Creatives Grab Coffee - SOCIAL MEDIA is CHANGING Video | Creatives Grab Coffee 46

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

JOIN OUR PATREON FOR EXCLUSIVE CONTENT: https://www.patreon.com/CreativesGrabCoffeeProduced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comWith the introduction of platforms like TikTok, social media is changing the way we create AND consume video. This week, we welcome our next guest from the UK, Jake Barrett from BTV.UK, an award-winning, producer-led video production company. Their passion is making the visual production process a pleasure for their clients. They partner with organizations and brands across the world who know they’ve got things under control.SUBSCRIBE 🎧✅ and FOLLOW 📲 for more episodes! https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/

all right well guys let's get into it welcome everybody to another episode of creatives grab coffee today we welcome our next guest from the uk jake from btv welcome jake welcome how are you guys you well doing all right it's like what three o'clock uh your time yeah two in the afternoon at the moment yes so where is it's creative grab coffee for you guys obviously i'm in the uk so i have tea just before you move on to to the beer in the evening right the moment. Yeah, so where is it's created to grab coffee for you guys? Obviously, I'm in the UK, so I have tea. Just before you move on to the beer in the evening, right? Yeah, that's what I was going to say. There's about a 3 p.m. cutoff for that, yeah.

Oh, 3 p.m. is the cutoff. Yeah. Nice. Before we kind of like jump into the conversation a little bit, Jake, give us a little background on who you are and who BTV is. Yeah, okay, no worries at all. So yeah, hello, my name is Jake Barrett, and I've been working in the world of film, TV, for about 12 years now.

I studied film and television, and then went straight into essentially work straight after that. So I had the decision of whether to choose to go to university or whatever I decided I wanted to do, but I'd met so many people during my you know time studying film that I thought actually I'm just going to get straight stuck into it essentially so um went straight into work experience did a year and a half of just doing work for free and just grafting for as many people as possible um and did a few nice tv shows

over here so um a couple of documentaries for Channel 4 over here, as well as a show called The Gadget Show, which is quite a well-known show over here. I'm not sure if you guys have heard or have that over there, but essentially did that. And then very quickly got into the world of advertising and commercials. So it's a much more approachable, much easier in the industry, I suppose, rather than working in broadcast, etc. So I've owned production companies, I've then worked in-house at agencies as head of film, managing their clients, and I've seen various roles, of course, over my career,

but essentially I'm now at a position where my strength is as a producer. And I set up BTV back three years ago now, so about two weeks before our first lockdown for COVID, which was an interesting time to start a business, as I'm sure you could imagine. But, you know, we continue to grow. We've had some fantastic relationships with some of the marketing agencies that we work with, you know, who we've got good relationships with

as an approved film partner. And one of the first clients that we managed to secure was TikTok. So back in the day, we had an inquiry come through for this new social media platform called The TikTok, and we're literally sitting here going, right, okay, what's this all about? But essentially, yeah, so we ended up doing,

I think it was about 365 films for them through 2020. And these were all their ads that they were then putting out on Snapchat and Facebook, Instagram, trying to convert people essentially to this ever-growing new beast, which is, of course, now TikTok. So that was really sort of the start of the work that we were doing here at BTV. And then through the last two and a half years,

we've just grown really from there, from strength to strength. So there's four of us internally as a team and as a unit. And we are many producers. And that's why we said that we're a producer-led video production team. And by that, we've got a slogan called the bigger picture. And what that means is that you've got the end piece,

you've got the end video that you produce, you know, and that's all good. But the amount of times that we speak to clients who say to us, oh, it was good, yeah, but the process of getting there was just an absolute nightmare. And that's what we're here to challenge. It's looking at all of those things around production that could go wrong that we make sure don't go wrong and that's why we call that the bigger picture of looking around that end you know that end piece and that we're producing and that's the focus of our business so there's the four of us who manage that day to day and then we've got around about 150 freelance professionals who we pull in and build the

right teams for the right projects so everything from directors through to runners and everything in between um and essentially yeah that's that's who we are as btv and i'm sure we'll get into a bit of the work a little bit later on but that's a bit of an overview anyway for you that covers a lot of uh that's a lot of the landscape for us again i'll leave then thank you very much yeah yeah that's the shortest episode ever i had like a few questions and then as you kind of were going on but i feel like a lot of them were answered right there i'm like all right you only started it three three years ago how has it already gotten to this point and then when you

said that you rode the coattail of the tiktok growth i'm like oh okay that explains a lot a lot of it right there how much of an eye roll did you do when they're like yeah we want to shoot the a lot of this like all this content in 9 by 16 you're like coming from film and tv you're like oh my god there's a lot of challenges around that um of course and um yeah we were finding that it was it was interesting to try and learn how to adapt a film because of course that the thing is is that they also wanted the assets to be used in 69 916 um obviously ipad formats as well so we literally again we've got to shoot it all this wide there's no depth of

field now in the shots whatsoever it's all flat um and essentially that's we've so ended we ended up shooting it all from two camera angles in the end so we'd we'd have the same creative but we'd literally have two cameras married up next to each other so that at least we could get some shed of quality out of the assets that we were trying to produce oh so it's kind of like the hot like uh like what happened with peter jackson and the hobbit where he had like two reds right next to each other except he had one camera reversed for the vertical format right exactly yes wait here why did he have two cameras oh it's because he was doing two uh he was doing 3d so he had it with like two reds kind of like like one was like filming this way

one was up here on a mirror filming sideways it was a it was a very weird setup but yeah um 3d that kind of just went away oh yeah you know what You know what it is? 3D is now, look, it's like it's in your home when in reality, it is in your home with Netflix. So the other thing I was going to ask was like, so basically, we can now attribute to the success of TikTok then to you guys. Is that correct? Well, maybe in the the UK we've had something to do with the growth anyway yeah it's it was it was really interesting I think that I think that since TikTok you know not only with just my work but actually as an industry as a whole you know

the shift that we've seen in the type of work that people want to produce has changed dramatically since the likes of TikTok coming to form. So, you know, maybe it's not a great thing that I've been involved with that launch, or maybe sometimes it is, I'm not sure. What would you say is the change that you've noticed? So I think if, you know, the sort of general run of the projects that we do can vary massively. So we'll have the run of the mill day-to-day projects, which are corporate interviews, just shooting them as nicely as possible for people, through to we've currently got a TV commercial in the works for a large automotive brand, which is really exciting. And that's us kind of relaunching this brand into the UK.

So that's an exciting one. And we're lucky to have a variety of projects there. But what we've kind of seen on a whole is that the industry over the last six months in the UK has been a real challenge. You know, the average spend on TV and broadcast content is down about 67% on a whole compared to last year, and then even more the year before that. There's been a real sort of difficult time for people, and we're finding that that's because people are turning to this always-on content. So it's this always-on content where people would decide to,

instead of spend, I don't know, £20 don't know 20 30 000 pounds on one single piece of 30 second film they're spending the same budget but this time it's going over multiple assets and actually that's got to expand over a three month period and these particular projects that they want to create they're quick they want them turned around fast they want them to be on trends with things that are happening currently with either current affairs or certain topical things that are happening in the world. And we're finding that we're having to, we're getting briefs, you know, with far less lead time than we used to. And we're finding that the deadlines are so quick. So, you know, gone are the days of us having two months notice or something.

We're now saying we need this on air in a month you know and it's a large project and you're thinking okay fine we're gonna have to move a lot quicker than normal um so we're finding a lot more of that but i think people's sort of appreciation of a lot of the content we produce isn't as high as it used to be and i find that what we're finding is that you know people don't care if we say that we're shooting on reds and if we're gonna get this in we're gonna use these toys and whatever they're like yeah great cool like you know how is that going to be better than me doing it on an iphone and actually that's the alternatives for them is that they're kind of having to value that difference so for example you know restaurant they're not necessarily that interested in creating high-end content

if they can go out with their iPhone, use a little gimbal, and go and get some nice cocktail videos, because at the end of the day, if that gets them conversion or interaction on their Instagram channels, and therefore people are booking their restaurants and sitting down in those seats, that's all they care about. So trying to justify the level of quality that we produce, I find is becoming more and more difficult.

And I think that that's been something that i think has really changed over the last two three four years now whether that's tiktok and the likes of platforms like that or whether it's because of the pandemic i'm not sure but you know there's something that's happened and there's been a real shift in the industry i wonder if that's just because you need to constantly post on a lot of these social media apps so the budget just wouldn't be there if you have to do like a high level production versus like something that's lower budget but at least it can pump out more content because that's generally how these algorithms work right you're constantly be posting content quantity has become like the currency almost in a way now in the industry, because like, like before even TikTok, so much content

was being thrown onto YouTube as it was. I forget what the statistic was, but it was like, it was like, it was like a hundred thousand hours or like uploaded every day onto YouTube or something like that, maybe even more. And then when TikTok came around, you're now even posting more and more and more bite-sized content. So to compete, you need to have more that you can post on a more consistent basis. And because of that, I'm wondering how the perception of quality has now changed. Back in the day, people would be like, oh, that 30-second ad or whatever was really cool, the great story, this and that. Whereas now it's's like did you manage to tell the story in like 10 seconds and do you have like 10 versions of that that is a quality piece then right so i feel like

things have really shifted in that regard when it comes to producing like quantity content which are changing the perception of quality at this point as well i wonder if it's just an additional thing like you still need to create the high quality content, but now you also need to create lower quality, but quantity content. It's not that it's lower quality, but it's like different quality. It is lower quality. I mean, like social media content

is not high quality content. Let's be honest here. It's meant to be, because even when you do get like the briefs from clients, it's meant to be like, hey, we can't make this look, we've literally gotten some briefs where it's a don't make it look good which means make it look like a like an influencer or a normal person shot it right shake shake the camera as much as you can yeah like literally got that on briefs so because yeah they're not i mean you're

asking a non-professional to create content it It's not going to be good. Now, you are right. People definitely want more organic looking, you know, user generated content. Um, a hundred percent. And that is something that definitely, yeah, we're seeing with, with the majority of briefs that we're getting for people. In fact, people don't want to be advertised to, you know, and you look at the minute that you're scrolling on your feeds and you see that something's an ad based video, people just scroll past it basically, you know, and and you know my theory is on that though they don't want it to look like a good like an ad piece because they want you to get tricked by it because sometimes when i'm on reels i'll go and

then sometimes it'll take me like five seconds to go oh wait a minute this is an ad and i'll skip it right you have you on it long enough to go like, okay, we register the statistic and then whatever, they skip it, whatnot. I think that it's really interesting how much content we consume now, you know, compared to previously. So I think now, you know, even if you look at the way that we watch mainstream content, a two hour film feels really long, you know? And actually you're very used now to watching things in a 45, 50-minute burst, going making a drink, me tea, you coffee, whatever it is that you want,

and then going back and watching another, you know, 45 minutes, whatever. So I think that has changed, but I think it's the same on social content as well. I mean, just by way of experiment, the other day my girlfriend loves a little bit of TikTok, and she'll sit on it in the morning, even if it's just for 10 minutes,

and she'll have a little scroll through. There might be a little bit of a session on it even after dinner. And she's not on it a lot, but that's why I wanted to test this theory. If somebody who isn't actually on it a lot, how much content they're really consuming on there. And you can go onto your data and whatever else, and you can see how many videos you've watched.

And basically, in a day, she'd watched about 680 videos, you know, and you're looking at that going, that feels like a ridiculous amount. But if you're sitting there just kind of now, now you're soon getting through them. And that's the point. I think we're all so used now to literally having that much media thrown at us all the time that you try and create something that's a little bit more long form even as a 10 or a 30 second high-end piece and people

are just like people's attention spans are completely gone and i think that's a society change as well as just just an industry thing really or the way that we market products there's a lot of adaptation that we're having to do this basically goes back to like how the the way we used to be advertised as a society was people would sit down in front of tv or computer and these would be platforms where they will throw the ads at you and you have to sit there and watch it because that's the that's the broadcasted program it's not like you have the choice to choose what you're watching or anything like that. And then Netflix was one of the first platforms that allowed audiences to kind of choose what they watch, how long they watch it, what they want to watch. And now with TikTok, the power is so insanely easy.

Like you said, it's like you could make like a 10-second piece that is amazing and someone can go like, eh, eh, eh. That decision is so fast now compared to what it used to be and i feel like it's only getting faster like the second you said that she watched 680 videos in one day i can i can see it just like just like this going through the videos and one funny thing i've noticed with some reels like as a filter if it starts with music it's usually an ad if it starts without music it's not an ad it's like a regular it's a regular piece that's good think about it like when you start watching who who makes like a random video and decides to start with actual music unless it's like someone on their bike riding

you know and they want something cool like to accompany what they're doing but if it's like someone's like sitting down doing something and there's music that starts playing like in the background like that's usually an ad that's what i've noticed that's a good catch man that is a very good point so no music in your next reel that's that's yeah that's the trick maybe it is maybe that is the case you know um but so what we what we've had to do over here is you know we've got we've got btv as this more traditional production company by way of produces higher end you know more've got we've got btv as this more traditional production company by way of produces higher end you know more single 30 10 second pieces um as well as you know the corporate world of things that we do and that will always be there but the start of this year was incredibly

quiet it's been the quietest periods that not only i've known for my career but it's been echoed massively through the industry over here um is it how's the what's the economic state in the uk right now what do you mean sorry like like i'm just trying to see if maybe it has to do with the the the economy there well the economy is awful okay so same yeah um how i mean it's always awful we've had good periods energy bills are through the roof it's the worst that it's been in in years you know just everything energy bills are through the roof bills that used to be 100 pounds are now for four or five hundred pounds a month um you find that you've got the likes of you know there's companies that are sadly going bump or being taken over all the time um there's just this cost of

living crisis essentially is what we're going through right now and because of that so many people are tightening their belts and sadly you know video for marketing and marketing as a whole is one of those easy overheads to cut fairly quickly and i always say that it's it's first cut sort of last um lasting you know reinstated essentially. And that is something that we've had to fight. You know, as I say, I think that a lot of, I mean, it depends on what side of the industry you're looking at, right? So broadcast and TV shows, they're really quiet at the moment because a lot of people made shows and almost banked shows during COVID.

You know, they made a lot more content during that period. And because of that, they've kind of come out of it. And actually, they've already got content for two or three years already made. So you find that the broadcast side of things has been quite quiet. From an advertising perspective, as I say, a lot of companies are sadly having to cut their, you know, cut their overheads, and they're cutting staff and all the rest of that, just because there's so many industries right now that are going through a really difficult time and because everything has just gone so expensive um doesn't matter whether it's supplies and you're a building company or you know even whether it's

what we do you know camera kit is up 35 in certain areas there's just there's just nothing that you can do about that so because of that reason we've to, we sat there at the beginning of the year, and the January wasn't too bad because we had a fallout of work from, you know, December. But then the minute that February hit up until mid-April, it's been a really challenging time of just no emails coming in, no phone calls happening, sitting there every day going, we're ready for this, guys. Like, where you know what's going on um and we had to we sort of sat there and said what what are we going to do so what we decided to do was come up with a separate brand um which we called dash as a dash video which is this production company which is this digital first ultra fast video

production team and it was a package-based video solution for people who essentially need video on the regular to feed these you know voracious hungry social media channels and digital channels now it doesn't have to just be social media it could be a company that needs to do a range of how-to videos for example or product explainers or they want to recruit staff and they've got various roles that they want to put videos out for, you know, show homes and property companies that want to show people a little tour of a new development that they've been building. There's so many different uses and applications for this. So essentially what we came up with is a package

based solution, three price points, somebody can choose which price point works for them as a base and then essentially we're looking for either a six or twelve month commitment whereby for that um for that fee they get a certain amount of assets from us every single month so it's either 5 10 or 15 depending on which package you choose but it meant that essentially they're committed to us which naturally gives us some guaranteed income of knowing what's coming through the door. It's no longer a project by project basis and we can plan ahead. But also it means that they're always going to have content fresh for their channels. And it means that it can continually be refreshed.

And they're not every month having to think of, oh, well, this is getting a little bit tired now. We need to do a recut of that. You know, it's automatically planned in every single month. So this is a brand new sort of scheme, essentially, that we've set up this company. It's only been going for about three weeks. We've had some fantastic feedback on the initial launch of that so far. And hopefully that will get us in with some agencies that will commit to us. And there's a couple of ways we can do it, either as a direct client. So if you're, you know, just for conversation's sake, BMW, you might want to say, okay, well, we will commit to a Dash package for six months.

But actually, certain clients might not want that commitment. And if that's the case, the marketing agency or a marketing agency can make that commitment to us. And then they can use us on different clients every month if they want to. So fine, if you want to put us out for that one, cool, no worries, we'll do that. Next month, actually, we want to use this month's quota for this client. Okay, I don't mind. You can do whatever you want with that. But essentially, it means that you've got constant flow of stuff from us coming in.

And you can allocate it where we want. And we know that we're getting the work come through but it was a way that I'm really trying to to support the industry over here massively so there's not much over here in the UK by way of communities groups that really sort of bring everybody together in the creative industry there's not really many unions or anything like that it's just that everybody's basically freelance and it's a free-for-all and you know there might be a few community groups that people do it but that's it everyone's after each other and that's just the way that it is there's there's people that of course try there's there's things like the bfi there's there's the apa which is um the producers association and that's there for

more production company level but in terms of for filmmakers boots on the ground people the lack of support for people is something that really bothers me and i've seen a lot of people through this difficult few months find that really hard because of course they're working from home they're on their own they don't know where to find the work because they're waiting for production companies to to give it to them and they're not you know with respect the best business people in the world to go out and understand how to get that work so they're working for production companies because they're great creatives so what we've decided to do is we would love to develop dash as a platform

and potentially through bTV as well, whereby the entire process becomes app-based. So for clients, they download the app, they essentially can choose their package, they sign up to it, and it's almost like having a gym membership. Every month, it'll say time to choose your options, time to choose your bits and bobs,

time to book any film dates. All of that works through the app. On the flip side of that, you're a member of crew who can become Dash approved or BTV approved. We've pre-approved you with understanding of your creative level,

your skill set and interaction with people, but also your camera equipment and what you've got on hand. We will pre-agree rates that are almost like universal across the board. So you won't have a cameraman who's on £500 and another one who's on £1,000. It's a flat level for that role.

And what will happen is that once you become approved, if a DAS or a BTV job comes in, it pops up on the app to that person, almost like an Uber driver would, job available in your area tomorrow. They can press on it. The brief is all on the app. They can see all the information. They can accept the job. And then basically off they go.

They do that job, submit everything through the app back to us in terms of their mileage, any additional costs. They sign it off at various stages. They send the footage back through to us, either depending on file size right we transfer or on a drive and then job done they get paid for that job and away they go but what we see is that actually that becomes something that you know could potentially become a little bit of a paid service from crew now we don't want that to be a lot but we're saying that you know if you

were able to become part of the dash or the btv portal for 9.99 a month for example not only are you giving yourself access to the jobs that we can bring in for you we want to have different things on the app so we want to have forums we want to have mental health support where you can talk to somebody anonymously to help you with things there's video podcasts much like this one where we've spoken to professionals, et cetera. It becomes this real portal and source of information for people in our industry and we bring everybody together as a community

with events and awards and all sorts of things like that. And at the moment, there is nothing like that whatsoever being done. And we think that that is the future for how we can bring essentially production and crew all together under one roof and manage it with our sort of level of high standards that we expect from both parties really so i know i'm waffling on a little bit but that's where i can see where we want to try and take production and move it away from everybody working siloed and

individually and just not really knowing what progression there is for them. Yeah. I don't think anyone's done anything like that anywhere, to be honest. Like I, the, like there are some companies like here in Canada where they've had like a network of production companies and creatives that the, like that basically would sign up for jobs or get reached out to for certain jobs. But those are all unique and specific types of jobs. Whereas like you're trying to go with the more packaged kind of style for it um at least like trying to standardize everything on the client side and standardizing everything from the uh the the crew and supplier side and i think that's the only way really to potentially make it work so i i'm really curious if you know to to see how that goes you know like definitely

let us know like how how you progress in that yeah for sure i also like how you're looking at it from like the you you're trying to help out freelancers in a way because i feel like that's a lot of times like what carol and i do is like we do have a roster of freelancers and we do like giving them work and whatnot because it helps it, it helps the, you know, the community out in a bit. Well, I mean, you know, in reality, you know, I've, I've had my first business when I was 15. And, you know, I've been doing it ever since.

And, you know, various different things from photography to this. And I've always been a little bit of a trader and done little bits and bobs, you know, because that's just what I enjoy. And it gives me a thrill. But what is that legacy that I can leave? And I that if if I mean I'm god I'm only young right but I mean if there's something that I can be building towards it's something like that where you're leaving something that's you know made the industry a better place to work essentially for people um and I think there's some really big gaps in the UK for that kind of thing I mean it may

well be different in the US and Canada I'm not sure um I mean you guys tell me I suppose you know what is is there a standard is there is there almost like communities or or somewhere that you guys go for access to resource and things there were some at one point like there was a source like called mandy.com that used to be decent like in the early 2010s um because i what do you mean by research what do you mean by research like trying to find freelancers you mean no sir i mean well we have mandy over here for for finding up freelancers and stuff but i do find that it's quite a slow process and it's a bit old clunky a bit old-fashioned yeah it's it's ancient which

is why i think that this could be that next step and something that we want to try and change a little bit there but what i mean is in terms of like you know what are the unions like for you guys over there or if you need just just help with things or is there a way of standardizing pricing over there like how does it work we don't we don't really i mean like us in particular we don't use union we we have our roster of creatives that we've built through like a referral network and then that's that's basically how we've been able to find our crew members um so usually for example if like we over the years we've just been connected to different people and then you know if that person's busy they'll connect us to other people and that's sort of sort of how our network has like a spider web there is a pretty big um producer facebook group i think it's called i need a producer i need uh

what is it i need i need a producer fixer this and that basically yeah it's it's like this one massive facebook group that a lot of people like go to for jobs and things like that yeah but we yeah for jobs like yeah that's usually how you can find some freelancers but for us in particular we've just been using a lot of referrals because i like again i like the industry is big but it's small at the same time it's a lot of word of mouth so you don't want to bring on someone that is a dud because it does like it could potentially kill your your job prospects with that particular client so we don't like to take risks like that sure um so yeah we don't have like a big resource in terms of finding freelancers there are ways to do it but we usually try to take the safe approach yeah no it's

interesting it's just it's interesting to know how the industries differ really i suppose over the pond and what you know and the way that it works i mean i mean the other challenge that we have here i don't know if you guys have an issue with the location where you are but but obviously you know you've got lond you know, down the bottom, obviously Birmingham in the middle, Manchester and, you know, Edinburgh, there's a few other hubs, et cetera, of production. But you will find that, you know, something like 90%, I don't know, 80% of the work is in London.

That's just the way that it is, you know, and around that, you know, sort of what's called the M25, the big sort of highway that literally circles London, right? And anything out of that, it's not good enough for people in London. So you find that actually they will just kind of keep everything internally and that's just their own ecosystem. And actually, that's the exact reason. That's just in every industry. And you find that that's why London is very much like its own country, yet alone its own city. find that that's why london is very much like its own country yet alone its own city um so you know we kind of find that we're trying to challenge that as well and trying to connect more people

um to be able to realize that actually there's potential across the country you know and there's some fantastic creatives everywhere and that's why we're hoping that this platform can can really bring everybody together i think we're ice we're kind of like that in canada then we're it's sort of isolated but because canada's so big that's the thing there's there's a lot of different types of industry in canada because because of how big of a country it is so there's different like from what we've talked with a lot of different uh creatives in different provinces like the the types of clients and work and industry that they focus on in their regions is completely different to like what we would be doing here in Toronto, Canada or anything like that. It's funny that you mentioned like in terms of like building the community aspect, which is kind of like what we're in a way doing with Creatives Grab Coffee as well,

interviewing all these different creatives in different provinces to kind of, you know, build like a network of people that, you know, they can some, they can trust each other or at least reach out to, you know, with confidence saying like, Hey, like I was on the show, like, uh, this is what I do, yada, yada, yada. Here's my episode if you want to get to know who I am. So that I think like building community is like a, is an essential thing in any any in any part of the world like for this industry because i i agree when you start you start completely alone as a as a creator or as a videographer or whatever like there's you don't know where to start you don't know where to go and then you just kind of get connected to some people and then you just kind of start hopping from network to network

to network depending on your skill depending on what you're trying to do and there's no like one main resource to kind of look to and think like all right this is where i this is where i can get like some solid advice you know there used to be youtube when i started i'm like all right what do i do all right all that's available is youtube with random people creating video content and tutorials this is this is how i'll begin like i'm sure it was something similar for you when you began right jake yeah absolutely it's it's you never you never really know where where to go for information um I think that all came from doing that free work initially for me and and even rates just things like that you know just just rates of understanding how much I should charge for things

people don't like to disclose that information. So, you know, trying to understand that. There's guide rate cards, but it's so hard, I found, in advertising to understand actually what they are because a lot of those rate cards are for broadcast or they're for TV shows, you know. And it's a totally different game when working in advertising and actually, therefore, to try and find more accurate rate cards and things for that were like a real challenge.

So that's just one example of why that sort of, you know, therefore to try and find more accurate rate cards and things for that we're like a real challenge so that's just one example of why that sort of you know it's it's so important to to try and help people to understand this stuff from as early as possible within their careers otherwise they end up just shortchanging themselves and you know that's not a positive thing for anybody really yeah but i i feel like when you get those like early jobs with the lower rates, that's like kind of like the time to to try things, to learn things, you know, like that's when you build your first initial experience. Like I remember the very first videos we were creating or like the ones that we were creating was like one hundred and fifty dollars a video blanket blanket rate. rate and that's all we were doing but i found that like we were doing such random projects that we were able to kind of learn different things quickly rather than just you know it's like all right i'm gonna start charging like a really expensive price right off the bat you may not

get as many jobs in the beginning uh and then you won't learn as quickly i find like in the beginning like you said do free work um obviously to an extent or like really low rate work so that you can do a lot early on and you can learn quickly that's that's the best way to learn like do as much as you can as fast as you can to learn 100% yeah and understanding different roles as well you know is so important I think you get so many people who finish college or university and they're like I want to be a director and that's all they'll do that's all they'll focus on but actually understanding you know and starting with the runner then operating and then working on a bit of production work and trying things that you would never even think that you may well enjoy is such an important part of that process and and valuing everybody's

roles is only going to bring everybody together and for you to have a better overall understanding of the industry um you know and I think that's that's one of the ways that I think you find that people who do so will succeed. I think, you know, you find that people who don't almost become stubborn, you know, to that, I think, as well as with free work as well, I think you find that the amount of times that I will have the opportunity to give somebody some work experience and you'll speak to them um and they've never done anything before and you'll say to them okay we've got a fantastic

opportunity we're shooting a car ad for two days and we've hired a private you know estate up in York or something over here um and off we go and the first question they'll ask is what's the rate and it's like you're looking at this all wrong, guys. Like, seriously, you know, of course I will never. So, I mean, even with work experience, I don't not pay anybody. You know, I always think that if at the end of the day they're putting the work in, it's a benefit to me and therefore you absolutely should be rewarded.

And of course you will, but that can't be your first question. You know, you've got to have something else that you want to think about first. And I think that that's just the way that people go into the industry. It's just such a wrong approach from the get-go. And you see a lot of that, and I find that a shame, really. I mean, one of the other things as well is I do a lot of talks in schools. And these are only young children.

Some of them are only 12 13 and even younger than that and i can stand there and i can do an hour complete insight into how you use video these are the different ways to use it the different ways that brands use it start being clever about interactive video and using ar and i'll sort of give them all these inspirational bits of ways of thinking differently any questions anybody a few hands go up in the air yeah you first question will be how do i become famous and you're just thinking oh man this is just this is so wrong you know where is where where is the skill and the passion for doing something that you enjoy go on and it's just it's always going

to be like that it's only a small percentage of people that will see past the superficial and go deeper well that's like a desire that people have had for decades this is not something new in terms of like i want to be famous right but the definition of famous has kind of changed in terms of like what do uh the younger generations consider to be a famous person where like back in the day we used to think movie stars that was the famous person so everybody wanted to be a famous actor now everybody wants to be a famous youtuber or tiktoker yeah exactly no no social media oh influencer that's what they all want to be or influencer but but i did hear that now like the top job that a lot of um younger people say they want to be in the future is a YouTuber. That's like one of the highest, like, like mentioned dream jobs that a lot of kids now kind of say, which is like, that's such a broad term now, especially as well.

It's like, you know, you could, you can create a YouTube channel about, you know, like fixing cars, you know, that that's a YouTuber right there. You can be, I don't know, like, I don't know what, there's so many, like, you see, that's, that's what I mean. I can't even like i don't know what there's so many like you see that's that's what i mean i can't even like think of one off the top of my head that easily i think you just sum it up to they just want to be popular right yeah that's that's it yeah they want to be stars movie stars are just popular people right exactly symptom of society you know something wrong with society when people just want attention attention is the currency yeah you gotta love your kids people love your kids give them attention love yeah exactly that's what it is hug your kids god

damn it yes it is a real shame when the currency is is likes and shares on something rather than actually making a difference and i think you know that has changed massive i think obviously that's just social media as a whole i think which has made us all feel that way and you know I think Instagram as well has a lot to play for for people feeling down about things essentially unless they're as popular as that person or whatever it might be you know it's at the end of the day the fact that people are continually comparing your behind the scenes with other people's highlights and those highlights aren't even real highlights you know naturally that is going to have some effect on the way that people you know want to get on in life and the things that they aim to have and the attention

that they constantly crave and um i think i think i hope that a lot of people will grow out of that. We'll see, you know. I don't know because it does happen. I wonder because I see a lot less of my friends posting about their personal lives. I don't even know how people have the time to post about it, to be honest with you. I just go on these social media apps for the reels and I just send them to the same five, six people. I find something funny, send it to them and that's it. That's the only reason I go on these apps anymore is just find funny stuff to send to my friends while I'm just taking a quick 10 minute break. Sorry, it's because now our generation went from like posting about personal stuff to posting about their careers, right?

I think we talked about this in one episode where like when we were younger, everyone was on Facebook. Everyone was on Facebook posting this, this, this, and this. And then everyone got jobs and they got their careers. So now everybody kind of migrated to LinkedIn. So on LinkedIn, that's the business world. So everyone's going to be posting about the business side of things. And if you look at any of like other people within our network who is in video production, what do they post on social media behind the scenes on set some of the work that they do and everything like that and it's it's funny that you mentioned that jake we know like everyone's kind of sharing their behind the scenes or the best projects that they that they're they're kind of doing it's like okay that is like the best project but we all know that

there's at least enough for that one ad you did there was another 10 talking head interview videos that well they're just doing marketing kiro it's like yeah well i mean like a lot of the time like you know what though kiro like a lot of times we're we have freelancers on our on our socials that we follow and yeah they're marketing themselves on what they do and that's good because that's the only that's the only way i'll remember them right so it's true um but in terms of personal i think it's i think it's gone down i don't know it's gone i think it's just i think it's just boomers that do it now they just post on facebook and then yeah no i agree i really do and i hope there's a shift actually in terms of you know bringing it back to video content the fact that that you know there'll be so much user generated you know stuff that actually making something that's a bit more high-end and glossy

is actually oh that, that's nice. That's standout. I want to do one of those. And hopefully that comes back and we might end up being the fact that that then becomes really popular. I don't know if it's just a wave that we've got to keep riding, but I think that all we can do as an industry is just be more flexible than ever and just embrace these platforms. If they're hot right now absolutely make

content for them like is what a lot of the brands are saying and if that's the case like you know you've got to get involved um you know i think it's um going to be interesting what happens over the next few years and if it continues down sort of this path of this quick fast organic content or if actually it does flip and and actually people go now we've had enough of that let's just do something really nice and stand out from everybody else hopefully it's like a cycle we're gonna get to the point where it's it's it's such short content it's just gonna go to photos back to photos yeah video dies just back to photos yeah all the way through 60 seconds 30 seconds 15 10 5 3 one second content like the biggest benefit

guys that we have in our industry is that our audiences will get a board will get bored eventually with whatever they're watching and it'll the trends will just keep changing they'll keep shifting and whether they go back to photo for a bit they come back to video or long form video back to short form video like you said come back to video or long form video, back to short form video. Like you said, Jake, you have to be flexible. You have to go with what audiences are watching or wanting to watch. And then that's how you will survive as a business and as a creative. You know, one positive thing that's happened is that a lot of the B2C content type of content is also being applied to B2b type of content so you no longer need to make

like a five minute company profile video because no one used to watch those back then and now finally a lot of the marketers they understand that okay why waste the time so they're trying to make fun uh corporate content which which is good i think that's probably been the most positive change because now when we talk to clients they ask we always ask like how long do you want it to be and whenever they tell us like minute and a half two minutes i'm like that's already too long you should just be thinking 60 seconds or shorter and makes the content more fun for us to make and makes it more marketable for them and i think it's more of a challenging creative process when you've only got

a limited amount of time you know yeah that's the whole point you know 30 seconds is hard to make the message across in that time or 60 seconds you know five minutes when anybody can sit there and waffle about things um and that's that's the challenge i think is is to keep that concise um something we're trying to do a little bit more with B2B stuff that we do. So we've got a lot of, you know, just factory clients and industrial, you know, people. And essentially, we're trying to approach their work very much like consumer content. So, you know, for example, we had this battery company, Acceleron, who came to us and we had a creative meeting with them. They plonked this big battery on the table in front of us

and started reeling off all of these figures about why it's the most sustainable battery in the world. And we're going, well, that's great, guys, but who are you? You know, and their story about how they met and their characters was so captivating and it was so much different, you know, so different compared to anything else I'd heard. And it was literally like, guys, this is your film right here.

Like, this story is just totally out there and different and it literally is the formation of who you are and I think a lot of people struggle to to sort of like define or or be true to who they are a lot of the time I think they try to gloss over it or be bigger than they want to be or whatever else when actually they're they're interested in themselves so trying to captivate that is really interesting um and it's something that we see a lot in b2b where people try and be very serious very corporate and it's a case of right strip that back let's focus on this people-driven just get real here yeah exactly just get real stick to your truths and just have fun and stop this pretense that is surrounding what you're

trying to do right now um and the people that we've done that for have seen fantastic results so that would be my one piece of advice if anybody's listening uh jake but you gotta head out in three minutes so we'll just end off with uh how did you come up with the name btv and what does it stand for so yeah btvTV's been through various different evolvements throughout each year. It actually started because I started as a freelancer and obviously my last name was Barrett. So the Barrett Film Company was the first name

that was started out. Then that shortened down to Barrett Film Co. Then that shortened down to Barrett. And then it was a case of actually we're no bigger than it being just me and whatever else. So this is a team effort right now. One of the clients that we work with is Fox Sports.

So when they come over to the UK, they will use us for, you know, essentially their sporting content and broadcast stuff. And we'll provide crews to them. And we said we want a name that feels like it works on a stage with those kinds of brands. So over here, you know, we've got ITV, we've got the BBC, you know, so BTV was something that we said essentially we can strip it down even further to just BTV, you know,

which necessarily just stands for Barrett Television. But there's other things that we've got in the works, whether it's, you know, the fact that we're the people behind the vision and that's what BTV stands for. whether it's the fact that we're the people behind the vision, and that's what BTV stands for. There's various different terms that, again, if I was trying to build some mystical story around it, it could be something like that.

But there is no other, anything other than the fact that it's just continuing to get shorter and shorter. And I don't think we can get any smaller now. So I think we'll be staying where we are. But the funny thing is the first time I heard your your company name I don't know why it first went to did Dario reach out to British television was that well that's very good to hear I'd like to think so anyway it sounded very like like like it was like like you said like one of those BBC type network ones and I'm like is this one is this one of those the big ones over there like like not to say that you're not big okay we're getting there we're in our infancy we will be one day you guys you guys are definitely getting there in three years and like

having only been around for three years it's really impressive what you guys have done lovely now i really appreciate that thank you and um if you're on this podcast you're one of the big ones in your city. So that's good. Exactly. Exactly. Because otherwise I won't be able to find you. So that's how I found you. That's a very good point.

Yes. Cool. Well, Jake, thanks again for joining us on the show. You know, if you're ever on your way over to Canada or Toronto specifically, let us know. We'll grab a beer. Love to. Yeah, that's good. Now, thank you very much.

And yeah, look forward to seeing how this turns out and obviously more episodes in the future for sure for sure all right all right thank you jake thanks guys thanks a lot take care