in the grand scheme of things and like we get a fair bit of music video requests too that generally like after we explain sort of what the minimum budget for a music video is, they realize that that's probably not realistic. But we do get a fair bit of like, I think it's fairly easy to tell, you know, if it's a legitimate company or an agency and they're talking about a specific project. company or an agency and they're talking about a specific project, most of the time they have a good sense of what they need and maybe even in the email a sense of what their target budget is already. So sometimes I'll schedule, I'll send an email with a couple follow-up questions just to clarify what their needs are. But if I think there's a good fit, then I usually jump right into scheduling a discovery

call. Hey, we'd be happy to work with you. Like, let's schedule a call to discuss what your project is more specifically. Personally, I find that having one 30-minute conversation where you can talk face to Zoom with someone and sort of go over, you know, what their project objectives are, what the timeframe is, go through a whole bunch of questions, try to get a sense of if they already have like a budget earmark for the project or not. That's far more efficient and also gets you a bit of that personal relationship than just responding in an email with all of the information. So it's rare that we'll do, you know, we'll go back and forth via email. And that's another way to qualify people. If someone emails me and I write back saying, hey, sure, let's schedule a call to discuss further. If they don't want to take 30 minutes to hop on a call to discuss their project that they're asking about, then they're probably not that serious because when we're asking for people to jump on calls with them, what people don't realize is that that is a subtle way of us to kind of even understand how focused they are on this project and how much energy and effort they're putting into it. worse than a client reaches out, they want you to develop a project. You know, we go through so many

steps to kind of make it happen, but their, their, their mind is kind of a little bit elsewhere sometimes. And that's also sometimes where the budgets are a good way to kind of determine who's as focused with it. Right. So like if a client wants, say, as you said, a music video for like a thousand dollars, maybe they're not as confident in the project or like know what they need at that point. Whereas if someone is with 20,000, it's like, here's our plan. This is what we have. This is what we want to do. We need your help to help to get us to execute it.

Right. So it's, it's kind of like a good way to distinguish things. Even something as simple as let's just hop on a quick 30 minute call. It can tell you a lot. Well, you got, you got to vet them before you get to the call too, because we started focusing on our SEO in 2021 and about halfway through the year, we started to notice like an increase in the amount of inquiries, right? Since we were climbing the Google ranks and it was great at first. Cause it were like, Oh great. All these leads are coming in yada, yada. But then after a time, we're like, man,

like a good chunk of these are like bad leads, right? We gotta figure out a way to like, yeah. So we were trying to figure out a way to filter them out. And what we've started to do is on our contact page, like we immediately asked them for the budget before they submit. And over there, like we set like our minimum amounts for our projects, right?

And we even added like other stuff in there. Like a few questions. Yeah, industry. And we've been added like other stuff in there, like a few questions. Yeah. Industry. And there's two other things I want to add, like purpose of the videos, just so like, before you even get to the call, we kind of like already know, okay, they're in this industry. They need this video for that reason. And this is what their budget is. And obviously like the leads have gone down because of that, but at least like the ones

that are reaching in now, they're qualified leads. Right. And to your point, Josh, you mentioned, you know, like the, sometimes you get the, uh, inquiries, which are just simply like, Hey, we're doing a 32nd project, or we want to do a 32nd video. How much would it cost? Uh, we just to kind of like, uh, see the like see the process ourselves, we would basically be reaching out to them to kind of figure out, jump on a call with them. And at that point, we realized very quickly, it's like they really don't know too much about what they want to do, especially when we ask them, like, what do you want to do with this video?

And they're like, oh, we just need a video, you know? So we just need a video. Yeah, it was too much us chasing them. You know, it's like there's only so much we can do. If you don't know what you need this product for, then like, we can't tell you what you need this product for a hundred percent. Right. At least you need to have an idea.

Totally. Yeah. Totally in agreement. Um, so what would you say, what would you say are some of the challenges you've faced, um, growing your business? So what would you say are some of the challenges you've faced growing your business? So I think for a long time, I was focused mostly on, like I said, doing good work. In fact, like until recently, like if I sort of divided it, looked at my time and divided it up probably you know i think it's fair to say that maybe 90 of the of my work was focused on the project so that could be anywhere from the the

like uh proposal stage of working with the clients the the the actually production and making the video or creative development and you know editing all the way through delivery, we were focused on the project specifically. And sometime probably within the last year, my mindset sort of shifted to focusing just on doing good work to like, maybe I should actually focus on growing this business. And so that has been, I guess, a slow change in a certain sense, but I've been very focused on just absorbing as much information as possible about how I can grow this business, how I can build a team to work with, how we can, we basically, like I said, most of our inquiries or most of our projects come from inbound leads because we've been fortunate enough to have good SEO. But, you know, what would it look like if we started to do some

outbound lead generation or what if we were more focused about the kind of clients that we want to work with? So whereas earlier on, you know, I think we sort of said yes to everything and had a very wide net of services that we offer. At this point, I'm getting to the point where we want to say no to more and more so that we can be very focused about the kind of people that we serve, the kind of projects that we're doing and making sure that, that we develop, I guess, a deep expertise in those sorts of projects, which is part of the reason why we're, we're launching this new brand.

I don't know if now would be a good time to talk about that or not, but. Well, this episode is going to air in like a month. So if you want to. It'd be the launch. If you're launching within a month, so then now is the perfect time to say it you heard it here first maybe you heard it here first so uh you know we've over the years we've done a lot of work with um with entertainment brands toy companies video game companies and so we in in like reading the, I guess, literature out there, listening to the podcasts from other experts, over and over you hear people talking about develop a specialization, find your niche. That way you're more clear when you're speaking to your audience. You have a better understanding of the category that you're working within.

And so we are launching a brand called the fun machine. And it's specifically targeting the toy and gaming industry. And, you know, the idea is we help you sell fun, you know, basically. So, so that's sort of been a project that we've been working on for a couple months, the website is up now, and we're working with someone to sort of get us in front of the our ideal prospects. So they're going to be doing some outbound emailing and reaching out to people on LinkedIn and sort of say, hey, here's a new brand that we're working with, or here's a new service that we're offering. We think it would be a good fit for your brand. Can we talk about it? Anyways, going back to the fun machine, that sounds really cool. And the one thing a lot of people talk about, like you mentioned, is it's so important to niche down your business if you really want to grow it to such a massive level. it's really hard to do that quickly when you are doing a little bit of

everything because yeah, you can grow from that, but it's going to be a slower growth. Whereas since you guys recognize that you do a lot of work with entertainment companies, video games, toys, you know, that definitely means that you guys have a very kind of like skillset for that type of work. So that sounds like a very exciting type of project that you guys are launching now. Is it going to be kind of like skill set for that type of work. So that sounds like a very exciting type of project that you guys are launching now. Is it going to be kind of like another production

arm kind of from Blackbox or is it going to be something completely separate from it? You know, the way I look at it, at least on the back end, is it's a different door to walk through for our clients. So in the end of the day, the kind of creative process that we're going to take is very similar to the work that we do with those kinds of clients already. Whether or not, so it like it will have its own website, email address, communications platform aesthetic for sure, like the proposals will look different targeted specifically towards that audience but um at the end of the day you know it's it's working with our creativity following our same kind of process uh so yeah it's basically the same team like it's basically you guys the same team but working

under two basically two kind of brands under uh under the same umbrella whereas it's basically you guys the same team but working under two basically two kind of brands under under the same umbrella whereas like you're gonna get leads coming in through black box and you're gonna get leads coming in through um the fun machine and i guess you know at one point they're gonna battle it out over who gets to work for which uh which uh team but uh no that sounds great you know and yeah how are great. How are you splitting that up though? Because how big is your team for as well? So it's you, your partner? At the core, it's just the two of us, myself and my business partner, Ben. And then we sort of scale up to the needs of the project. So since since COVID certainly teams have gotten a bit smaller, uh, like on average,

we're in the like five to 10 for the most part in terms of crew on set. Um, you know, before that, one of the last projects that, uh, in 2019 was with Air Canada and Cirque du Soleil. And for that project, we had a call sheet with like 75 people on it and we crewed up within a week. So, you know, we can scale to the needs of the production, but at its core, it's a very small team of, you know, freelancers that we work with on a regular basis.

75, how much of that was talent versus crew? I'm very curious. Because I know Cirque du Soleil obviously has like all the, I saw the Air Canada ad you guys made for that. And that was really cool. So I knew that there was going to be a big team behind, but I didn't expect 75. It was nuts.

I mean, I received a phone call about that on a sort of a Friday, a week and a half before the shoot. We got the green light on the Wednesday, a week before filming on the following Wednesday. And so we went to the location with a director, a producer and myself, and we were filming in the Air Canada airplane hangar in Montreal. There was going to be a Dreamliner airplane that was in there that we were going to be filming. I think we needed three 20-foot cube trucks full of gear to light the space. We had these helium lights that we brought in so that they could kind of cast a nice, even light across the whole space.

Giant HMIs. It was a big setup, big production. And the challenge really was that we had a very short time within the space. I don't remember exactly what the schedule was now, but we got in there at five or six in the morning and the plane needed to leave at 3 p.m. So we had to set up and get all these shots and plan that if at any point in time another another airplane needed to repair or maintenance check that we would have to stop the production and let, you know, air Canada, this was an operational hanger, let them deal with whatever else, you know,

they needed to do to get everyone flying safely on their journeys. Please tell me you took a BTS, like someone, you guys did BTS video, like a BTS video for this. Please tell me that it, cause it because this is crazy yeah i think we just had no time every hand on deck dario 75 people like i like how long because of that those logistics typically one thing whenever we're talking with clients is about setup time for obviously any any productions and things like that right and i'm guessing you probably needed the 75 people so that you can get everything set up with what within an hour two hours how long did it roughly take to get it set up the way you needed to film uh i was i don't remember for sure so don't hold me to this but probably a couple hours for

loading and setup most of the equipment we were able to drop the night before, but just in the truck, like checked and dropped. So it was already in the space. And then probably a couple hours between, you know, setting up wardrobe and getting talent through that and makeup and, and getting the lighting set up. We started, you know, we filmed it strategically. I think we started in the airplane first. So that required less lighting because we could just have a big 20 by 20 bounce with an hmi coming through the window kind of thing um but then as we're filming that the team would be setting up on the outside as well it was uh it was a non-stop project for sure wow yeah meanwhile some clients would come to you with like yeah can you do that all 30 second

project for like what like five thousand dollars that should be fine right like can you make this it's like people really don't realize how many how much goes goes behind a project like dario and i knew that there was a lot that went into that one but even you still surprised us 75 people you know like there's a lot that goes behind the scenes yeah that was that was a wild one for sure but my god just doing payroll for that too it's like you're sending off interacts after interacts well he hired someone part of the 75 people would just deal with that right management yeah all you do is you just pay people at the end of the project. That's all you do. I can feel the stress on this end already. Just talking about it.

I mean, the stress was really having my name or black box on the insurance certificate when you're dealing with the airplane, like stay away from the plane. Don't touch it. You know, only for sure. For sure. No, I mean, there was like significant safety protocols in place and we couldn't touch it. And if anyone touched the airplane on the outside with anything we had to report it and inspect it and the plane would get pulled from circulation until it was fully checked. You know, like there's the people's lives are at stake in that sense. So you got to take that very seriously. Oh, absolutely. I can imagine like how, I mean, with such a quick timeframe of like one week, like hiring people alone is, is a whole process. It's time consuming, but like just now you're mentioning also the insurance aspect of it is like, how did you go about getting that set up? But like, did they basically come to you and tell you this, these are our rules.

How do you insure yourself? Like, I'm just, I'm, what was that call like to the insurance company? Yeah. I mean, we have, we have annual production insurance. Uh, I think it was just a matter of putting Air Canada and some other people as additional insured. I don't think the insurance, the insurance part of it was, was the easy part. That was the easy part. Okay. You just have to call your insurance that's it i'm trying to remember there was a surprise that came up i think we they added well it features the video features a a young girl i think that that was not in the original brief and we we started casting for that person on the saturday uh, so like the, the Cirque du Soleil performers were part of the initial

concept and came with the production. The airplane came with the production location came with the production, but, but then it was like, you know, we want to follow, we don't just want to follow the performers, but we want to follow a little, a young girl on her like journey through this like world of wonder that we're creating and so that was like a bit of a last minute idea that we sort of added and then we had to deal with the the casting and approvals of that and then of course the wardrobe and and all of it that was a good creative choice because it really um it really allowed uh allowed the the viewer to kind of like almost like follow someone as as if they're also going through the journey. It's one thing to essentially, uh, just kind of like see a lot of like cool

burlesque dance or sorry, not burlesque, um, Cirque du Soleil, uh, dancers, uh, you know, and performers just kind of doing all their routines and in a hangar, right. Cause it's it would almost have no context at that point. Right. Whereas if you're following kind of like someone going, uh, traveling in an airplane an airplane you know going through a journey that's also like a part of it you know like air canada can take you anywhere so that was a very good creative choice i like that a lot thanks yeah um i wish i could take credit for the the creative side of things that was sort of i was more for that project really line producer bringing together the crew and the and the production team to make it happen uh the creative was coming from

an agency called wasserman based in toronto um and uh ian mcmillan was the very talented dp on that project and uh joe mclaren was the person who contacted me he's a producer based in toronto nice nice is that the biggest project you've ever done And Joe McLaren was the person who contacted me. He's a producer based in Toronto. Nice, nice. Is that the biggest project you've ever done? No. Maybe the most body count for a single day. I'd have to think about that. But we also did this project for Fear the Walking Dead.

That was like a month of filming content. There's a company in Montreal called Triotech that does these kind of like interactive attractions. And so we were tasked with producing a bunch of content that would sort of go in like an escape room, theater, tape room, theater, video game installation kind of thing for Fear the Walking Dead. So we were filming with zombies and military officers with like live machine guns. We set a car on fire. You know, that project was another one that came up very quickly we had a very short time between when we were like green lit to go and when it actually happened and um uh had a lot of moving parts in it because there were i think nine days of filming and all with all the different

scenes that we needed to capture that would then be used in the uh installation attraction wow any it's just like hearing all these like massive projects you guys have done just kind of makes me think oh i guess the projects we've done they're they're really a cakewalk they do look they do look a lot smaller a lot smaller like we did this one big one in january which was like four weeks practically almost four weeks straight of uh filming that we were doing. And we had to produce 80 videos for this one client and all to be done basically by mid February. And we started like January 10th.

They came to us like a few weeks prior. And, uh, and then that's, and then we had to hire actors. We had to bring in a talent to, to get it all put together. But then we were like, Dario and I filming every single day, editor around the clock, churning out the videos as well. And we thought that was big, but we have 80 videos,

you have 80 people is the difference. Yeah, I mean, like I said, from the beginning, it was sort of about building up confidence project by project, doing bigger and better work every time. Like I'd be lying if I said that with either of those large projects, building up confidence project by project, doing bigger and better work every time. Like, I'd be lying if I said that with either of those large projects, I wasn't a little bit stressed going into it about like, are we actually going to be able to pull this off at a caliber that we

want to just in the timeframe more than anything. But, you know, over the, over time you, you understand how production should work and, and best practices. And you build a team of people that you surround yourself with so that, so that they know more than you do for like, for those bigger shoots, I wasn't operating the helium lights. We have a guy that, that does nothing but helium lights. He's got a helium light rental company, you know, or if you, you need, um um i don't know any kind of specialized skill like the the right thing to do is bring in the right people for the job and and wear the hat that you should be wearing as producer which is basically just making sure that everything is uh in place as

it should be and and gonna be you know running on time so people have what they need hey josh i'm back oh sorry no no you can, you can go. I was, I was just going to go back to how you said, you're trying to change your focus more to, towards like growing your business. So I just wanted you to kind of elaborate more on that. I think we touched on it a little bit. So you're saying like you wanted to grow your team, but what else aside from growing your team are you looking to do? And I think it's going to be a little more trickier for you now, too, since you are starting a separate company, right? Right. Well, I think I can start just by

giving your listeners some recommendations for things that have helped me start to think about the business. I've started listening to a podcast called Two Bobs. It's by these guys, Blair Enns, who wrote The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, and David C. Baker, who wrote a book called The Business of Expertise. These guys are really focused more on how to run a creative agency. And so less specifically video production, but more agencies in general. But a lot of their advice has helped me think about how we approach our businesses. And another book would be Traction. I don't know if either of you guys are familiar with Traction. book would be Traction. I don't know if either of you guys are familiar with Traction,

but another great book for starting out in business. I wish we had looked at this sooner, but it's how we decided that the fun machine would be a good initiative for us. And it just looks at what are your skills? What are your values? What is your vision? Where do you want to go? And try to try to, um, more clearly define the direction that you're going and then define the steps that it's going to take to get there. Um, so those are some of the resources, another book, which I've started reading, but haven't finished is the, the E-Myth. But again, it's about the idea of you can't be wearing the creative hat and the business hat and the executing hat at the same time that you're trying to be the visionary. So all of those different resources, I think, have been informing what it is that I see as next steps we need to take.

next steps we need to take. And one of the first things that we did was just like, look at what are the processes that we're doing now? And how can they be done more efficiently? And how can we kind of develop a playbook so that they can be repeated without steps being forgotten? And, you know, if, if a few years ago, you had asked me, you know, like, what do you do at Blackbox? I would have said, well, we, you know, pre-produce where we figure out what the idea is and then we shoot it and then we edit it. And that's basically it. But when you start looking at it, like even just as I mentioned, the discovery call or the like how to respond to a new inquiry, sort of what is our research process like where we're trying to better understand a brand and their positioning uh the creative process obviously like the production side of things i think we have nailed down like we've been doing the production

side long enough that that part i can sort of do in my sleep like really i i live and breathe it and and i don't have to think too hard about the production itself. But when I'm talking about like operating and focusing on the business is what are all the other things around it that need to take place so that we can, you know, succeed in the productions, which are really what the core of our business is. Wow. You've basically broken down for everyone how, not necessarily the blueprint, but basically all these great resources that you can kind of learn different techniques and styles. And the one interesting thing about talking to a lot of other business owners like

yourself in the production industry is we all have our own different paths in terms of what's worked and what hasn't worked. We all do video production, you know, like you said, it's almost like we can do it in our sleep. Obviously we could always keep improving, but you know, everyone's growth is going to be a little bit different. Yes. You can take elements from one, from one company as an idea, some from another, you know, and learn how they did well, but it's not going to necessarily work exactly the same for you, which is, it's, it's just always interesting to kind of hear, you know, and learn how they did well, but it's not going to necessarily work exactly the same for you, which is, it's, it's just always interesting to kind of hear, you know, like where people get their inspiration or where they would learn, you know, it's like, if like for us, like when we were first learning how to do video production, we all remember Devin

super tramp in like 2012, 2013, when he was like getting the whole video craze. That was like one of the first bits of inspiration we had when we were first starting out. So like everyone has a different one. And sure, nowadays there are people like Peter McKinnon who are like a lot of people's like first content creators on YouTube that they learn from. Right. Totally. Another thing for me, I think like when the pandemic first happened, I know you guys are the same situation, like work really slowed down for the first few months. And then I found, I mean, there were times where, you know, things got pretty tense or anxious, you know, just there's a pandemic going on. Personally, I was feeling a little bit stressed at times or having trouble sleeping at night.

I was feeling a little bit stressed at times or having trouble sleeping at night. And I joined a couple different Facebook groups for video creators. And I found that one of the ways that I could kind of get my mind off of that and like I've got some some pleasure from or some personal fulfillment from was just giving my advice to other people that were in the same boat or maybe had a question about how to approach something with the client that I felt like I had something to offer. So one of the ways that I was de-stressing was joining these chat groups. And when people needed advice and I felt like I could have something to offer, some kind of constructive feedback that I would kind of add my two cents there. So that's something that I don't know that I've really made like a sort of formalized

approach about offering that kind of advice, but I did find it very helpful to see what other people are facing in terms of challenges and also offer my two cents about if I was in that situation, here's what I would do. Well, that's what the pandemic essentially did. Everyone, like you said, everyone was like suffering in some way, in one way or another. And, you know, like even as you mentioned, there and I was it was a struggle at the beginning. But, like, we noticed that a lot of people were much more willing to help, you know, and give advice, you know, and help others get back on their feet. And, uh, there was a lot of reciprocation, which I think was good. You know, I feel like a lot of people look at, um, business, uh, and competitors in a way as

like, you know, people, you don't really want to go near or, or, uh, or help in any way. Cause then they'll like do better than you but it's like you know as we mentioned everyone has their own slice of the pie you know everyone's also trying to learn you know put food on the table and and and succeed and it's just interesting to see like how willing people are to be helpful to one another now especially because of the pandemic yeah in a way like oh sorry I was just gonna say in a way like the way you were going on those facebook groups and and helping those other people out we kind of had the same intention with the podcast when we started it it's kind of like other people that were in the same boat at

least they could hear that other people were going through the same things and then kind of like take your mind off of it focus more on like okay well if you have a company and whatever like this is a good way to just do some interesting things to learn yeah i don't think it's healthy to look at other video producers as competition i mean sometimes there are cases where you're bidding against another company that you know but at the same time there's more opportunities to collaborate with those people to work together if they need a second shooter or you need some help in this category like there's production companies that i still reach out to like especially if you need to crew up for a big crew with with a large team where you can call and say hey like can you recommend

any pa is the first three people i call they're unavailable do you know someone good and like uh i will reciprocate that as well i think like it gives me a lot of pleasure to connect good people. Um, so, um, if I, if there's someone I've worked with in the past who I like and they need help on something and I can't help them out, then I'm happy to hand them off to someone else who I think is going to be a good fit for them. Yeah. And one cool thing, uh, after, after doing this podcast is that we've also gotten into the habit where like, sometimes like we even see like there are projects where like, oh, we know that this potential project would be a great fit for XYZ company. Let's connect them because I think that they'll do such a great job for it. Because, you know, like you said, at the beginning, you know, everyone wants to do a little bit of everything, right? And then over time,

you start to recognize what your skillset is, what you're really good at. You start to find the talent around you where, you know, that they're really good at something that you aren't better to recommend them, you know, and, uh, you know, it makes, it makes not only them look good, it makes you look good, you know, for making that recommendation and, you know, everybody, everybody gets to work and collaborate eventually over time. Right. Which is really cool. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think for us at Blackbox, our focus is really on like well-crafted projects, like things that are done with intention. There's a lot of thought that gets put into it. I mean, obvious, often working with agencies or our clients directly, there's a period of weeks leading up to the project just to get alignment on the creative treatment or the script or those kinds of things. And so I'm more interested in

doing these well thought out, well crafted projects, maybe less of them and maybe at a higher price point compared to more, let's say, disposable video, which is going to be done really rough and really quickly. And we'll live on social media for a short time. And then it's sort of onto the next thing. Like we are not really set up to be a video factory. And I know that there are like some, some successful production companies that are more of that mindset. My feeling with Blackbox and sort of like know yourself is that we want to work on projects that are, that are well-crafted,

well thought out that everyone is aligned on before we get into it so that I know it's going to be a successful experience for, for everybody involved and that we can deliver on what we set out to from, from the onset. Sweet. Well, okay. Before we end off, we always like to ask this question to our guests. So tell us how you came up with the name. Black Box Productions. Okay. Well,

when we were, I don't know, late teenagers, like 18, 17, 18, something like that. I think Ben and I wanted to have a two-story, big, black party space that we could have screenings and party with our friends. And it was going to be called the Black Box. When I was in university, I ran this, I guess, film festival sort of called Video Party because I'd been to a lot of screenings and film festivals. And often after the screening, like everybody just kind of goes home.

Maybe there's a Q&A with the director, but there wasn't a sense of community. And so I started throwing these video parties where most of the filmmakers would be present. There were DJs and bands. There was definitely some alcohol involved. And it was a good way to like show your work, but build a community, socialize, like ask people questions about their films and and like have a good time. And so I think that the name Black Box, which was like the dream venue space and video party kind of came about around the same time. And then it's not a venue, but you can see, I don't know, for anyone watching on YouTube, I'm in my black box right now.

But that's where the name began. And then we sort of thought it could be applicable to there's like another meaning of black box in terms of like information goes in and information comes out, but you don't really know the magic that's going on inside the black box. So there's like the creative process

inside the black box as well. That's maybe another interpretation of it. No, that's really cool. It's always nice to kind of hear like how a lot of people's like company names, there's always some kind of more personal touch to it, you know, or like an origin story to it. It's never, it's not usually something that just gets thrown right out of a hat, you know, and it's, it's just, well, kind of, kind of there.

We have our own story about that which everyone has heard it like hundreds of times so we're not gonna get it dude we can tell you this after the call but but we basically pulled it out of a hat you know we pulled it out of a short film we were supposed to make that's what we did yeah yeah nice but anyways josh we really appreciate you uh hopping on the on creatives grab coffee with us and sharing your experiences and uh your origin story and uh yeah no we uh thanks a lot man thanks for having me i'm glad to be on here this is the uh first time i've ever been invited on a podcast i picked up a microphone a, a blue Yeti, just for this so that it could come through clearly and sound good.

Need to up my game a little bit. And yeah, it was great talking with you guys and I wish you all the success with the rest of the podcast. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Thanks, man.

Take care. you