You’ve worked on projects from commercials to films, music videos to VR experiences, events to social content. I would love to get into the differences between these forms.
Let’s start with where you got your start - commercial work.
The majority of my work falls into social media content and commercials. I would say that’s how I got my start, but that was always a way to advance into commercials, which is what I was trained to do.
The social content has lower budgets and tighter timelines. The first major thing I did was probably just $4000 for a social media posting shoot. This was back in 2012. I just paid myself $400 and worked 2 weeks to make it happen - casting, creating, coordinating logistics and all of that. The majority of the budget went towards the production itself because it was so tight. But it was a way to get in. And I think that’s important to know - that even now, with the visual-audio medium constantly changing, so many opportunities are there for you to put a foothold into that new space. Whether it’s Clubhouse or NFTs or TikTok - people already learned from the past how quickly Vine and Instagram became vehicles to advertise in a digital space. Now it’s all about the Metaverse and it’s all about TikTok and that’s great but, you got to know, in 5 years, that technology is going to change again or some new technology is going to come in. Facebook is now mainly used for business. It used to be, to me, the social media network in the early 2000s to just waste time online and poke around. Pun intended.
So that’s something to be keenly aware of as a producer. With new technology comes a new void to gain expertise in and make a career out of it. You can create a box for yourself and just stay there, like I make viral videos for Instagram, but you have to expand after that. In the long term, even the guys who started on Vine - they are now something else: actors, entrepreneurs, mixed martial artists [laughs]. There’s new stuff they pivoted to.
Can you walk us through the process of working as a producer on a commercial? What are the differences between working on a commercial versus social media?
With commercials, with broadcast commercials, it usually comes with a higher budget and a longer timeline. Because you’re about to spend a lot of money on the media by airing time for all of it. On top of a commercial, you are packaging social media, prints, stills photography, radio ads - to create a campaign you want. It’s usually a million dollar thing or a hundreds of thousands of dollars investment for a client to go into. They take that and break it out into all the different distribution platforms - other content multi-channels. There’s all the different screens you can advertise on, including video games, like Fortnite is a place you can put a Mountain Dew ad.
But the difference between that and social media is that you have a smaller budget, a tighter timeline and it’s usually very reactionary with social media content. Like “Hey, Father’s Day is coming up so let’s make a Father’s Day ad” or “Let’s make something for Women’s History Month” or something like that. It’s a quick start and I like to compare it to bite-sized content. For commercials, you could be in pre-production for a month. For social media content, you could be in pre-production for two days and shoot the next day, or even less. Or “we need to send someone to this event, capture this content, put voiceover and text, and turn it into an Instagram ad.”
Something that came to mind was seeing a lot of smaller content creators at the Oscars. I’d never really seen that before.
It's “info-tainment-advertising.” They might even be on the carpet, a comedian from TikTok talking to celebrities while also reporting on fashion and pushing some kind of promotion to Macy’s. It’s all happening at the same time. And they’re promoting their own stuff - “follow, like, and subscribe to my channel,” which also brings in their revenue. It’s amazing right now. There’s so much opportunity.
We talked about the difference between social media content and commercials. How does this differ from working on more narrative projects, like short films and feature films?
For short film content or narrative content, it’s entirely different because your client or ad agency is now a studio or a producer. Sometimes the director is the producer, like they’ve contracted me to help them make a short film but it’s their idea and script. What’s great with advertising is it’ll give you structure into how a production company is on top of all the things that are organized for a formal shoot where thousands or millions of dollars are on the line - and people’s careers. And then you take that into the narrative space, which is also the same, like people’s careers are on the balance - the director, the writer, the actors. But you’re serving mainly the story - and this is in an idealized way, because sometimes you’re not serving the story, you’re serving the bottom line of a studio or client.
When it comes to narrative, I think having the commercial production background is going to help you be so much more organized and, within that structure, you’ll be able to be more flexible. For example, I’m working on a narrative project that is shooting next week…right now we haven’t casted anyone yet and we don’t have 50% of our locations. That would spin a lot of heads if it were a commercial production because you have to get all their paperwork together and the agency as well as clients to sign off on everything. Nowadays, you have to get them COVID tested and get all those procedures figured out, you have to get a wardrobe fitting together, makeup, travel logistics. It would take a lot of time, effort, and money to make that happen so that everyone is on board with the plan. But in this indie filmmaking, we are serving the story, so we are looking for the best performer and there’s no one else breathing down our necks other than myself and the director to keep us on time and on budget.
Every production has its own particular challenge and obstacle and for this one, the movie revolves around the 8-year-old child. Every scene has this person. So it has to be an amazing talent and that’s the obstacle. We have searched the nation to find this very good actor who is up-and-coming.
Everything else when it comes to lighting, location, costume, production design is lower on the totem pole because if we don’t have this actor, we don’t have a movie. So that’s the particular obstacle we are facing right now. (Speaking in reference to producing the Tribeca x Netflix x Gold House Future Gold Fellowship production of “Closing Dynasty”)
I wanted to get your perspective on content made on or for short-form content platforms. What are your thoughts on how social media functions as one of these visual-audio mediums? I’m thinking now with TikTok, there’s more content being made every single minute of every single day. Whereas, before, there may have been a lot more hoops to jump through to get a story out there.
Something interesting I’ve noticed too is that it puts the power of choice in your hand where not only can you decide what to watch but also how long you want to watch it. You can swipe or skip ahead. On Netflix, you can watch movies at twice the speed. Which is totally not the intention of any filmmaker. But, there you go. That technology has changed the consumption behavior of everyone. As well as captions too. Obviously, if you’re reading captions, you’re not paying attention to the full picture. Speaking as a parent, I’m always watching things at 1.5x speed with captions and with headphones on my phone because there’s just no time to sit down on a couch and watch it. That’s probably terrible. [laughs]
That behavior option was created by technology and the AI algorithms learning that even though it may not be the most optimal method of consuming content, it is the instinctual method. It’s tapping into a base behavior of not engaging the higher mind or critical thinking of how to consciously take in content. It’s kind of sucky, but from what I also know, when it comes to commercial or advertising content, they do try to tap into some sort of an emotional thing. So a commercial can be very touching, can make you cry, can tell you a story in 30 seconds to make you feel something for a brand.
My mind always goes to the Google Year in Reviews where they pick what the most searched things were and it ends up about hope or gratitude or something like that. Instant tears.
They’re also kind of molding a message of what Google is, which is playing into all these different things. Even if what people were searching was in fact “hope,” it’s also identifying its brand as a place to find hope. It’s a search engine, but now it’s providing content to create an emotion and associate it with the brand. It’s a very cynical way of looking at it, but if you want to make a career in it, that’s how you have to break it down. It’s human psychology - that’s a big part of content creation. Putting yourself in other people’s shoes. Many times you’re putting yourself in the client’s shoes, to imagine what they might approve of, but you can’t lose sight of putting yourself in the audience’s shoes, like what are they going to watch and actually share or be inspired by.
When you work on a commercial project and if you were to disagree with the way the client is approaching the story, how do you manage that disconnect you feel?
You got to bring it up, but in the end, if the client is paying for the content, it’s their message. But as a responsible producer, either from the production company side or advertising side, you have to raise whatever concerns you can and document it so it doesn’t come back around to bite you. History will judge you for your decisions and where you stand. And you did at least try to change things for the better, I hope.
I feel like I’m seeing more production studios or distribution companies where - I don’t know if it’s on their part or how audiences perceive them to be, but they’re known for a certain kind of content. I’m thinking of A24 being known for “weird” content - where people will think it’s weird, but they’ll also know it’ll be good [laughs]. And then there’s Blumhouse that does a lot of horror stuff. Aside from those companies, streaming platforms also are associated with certain kinds of content. What are your thoughts there?
The different distribution companies and streamers have created more ways to showcase yourself and your abilities and services. Back in the day, it was just the broadcasters: NBC, ABC, Fox, like those main channels for TV. And then you had cable, and movie theaters, and radios, and now it’s just everywhere. Your phone can be on any app. Your Oculus. Your laptop. Your car radio. There’s so many places now - I think it’s created opportunity, but it’s harder. There are so many places where you can showcase your stuff, but instead of thinking about what’s happening now, you have to forecast on a vision board - what your bigger goal is and work backwards from there. Start with the big ugly hairy goal and work backwards. So, if my goal is to make the Best Picture Oscar-nominated movie - and that’s not even a great end game because what happens after that? [laughs] Do you leverage that award for more and are you satisfied with enough?
That’s always been something too, because there’s plenty of content out there where the director or actor or even athlete say they worked their whole life to win that one award and then they just get lost because they finished their goal.
I heard something great from Emmanuel Acho. He said something pretty cool: “It’s not good to create goals, it’s better to create objectives.” So, if your objective is to be a visionary filmmaker, then you’re constantly going to be thinking outside the box, making content that won’t be mainstream. Maybe you’re just going to be a Scorsese or Coppola or PTA kind of person where you’re creating an auteur style of filmmaking. If you get some Oscars along the way, so be it. That’s the result of the objective of being a visionary filmmaker or producer or whatever.
So, to get back to distribution. Yeah, there’s so many places but if that's your end goal, like “I want to create a social media business that will generate ad revenue and create a brand and help me create financial freedom for myself and give me fame and fortune.” Then, if that’s your objective, you plot backwards from that.
I feel like that quote carries deeper meaning for all facets of life [laughs]. I think that’s a good reframing to think about life in general.
We’ve been trained to do that, from high school and stuff. What are you going to do? What are you going to major in? What is your 5-year plan or your 10-year plan? If you think about people being asked those questions, by the time we’re in our 30’s, we’re lost! [laughs] We have no idea what’s next. The 30’s to 40’s is a crazy time because that’s your time to really be thrown into the “Wait, what am I doing with my life?” situation. So if there’s a way I can reach out to people who are starting this journey in producing or filmmaking earlier and give them this message. Because I don’t think this message is out there that much. The message I kept hearing from my film school friends and books and what I could gather from the media was, “Make your big film.” Because that will get you to the next part. But no one ever said how you make money from it or how you survive to make that big film or how you get the money for the film or how you create the relationships for that film.
And my end goal is establishing a commercial production company that will be in the industry and serve it for multiple years and that company will also bring up people who are marginalized or don’t have a conventional sort of look or identity.
The mission of Hsubox Productions is to help connect Clients with incredible Makers who would originally get overlooked, minoritized, or rejected outright because they were…too different or “not commercial enough.”
That feels more like a calling to me and that is what helps me set my vision.