Creatives Grab Coffee - The Power of Niching Down (ft. Dark to Light Productions) | Creatives Grab Coffee 83

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

In this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee, Tyler Hendricks from Dark to Light Productions (Idaho) shares how his company carved out a unique niche in nonprofit fundraising videos, delivering high-impact storytelling that drives donations. Tyler discusses the power of results-driven video production, revealing how strategic emotional storytelling at fundraising events can yield significant returns for organizations. He also dives into the challenges of pitching to commercial brands, the importance of understanding a client’s audience, and how niching down has simplified his sales process. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Episode Introduction and Welcome 02:19 - Guest Introduction: Tyler Hendricks from Dark to Light Productions 02:37 - How Dark to Light Productions Found Its Niche in Nonprofit Fundraising Videos 05:06 - The Power of Storytelling in Fundraising Events 07:09 - How Emotional Videos Drive Donations at Nonprofit Events 10:16 - The Impact of Niching Down on the Sales Process 13:20 - Why Results-Driven Video Production Matters 15:38 - Client Retention and the Value of Long-Term Relationships 20:35 - Challenges of Expanding Into Commercial Video Production 23:59 - Pitching to Outdoor Brands and Commercial Clients 27:22 - The Importance of Market Research Before Pitching 32:28 - Why Many Video Projects Fail Without a Clear Marketing Strategy 36:34 - The Changing Landscape of Video Production and Agency Work 40:16 - Small Teams vs. Large Crews: Efficiency in Video Production 44:56 - Union vs. Non-Union Productions: Industry Insights 47:04 - Favorite Types of Video Projects to Work On50:17 - Researching Clients Before a Pitch: Best Practices 58:50 - Closing Remarks and Where to Find Dark to Light ProductionsSPONSORS:Canada Film Equipment: www.CanadaFilmEquipment.comAudio Process: www.Audioprocess.ca🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9🍏 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 🎞️Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comTo learn more about the show, visit: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/

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And now, let's begin the show. Hi everyone, today we got Tyler Hendricks from Dark to Light Productions. So Tyler, welcome to the show. Thank you. Appreciate it. Good to be on. And I guess before we start and really dive deep into the show, why don't you just tell us a little bit about who you are and your company.

Yeah. So my name is Tyler Hendricks. I'm the owner of Dark to Light Productions in Haley, Idaho. We've been going for about 13 years now, and our primary focus, and I feel like what we've fallen into, is a lot of fundraising nonprofit events. So we handle a lot of video production for nonprofits, telling the stories of the participants or testimonials that parents from participants might have

To enhance the overall fundraising event to raise more funds for the nonprofit. It seems like that's about 80% of our work right now Would you say that's like your niche essentially? Oh, it's definitely it niche. Uh, I think the way that we stumbled into it is, you know, for so long, we were trying to do small businesses or product product sales. Um, and we just couldn't figure out that formula, you know, and I think there's a lot of people around who have that formula kind of dialed in, um, or at least they say they do, or they're better at marketing that they have that formula kind of dialed in or at least they say they do or they're better at marketing that they have that formula dialed in and we just had to be

honest continually with our clients and say we don't have a formula where if you produce this type of video you're gonna get this amount of return. But when we started working with nonprofits it seemed pretty obvious that we had a formula dialed in which was make sure that there is some sort of fundraising event happening for the nonprofit, and then include some sort of emotional, impactful video that kind of tells the story of that year that the nonprofit went through and the participants

that went through the program or whatever the nonprofit is doing. And if you can tell that story and then have someone validate that story from the stage and then you do a paddle up right after, you're going to raise way more funds, 10X funds, compared to what you spent on the video. So we figured that out pretty quick and then we started doing social media reels and posts from those main videos, but really those are just kind of the secondary goal

for a lot of our videos. Primarily it's the long format storytelling pieces at fundraising events that we seem to have found that niche. It's funny that you pitch as like they're getting a return on their investment because a lot of the times when we create our videos for our clients, we don't really pitch it as like, does it going to generate X amount of dollars for you because there's a,

there's a segment of that strategy that's missing from what we offer, which is the marketing, right? We don't really offer marketing, and it's kind of in the client's hands to be able to market the videos we create for them, to be able to generate like maybe 10 times, return our investment. Well, what's the, there's a two word phrase that I think every videographer uses

when they're trying to sell their piece, and it's brand awareness. I kept over and over and over, that was my thing. I don't know if you're going to get money back from us making this video and it's going to sell your product online, but it'll bring you brand awareness. Eventually, I just got so sick of telling people brand awareness, brand awareness, brand awareness, but they weren't receiving any funds back.

And then if they're not receiving any funds back or they're not making a profit, what's their incentive to hire me back? So nonprofit work and seeing a direct return from big donors at these fundraising events was such an easy way to go, okay, let's do it again next year, do it again next year. So it becomes almost a big flat rate subscription fee to our services. I think one of the biggest things that lends to your formula also is you know your target market almost a hundred percent like dialed in as to who they are, what their intentions are, what they're trying to do and the setting and the context with everything.

It's very rare a lot of the time when people are watching your video content, also in the right context for it to actually make a difference for like sales and things like that. But I guess because you're focusing on videos that are to be shown at fundraising events specifically, like the customers are the, the target market is there essentially, and they are already ready to kind of like, they're already ready for action, right? They're ready to donate and fundraise and you're just basically giving that little extra push for them, you know, in terms of like the story and like, you know, tugging on the heartstrings a little bit here and there

as well. And I think that's why it's a, might be a little bit easier for you to quantify. Cause like, if for example, you have an event with a hundred people, every event you can ask your, your client, how many people invested after they watch that video. And then if they say, or sorry, not invested,

fundraise, and you can say like 50%, 60% all made a donation. It's like, that is actually something tangible that you could bring to another nonprofit. So it's pretty interesting that you've niched yourself into that area and specifically, uh, in very direct marketing in a way or direct promotion with the video content. Yeah. And you know, it's word of mouth spreads pretty quick around these nonprofits, especially

because you know, at these events, you might have 100 to 200 donors. And like you said, they're ready to give already. They're there for a reason. But then they also are donating to another nonprofit. So they see a video that they watched at this fundraising event. And then a month later, there are another fundraising event that they give to that doesn't have a video. Those donors end up becoming our biggest advocates. They'll go to the nonprofits and go, hey, there was a video that we watched on the last one that was really compelling. We raised a ton more more donor dollars from that video.

Can you guys reach out to them? And oftentimes the donor ends up fronting the bill for it, not even the nonprofit. There's oftentimes like donors specifically that will go, we need this video. We're happy to contribute and pay for it. Um, because donors don't want to be alone, you know, like they don't want to be, uh, fronting these giant bills every single year. They want to gather more and more people like them who are philanthropic so that they can disperse that money not just in one place but in multiple places.

So yeah, and what's also awesome is, you know, we're in a day and age where it seems like you're continually trying to make the shortest, most entertaining video for social media purposes or whatever. And we feel very blessed to be able to make long format films that people are basically stuck in a room forced to watch. And they have to start from, they start at the beginning, they get, they get to the ending, they clap, there's tears, and then they, they give money to the nonprofit.

And then from there we can, we can still have fun. You know, we can take that video and cut it up into a ton of shorter clips for social media reels and for other media assets for that nonprofit throughout the year. But we feel very blessed to be able to still make what are essentially short films. How has narrowing down on a niche kind of, has it simplified your sales process or has it complicated a little bit? Like what's that process been like? That's a good question.

You know, it's funny because we're all, we always still want to work with everybody. Like we want to work with small businesses. I think that we are overly honest in saying that, especially if there's products that we're on the fence about, you know, like, I don't know, like this product doesn't apply to me, but the client still really wants us to make an impactful, you know, short for that product. Oftentimes we're looking at it and going, yeah, I, you know, we don't know if this is gonna sell anything. And I think that oftentimes these clients have four other people who are saying, Oh, you're for sure. Gonna sell it. You're for sure. Gonna sell it.

It's going to, this is going to happen. You're going to, you're going to get sales coming through in this place, in this place. And it's kind of all fabricated sales techniques, I think, um, just to, just to get that client over the line. And so we're very honest from the start of what we know and what we don't know. And so what we know are fundraising events and nonprofits. Our whole valley, the place that we live is about 20,000 people. And a lot of them are on the wealthier side, second and third homeowners.

And so there's a huge philanthropic population in this area. And because of that, there's a ton of local nonprofits. So that was our start here is just continually building our portfolio of these smaller nonprofits. nonprofits and that's that has naturally taken us to a lot bigger nonprofits throughout the country. So I'd say we want to work you know like we have we have dreams of working with companies especially outdoor companies because we're in we're in Idaho we're in the mountains we'd love to do some work with you know like Jetboil or First Light or some of these fishing and hunting companies.

That would be super fun. But I just don't think we're the best salespeople for it because we don't know what it's going to do for them. We don't know if it's going to increase their views dramatically online. It can't hurt. But I know that the nonprofits, I can tell them if you spend $10,000 on this video, you're gonna make $100,000 at that fundraising event

more than you anticipated without the video. And I can say that confidently because we've been doing it for 12, 13 years. You seem very focused on the results your videos will produce. And that's usually a rare thing to really pitch yourself on because a lot of the times we just pitch ourselves on our skill and the quality of the work,

but not the results. Because usually that's outside of our hands. So how come you really like to focus on that part? Yeah, I mean, gosh. An ideal world, if I could figure out how to make that work in my brain, I think life would be a lot easier. Like, just being.

You mentioned how you didn't like talking. You got tired of talking about the brand awareness like talking, how you didn't, you got tired of like talking about the brand awareness is like the main pitch that everyone keeps talking about all the time. And I understand your position because like at the same time you're trying to sell someone on something that you don't know if it's actually gonna help them.

And you probably like the feeling of actually being able to yield results from all the, like actually having an impact with the videos where as Dario mentioned, a lot of the time in our industry because it's out of our hands all we can do is Be proud of the fact that we created a great a great video But we can't always definitively say yeah that video Did that for that business always right? Yeah, sometimes yes sometimes not but it always depends also on the opportunity coming Well, do you mind if I ask you a question?

Yes, go ahead. What percentage of clients become, would you guess, become repeat clients for you guys? Percentage wise, what, like 30% Dario? Repeat? Yeah. We have a very high retention rate. But the thing is our projects are usually. Over long term.

Well the only, so I would say a good chunk, over 75% become repeat clients. But we're usually a per project based business. So it might be like once a year, they'll come back once every two, three years. They will come back. I think the only times when it doesn't work out is if they've just switched jobs into something where they don't deal with video anymore, um, or they just. Can't afford us anymore.

Cause maybe we were working with them earlier on and we were doing like two, $3,000 videos and now we're like at double, triple times that. So they just can't afford it. It's out of the budget. So our retention rate is pretty high, but again, per project basis. So it's not consistent.

Yeah, it's not a consistent retention. Like people do want to work with us more after one video project, but it's like it's not like a retention that's why I was like thinking like 25 30 percent maybe like on a more consistent basis like a year But in terms of like as Daria mentioned like some would come to us maybe like once a year once every six months We have like a handful that we do like maybe one every like two months or something like that as well. So, but it's like, it sprinkles itself around obviously.

So that keeps us busy, but, um, yeah. And I think that's, I think that's similar to us as well. Um, and I think that was just like you were saying with the growing pains of when you start out, I mean, the first year in business, I made $17,000 with a partner, split between me and a partner. Of course, you're charging what you can to make ends meet month to month, but as you grow, your prices end up going up because you realize what it takes to build a business and build a team. I always needed to be able to validate the price to my clients.

I always needed to be able to say, if you spend $2,000, you're going to get a return. Obviously, I'm not giving them specific returns, but I can guess that you might get a return on that at the fundraising event of like $10,000. If you spend $10,000, you can get a return of $100,000. If you spend 20,000, you know, and I can keep going up and up because the quality of film will get better. The audience will have more of an emotional reaction,

and we can dive into the pre-production side of things and really make sure that the message shines through when the video is done and it hits all the marks. And so I had to continually validate that not only is it good for brand awareness, you're going to have a great quality video, people go to the home page, you're going to find out exactly what you're about online, but I also wanted to make sure that that fourth thing was met, which is that they are going to continually receive more than enough on on, they're going to get a big return on their investment for this video. And so that was

definitely a component I was super concerned about. And so I think because of that, like we're the same. I'm actually not a big fan of retainers. I think that they end up to bad client relationships in the end where you eventually have to charge more because the client demands more because they can't, you can't just keep rolling out the same things month to month. They're going to get bored of it.

So I'm big on flat rate project by project, but it seems like we're at like 95% of people are going to use this every single year once they know that all four of those things are met for them. And I'm sure there's other things I'm not even thinking about but once if they know that no matter what they spend money on it And they're going to make double or triple off of that at the fundraising event more than they anticipated Because they go into these fundraising events already knowing this donor is going to give this amount This one's going to give this amount, But if they make way more than their goal was to reach at the fundraising event, then

it just seems like it's a no-brainer to keep using us over and over. And we might have a client switch trying another production company. And we really focus on being collaborative. And we work. We being collaborative and we work, you know, we are not a production company that does like two revisions. Like it's common for us to do eight to 10 revisions to make sure the client is super stoked with the end result.

So I think a lot of times they will switch to another production company and go, oh, they wouldn't even give us more than two revisions. And so they end up switching back to us. But yeah, year over year, typically our clients stay with us at about 95%. And they do the same type of project year after year. And they usually are increasing year after year, which is great. Yeah.

Every year, things, there are always like little variables that change. But it sounds very similar to us where it's like every year, it there are always like little variables that change, but it sounds very similar to us where it's like every year it's like the same organization. Like we have a few specific clients that have like conferences every year. And there was one that we did, I think for four years running throughout the start of the pandemic. We were doing, we're doing projects for them. And actually one thing I'm curious about, because you mentioned you wanted to start working

with some of these more outdoor brands, but now you have a very focused philosophy on wanting to have your content yield certain specific returns for your clients. But that's, you kind of had the luxury of, you know, you had an audience there always ready for you with very specific intentions that you knew, and you knew how to market or create content towards that.

How would you go about it then with say one of these new outdoor brands that you, that's like your dream client, but the marketing is out of your hands at that point. So what would you do differently when you're pitching to them? Gosh, that's a good question because you know, that's what we're trying to, trying to figure out. I think for us, we do a lot of research into the clients that we wanna work with. And so, I'll just say it out here because the more I can get this out there, the better.

We really wanna work with Jetboil. Are you guys familiar with Jetboil? No. Jetboil's like a tiny propane tank that lights a flame at really high temperatures and boils water super fast. And it's super lightweight, so you can carry it into the outdoors. So when you're out in the mountains,

just with a tent on your back type of thing, you'll also have your jet boil where you can eat your dehydrated meals. You can boil water, all that kind of stuff. And it's funny because it's like, why that product? Well, that product we've done a ton of research on. We all use it. We love the product.

There's nothing on the market close to it. And we look at their online media. And essentially what they're doing is they're just sharing on Instagram all of these other people or Instagram influencers who use their product. And so for us, it's like they should have super professional video and professional storytelling attached to their brand because everybody has those outdoor stories with their

Jetboil where they're literally sitting there going I don't know what I would be doing here right now. Like I definitely couldn't stay out in the mountains as long as I am without this. And so everyone has this really big appreciation for their jetpile when they're out there hungry in the mountains. And so there's tons of stories that could be told with this product. And they haven't tapped into that at all. It's not a part of their marketing strategy at all. So for us, we've started creating like little spec commercials here and there when we have time, and that's not usually a part of our strategy.

I hate developing videos that are gonna go nowhere, that may or may not go anywhere, but essentially you're doing free work for a client and giving them the ideas. But in this particular circumstance, if I want that client, the more that I reach out to them online, the more I email them, it just sounds desperate. And so to me, I feel like I gotta show them something

that their marketing teams can talk about. So yeah, for a company like that, I would probably be making them a teaser spec commercial that they can at least Get the overall picture of what I'm trying to pitch to them So I can at least start the conversation with them I have no idea if that's the right way to do it. What do you guys recommend in some I would? I would ask for send this episode to them send this episode to them and that'll work Send this episode to them. Send this episode to them and that'll work. Okay, cool.

I was gonna say like if you do create some content, I would ask for something in return. Like, I'm gonna send you this video but I want a Jetboil. Jetboil, is that what it's called? Jetboil. Jetboil. Jetboil. I want one of those in return. Yeah, totally. There's gotta be a trade here, right? The way you were passionately talking about how you wanna pitch to like pitch to them and how you want to work with them? Like in this video format that like just take this snippet and send it to them

Like they might it might yield a different result than just sending an email. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea Yeah, I would totally do that. And then there's a lot of clothing companies like it's silly right now So what are you guys familiar with first light? No So first light are you guys familiar with first light? No. So first light. Um, are you familiar with meat eaters? You're really an outdoorsy type, eh? Yeah. I have these brands are not that, that huge here in Toronto. Really? I have to say, well, well, well, that's surprising because we're not outdoorsy type. So we don't know. That's surprising because we're not outdoorsy type. So we don't know

Maybe maybe at bass pro Yeah, yeah. Yeah, i'm not an outdoorsy type. So I have no idea what these brands are They basically sell like really high quality marina wool, uh, uh, like they're their signature Clothing in my opinion is like they're marina wool underlayers Um, there's there's nothing like it like when you're in the mountains with that on, whether you're hiking and it's super hot or it's really cold and you're needing to stay warm, they do both. And then they sell these big puffy jackets that it could be negative 20 degrees and if you have that jacket on, you're totally fine. They're actually a company in this valley.

Like they're in this 20,000 people community, their headquarters is here. And I still am not an expert in pitching to those clients. I'm not an expert in building like pitch decks or anything like that because we're so busy with the non-profit work that we do right now. But that's the future for us, is figuring out how to start going into those markets using the same strategy of storytelling technique and being collaborative with the client.

But obviously, you have to do it in shorter formats. Um, and they need to appeal to a broader audience. Uh, they have to have that hook that people will, will gravitate towards and watch. Um, but yeah, that would be, that'd be kind of the future for us. One thing you could potentially do is even look at like some of their main competitors and see what they're doing and what's working for them. And that could be something that you can use as like a comparison when you're trying to pitch something for yourself, like, in terms of like trying to find something

quantifiable, because I could see that that's, that's one thing you're trying to kind of grapple with and like trying to show when you're when you're talking to these, like more sales or, like product based companies rather than nonprofits because yeah, like when you're working in the nonprofit sector versus the commerce sector is Completely different type of ball table is there's different focuses There's different needs and different kinds of marketing people behind it too, right? So that second company seems like an easier sell though, because if you're in the same location, I would just create something, create a video,

your spec spot, and then a simple pitch deck, and I would literally just walk into the office and see who I can talk to there. Right, right, and you know, like all the owners, because I've talked to the managers, I've talked to some of the employees, it's the owners that have to make the decision and they're never here. They're a part of a show called Meat Eaters that isn't, it used to be on Netflix, they did like nine seasons on Netflix.

So it seems like they're off to these big adventures and they're all about creating the media for those adventures and they do have some for their product line and obviously everyone in these big shows is wearing first light but yeah no you're totally right. I need to get on it and I need to start going through what that formula is like what makes us stand out in that area? But I think the biggest thing for them is we're here like we're literally in town your next door Yeah, yeah exactly But yeah, like you said like you're figuring out pretty quick. I feel like I have to I Have to know all of the questions beforehand.

I have to know the start to the finish, not just what the quality of video is going to be at the end, because that's a no-brainer. Everyone's going to sell a super high-quality video if they can. Well, not everyone. But if you're good at what you do, you're going to sell a good video. If you've been around for 10 years, you've got to be doing something right with your videos.

But beyond that, I think it's important to know that you're good at what you do, you're going to sell a good video. If you've been around for 10 years, you've got to be doing something right with something. But beyond that, I want to know who their audience is and where it's going to go and how it's going to bring them money compared to what they're currently doing compared to the current marketing. Like, how can I contribute to it? Yeah. And I guess it goes back to your, the way you, you position yourself as like results baits videos, because in my mind, like that seems like such a harder approach when it, when you're dealing with a client that has control of their

marketing, right? Like with the nonprofits, it seems to make more sense because you guys are both aligned, but anyone outside that space, there must be a way because I know That there are video production companies out there that do pitch themselves as results based businesses But I feel like they also offer the marketing support for that, right? Yeah, so maybe that's something you might need to explore if you want to that Diversify kind of outside of your niche a little bit, right? And we do.

We do. So for a very select group of clients, we actually have a retainer marketing program that we have them on. And I don't offer that to clients in general because you have to have such a good partnership with that client already. You have to know you're going to work really well with them. Otherwise you could blow up your relationship just in the videos that you were doing before the marketing.

So you have to be on the same page with them. You have to have tons of communication. The collaborative effort really has to be there. And they have to be super communicative. Because if they drop off for two months and you're doing something totally off track of their mission or their goals, and they come back two months later looking at what you did, super easy way to be dropped entirely. So yeah, I mean, you know, we're, I think that that is a route that we're going is a little bit more of this

agency route. But it's not intentional. It's because I can't, it's probably because I'm a little bit of a control freak. Like I want to know where this video is going and I want to know that it's being marketed well because I never want a client to look back on what we did and go, this is because of the video you made, not because of our marketing efforts. So if I have a hand in the marketing efforts, then I can at least evaluate. Yeah, it was our video. Our video sucked. Or no, it was definitely your marketing team or our part in the marketing.

Just being able to have open and honest conversations. We're first always going to be the company that says, yeah, we fucked up in this area. We should have thought more about your audience and thought that they would want to go this route. And we totally missed that. I think that that appeals to clients who are looking to figure out some solutions with you and they'll be willing to work with you

if you can take blame for something. But I also wanna have open and honest conversations about their marketing. Like this was literally thrown up on YouTube and you got 15 views. What did you expect? Yeah, that's always the challenge in our industry and like if we're production video production companies It's like, you know, you can do a great product, but it's always difficult to know How it's gonna be pushed on the client side and a lot and sometimes

One one question. I'm always asking is who is this video intended for? And clients don't always know the answer for it as well, which is a big challenge because then it's like, so who are we really trying to market this to, right? And like in a way with the fundraiser, with the nonprofits, it's like the marketing process kind of just gets cut out, right? Because it's just, here's the audience, it's gonna be played there. That's all the marketing, it's like the marketing process kind of just gets cut out, right?

Because it's just, here's the audience, it's gonna be played there. That's all the marketing that it is, that they're there at the event and you're playing the video. Whereas in the other sense, you have to have marketing dollars and an online push for all the content you create,

or you know where it's gonna live after an event or something like that, right? So yeah, it's always a challenge and like any, and especially if you're just doing video production, you're always asking these questions and then it's frustrating when the clients don't know these like simple things that they should know if they wanna be doing video, right?

Well, and yeah, and are you guys typically working with, like how's your clients kind of split up? Do you work directly with businesses, or are you working oftentimes through an agency? What's your, who's your normal client? We're usually working direct with our clients. I would say about 90, 95% of the time, and then the remaining percentage, 5, 10%,

would be through an agency. So we're usually dealing directly with the marketing department. That's awesome because a lot of video production companies I talked to and a lot of them have recently just last couple of years have shut down who were primarily working with agencies. They typically found that they felt like they were doing all of the work that the agency should be doing. They were building all of the stories. They were basically identifying the audience.

And oftentimes they were doing it through pitch decks before they even got the job. And then that marketing company or that agency was taking those ideas, pitching it to their bosses, they were getting rewarded for it, and sometimes they would not even use the video production company, and it felt like they were doing all of the storytelling work. And unfortunately, a lot of those companies have been, a lot of those video production companies have been cut out by the agency because oftentimes the preferred employee of that video production company

was just absorbed into the agency. They would offer them more money to just come work for them rather than paying the company the amount that it needed to survive. So I think definitely, I think you guys are rare in talking to a video production company that does, and you guys, you're obviously talking to more owners than I am, but everyone I knew was working directly with agencies and I felt like we were rare by doing direct to nonprofits or businesses. But I think long term, that's going to pan out and be the right move, even if it wasn't lucrative as lucrative at the beginning.

Well, I mean, it depends also on the types of projects you're doing, because if you're doing more commercial work or just really high end productions, you will most likely be dealing directly with an agency versus what we do, which is in like the medium sized range. Like we're we have that possibility to just deal directly with with those businesses, right. But if it's like they've got to do like a national campaign or worldwide campaign, I'm sure they're going to hire an agency that will then foresee everything else. Right.

Otherwise, the client would have to pick and choose every single part of the process. And I don't think they have the time for that, especially if they have the budgets for it. So it's just dealing with a different aspect of the industry. That's probably the reason. The agencies have evolved. And that's why there's a lot of those challenges that you're mentioning where I feel like the medium sized range projects have really evolved in terms of like the budgets have really shrunk for agencies.

So it's hard for them to be hiring out externally constantly. And yeah, it really varies. Like one thing we've seen in Toronto especially is a lot of big agencies are merging. And they're making, and it's funny cause they're talking about it like, yeah, we're merging to become one big powerhouse and it's like, no, we know that,

like some of them are struggling to keep it going and they're just like migrating talent, laying people off. Like there was like a lot of layoffs in Toronto over the last year from the agency side, from what I've been seeing. And I've talked to like a few people that have worked at the companies that have like, that have been laid off. And then they were saying, yeah,

the partners would go and move to a bigger agency and then they would become like one bigger kind of powerhouse. But at the same time, it's technically kind of like a downsizing of the amount of agencies out there, right? So there's always gonna be a need for bigger, like as Dario mentioned, for campaigns that are on a more national level or a company or a Fortune 500 company that needs to, you know,

push multiple initiatives, but they're not, those types of clients are not gonna be coming to, like all of us, right, who are dealing with medium to small size based companies. Right, totally. I mean, what like average when you guys are out on a shoot, how many people typically are on set for your productions? Not a lot, like-

Three to five. Yeah. Yeah. It's three to five. Producer, director, the producer is usually the director on our sets And we have a cinematographer PA and then you know if it gets bigger like we're recording interviews we'll have an audio operator from our sponsor audio process come on on and That's usually the average team size like again our projects aren't crazy big So we don't really need to have like a massive massive team

But we do know enough people to be able to bring on for a bigger project depending on the needs. And I'm sure that you've been on sets and usually for us, it's on sets where an agency is involved. Um, and this was in the past, we're definitely not seeing this right now. This is, and when I say past, it's like four years ago. But four years ago, you'd be the production team hired for all of these different roles, and you'd show up and there'd be 40 to 50 people.

And you would just continually wonder, what are they doing? I don't know what that person does, that person does, that person does. And I think it's because there's oftentimes this old traditional style of every single person has one single role while they're on set. And companies like ours have adapted to being like, well, I can handle this, this, and this. That guy over there is gonna handle this, this, and this. And so you have all these people with broader skill sets

compared to what was in the past. And I think we were just running into this merging of this old school way of doing things and new production companies coming in. And I think it was pretty quick that when that merge started to happen the agencies were going we don't need all these people Like we just don't need all of these people. We just need the very qualified people to have a broad range of skill sets Could also be in Sir could also be in the types of projects because yeah, if it was like the old-school style of

Filming or that mentality they were also probably dealing with bigger productions. But now that even like regular companies just need small videos with the production level not being that high, it just right. Those those positions just aren't needed, if any. Yeah, for that type. But they're still need like I'm thinking about. We did a commercial like I guess it was a commercial for a restaurant. And I remember we had like, it was for another production company and there were like 15, 20 people on set.

So for that type of work, it's kind of needed because it's, it's like a much bigger thing and whatnot. Or for like a regular talking head with some B roll content for a financial client, you don't need 15, 20 people. You just need three to five. No, I mean, we're talking two people on camera, scripted, teleprompters, like, didn't seem like it needed 30.

Oh, you had, there were that, oh, they were really that, okay, I don't know then. That's how basic some of these shoots we've been on. We're like, we could, and we've been the one on the creative briefing the entire time leading up to it um, and so we're not knowing that all these people are going to be on set we think it's us and just like talent and maybe one person from the agency And we've shown up and there's yeah 30 to 40 people and we have no idea what they're doing

It's I mean, it's also also the client, the client and their people are coming on set, they're being invited by the agencies, that's maybe two or three people that might come in. And then on the agency side, there might be the creative director for the project, then there are two assists or something like that, and then an intern. I'm just trying to look for-

Where are the other 20 people coming from, Kieran? I'm trying to rationally list them out, but like I've seen also like the agencies are kind of like going into the video production model where it's like the key core members that are running all the different projects, and then they hire freelancers as well. It's becoming more like the freelancer kind of pool

is getting more and more utilized, I think, companies because that's, that's where the budgets. Okay. Well I'll invite, I'll invite some ad agency execs and we'll pick their brain and we'll get to the bottom of this. We should do that. Yeah, we should do that. I mean, cause most of the time we're really like, you know, when we're on set, we like to know who, who's doing what. And most of the time it was just, you know, for agencies around here, it just felt like a lot of people standing around.

An office space moment. So what is it that you do here? I told you, I talked to the video production crew so that the clients don't have to. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I understand like trailers for makeup and, you know, I understand all of that. You have to do things weather-dependent, and you have to have extra. I understand all that.

I think it got so overinflated 2020, 2021. Funny enough, right after the pandemic, it got so overinflated with crew. And I think it was the agencies panicking a little bit, like they didn't know the full scope from start to finish of how things were going to be done. They're trusting the video production company. And at the last minute, the panic starts to come in and they just bring everyone that they know on set because there's so

much money on the line for them. They're getting the bulk of everything. We just kept finding that over and over. Then now, the last agency we worked with, it's bare bones. It's like us, like what we're used to. It's us and a couple members from their team just overseeing it but trusting us to do the work um, I wonder if it was also union related because I think if you It um, I forget I mean we haven't done it to be honest with you but I I was asking someone about it if you want to Like if you want to have one of the actors be union every every crew member has to be unionized to have one of the actors be union every every crew member has to be unionized so maybe it could be one of those situations and then I think if you want to use unionized people on your shoots

then you have to say that everything you do for that year has to be a unionized project I might be talking out of my ass on that I don't know if that's correct or not but I think that might be a reason so when it comes to union work, like you got to get specific people for specific jobs. Some agencies have opinions on unions. We don't use them. So like our projects are just non unionized people. We do have a story about union based. Some agencies are union based. And that's why they need to have certain people, certain hours, certain types of crew covered for those projects because they have partnerships with those unions because of also how big those productions are right, but

medium to small sized ones typically No, it's not it's not as common So we haven't had to use them so we don't have a lot of thoughts on it My only thoughts are that man that would be a really expensive production. So that's about it. Yeah. Yeah. And you guys could totally be right. Uh, cause I know that, uh, a film crew came in from LA, uh, and they had a lot of union, uh, union members and it was very specific, uh, roles that they had to fill on the crew. And oftentimes they found those guys like they had to fill the role But they didn't actually have a specific job for that role

So that person was doing a few minutes of work a day and they just had to be there um No show job No show jobs. Yeah we found like for like I feel bad for We found like for like I feel bad for all talent that we've ever reached out to and wanted to hire them for something and they really wanted to be a part of the project and then couldn't because there we couldn't meet the standards that the union had for them. And so we had to just say sorry we have to go with someone who's not a part of the union. Bummer.

Yeah. Cause once you start hiring some union people, there's also, then the union will be like, no, now you have to make your whole crew a union too. Like it's such a, it's so foreign to Dario and I, and like anytime we've had like brushes with any union crew or, or talent, we've always done our best to avoid it because it's, it's, it's not in our interest. It's not in our client's interest and it just complicates everything. Uh, for our, for our, yeah, for our, for ours. It makes no sense. Maybe, maybe once we start doing bigger stuff, it might make sense. But yeah, yeah. Tell me, uh, what are your guys's favorite projects to work on?

My favorite types? Sorry, Kero, go ahead. Okay. I like doing projects that are like telling real stories, like very docu-style type productions. We don't do too many of them at the moment, but when we do those types of projects, I get really into them and I like to spend as much time as I can to really make something really cool for our clients, not only for them, but also for us in our portfolio. And that's also why,

cause I always get excited when we do projects that I know is going to be like, yeah, this is going to be good for the portfolio. And me, I love doing shoots. So we're just learning something new about like a business or whatnot. Like I especially like going to these factories and just seeing how they just build stuff. It's so fascinating to me.

Yeah. I like that aspect of it, or those shoots, you know. Yeah, that'd be cool. We've never done anything like that. I think the closest we've come to is like, you know, product videography for, you know, a bicycle company or something like that. We do obviously a lot of the docu style storytelling for the nonprofits.

But yeah, that would be so fun going into a big, like almost doing a how things work episode would be awesome. But that was interesting. Yeah, that reminds me the the old school Uh how it's made on discovery channel from like yeah, that's what i meant. Yeah, like that's how yeah I thought that's a trip down memory lane right there ages us a little bit right there, too Yeah, no, it'd be so fun because the shots are usually super, you know, they're super basic. It's not like you're going to be able to get a bunch of lighting in and stuff like that. But at least that's not what they were doing. But if you could do it, you could modernize a

series like that, especially, you know, high frame rates to really show how something's being molded or crafted. Like all that stuff is shot in like 29.97 and it's just us. It's a camera on a tripod showing all the different machinery. And obviously people loved it because it, I don't know how many seasons they had of it, but if you could take that and modernize it, I think that'd be an awesome series to do. Yeah. It's a pitch idea right there. That is a pitch idea, yeah. Filming in factories is not as easy

as a lot of people think. I bet. And you have to be very minimal with your equipment because there's so many things happening constantly. For safety. For safety you gotta keep an eye open. Safety is the biggest thing. Like it's the biggest thing.

And like at most you Could do is like bring in one maybe two lights on hand depending on what you're doing and What the factory processes are like because ultimately the main thing is you want to make sure everyone is safe No one walks into like a big machine. That's like spinning at like hundreds of I don't I don't even know how to measure This is Canada. There's a lot. There's a lot of guardrails, so you're not allowed to step close to that stuff, but you still gotta keep an eye out. Yeah.

In the United States, we can go right up to it. It's no worries. So. Ooh. My hand. Oh, there it goes. There goes my hand, yeah. My camera hand. I want to go back a little bit and kind of explore

what you were talking about when you said you research your client or your lead before you start pitching to them like can you can you kind of expand on what your process is for that like what do you look for? Yeah, I mean, oftentimes we do a lot of, you know, we're looking online in the normal places. We're Googling. We're looking on their website. We're checking the media that they've done before. I would say before we even step into our first client meeting, when we get that email or that initial phone call where they're setting up the meeting, we are going to look through everything

that we possibly can online about this company, mainly to see what we like, what we don't like, and we probably do this a little bit to our own detriment where we have so many preconceived ideas as we step into the meeting. But we find most of the time the client is going to be usually brand new to the space as far as trying to develop any media for themselves or they've done media in the past that was not well researched and you can usually tell by just watching their video that's on their home page or whatever

they have. And so for us, I want to come into these first initial meetings prepared with the basic understanding of what that client does and who they're trying to reach and and if I can't establish that by looking online then there's already great questions that I can just dive into the client on that initial meeting and I'm pretty forward with people if I see on their website that I can't figure out what they do. It's one of the first things that I'll say is, yeah, so looking at your website, I don't know what you guys do. Like, can you walk me through it?

So at least they know that I'm not coming into this totally blind. But I really do like to have as much information that is available online from this client so that I can gather myself before I meet with them. And then I really do let them run the show, but I find most of the time they're jumping onto the phone call being like, so we've never done this before. We don't really know what we're talking about. How do you guys normally work with your clients? And when that happens, we can kind of, you know, take the lead, especially if we're prepared. It's a nightmare if we have to take the lead and we have no idea what they do. Then we're just continually asking

questions and it feels like we could have already gotten most of this information covered by just looking online for half an hour, you know. So that's typically our our research diet. Now if it's something like Jetboil like they talk like I talked about we're gonna go in depth into years of media that they've put out on social media or are out on their website. We're gonna dive into however many years we can find and just see are we pitching something to them that's already been done or are we pitching them something that's going to be brand new concept to them.

But we really want to make sure we've identified their audience. If we haven't identified their audience or pitching to an audience that they don't care about, especially if we can predict like they're sitting in marketing meetings going, we don't want this audience, we want this audience, but we're pitching to that audience over there. It's going to be a total nightmare, total flop of a meeting. Um, so that's usually what we're trying to, that was a lot of rambling, but that's what we're trying to research and establish before a lot of these initial

meetings. Is it you mainly doing all the sales or is it like you and like a few other people? Yeah, weirdly enough, so I started the production company 13 years ago and I was doing, and my background before that, it's funny, I was like 21, but my background before that was I was funny my background, I was like 21, but my background before that

was I was working for a local television company doing shooting and editing. I was basically a one man crew and they had sales people and they had a couple other guys like me. But we were each responsible for shooting our pieces, editing our pieces, finalizing our pieces, including audio mix, color grade, so a big wide spectrum of like mediocre skill sets at that time. And you kind of, I mean I don't feel like it's easy to be an expert while having this knowledge base of all these things. So it seemed like I was just mediocre at all those things.

And then as I started to, when that company shut down, I was sitting in the office as the place was being ransacked by the employees who hadn't been paid. I was sitting there and the phone was ringing with clients going, hey, we hear the TV station shutting down but I still need my piece for online. And so that's how my production company started, was basically going, yeah, I can finish that. What were you paying the television station?

Just pay me and I'll give it to you and you can have it for your online purposes. So to say that I actually sell anything, it wouldn't be accurate because I have zero sales techniques. But because everything's kind of spread from word of mouth from that point to where we're at now. And we've never had to actively go in and sell something to anybody. Usually it's word of mouth spreads from one client to another or one donor group to another. And that's how oftentimes people are reaching out to us. Or now especially they're reaching out to us directly from our website. They do research in the area.

They want to shoot a film here. They have a product here, a business around, and they're doing research trying to find a professional video production company and they find us online and go through our contact form. So now, I typically am just managing, because we also, video production company is just one of our, video production is one of our services.

We also do web development, graphic design, photography. And so now I find myself just managing the business. So I'm not doing, and I will sit down with the client on that initial meeting and I'll give them the full scope of how we work, what our process is, how we're going to work with them. So I guess in that sense, I'm selling it to them on that initial meeting. But after that, my crew takes over everything.

And after that initial meeting, we typically have enough data that they can create the scripts and the shot lists and present it to the client. The client already has been introduced to my crew by me and usually it's that one director or producer that's creating the shot list and the script and they can present it to the client and the client can collaborate directly with them after that. So usually and usually that's the end of me participating in that particular production until QC-ing at the very end, just making sure the quality is up to par. And then I'm on to the next meeting. It feels like my, and I never thought, you know, like I like being creative. I like creating things, but it feels like my whole job now is managing

crews and pitching, managing crews and yeah, and pitching and, and obviously like I got the nonprofit pitch dialed in and I'm super confident that it's a win-win for everybody and my pitch to businesses will need some improvement But we're working on it Nice. Okay. Well, I think we can end it here because I think we're at the one hour mark ready so Tyler, thank you for coming on guys if you want to find Tyler go to dark to light dot productions So it's dark to light and then dot.

So long for the production. It's the word two, not the number two. T-O, not the number two. D-A-R-K-T-O-L-I-G-H-T dot productions. How did you choose? Oh, I forgot the tradition. Yeah, how did you come up with the name? How did you choose that company name?

Yeah, so I was in so I was in film school and it was a very, it was, I shouldn't even call it a film school, it was an internship program where we were basically thrown into immediately doing production. We were actually paying to do production work for this internship school, kind of a skeezy great business model for them. And so during that time I had a ton of free time because there were so many people a part of this internship that it didn't seem like I was doing much so I was just trying to conceptualize what my production company we would be named someday. my production company we would be named someday. And I love the idea, I love dark to light in two different ways.

I love the, just like, I love the idea of bringing things from darkness to light. So thinking about a concept or a story that people don't know about and exposing it in a good way, exposing that story and bringing that to life for people. And I think that we do that in the nonprofit space continually where these donors don't really know what's happening with this nonprofit

that they're interested in. And so we like to take that participant's story that most of the time would not be told. The participant doesn't really want to tell it, but they've been benefited so well by this nonprofit that we're able to expose that story and bring it to the light for people to see and hopefully contribute donor dollars to those nonprofits. So I love that idea. And I also love just lighting in general, like taking a dark room and seeing what you can do

with lights to manipulate the darkness and manipulate the light into something that's beautiful, where before it was a pitch black room and now it's something beautiful just based on lighting techniques. So I think that's that's where the name stems from. Yeah that's all I got for that. I like it. I like this. So yeah guys follow him and then on Instagram seeing'm seeing here it's at dark to light Pro

So remember it's to not to Get checks written all the time with the number two doesn't work Banks don't accept it But anyways Tyler, thank you so much for coming on. I really like this episode. Yeah, we appreciate it. Yeah, thanks guys. I appreciate it. Yeah, we appreciate it. Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Thanks guys, I appreciate it.

Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Thanks guys, I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to this episode

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