The Marketing Perspective

The Importance Of Video For Your Business

• James Danella • Season 2 • Episode 3

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On video... the importance of video in EVERYONE'S marketing cannot be stated enough. Today's episode speaks life into the production side of video as well as the marketing side. There are so many ways to utilize video content today, so be sure to tune in to learn from these industry professionals.


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Hey, Aaron, welcome back to the marketing perspective. I'm James Danella, and I am so excited about today because I get to speak with my friend and colleague, Eric Carlson of scene lab productions. We've known each other for quite some time, we've done a lot of work together, and today we're talking about all things video, probably one of my favorite topics, because if you don't know, I started my career in television and in film, and came up the ranks in that world first, before I crossed over and sold out to the agency side, there's so many uses today for video, as opposed to back in the day, where, you know, you make a commercial and you may use it for that specific reason, or you would make an infomercial or an educational video for very large company. They were, they had their specific lanes, but shooting video today, you can cross use that video in so many different ways, and that's one of the things we're going to talk about. So many of my colleagues through the years feared what the internet would do to the advertising industry back in the day, and then again, they feared what would happen when digital advertising came along. But through it all, you know what was constant video. It always had a place. It always will have a place if anything is just going to be even stronger as we go forward and who knows what's coming next, right? So there is not a marketing strategy today that I would not include video to some capacity ever. I don't care if you're B to B, B to C, mom, pop, being corporate video is a key part of what you do, and my short answer, why? Because Google owns YouTube. Just saying, I'm so excited to get into this right now because I get to talk to my friend and colleague, Eric Carlson. Eric, thank you so much for being on the show today. James, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. So we're over 1000 miles away from each other, but yet we get to do this. We get to see each other as a technology is crazy, right? Absolutely. Thank goodness. Did you invent it? No, no, I did not. I take no credit or blame. So I'd like to, let's for listeners, let, let's start with telling them your background and who you are and what you're about, sure, well, my background is probably the definition of school of hard knocks, because if you go back to it's about 20 years ago, very good friend of mine who is super talented and I worked with for several years, Leif Poland. He came to me. We had done a couple of little hobby films together and some things just for fun. And he said to me, Look, broadband is going to change things, right? Of course, I worked in tech at the time, and he's like, now that people are getting, of course, this is at the time. It's DSL, right? People are going to get DSL at home. Video is going to come to people's houses through the internet, and there's a whole new opportunity for advertising. So we talked about it, and in 2004 we formed our own little production company, and we started just grassroots marketing this real estate companies, catering company, you name it, golf courses. We just started kind of door to door selling the idea of putting together these little video commercials. And at the time, I think Leif had a Canon GL two, he had a Mac, right? One of the, this is like one of the old brick boxes, right? We grabbed a couple lights from Home Depot, and, you know, some scrims. And, I mean, do we, you want to talk about a bootleg setup. This was it. But we started, we started shooting things, and we started working with clients. And you know, when I look back now, I feel like, when I look at some of the stuff we shot early on, I'm like, How did anyone pay for this? But the idea was, here's an opportunity for them to visually start to tell their story, who they are, what they do, if it's a piece of property, if it's a service they provide, and people were excited about it. So we started back then. I've done a lot of different things through the years, lathe and I actually made a documentary together back in 2013 that we ended up, you know, having on several platforms, Netflix and prime and so forth. I went to work in the not for profit sector for a few years, and then in 2017 surprise, my wife and I have been married almost 20 years, but we had our first child. And so I went back to work with scene lab again. At that time, Latha kind of, kind of ventured into different things. So I took over the business solo, but he still served as an advisor at that point, and then over the last few years, a lot of what we do is real estate on the brokerage side. So not so much like property videos and Agent videos, but more marketing for teams. Is one of our big clients is Sotheby's regional promos. We work a lot in the tech sector. We work a lot in the commercial real estate sector, and then also healthcare as well. So those are our biggest ones. We get a few outliers in some other areas as well, but those are the ones where consistently, we tend to do that type of client work. Yeah. So if you're listening, I know Eric's real. And some of the stuff he just mentioned, I started visualizing some of the stuff that he shot, and they are incredible. They're really incredible company. Yes, I'm bragging on him, and no, I don't get a percentage of money that he makes. If you're in that market. Eric is in the Hudson Valley. But Eric, do you travel now? Are you? Yeah, a lot of our work is tri state, right? So New York, Connecticut, New Jersey. But the way it tends to work is some of our clients, because they have a national presence. We do shoot across the states. And what's nice is we have media partners in Phoenix and San Diego and Orlando, so it gives us some opportunities to be able to help clients out without always us locally, having to travel, although on occasion we do, our team will pack up the gear and head, you know, to different spots to be able to shoot things, you will have to revisit that conversation too, going forward. Okay, so you said something earlier about storytelling. As part of, you know, everybody has a story. I would like to dig, dig deeper into that, because, as you said, you made a couple of films in the beginning, and you know, part of my background was doing that. Well, that's two hours a film's, you know, about two hours or 90 minutes at least. You know, I think it's kind of easy to tell a story in that amount of time. You know, heck, it's even easier to tell an influencer story in two or three minutes, but try to tell a story in 30 seconds in a commercial, and people say, Oh, it's just a commercial. It's just advertising. It is a lot harder than you think to have a complete story. Can you can you speak into that? Because it's something you're very good at. Man, I'll tell you. It goes back to, I think it was Mark Twain who wrote right the and I'm going to misquote this to some degree, so let's just put, like, you know, single quotes on it. I apologize. I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time right. So his point was, what, it's hard to be concise. It's very difficult. And so when you're talking about a video, let's say to tell your brand story, or to share something new about what your company is doing or what your organization's about to do. That's really tough, and when people think a lot of times, what'll happen is clients will come to us and they'll say to us, we want to do a video, or we want to do a short film on this, and they'll start out with a number, let's say they say, I'm gonna, we want to do a two minute piece. But when we start kicking around ideas, and a lot of times, they'll give us their first draft of what they call a script, and it's five minutes, right? And so it's like, Okay, it's good. We want to, we want to know what they're trying to do so. So that's, that's for us, one of the first things we try to do. And I don't want to jump ahead if we're going to jump into process, but we try and ascertain, Hey, what is it? What do you expect from this? Who do you want to watch this, and what do you want their reaction to be? And by knowing that, then we can try and help them get where they want to go. Because, you know, I'll use myself as an example when it comes to certain trades or skills. I might know what I want to do or what I want it to look like at the end, but I don't necessarily know how to get there, right? So I need a professional come in and help me. Hey, this is what I want to do. I know the things I don't want to do or don't want to see, but I need someone to help me get there. And so that's our job, is to find out what it is they want to do and sometimes how they think they want to get there. If you could help them appreciate that might not be the best route. Now, at the end of the day, they're the client, but we'll just help share with them. I'll give an example. So we were dealing with a client, we client recently, um, this company is very successful in the commercial real estate space. Um, and you're very well known, I want to say top two or three in the nation as far as what they own retail wise. And so they had an idea for a piece they're doing for a new property in a major city in the Northeast, and they had an idea on how they want to tell that story, and they came to us, I mean, they really had put a lot of prep work into it. I was super impressed. Their marketing team's phenomenal. And they had some, you know, some storyboards that they had put together, a script that they had written, but in reviewing the script, basically as a team, we realized, hey, there's a lot of telling when there could be a lot more showing. And so that's the beauty. Obviously, when you're dealing with film and video, there are areas where you can become more concise by giving the visual that tells that story without always having to be so on the note. Lose with a narrative. You just hit it on the head. We have four interns right now going through our internship program, two strategic and two design focused, and one of them is interested in scripts writing. And we got into and he's thinking feature film, of course, you know? I said, Well, that's awesome. I said, Can you apply the skill into a 32nd commercial, and he they do mock so he has a mock for his client. He's doing the strategy, and he has a designer assigned to him doing the visuals of that mock brand, so they get to walk away with some real meat, you know, so excuse me, in this conversation, he said, Of course I could do it. I said, really. I said, What would you process but, well, it's the same thing as writing a long format script. I went, Okay. I said, Well, tell me all the things you want to say. You know your mom, you know your client, so what do you want to say? And he went through a whole list of he was at like, three or four minutes, you know, of meat. And they said, how do we get down to one main point with a couple of bullets, and to get the main point across of what you want your listener to remember. Oh, but they need to hear everything. I said in 30 seconds, absolutely. I said, Okay, go ahead and try it. I can't. He's still working on it. By the way, he's his internship's not over. And then I threw him a bigger curveball and said, By the way, it's really only 25 seconds, not 30, because we need to be able to have the brand come up, and it's got to be something that we wave a flag on right, or jingle if a jingles involved. And I said, but keep and you just you made the point that I had made to him. Keep in mind that you don't have to say everything, because it's video, and like a light bulb went off in his head. He went, Oh, and it's a moving company that is his mock moving in storage. He goes, I get it. And now I think he's pretty close. You know, it to take the auditory and the visual at the same time is a world of difference. And you know, you and I both know some of the media vendors in your market, and I used to have what I call intense fellowship with the radio people. And I would argue that video is better, and they're like, audio is radio is the best, and how can you use anything? But we're captive audience. I said, Oh yeah, because are you listening to radio in your car? Radio has a place sure for anybody if you're listening, you know, but commercials, the visual aspect of it, allows you to really tell that story in a much stronger way. And James, you mentioned something that that cute, an idea in my head, too. And I think you and I have may have talked about this before, but like, there was a book by Harry Beckwith. He wrote, I mean, years ago, right? And obviously he's one of the great marketing minds, you know, in recent history. And one of the things he brought up, he had a whole chapter devoted to this, and he was talking about, how many things can you include, concept wise, when you're trying to share an idea, right? And so they did a test campaign on a commercial. Was a car commercial, right? The visuals were exactly the same. In the 32nd commercial, the visuals did not change. But there were two versions. One talked about how the car, you know, the performance was amazing. The interior features were, you know, second to none. And it went through all these things that the car had. And then the next commercial, all they talked about was performance. This car had amazing performance. It was off the charts when they did the test. Basically there was two groups of people in the first commercial that shared all sorts of benefits that the car had. Zero people said that they would consider buying that car. In a second test, 6% of the people came back and said, I would consider buying this car. And when asked why, they said, well, it has incredible performance, right? So the what's the point? The point is, people, you think that you need to share 100 important ideas of why what you're doing is great, but people aren't prepared for that. And all that means is nothing stands out. So it's better to share a point or two about why what you're doing is so game changing, or so different or so interesting, and then people come away with something. And if you think you have some additional points, well, that sounds like something you'd want to put in a completely different film or commercial. You know, that's a separate point to be made later on, right? Longer format, more of an educational kind of a thing. Maybe it's showing in the showrooms, exactly. You know, behavioral science is a key part of marketing understanding human behavior, and I think video is one of the ways that captures it the most, because that process that we're talking about back and forth is exactly what we go through project by project to get the client the best effort possible. So. So I want to change subject for a second. I know this. I know your answer, and you've kind of already touched on it. But how important is scripting to you in your process? Oh, I mean, it's essential. And you talked about screenwriters earlier and trying to, you know, educate them and and bring them up to speed on the difference between a long form film and a commercial. And sometimes what we found to be helpful when you're dealing with that is, at least for an early meeting, putting a screenwriter in the same room with your director, with your DP and maybe your editor too. I mean, in some cases, obviously, with smaller teams, your director might actually end up being your editor, which is great, but putting those people in the same room to talk about it, because that's where ideas on culling verbiage but enhancing the actual concept can really come to light, and then the screenwriter walks away with like, Okay, I know how I want to approach this. Yeah, yeah. That's one of the reasons I love working with you, because that process is my favorite aspect, by the way. Not to brag even more about Eric Carlson and scene lab. He is, Eric, you're the only producer director that I can trust as as the agency and not be there. I have given Eric projects and know he is not only going to meet what we need, but he's going to exceed and come up with things that well, that's great. We'll use that instead. He they're just that good. Not I'm gushing a little bit, but we really heck. I want more work in his tri state area so that I could just keep working with him. So if you're listening and you're in the tri state, please hire our agency so that we can give Eric a lot more work. We appreciate the trust and the recommendation. Yeah, it's and it's earned, without a doubt it, and I don't say it lightly, having been in the industry for so many years and went all the way from PA to executive producer and director in my career, you're the real deal. So enough love. Let's talk about all the ways that video can actually be used today, because it's so much different. All right? So I'm a little bit, a few years older than you. You know, I've been in the industry before, the internet, yep, back in my day. So it used to be, everything was shot on film. Everything was very intentional, only used for one specific purpose. So let's talk about the way video is used today and the many uses that it has. Yeah, absolutely. I think that piece to the puzzle when clients start to realize that, I mean, I don't want to act like nobody understands that. I think a lot of people are understanding that now. But we call it, you know, repurposing, right? There's a lot of ways you can convert to it. We call it we call it repurposing. So you come in and you say, Okay, we're gonna create this short film or this brand story, and here's what our objective is, and what tends to happen right along the way. And this is where there can be really good compromise and actually value add to the client. So they say, we'll go back to the piece about not including too much in one piece, too many points, right? They want to include seven main points. And it's like, Hey, can we pare this thing down to two or three at most? Right? Even, even if it's a one minute film or a 92nd film. And then they say, Well, we got to tell this, and we got to tell that, but now what you can do is create the opportunities to capture that additional narrative, whether it's an on screen interview, whether it's some additional B roll that you're going to shoot to demonstrate those points. And then, depending on what it is they want to share, those could be things. So for example, maybe their main piece, their 92nd piece, they're planning on it sitting on their website. Maybe they plan on it sitting one of several professional platforms. Maybe it's sitting on LinkedIn, or maybe it's sitting somewhere else that's related to their industry. Maybe they're gonna play it at an event. But then we capture those additional things, and we say this would be great if you put it on one of several social media platforms. And sometimes we'll even while filming, film certain portions of what they want, not for the main piece, but we'll film it, let's say vertical video, right? And we'll say, Hey, we're gonna put this we're gonna put this one piece together for your audience that we think will reside on Tiktok. Or we're gonna put this together, and this is gonna be an Instagram story. Now they're finding new ways to take the same content, or pieces of the same content, and kind of distribute it out there to different audiences who are going to, you know, take that content in the way they choose to. Because, you know, as we know, not every age group or professional group is on the same social media platform, which makes it very. Very difficult for people to be effective marketers. So other ways that we will also use video, just so, you know, so obviously, for television, we also use it for OTT over the top, which is streaming video. Any places that you stream to watch anything, there's commercials there as well. There's long formats, educational videos, Eric said, website content, social content, that same footage can be repurposed in different ways, as long as you plan ahead and you script for it and understand the shots that you need to walk away with on your shoot, whether it's a couple of days or a week of shooting, depends on your needs. We also this is one of my secret sauces. We will transcribe all the video so we've already written the content, but we transcribe everything so that we can repurpose it and use it. So for example, if Eric is on a job and he is interviewing and doing like a live piece with somebody, and it's a Q and A kind of a thing, but he's just prompting some good content from the other person. That content is invaluable because it's not just that industry content, it's content from that specific brand company, and unique content is probably the most valuable thing you have when you're marketing your business. And video plays a very key part of it today. Would you agree with that? Eric, or Oh, absolutely, yeah. And usually within a an organization, right, there are some key personalities that people, either within their industry, or clients that they're touching really want to hear from. So when you have that person on camera, that's a tremendous opportunity to end up redistributing some of that, right? I mean, video is content. You know, depends on how you use it. I think websites that don't have video, I don't know why they exist today. I think video is such an important part of it because of the way it searches. It's got to be built correctly and not to I don't want to go off on this tangent too much, but if you're listening, understand that when you put a video up on YouTube, for example, I like YouTube better than Vimeo, purely because Google owns YouTube. Google owns YouTube. I say, I think I've said it on multiple shows like understand that, and then you'll get it. So if you put it on YouTube, on the back end, you have to put all the content. When we do it, we actually transcribe the entire video and put all of the content behind it. I want all those keywords and phrases searching, not just a sentence or two that one of my interns or, you know, a content person is typing up and say, Oh, just put this there. It makes it extremely searchable. Why is that important? Because it'll drive traffic to your site. If you don't understand why driving traffic to your site is important. I really don't want you to listen to the show anymore. I'm kidding. This is why they need you. James, yeah. Well, everybody does. They just don't know it, right, right, right. It's we both look at it like, why would they do it any other way? Like we have. We've seen some bad, bad marketing, and I have seen videos that I can't, I just can't Well, and I think that's part of the P That's a piece of the puzzle as well, right? So I'll go back to, let's say, for example, I'm going to have someone come in here and they're going to build a deck for me, or they're going to, you know, put on a gazebo, or do whatever. If I've, if I've chosen to hire a professional, it could be that I don't just don't have the time to do it. That's possible, but it's also possible that I don't have the skill to do certain things. So when you hire somebody that you actually trust, right? Not just somebody you found, but somebody you trust, where you're like, I have a good feeling about this person, because conceptually, they're they're mirroring back to me what I think I'm looking for, right? They get it, then you got to trust that person, right? And not second, you know, second guess everything they're trying to do. And so we say that not because we have try to have a big creative ego when we go into clients, but we're asking a lot of questions. We're listening to what they're saying. We're talking to the team. We're doing research on who it is they're trying to reach. And then when we come back with ideas and say, Hey, I know you said you wanted to have, you know, an on screen narrator, or, I know you said you wanted to go about it this way, but have you thought about going about it this way? It's not simply to be difficult or to try and come up with our ideas. We really want to think about, hey, what's going to reach the viewer? What's going to messaging wise, not just the visuals, but the way they're delivered what's going to hit their target audience. So hopefully that helps people to appreciate if it's different than what they had put pen to paper on early that may not be a bad thing, right? Hey, Eric, for the people you just mentioned, a bunch of different types of people, whether they have the skill set or they don't have the skill set, let's say you. Got an iPhone. It's new. They shoot 4k they're going to take the advice today from our conversations and try to do some of this stuff themselves, because they're on a tight budget Talk Tech for a second, and just kind of help us through what that would look like it because it really depends on the format. It depends on where they're putting the video. So just speak into that a little bit. Yeah. So I mean, anytime you're gonna record video yourself, whatever you're using, you know, so obviously, phones are a big source of people capturing video now. And by the way, there are feature length film directors who have made this their niche right recording on an iPhone and getting it done. The great thing is, and I'm using Apple just as an example, there are, there are other great phones out there that absolutely get the job done. I'm just speaking to what I'm familiar with, right? So like Apple now has made the decision that you could record on your phone in ProRes, right, which is a really high quality format. And so what you're going to come out with that's editable content as opposed to compressed content, right? So if you record on a phone a lot of times, it's in what's called h2 64 right? And so it's compressed. Looks good when you first look at it, but when you start to put it up on a bigger screen after editing and then re exporting and compressing again, sometimes it'll fall apart. So I mean, it's getting better and better. And there's h2 65 which is even better. Is even better compression. Now my advice would be, if you're going to try and do that yourself, and if you think you have a good grip on the storytelling and the marketing piece, look at your device, whatever you're using. It's a GoPro camera, right? It's a little DJI camera, and think about how to make the content that's on screen the most important thing, less about the tech, more about really good content. I have to say, I've seen a lot of video out there that was poorly filmed, I mean, and maybe even the audio was not the best, but the content is so good, what the person is saying, or what they're doing or what they're talking about is so good, it doesn't matter. So if you can just take the tech side of it and make it the least distracting possible, that's good. I would advise people to maybe consult with a production company and let them know, hey, right now, we can't afford to film. But would you be willing that we could pay you for a couple hours? You know one of your creative people, preferably a creative with some tech, right? And could we pay you for a couple hours for a consult on how we could do what we want to do in house? And that's something we're always happy to do with clients, because what happens is we give them some education that's useful for them to get it out the door, and they can use their own you know, people use window Movie Maker, or they use iMovie, or they use something else on their tablet, right? And then at a certain point, if they're using video effectively, they get the return on it. And somewhere along the line, a lot of times, clients will come back to us and say, Okay, we're ready for something a little more highly produced. Can you help us out? So we're always happy to help, kind of get them started down that road. We do the same thing for small companies. We'll come alongside them and just give them advice and give them an initial strategy, save money here, spend money here, try this, do this, and hoping that they become a bigger company. And maybe one day we'll sing our praises. But I get what you're saying. I think that's good advice on the on the tech side. I didn't hear you talk about so that footage, if it's raw footage, and they're shooting ProRes, it'll come out at 4k or even higher, depending on what they have. I mean, when we go up to 8k now, obviously those files are going to be very large. So if the final product is going to be on social media or for internet. Can you, is there another way for them? Because they may not have professional softwares like we use to be able to scale it down easily, you know, oh, I'm just going to export it for YouTube, kind of a thing, if they're using, I don't know, iMovie, or something really simple. Is there a way for them, in these simple programs, to export down to a lower format? Yeah, and they could, I mean, they could even shoot on a lower format, but I like to shoot a higher because it's better to be able to take it down, right, because you might want it later on. Agree? Um, so, yeah, there are a bunch of ways to take it, take it down. In fact, inside iMovie itself, and a lot of, I don't say a lot of people, some people may not be aware that iMovie and Final Cut Pro, for example, it's the exact same framework, right? It's the same thing, only Final Cut Pro has more bells and whistles built on top of it, right? So iMovie is great. A lot of when just to date myself. Here, when young people come to me and say, hey, I want to get started. I want to learn. I'm like, use iMovie. It's a great way to get started. Then if you decide to switch to Final Cut Pro, obviously you'll see similarities. But by the way, Premiere or Avid or resolve, right? All these. Things, there's a ton of options, and they all have a similar look and feel. Um, and then, you know, you may like one or the other, but they all can work to get it done. And I think most people who work, whether they're video marketing companies or whether they're cinematographers, will tell you it doesn't the the what you're using doesn't matter if you would have the skill you can use any of them and produce a great product. But I agree with you, James, make that you know, the footage itself only needs to be really at like HD level at this point, it doesn't need to be 4k 6k 8k right on the web, HD is about as high as it is right now, I understand there's some streaming services that claim 4k but honestly, they're doing some flavors to it where it's really pretty compressed as well. Big truth bomb, we won't name them though. You said something a second ago reminded me of another question, if you're okay. So I've watched you for years as you built your company, and I've watched this company grow and evolve and cool toys and you know, better people, better equipment, better process for the young video companies out there, or the ones that are just, hey, I think that's what I want to do with my life. Even there's high schools that are now teaching it in high school, which is really cool, that it depends on what their path is going to be on. If they're if they go on to college, they at least have a direction of where they're headed and if they go into our industry. Is there any advice you can give if they're starting out and they want to be their own company? Yeah, absolutely. One is, don't be afraid to attach yourself to a company and let them know your goal like a good you know, there are companies that, if you tell them I want to eventually own my own company, or I want to do, you know, via a director, or I want to be a DP or whatever. There are some who are like, Oh, no, no. We only want people who work for us. But there are a lot of good companies out there who are like, Hey, we're happy to help bring you along and help teach you benefit from your skill that you gain, and then maybe you inform a good partnership in the future, right? So I'll just say that for scene lab, most of the people we work with and who even work for us are media partners, right? I don't have a lot of employees that you're right. As far as like being an S corp, a lot of them are media partners, and some of them, right? Not all of them, but some of them are people I've trained along the years, and they've gotten to the point where they're running their own companies as well, but they still love coming to do work where the process is all spelled out. It's easy. They're going to do one piece to the puzzle or a couple pieces, and they know exactly what to expect, because we work together. And I would say from, from an even higher level, when you're when you're young, there's a lot of people out there who know more than you I'm gonna say, you know, I'm nearly 50 years old, and there's still a ton of, you know, I mean, I'm gonna say million so that. But there's so many people who know so much more about things, individual things, than I do. So surround yourself with those people, embrace the fact that you don't know everything, ask questions, appreciate other people's strengths. Because along the way, what's happened to me is when I've done some measure of mentoring and training, as I start to mentor these people, you see areas where they are going to be so much better than you, they have more skill than you, or they have a better eye, or they're better with tech. And so along the way you're you start to say, oh, this person is going to excel here. That's not threatening. That's fantastic. And so if you're starting out, figure out surround yourself by people who either are smarter than you or maybe they're not. Maybe you're a super smart person, but maybe they're more experienced than you, and just embrace that. And if you connect yourself with people who aren't afraid to see you grow, they're not trying to hold you back and keep you in the same spot for the next 510, 15 years, they want you to grow. I think that's a good opportunity, and it's how we have some of the great relationships we have across the industry. Is I'm not afraid of that conversation when someone comes in and says, Hey, I've loved working with you in this capacity, but I think I want to do this now, and it's like, okay, how can we help you to do that? That's great advice. It reminds me so quick story, so back in the day, so when I was a producer, I've worked with two different directors in the same season. One was Bob Giraldi, and if you look up that name, or know that name, he was the number one director in the country for commercials. He made more money than anyone. I won't say the amount, because it may embarrass somebody, but it was insane, like whatever number you just thought it was probably more. Just know that. And I also work with a director named Bill Mason Now, both of them very talented directors. Bob had the mindset of staying ahead of the times, staying. To the curve, knowing what the next cool tech Penguin's going to be. He was about post production, and it was why he was so well paid. He would spend, I don't know, because I produced for him. He spent maybe two hours on set any given day, point click, walk away, go back into his trailer and do whatever he did for the rest of the day, and we're doing like, B roll and all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, What the heck? And Bill was like an actor's director. He was there the entire time. He loved the process, but he could care less about the rest of it. He on set, is where he was capturing what he wanted. Bill, all right, I'll say the number, because it makes relevant to the story, Bill made 6k a day, where Bob made 25k a day. So it taught me a valuable lesson when I crossed over to the agency side and into strategy. I want to be Bob when I grow up and I stay ahead of the curve, I'm always learning what's next, what's the new thing? Like, one of my biggest questions in social media right now is there's no new shiny thing on the horizon, and I'm wondering why, like, have we maxed out on social platforms? I mean, there's a bunch of little wannabes, but there's nothing big. You know, have the big ones really monopolized where we are, and that's it, because that's dangerous when that happens. So I keep an eye on things like that. I'm always looking ahead. But you just gave the same advice to somebody. If you're young and you're coming out and you're starting a business, make a choice. Do you want to be Bob, or do you want to be bill? And there's no wrong answer. It's just, what do you want to do with your life? What's your passion? Bob was passionate about the tech, and he was amazing at it in post production. Man, there was nobody that can touch him. I learned so much from that man just by standing behind him and watching. And then I had a mentor friend who he and I were both executive producers, working at the same place side by side, same title, same amount of money that we made a day, but he had so much more experience than me. I mean, the man worked on Star Wars, okay, so I would be like, I'm not worthy, you know, and bow to this man. And he brought me up, and I learned so much from him what I thought I knew I didn't know, and it humbled me, and it taught me that I can always learn from others no matter where I am in my career. So I love that you gave that advice. I hope people heed it. You can apply it in so many different ways. Thank you for that, Eric. I really appreciate it. Well. I like that, that that mentality, James, and it's obviously serving you well still, right? Because the other piece of that is you reverse it, right? So I feel like, at this point now, I'm learning a ton from people who are younger than me, right? So, so I'll ask, like, somebody will come back and they'll have shot something a certain way, or gone about us. Or, I'm like, what? Why did you do that? Like, what made you want to do that? What, you know, what's your thought process? Blah, blah. And I just find, like, there's so many things that I would not have thought to do or, you know, purposefully gone about. And, yeah, age, you know, you see people who are excelling in their teens, 20s and beyond. So to think the only person who's sharing knowledge or experience is the older person, I think, is completely inaccurate. And if, if you want to stay relevant, as far as your team is concerned, meaning collaborating with them and contributing meaningfully, it's, it's a two way street, and I think that's one of the things internally that keeps us clicking, is there's a really good dialog. It's not, yeah, the professionalism, the kind treatment of people, the respect for others. I do think that comes from the top down, but you really want to make sure that people know that when you say, Hey, we love to hear you speak up. We love to hear a question or an idea that has to be evidenced day to day by the way you treat people and the reaction you have when people actually do come to you with an idea that's very different from the way you're approaching things, and you have to say, Okay, well, let me rethink this. Why are we doing this? Why aren't we doing that? You know, it's everything we're talking about is biblical too. But let's not that's a whole nother podcast. That's true. It's true. I have one more topic, and I was marinating on it as you were talking say, Wow, do we talk about this? It's we're already kind of maxed out. Yeah, I don't think we're going to go there. It'll be a long conversation for both of us. So I'm going to, I'll save that one for another time. All right. So Eric, one last thing, I feel like I've gushed about you enough, but I want you how would somebody contact you if they wanted to Sure? So, um, scene lab Productions is our company name, right? You can find us on the web at the scenelab.com um. Um, we do a lot of work, as I mentioned, in the tri state area. So, yeah, reach out. You can always reach me by phone. I'll share my contact info if you want to be able to post it on, you know, with with the YouTube link or with the actual podcast link. But we're always happy to help out the that's the other thing. Is even consulting if we can help you out and just getting some ideas started, so you can kind of move down that road. We're happy to do that. And we've found through the years. And James, I know you found this is the bulk of our day to day work comes from repeat clients. So we do have a few people who will come to us for a thing, and then we don't see them for quite a while, but most of the people we work with, it's repeat, right? So they see the benefit in it, and then we tend to have a long, long standing relationship. So we look forward to that opportunity. We always are looking for, you know, new relationships and new ways to help people. So yeah, we would welcome a call. Eric, one last question, what if I'm a client, what should I be looking for when I want to hire a video production company if I'm not going through an agency? Yeah, that's a that's a tough one, but, but a good one, right? I think sometimes people look and they'll, you know, we hear a lot of times they'll be like, oh, you know, my nephew has this gear. Or, oh, this person just graduated from film school, and they do this. And, you know, people, people try and refer to gear, or, you know, a bunch of different things that they quantify as someone who can assist them when they need to tell their brand story. Or, you know, share something about their organization. Think, if you're going to evaluate a company to say, do we want to hire them? Bring them in, sit down and see if they ask the right questions, and if they listen, you know, it's the old two ears, one mouth. So if immediately are coming in and they're pitching you and they're just pushing, and even if their portfolio looks pretty good, is that going to be a good relationship, and are they going to be able to do what you need them to do? But I do think one of the things we've seen, and even in other production companies that are having a lot of success, is they tend to ask the right questions, and they're really good listeners, and then they can say, I think what I'm hearing from you is this, am I right? Is this what you want? Okay, here's some ways we could accomplish that. So, you know, more important than what platform they're on or what gear they're using, or, you know, how many years in the industry is, does it seem like they have a firm grip on how to communicate. If they can't communicate with you and your internal team, they certainly aren't going to be able to communicate your ideas through film or video. Okay, one last quick story. This just happened not long ago, and it was my moment of, what would Eric do? So I'm sitting in front of it was a video production company. We were interviewing them, and they came to our office. They I got introduced them by a colleague that's in the industry, but they don't do the magnitude of what we do. They're they're a young company, and they say, Hey, you should use these guys. They're awesome. We use them. It's like, okay, so I kicked their tires, but it was for a small client and a small budget. I said, So Tommy, I loved everything that he was saying. He asked, he asked some good questions, had some good information. And then we got down to math. And I said, Okay, so here's the budget that I have. And it was, I mean, we know numbers, it was respectable, but it wasn't out of the park. You know what? I mean, it was like in the middle. Kind of a thing. And I said, I'm giving you everything I have, because it's a tight budget, respecting you. Okay, no worries, don't I'll just catch you with the proposal in the next week, and don't worry about it, and everything will be fine. I'm like, great. So I'm planning on using I was like, All right, wrote it in. He's going to be my guy. It was a Nashville shoot. He came back almost 10 times more than the number I gave him. I was like, Were you listening to what I said? And then, like, a day later, Hey, how's that proposal? Are you ready to move forward? I never even responded. I couldn't, yeah, plus, I was flabbergasted. If that's still a word in Wikipedia, I don't understand, like you didn't listen to what I said. I mean, I get that. That's your math. That's your math. Fine. Why didn't you tell me that day? Because I was ready to book. Yeah, right. Here's why we're not able to do it within that budget, or here's why we're not able to do what we just discussed within that budget. Here's what we could do within that budget. Or, you know, whatever it is. But yeah, once again, that comes back to communication, right? And we were talking one person, one camera. It was insane. I was like. Right? So we can say that the market tries to just take and take and take. This market is tough. Nashville is extremely competitive. It's an awesome market. I love it here. Our company loves it here. We're really starting to, you know, make the connections we need to make. But listening to your story, and I know that if they went direct to client and they said that number, some people don't know better, and and I told you that number, you'd be like, holy cow, I'll take that number all day. It was insane. It was like, almost double, more than double, the last job we did together more than double for a one day, one camera, one person. Yeah, it makes you wonder. Hey, listen, great work. If you can get it, I guess if you can get it exactly, not with us. So anyway, Eric, I am so grateful you were able to come on today. I'm a little bit giddy. At my age, if I could still get giddy, I don't know. Oh, man, thanks for having me on, James. I really appreciate it. And, yeah, good connecting again. And appreciate you having me on as a guest. Yeah. And if you have, if you come up with a different topic that you want to cover, I don't know, maybe tiny homes, at some point we'll have you back on, fantastic, very exciting. So if you're listening today, thank you for being on. I hope you got something out of it. My heart always wants people to be able to walk away and get some really good information and use for themselves. This isn't a shameless plug for the people I have on. Okay, once in a while it is today. It was just kind of a gushy kind of a moment. But it's not, if you notice, I don't even say the name of my advertising firm. It's intentional. That's not why I'm doing the show. I mean, feel free to reach out to me if you'd like. But that's not its purpose. Its purpose is you walk away, get some valuable information, use it in your effort to improve your marketing on a regular basis, we talked about all different topics. As you know, we have all different types of guests on I'm really excited about where the show is going. Please, if you love us, download the show. That's the way to show some love and comment as much as you want positive, negative, we're happy to interact with you. If you have any questions, I will personally follow up with you. If you have a marketing struggle. Just hit me up, happy to put you in the right direction. Thank you very much for listening, and we'll see you next time you.

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James Danella

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