20 Years of Video Production and Corporate Storytelling (ft. Spider Video)

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Kyrill0:05Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. The podcast on the business of video production.

Dario0:10Creatives, Grab Coffee, is hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov from Lapse Productions. Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences from video production professionals around the world. Whether you're a freelancer looking to start your own business or a seasoned business owner aiming to scale your company, this is the show for you.

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Kyrill2:14And now let's begin the show. Welcome, guys, to another episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. Today we got Craig from spider video up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Welcome, Craig.

Craig2:26Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the connection we made before, and the good work that you did for us remotely is fantastic.

Kyrill2:33Thank you. And, you know, the funny thing is, is that usually it we kind of did it the opposite way. We usually find guests and then work with them. But this time it was kind of the reverse where we where we where we got in touch with each other and then and then now working together. So before we kind of dive into it, though, tell it, tell our listeners a little bit about you and your background.

Craig2:51Yeah. I have a, small boutique production company here in technically Dartmouth, but Halifax, Nova Scotia, we've been at it for. I've been in video production for about 20 or almost 22 years now. Starting from, just small corporate work and just grew it organically until it became full time work. And, changed the brand name a little bit through the years, but settled on spider video probably ten, 12 years ago and kind of stuck with that.

Craig3:25And we kind of do a little bit of everything. So anything you want to press a record button on and shoot video for, we're really up for that. But specialty is in, corporate storytelling. We do hundreds. I've done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of interviews with people, and that's really where our wheelhouse is for doing good work.

Craig3:45Usually small teams that, kind of work with. It's myself. And I have a number two, not on full time, but I pull fairly busily all through the year. And then I have a, amount of group of trusted individuals I bring with me for our shoots. So probably similar to yourselves. We have 2 to 3 person and sometimes a bit more, crews.

Craig4:07And then we kind of do a little bit of everything. So I kind of run the show in terms of director producer, but also as cinematographer. Sometimes all lift all the gear and move the sandbags as well. So, yeah, we've kind of do a little bit of everything though, within that realm. A number of years ago, actually, probably even before YouTube was, YouTube live, was doing started doing live streaming as well.

Craig4:33Just it was kind of like a side interest that I had. And this was years before, that was a real viable platform. So we were using things that just didn't exist before, like knowing what Twitch was for. Twitch was really what it is now. It was that was kind of new just coming on board then.

Craig4:53And that's continued on through the years. So we have a bunch of live streaming equipment we've done, you know, multicam, live stream stuff, and it's fun. It's also pretty terrifying from the live side, because so much, so much can go wrong. I always tell clients, like, we've done a lot of good planning. Everything's in place. But I got to tell people like something you could just not work on the end of the day because it's the internet.

Craig5:17Things can happen, you.

Dario5:18Know, there's a 20 years and there's still the risk of live stream.

Kyrill5:21Still risky.

Craig5:23Absolutely. Every time.

Kyrill5:24Every time we've had so many requests. Well, not so many, but we've had a lot of requests over the years, like, I feel like especially in the earlier days, we kind of got a little bit more of it. And I think it was in back in 2017 or 2016, time like more events were starting to ask like, oh, can we also live stream this to something?

Kyrill5:44But back even back then, there weren't many affordable live streaming solutions. And then finally there was this, like this one Google box or something. Dario, I don't remember what it was that we got, but it was it was something that we were able to kind of plug into and live stream directly to YouTube.

Dario6:00But even then, sometimes it wouldn't connect.

Kyrill6:02Yeah. And the I remember one specific project, it was like for this, like local TEDx event, but it was like a very small scale, wasn't a really big one. And we we managed to get everything set up, but there were so many hiccups that were happening with it at the event that it started working literally just five minutes before the event started.

Dario6:22Now the best part, the best part about that was that we went through all those hoop love. Like trying to get it, trying to make it work finally ends up working and at the end of the day there were only two people watching it. And one of them, yeah, two. One of them were watching. It was one of the people that hired us to make sure everything was running smoothly.

Dario6:39So one person watched. They were like, what the hell?

Craig6:44You may hear an occasional dog bark, here we go. Oh, we hear dogs. It's okay. And then running. Running this from home. I do have an office. I have a separate office downtown Dartmouth. But, that I started, like, all the gear and things like that.

Dario6:58So, Dartmouth is right across. It's like a for those that don't know, like Halifax is like here and like, there's water like separating you two. It's it's it's like a bridge away, like.

Dario7:13But it's dark in Brooklyn.

Kyrill7:15Yeah. It's like New York and Brooklyn.

Dario7:16Yeah.

Craig7:17It's very much like New York for sure. It's a great still.

Dario7:21Halifax? No. Like you guys.

Craig7:24Yeah. It's Halifax, like the GTA. You know, you've got you've got your all your smaller kind of I wouldn't call them boroughs necessarily, but smaller kind of mini cities inside the main one. And yeah. So growing up in Dartmouth, there's always animosity between Halifax, Dartmouth. It's a, it's a, it's a sibling rivalry kind of fun way.

Craig7:43You know, we always say Dartmouth is better because we have a nice view of Halifax and Halifax. People are usually terrified to come out Dartmouth. It's maybe similar to, maybe Mississauga.

Dario7:54I was thinking the same.

Craig7:54Sort of like that.

Kyrill7:56This talk is not Toronto, even though.

Dario7:57The.

Kyrill7:58Even though they all say, I mean technically to the rest.

Dario8:01Of Toronto. Toronto.

Dario8:02Yeah.

Craig8:03Yeah, yeah. And the, So. Yeah, but it's, it's a fairly big, the population is growing for some number of years. And the film, video scene here has been developing over the, long, long years, but they've shot and it's continue to shoot a lot of big movie productions here. So there's a large there's a large, film crew group here, like grips, gaffers, electrics, there's one rental primary rental house, and, you know, there is crew around, so.

Craig8:35But we are, I feel like a dirty cousin of that in some ways. You know, we don't run the bay. We run the same things that they do. You know, we talk about, you know, good lighting and you scrims and flags and and all the stuff we need to. And dollies and gimbals and everything, and use the same set language.

Craig8:54But we just there's just like three of us instead of 30 or more and stuff like that. So, but yeah, they've shot tons of stuff. And like, right now there's a good tax credit. So, a lot of Hulu and Amazon Netflix stuff is being done here. And large Hollywood productions have happened in the past as well, like Titanic was here at one point and a bunch of things.

Craig9:17Yeah, yeah. If you ever hear about the, the James Cameron Titanic, there's a story about how the chatter was get laced with PCP and all the crew got, food poisoning and or stoned and threw up all over the place. And so, yeah, it's it's a quick, quick Google search.

Dario9:33You just you just get this with like, ten different people who got.

Dario9:38How did they get laced?

Craig9:40There was an after that wasn't even after party. It was like a crew wrap meal or something like that. And apparently like 90% of the crew got sick, like throwing up.

Dario9:51It was DiCaprio. I'll bet you was a playing a young DiCaprio.

Kyrill9:56Young.

Dario9:56And this is what you get for killing me at the end of this one?

Craig9:59Exactly. I should have made it on the boat or the.

Dario10:03Room on the roof. It was cold. It was cold on the water.

Dario10:06So you guys get for that?

Dario10:08Yeah.

Craig10:09But there was, seafood chowder apparently there. So the there's two theories. One, that was just. Yeah. One, it was just that it was, food poisoning. But the other theory is that someone put, like, PCP or something, like some sort of, hallucinogen in it, and people got all fucked up, and there was like, ambulances.

Craig10:28People had to go to hospital. Yeah. There's a whole myth around it and stuff like that.

Dario10:34Local legend.

Dario10:36Yeah.

Kyrill10:36But it's always with seafood chowder. Anytime I hear someone getting really badly. Six and they mentioned seafood chowder, I'm like, Jesus, that must be like a 5050 toss up.

Craig10:46Yeah, yeah. But when I, when I first saw, I went to, NASCAR at the university and I did what's called media arts. At the time, they didn't have a film program, of course, till I finished. And, but in media I did a little bit everything. So it's like video art. So we did lots of crazy, weird video art kind of stuff.

Craig11:04And, but you learn all the same kinds of things. We learned how to edit. This is at the beginning of digital, editing. So, Adobe was a really ugly, dirty program at the time. Premiere. Final cut was in his super, super early stages. And, but all the same types of ideas like DaVinci didn't even exist at the time.

Craig11:24And, we were editing on some of this kind of media 100 and we would use like something called like a zip drive or Jaz drive, which was like this thing, but this size of a floppy. But it wasn't really a I was like a floppy floppy, but it was like a hard disk, like a hard shell floppy.

Craig11:42And it only had like, I know, 100MB on it and it costs, you know, a couple hundred bucks. It was crazy. And you had to put all your stuff on that. So it was very interesting times. And when I finished there, though, I kind of I was like, okay, I'm gonna be a film director. I'm going to go do that kind of stuff.

Craig11:58And I worked on a couple big, big film sets. There was a movie called Kane it scene that was being shot here. I just did a week as a PA, like a bottom of the boot kind of PA, and, it was very interesting afterwards because, it was like the mesh of Star Wars, because you had Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson as the two stars on it.

Craig12:20So, it was interesting. So I get to actually walk them down the set from there. From there. They were I mean, we're talking 20 at least 22 years ago, so they're even like, probably it's not like they're more famous then. But they were like peak fame. They're they're super cool. I mean, it's very everyone of course wanted to, to be talking to them and kind of, you know, there was no there was no, like cell phones.

Craig12:52There were cell phones in hand, but not cell phones where you had cameras to them at the time. So if I.

Dario12:57Didn't take a selfie back then, the.

Kyrill12:58Big picture, you know.

Dario12:59You can't really. Yeah.

Craig13:01Yeah. It would have been like, yeah. Or which is would have been like those little, you know, those, point shoots at the time or disposable cameras and stuff. So it was interesting because they trusted me to kind of walk them down, but also like just kind of not protect like stand by the car. And okay, now we're ready for we're ready for Harrison to come or so the interesting story for that is me being, you know, even though, I'm older.

Craig13:27So I was still, you know, I was like 30 at the time or something like that. And, but absolute new to being on a real set. I had worked like one job as a PA before on a music video and, you know, like one day. So somehow I got in on to be in the ad department to do the stuff with Harrison Ford and he, Neeson or just like the whole crew department, I think also one of the stars and Peter Sarsgaard was there as well.

Craig13:55So, but at the at the time, so they're like, okay, you are going to walk, Harrison Ford from his, trailer down to set or to the track down to the set where they drove him up to like, okay, cool. So I've got my walkie on. I'm like, Mr. Ford or like, whatever. They said, we're ready for the race, for you on set.

Craig14:18I'm going to walk you down. So I gave them. I give him, like, the, ten feet of walking. I'm just going to walk, and we're just walking down. And I said so over the phone, over the walkie. I was like, all right. Yeah, I've got Harrison. Walk him down to set now. I see out of the corner of my eye, his head like snaps like not snaps like like, but like, totally looks at me and I'm like, oh, Fox.

Craig14:42Like, what did I do? And I'm like, okay, so anyways, just walk them all the way down. These are all good. Does this thing, like go back to the lead department? And I'm like, hey, this kind of weird thing happened. And they're like, where I turn that scenario was they're like, yeah, I guess we kind of forgot to tell you, we don't use their names over the walkie, as we say, like number one or number two.

Craig15:03So Harrison at the time was number one, and and Liam Neeson was number two or something like that. And I'm like.

Dario15:09Shit. So this was like.

Craig15:11I just like, piss off.

Dario15:12Like, that's the code that.

Craig15:14Harrison Harrison Ford, you know, the Han Solo going to going to hate me forever because you said that. So it was it was interesting. But he was he was again, he was super chill, super nice. Off camera doing his thing. And Liam Neeson was it was even nicer. Like, he was just like some just like your buddy kind of walk around there.

Dario15:33It is really cool. Like, he's really super tall.

Craig15:36Yeah. And I'm not really. Yeah. I'm only like five seven and he's, he was like six two or some, like a big, big, big dude. So yeah. So that was my birth by fire under the, under the set. And then I didn't I didn't go back to the next round just because I was getting busy. And no, I should say this is an interesting point for for video people and stuff like I it's like I, was it's still in married at the time, and I was just like, I can't work like 12 to 14 hour days for three weeks or three months at a time.

Craig16:09So, like, I'm not going to be married anymore. This is not going to be good for me. So I done a few corporate jobs and I kind of switched gears. Instead of trying to become a film director or work my way up in crew, I just started doing more corporate work and, little by little, just kind of built it up to where I am now.

Dario16:26Yeah, a lot of them tend to just marry people that work like crew crew members or, you know, a lot of the marriages might end up in divorce because the hours or the hours are really wild. I don't know how they do it. Yeah.

Craig16:38Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill16:38Like like on a consistent basis. It's crazy. Like, if you do it here and there, it's not that bad. Like maybe one a week, that might be a 12 hour or 14 hour, but or twice. But doing consistently for three straight weeks. Sometimes you have to fly out somewhere else so you don't even get to come home where they could see you briefly like that.

Kyrill16:57So it's like, I don't know how that lifestyle works for people who have like who are married to people in completely separate worlds. I'm I'm really curious about how that works.

Dario17:05It doesn't work, I think.

Dario17:07Yeah.

Craig17:07I think you're right. Yeah. I think you're right. It doesn't work. What I heard from people that I know in the industry, they're like, exactly what you said. They're, they're they're married to someone who's also in the industry or they're not married off. So it's not and definitely like the the benefit of doing this work, which is something I'll probably never actually truly be able to to realize, is that, I've never had to work in an office like a 9 to 5 lockdown kind of thing for, for, for all my careers doing video stuff.

Craig17:35So I'm able to, like, kick off at 3:00 and make sure the kids get home from school, or I can go see the, soccer game, you know, whenever it is. No problem, I can. Someone has an early hockey practice, I can I can take the time to do that. Because that flexibility and control within working for yourself is, you know, amazing.

Craig17:53And, my family and my kids have definitely benefited from that. And myself, I should say, as well. Of course, the downside of that is that, you know, you kind of work all the time otherwise. And you sometimes, as you both know, you don't know if you're gonna work next week. So it's, always a, an edge of terror that you're always on.

Kyrill18:11Sometimes I always wondered, like, what it would be like for the kids of professional video professionals like us who have that work life balance and flexibility, where we get to kind of like work when we need to, you know, be able to make it for things that are important as well that might be normalized for them. Whereas like when we were younger, it was very normal for us to that our parents would have to go to work from 9 to 5 constantly.

Kyrill18:35That was the that was the lifestyle. And then it was almost like us doing this was like a rebellion to that. Will their rebellion be going into the.

Dario18:43Into.

Kyrill18:44The 9 to 5.

Dario18:44Workflow as well?

Craig18:47I think once you get it, it's hard to let go. And, you know, I've talked about this before, so it's like it'd be it might be difficult to work for anyone else at this point. Just because the flexibility that we used to and stuff like that. And, you know, I always tell people when it's when it's good, when this job is good, it's amazing.

Craig19:04You have, you know, flexibility that good income. You've got your creative all the time. You get to do all that kind of stuff when it's when it's okay. Like it's a there's a little more stress and anxiety and things like that and so on. But it's still pretty good. You know, it's like it's just regular. You know, everyone else has jobs that are not great.

Craig19:20But if it was not great, it's, you know, it's still not bad at all. But when it's bad, there is zero safety net like it is. You have to the anxiety and stress to goes way, way up. So it's just as long as you can balance that, that, that roller coaster that kind of happens with that, with that, then I think, you know, it's a great opportunity to do it's not definitely not for everyone by a long shot.

Craig19:45But if you can make it work, it's a has great benefits for sure.

Kyrill19:50There was one thing you mentioned earlier, how like when you were still in school, you had like a 100 megabyte hard drive or disk. That was basically your whole life on and wasn't exactly a very cheap thing. It got me thinking, because this morning I saw this video from Cold Fusion about how they just developed this, new CD disk that can hold something like 1.6PB of data, which is around 200,000GB, and that is one thing in our industry that people forget about in terms of the business side of things, is like what happens once you film everything.

Kyrill20:26What is the economics of storing all of that, all the data and everything? Because I just recently we had to we just filled up a lot of our main drives and then we had to I had to go through this process of like researching and finding the most cost effective, like storage alternatives. But like, I don't know, like everyone's system is different.

Kyrill20:45Like how do you typically go about like storing and, maintaining like the files from like, clients and everything.

Craig20:52For sure are like, interesting. When I first started, we were shooting on, mini DV cameras. So, like, there's a, there's a camera that I still love. It's a canon X ZL1, I think is that's got the big force lens on the front. It's like a zoom kind of thing. And but it was all mini DV tapes and mini DV tapes you could reveal.

Craig21:14Watch. But, for the most part, it was pretty difficult to to do. It's like it's, it's digital tape. So I have 2 or 3 boxes like that are, you know, two feet by three feet, just stuffed full of, mini DV tapes. And that was the backup. There was no, that was the, like the that's the source backup.

Craig21:37They just kind of put it on a shelf and at the time, there was ways that you would you're supposed to rotate them every year or something like that, because there's really weird kind of like gravity, weight in pixels is kind of strange stuff. Anyways, I never did it.

Dario21:53So I know it's.

Dario21:55Like hard, but though you got to like put them up every now and then. Otherwise, like the the loops. Try in the end of this and they won't turn anymore. It's the same thing.

Craig22:04Yeah. So what I would get into the habit of doing is basically, I mean, I always did double backup because in the video industry, you know, it does doesn't live twice, it doesn't live at all. So you always have that and maybe even a third backup for that stuff. That's super, super important.

Kyrill22:19We do. But we do three actually. Yeah. Because like the way we do it is, since there's the two of us, like, we would create like three backups where I would have, like maybe two main ones. And then one goes to Dario because I typically have to access them more often than him, but he at least keeps a backup of everything once it's been set.

Kyrill22:40It's just, like a, it's a it's really just a peace of mind thing. But then there are times that really we talk about like, how long do we store keep people stuff stored for like, you know, like we say, like we were only guaranteeing for like two years or something like that with clients, but we typically just keep everything because we've had clients even come to us recently for a project that we did like four years ago say, hey, we need to change something from that video because so-and-so is no longer in, is no longer working with us.

Dario23:08That's a one off doing, isn't it? Doesn't happen often, like I would say, like it's maybe 1% of the time they they ask for something like that.

Craig23:17Yeah, I do this similar thing I tell people. I mean, I don't even tell them. I just, I always backup everything. And I have a file cabinet that has I would I used to just name them like ABC and someone like that. Now I want to I've gone through the alphabet through these drives and now we're into like numerical system.

Craig23:38So I've got that as a back. So there's always a those that lives a backup somewhere. But I always tell people like basically after that, after the project's done, I can't get I won't guarantee that we can archive the footage. I say we do archive it and just go. Since it's on shelf. But that drive may not. Like you said, it may not work.

Craig23:56So like that.

Dario23:57Is, this is a year in numerical system working like one, two, three. But then how does that correlate to what might be in that, in that project? Because we do like, actually when we fill it up, we just type in like the types of projects that are in there and like the year. Right. So we might have client a year.

Kyrill24:16I have a spreadsheet like we have a spreadsheet a like, an Excel spreadsheet that basically just says, like, this is the name of the drive laps, drive number one, laps drive number two. And then there's like a backup for each of those. So there's like each number is like a set of like three backups. Right. Or or 2 or 3 backups depending when we started doing it.

Kyrill24:33And then in that spreadsheet, we write down what the projects are, which clients from what date to what date. So that way we have a faster way of like referencing and looking over like which drive we need to kind of access. And then we just label it directly on the drive as well. It's like a little sticky.

Kyrill24:50It's like laps drive number this know you.

Dario24:52Should do Carol. You should take a screenshot of all the folders and then just, collapse the subfolders as well, take a picture and maybe link it to that document as well. It's easier to see.

Kyrill25:03Yeah. I mean, I guess we could, but I just type it in because then.

Dario25:07But then you can easily search it. Yeah. Okay.

Kyrill25:09Yeah. It's a little bit easier to search it like with that system. It's like and I just reference it directly on the spreadsheet which.

Craig25:16Yeah, I wish, I wish I would have done the spreadsheet before because, I didn't do actually what you said. Jerry, I basically just take a, file folder or a folder system. Screen image shot of what's in there. And because it's usually like client X, Y, Z and so on. And if there is maybe some folders, but then, yeah, I've got clients coming back like ten plus years, stuff like forgot.

Craig25:39So really.

Dario25:40Oh my God. What?

Dario25:42I don't get that though because how like that footage like camera technology has come so far. Even like your own skills. Like, you know, skills. If you're freelancers have come so far that like, does that footage.

Kyrill25:52Make a new.

Dario25:53One? Yeah. Like, what is that footage still get to use nowadays? Like, that's what I know.

Craig25:57That's why I felt like when.

Dario25:58After like two years, it's like it's done, man. Like this footage is no longer usable anymore.

Craig26:04Well, I mean, it's interesting Segway, actually, because the camera technology where we're at now is I wouldn't say it's like plateaued per se, but with the advancement into like that, everyone was on HD, like 1920 by 1080, because most people deliver in that. But some, you know, rarely even now, clients will want to deliver to 4K because everything goes ends up on YouTube or some sort of something like that, that they're either watching their phones or their laptops, and that's still in HD.

Craig26:35So I think once we get to HD and then once we get to the 4K, that probably kind of plateaued in terms of camera technology. So if we have stuff that shot in HD from, you know, ten years ago, if it was like a rare thing of like, oh, we want to do a retrospective of, our CEO at the time.

Craig26:53Do you have anything there? It's like, well, let me see if I can blow the dust off. And the, it still should look pretty good. I, I use, yeah, but I use, Vimeo for all my clients. Client. Reviews of and transferring files and stuff like that for them to watch. You know, the the master file will go there and they just download from there.

Craig27:16And I probably had, like, you know, 15 years of, Vimeo, files because once it goes up there, it can stay up there until Vimeo doesn't exist anymore. And, but for some weird reason, about two years ago, I went through Vimeo. I'm like, you know what? I just there's like thousands of videos here. I'm just going to go delete everything from, like, six years ago to the start of time, except for maybe a couple special ones that I really wanted.

Craig27:42And I went and did that. And like less than a year later, clients like, hey, remember that video we did like really long time ago.

Dario27:49But it's always like that.

Craig27:50And I was just like, so yeah, I do, but it doesn't exist anymore. I said, I can rebuild the entire thing if you want, but and so if someone does want something totally rebuilt and that's the thing, when you go back further in, further back in time, you know, project files may not even mash up and things like that.

Craig28:08So it's like maybe the footage there, but essentially it's a whole new editing project unto itself, plus the archiving, as well. And just because, you know, you spend time doing that, I.

Dario28:18Hope you're charging a fee for whenever you have to go back to the archive, because that's what we do on our end.

Craig28:24Oh yeah. For sure. Yeah, that's that's the only way to do it because it's it's your time. Everything you do, everything you do is time. And that over the years, especially the last five years, I've kind of started to make sure that we charge for even just like emails administration that there's a, there's a budget line there somewhere that says, you know, we're going to have ten conversations over email.

Craig28:44So it's just it's producing time. So it's like an hour or two of time.

Dario28:49You put a number, you put a number to, the amount of, you know.

Craig28:53Not to the amount of emails just I can't well, I.

Dario28:55I, I just, I like.

Dario28:56If it's over ten emails I'm going to.

Dario28:58Charge you for. It's right.

Craig29:00It's like $0.18 per email that, use. Yeah. It's usually it's just like a I just know that, certain clients are going to be, a lot of conversations or a lot to make conversation. So you can just ballpark. It's like, oh, this is going to be, you know, ten hours of, of time or five hours of time over the course of the project that I'm that make sure that I, get paid for because, you know, anyone else is working.

Craig29:24They're getting paid for that, too.

Dario29:25We do like a project management fee and we throw in, you know, client communications, cast and crew communications, and then general admin.

Kyrill29:33Stuff, all communications. Yeah.

Dario29:35Essentially I know we got item. I just itemize it sometimes scales just so they know what it is because I've, I've had them ask at the beginning of like what is this. And then I'm like okay, it's this, this and that.

Dario29:45Yeah, it's for this what we're doing right now. That's how you tell them. That's exactly right. Now it's this.

Craig29:52And people don't kind of realize that. People just don't realize. I think probably, people work for themselves. Kind of forget that that is time. And, you know, I probably could have made a lot more money if I had charge for and put those budget lines in way earlier just to make sure that because we're nice people, we want to help them out.

Craig30:10So I respond to emails a lot and you get back and forth and but, you know, on on a recent project, I was, because I'm very much on demand. I have some clients who text me at any time, any time of the day, and I'm open to that because they're great clients for me, and I like working with them and not too difficult to do the stuff we need to do for them.

Craig30:27But we'll there was a a different project we did and we were like, you know, where 10 a.m. or sorry, £0.10 doing work for people that are text us directly. And so like, yeah, this is just extra time. So let's make sure we get paid for it.

Dario30:40Yeah. That's good. What was the scene like when you started in Dartmouth or Halifax? Like it was like the the corporate video scene, like.

Craig30:53It was, a little weird, I think, honestly, because there was a lot of blend of, of the, large scale productions, like television because TV was big then, like broadcast television was still like news and all that kind of stuff was big. But then also when these shows would come in, they'd be do EPK, so electronic press kits kind of stuff.

Craig31:16So there was a bunch of people who did that, and then there was just a bunch of corporate stuff that was kind of some of it was, just like boring, like event stuff, like, oh, dance recital. So interestingly enough, like, it goes far back enough. So it was like you would make a VHS. So some I did some work for some people, starting out where they were doing like dance recital.

Craig31:40So like, okay, we're going to do this dance recital thing, you know, kind of basic, kind of boring stuff, but this stuff builds as well. And then they would they would finish by, mastering it to, VHS again, all those VHS tapes duplicated and people buy it, buy them for ten bucks. And then that eventually switched into CDs for the doing the same kind of things.

Craig32:01And then that switched into like it was and then into DVDs. It was DVD first and then into CDs and then now it's just purely digitally online, stuff like that. So there was a whole different world of doing that kind of stuff. And there wasn't there wasn't many production companies around. There was a few more because there was a couple small like actual real studios.

Craig32:22But, Halifax at the time was a small kind of place, and I didn't really have a whole lot of people to lean on. There's kind of one person that I kind of met early days. His name was, Chuck Calder from 45 North. And bit of an icon in terms of the video production, stuff. And he was a great resource.

Craig32:42So at the time I'd rent like a, what was they called a, not a hi8, but like a, mini DV, but an HD mini DV camera. I think that was like a Sony HTV or something like that. And I would know what I was doing it all really, for the most part, because although I went to school and get trained in terms of media production, there was not like film training.

Craig33:02It was not like, you know, I learned most things just by doing it, and watching other people do it. But like, Chuck was fantastic. It was he was a you just like, yeah, you want to go rent that shirt? And I've heard from other people who said, like, he would even, like, drive it, drop it off to people's places and stuff, like, I'd pick it up from them, you know, the next day and stuff like that.

Craig33:22So. But he had, a small production company called 45 North, and they did. They did a little bit of everything. They did EPCs, and then they eventually moved into doing a lot of live stuff as well. And yeah, he was a he was just a great person. Like he would, you know, walk in the office, just shoot the shit for hours.

Craig33:39But just like because you don't run into people like yourselves very often where you can actually just talk industry stuff because because people are usually very insular and in terms of, meeting other people because, oh, you're going to take my clients or you're going to take my clients, I did the opposite. I went out and actually met people and said, hey, can we just want to basically did this?

Craig34:01But grab coffees with people like, hey, can we just talk and find out about, you know, what you do? Or you know, what should I know or what should I be? Where of and how could I be better and stuff like that. So I did a bunch of that was meeting with people, and I also did that same thing, with agencies as well.

Craig34:19So get out, meet people like CEOs or ad agency execs and stuff like that. Just like, hey, can I pop in and have a coffee for, you know, so the cheapest mentorian that could ever find for sure. And people are totally open to it. Here in the Maritimes, it seemed like everyone was. Yeah, well, we'll do that and stuff like that.

Craig34:37So. But really, at the beginning, it was there's a lot of crappy equipment, a lot of, like, hot orange redheads and stuff like that. You could bring yourself their host down with, you know, I did. I did a lot of things with some, weird equipment. Like, no one sees that. Because I really took from the fact that no one sees this behind the camera.

Craig34:57Right. As long as things look pretty good, it's fine.

Dario34:59Like, I can find them with the light. No one can see what's bothering.

Dario35:02To tape.

Kyrill35:03The mic to a.

Dario35:04Stick. And that's your mic to stick?

Craig35:06Yeah. For sure. Like, did I ever use a work light to, to light a scene? Yes, for sure. I did that way back.

Dario35:13But eventually it's like, the shitty rigs. Instagram. Yes.

Dario35:17Yeah.

Kyrill35:17There's there's, there's DIY ways to do it. You know, I remember like one of my favorite, funny memories of this was when stereo and I had, had a shoot back in, like, 2014, 2015.

Dario35:29A light bulb went.

Kyrill35:31I had to I had to drop him. I had to drop him off at one location to do some, shoot. So he took one of the backpacks. Right. That we had. And then I had to go to another location when I got there, I realized, that he took the backpack with all the base plates.

Kyrill35:46Yeah.

Dario35:48And I'm like, oh, no, that's going on.

Kyrill35:51What do I do here? And then what I did was I took my camera and then with duct tape, just duct taped it to the tripod. And that's how I conducted that whole entire shoot. I but I got creative. I started doing things where I let things move rather than moving the camera. I'm like, okay, I got some cool stuff out of it, all right.

Kyrill36:10But then when I met up with him later, I'm like, damn it, man, you took the bag.

Dario36:14With all the lights.

Kyrill36:16And he's like, I was like, oh, that didn't really.

Dario36:18You're going to make sure that you're going to mention the the light bulb one when we're doing it for that student group. I think the first time.

Kyrill36:25Oh yeah. This is like the.

Dario36:27On the, on the student group video.

Kyrill36:29Yeah. This is like the very first because I started doing video, like about a year before Dario jumped into it. And then he when I started working on my own projects, he came in one day to, to assist. And I had just gotten these new light bulbs or these new lights with soft boxes from Amazon. Yeah. I mean, back then when you're starting out in 23.

Dario36:50Studio, do you remember.

Kyrill36:52Yeah. Oh yeah. That's what it was. It was.

Dario36:53So yeah.

Dario36:54Everyone knows.

Craig36:56Yeah. I was on their site just the other day actually.

Dario36:58They're still around like oh yeah.

Craig37:00Yeah.

Kyrill37:01I still have, I still have a reflector from them from back in the day, you know, like that doesn't break. But essentially on this shoot, I had just gotten these, these lights from them and it was, it was that classic set of like, three lights for like, 200 bucks. Yeah. And they had these, light bulbs with,

Dario37:20So once I like spin or like, you know, they're circular.

Craig37:24Oh, yeah. Almost like a complex fluorescent light.

Kyrill37:27Yeah, something like that. And then we, I turn everything on and it's running. We're filming a little bit, and then all of a sudden we start smelling a little bit of smoke. And then we noticed that, like, some of the light bulbs started burning out and it just filled the room with such, such an acrid smell.

Dario37:44If we get cancer in the future, it's going to be from that shoot.

Dario37:48That way got no atmosphere. It's like it's a.

Craig37:51It's a, it's a built in fog machine. Right.

Dario37:54Yeah. That's right.

Kyrill37:56It took a while for us to find lights that worked. And then in 2014 there was these, these like circular LED is that we managed to find. And then and then we bought those. They weren't super powerful, but we knew at least that they were not going to run hot. They weren't going to burn out on us or anything like that.

Kyrill38:14And and this was like when LEDs were like still in their infancy for, for video production. And then and then when finally aperture came out, that just started to make things so much easier. It was like, oh my God, these LEDs are so powerful.

Dario38:28And now then they got too expensive. And then thank God for Nan Light.

Dario38:32Yeah, I love I love that.

Craig38:35Although I find though that like I've seen, I've gone from halogen like touch it. You will burn. Absolutely. You'll scorcher your hand off and stuff like that to where we are now within even just like the light mats and stuff like that and like the blow up soft boxes and things like it's it's it is amazing to be able to, I work with a friend of mine who's I've known since junior high, and he went off to become not become a grip, but he worked in the film industry, and, is a great grip on electric.

Craig39:07And I always trust whatever he says. If he. If he says, yeah, how about we do this? And I'm not if I'm like, I don't know if I wanted to do that. Maybe not. Good idea. I usually afterwards always regret it. So anytime he says something I totally do it. But he is also come through this whole world and evolution of of stuff.

Craig39:22He's worked on the big film sets and the small stuff, and we just were talking the other day about how good lights are now that they're consistent in color. They don't flicker, they don't burn anybody up. They're easy to operate. They're now waterproof, basically. And the cameras themselves are relatively light, but they almost always look good. You have to work really hard to screw something up to make things look bad.

Craig39:45Now, with cameras, technology, for the most part.

Kyrill39:48It's a it's such a time for people jumping into the industry and like, even just to get started, I think we touched upon this in a previous episode where you can get a lot of really, really high quality equipment for basically not no money, but like very inexpensive, like what used to cause like for $5,000. I've always wondered, like if we could do like this kind of challenges, like for $5,000, what kind of kit can you get yourself to get started in this industry?

Kyrill40:13I'm sure there's like thousands of YouTube videos and everything.

Dario40:16You go to use it, you could use that.

Kyrill40:19That's what I mean. Like going the used route alone, because there's a lot of great cameras that are that people are trying to offload because they don't need anymore. Like I see 200 alone, you could probably get for less than $3,000, which was like.

Craig40:32Even less.

Kyrill40:32Ten grand. Yeah, even less than that. Yeah, exactly. It's like it's gotten so low to the point where, like, Dario and I, we were talking about like, oh, dude, should we sell it?

Dario40:40We're trying to. No, we were trying to sell them and and I was like, I'm not selling it for three K. Like we spent nine K on these things just for the sentimental value. I'm holding on to it like.

Kyrill40:48Yeah, these things are great.

Dario40:50Like good to use.

Kyrill40:52Yeah. Exactly. To your point, there are two, Craig. It's like, you know, like footage like the camera's from like six, seven years ago. Still shoot HD, still shoot 4K. That stuff's still usable.

Dario41:03Like, if if the cinema camera, the cinema cameras. We should clarify the DSLRs. They have come quite a long way.

Kyrill41:10They've come a long way. But at the end of the day, like, even like some of the DSLRs from like 6 or 7 years ago, like you could still work with them, at least even if you're jumping into the industry, you could. There's so much you could do. I mean, like I remember when I jumped into it, like every camera that was released had such a huge incremental jump.

Kyrill41:27So it was kind of like it was almost like wild. Whereas like now it's they're incremental, like smaller, smaller, jumps in quality.

Dario41:35So but you should remember it's the the stuff from back then is passable, but it's not like, you know, good, good. It's passable if you have. It's like learning. No no no no no, I meant like in terms of, like longevity of the, the content that you shop from back then because like, if I think about I remember when we were, I remember when we were on, we were still using Sony's and we were looking at the 4K difference between our A7, s2 and like our C 200 like, there was a noticeable difference between the 4K quality you remember.

Kyrill42:09I remember specifically, there was a difference between the A7, S2 and the canon C100 back then, which was a little bit wild.

Dario42:17Yeah, because the C100 was older.

Kyrill42:19Well, well, the difference was that the C100 was better than the A7 S2, which shocked me because the C100 had a camera sensor that was 4K downscaled to ten ADP, but it was only an HD camera. Whereas like the Sony 4K, I did a comparison when I shot them. And like the the C100 HD was so much better than the Sony 4K, which was almost shocking to me at the time.

Kyrill42:45I'm like, this doesn't seem right, but it just goes to show like what the difference was. Back then. There were such huge differences between every single camera. So it was really like, that's why people got really into being gear heads, because people would be like, I'm so into this one because of these benefits, whereas I'm so into these ones because of those benefits.

Kyrill43:04Whereas now the differences are small. It's like it's up to personal preference at this point between cameras and and everything like that. Like the difference between, like a Sony Cinema camera is a canon cinema camera. It's like it's small things. Ergonomics, buttons.

Dario43:22Autofocus is way better.

Kyrill43:23Autofocus I mean yeah, but but my point is like it's not like something where it's like a huge difference in quality.

Dario43:31I'm telling you, the next push is, they're going to start introducing AI features in these cameras.

Craig43:38I think.

Dario43:38We.

Dario43:39We might see some big, big improvements once they start doing that.

Craig43:43They just love to push that sensor size. Really. It's, you know, the Blackmagic get the 12 K kind of stuff. And have I'm working on a project this Friday that they're doing, part of the project being shot I think in Vancouver today. And they're shooting six K downscaling to TikTok from from that. So such a waste. Yeah.

Craig44:03I'm like, I don't it's like I don't think you really need that. Like it's fine. But even I have, like an event. There's an event happening here this week that I have. I'm not going to shoot, but I got some people to shoot for me, honestly, for the for a client. And they're still using Sony Fs7 because the Fs7 has been a beast of a workhorse.

Craig44:22It shoots 4K. It is is pretty good for color and I nearly I thought about buying that camera several times, and when the C200 came out, I was like, because I was using the, five D mark three at the time, which is a love this full frame sensor of that five D and when the C200 was about to come out, a cinematographer of mine said, like, this is a camera for you.

Craig44:47And I was because it can shoot raw, which I maybe I've shot like five times with of over.

Dario44:52The we did it once and that was it a.

Kyrill44:54Couple times. It was never needed that constantly.

Craig44:57No. And I the like the eight bit the footage turned like looked great on the camera right off the bat. Awesome. I shot I over a thousand more hours on that on that camera for sure. And but it just loved the how easy it was to kind of color great out of that. And people I was on the Facebook groups for it, stuff like that.

Craig45:20People were going crazy, like, when's it going to be ten bit when it's gonna be ten minutes? I was like, I don't need ten bit. Hello Cat.

Kyrill45:26I was going to say what? I was wondering what that little thing was that was coming.

Dario45:29Out in the frame and like, well, the let me this is oh.

Dario45:33Well, it definitely wasn't the dog from earlier. Like you're all.

Dario45:35No, no.

Dario45:37I still don't go like this.

Dario45:39Yeah. When.

Craig45:40I, when I was looking at the, to, I wasn't actually looking to upgrade from the C200, but I was thinking that maybe I need needed something a little bit better. And I'm really stingy when it comes to getting a new camera, because, you know, once you invest in the camera, you just don't want to ever spend money ever again.

Craig45:59But so I was looking at this, the f six, the Sony FF six and the C70, which we're using here right now. And I was I wanted to buy the f six and this was probably two plus years ago now when was just coming out and that and that was the reason like I, I, I did because the great thing was at the time they had Sony had 0% financing.

Craig46:25So I was like, oh, great, I'm going to do that. That's what I did with my old camera. I'm going to do this, this one. It's a great way to kind of, finance a camera and get good, good, tech in your hands. And so I went through the whole process. Sony was. Yeah, we're good to go.

Craig46:39And then they're like, oh yeah, this. So say it was like a 610 or something like that. They're like, yeah, you can get it in. Like you might be able to get it in March. I was like, what are you talking about? This is like I want it next week or you time. So I was just like, they're like, no, it's just this is when the whole sensor problem, sensor shortage was in play and stuff like that.

Craig47:00And I was just like, exactly. So I contacted the canon local canon rep that I've been dealing with. When I got the, the C 200 and I was like, hey, what about that? C70? And I used to have a little number on my, my whiteboard in my office, where it showed the difference in size of the in terms of millimeters for the Sony and the the pH six and the C, C70 and the it was like ten millimeters, bigger for the first six because it was a full frame.

Craig47:27And I was just like, I sort of I can really that's what I want. But it didn't exist. So I called the canon rep guy. He's like, he's like, like, do you still have 0% financing on the canon? They're like, yeah, actually just happened like last week. I'm like, great. Let's do it. I'll send the application in.

Craig47:44I think I got the camera four days later or something like that. It just that it gets shipped and. Yeah, shipped. And I got a couple lenses with it and I was able to add an F adapter. So, you know, I was able to use my F lenses from that adapter as well. Yeah.

Dario48:00Get an extra couple light with it.

Craig48:03Yeah. So it was I do also have a Blackmagic pockets in the camera as well. They don't shoot much with, but I need the USB camera one time and I got it and just started using it, stuff like that.

Dario48:14So I love that C70. Fantastic camera.

Craig48:18Impressive. Every day.

Kyrill48:20Even the. And when you pair that with the R5, see as a victim you know it's like the best combo is it's fantastic right now. Like like obviously every camera has its like drawbacks here and there. But overall they have been great. And the at the time and luckily we're actually just I think two months away from finally paying off.

Kyrill48:43Oh really.

Dario48:44Well from the oh that's great. That's like a thousand bucks a month extra.

Dario48:48Another way. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Craig48:51I'm in the same boat.

Dario48:52Oh, man.

Kyrill48:54But the the that's the thing. Like when you're trying to look for cameras and and everything like that, you have to think about like what you also have like how, how much do you need that other brand camera. Like if you switch into that ecosystem then you have to make a it's like you're reinvesting everything again. So if you get two new cameras with all the associated lenses and cards as well are not cheap, like, well, we got the R5 CS well, we got the R5 CS, we realized, oh, this is not with SD cards like it is like one has.

Kyrill49:25The one is one. Cfexpress type B. And then I, we were looking at cards because usually it's good to have multiple. And then I thought, okay, this is this is how we're going to do it. We're going to get one massive cfexpress type B card and a backup little one. But that big one is going to be like the main card in the R5 seats.

Dario49:46Like a thousand for like a thousand bucks.

Kyrill49:48It was two terabyte cfexpress type B and it was $1,300 each. And but it was like, what was the alternative? We get a bunch of like 256 cards that are 506 hundred and $700. It's like that thing's going to add up over time, and then we really only do it because we double record, right? And we always do backups.

Kyrill50:07So we said, okay, Cfexpress lives in the camera, and then we just swap out the SD cards as the backups for that. And then that'll be our that'll be our workflow. And thankfully it's been it's been very useful. But like it's it's crazy. It's crazy when when you need to reinvest in something new and like you said like if once you get a camera you're stuck, you're sticking with it for like three, maybe four years if you can push it depending.

Kyrill50:31Right. Or if there's like some big push for a type of feature that you're going to need for a client project or for certain projects that you start coming into, right? Otherwise you make do with it, you know? And that's why also a lot of people rent, a lot of people in our industry also rent, cameras for depending on the needs of the project, especially, directors of photography that do big budget commercials, like, they're not going to be not all of them are going to drop 200 K on a Rolex or whatever with all the associated stuff that the.

Dario51:01Occasional one will.

Kyrill51:02The occasional one will, because they use that as like a selling point is like, hire me and then I come with my own RV, you know, and that saves the production like, well, I don't know, they probably they still rent it, but it's like at a discounted price probably. Then go to a.

Dario51:15Friend of ours that that wanted to drop 80 K on a Sony Venice. And we're like, what are you doing, man? What?

Craig51:23Yeah, I, I rented from the beginning. But then I realize, especially in the corporate world, it's like you might get a call tomorrow or in two hours and like, hey, can shoot tomorrow and then like we go to the rental house or like, oh, no cameras all gone for the week. So I learned early on that you need to have some type of camera.

Craig51:41Doesn't really the best camera. Yeah. You just need to have something. I actually still have the, Sony X1-R HD. It's a servo zoom, kind of like a advanced camcorder kind of thing. The first I bought that early on probably. I remember.

Dario52:04I remember specifically.

Craig52:06At the time buying it, purchasing it and telling my wife like, oh yeah, but cameras, oh, great, blah, blah, blah. And then I was like, she's like, how much was that? I was like, yeah, it was about $10,000. Just like how are you going to pay for that? My God. And this is early days.

Dario52:22It's called tax write off.

Dario52:24Yeah.

Craig52:27But the funny thing was that that camera I still use to this day, it's now you only use it for, because it has a surface zoom and it shoots, 1080 as its maximum. But when we're doing, like, live streams, it's a perfect camera. It is an absolute perfect camera for it. And a friend of mine was jumping in one of his, and he's like, hey, do you want it for.

Craig52:49It was like ridiculous amount of money was a couple hundred bucks. And I got and he's like, do you want anyone to buy this from me? I'm like, I absolutely do it. So now I have two of them and they're perfect for doing live stream. Yeah, it was it.

Dario53:00Basically two broke years cameras. Yeah.

Craig53:02It's so weird. And I shot a lot of footage on that camera. And it was, you know, it's not a cinema camera, but if you use it properly, it still looks good. Out of the box and stuff like that. And, it, you know, that's like, I don't get rid of technology because. Because of that reason, I've got a lot of stuff I've got.

Craig53:22So I've got two those cameras, I've got the black magic, my five d, which I shoot more of kids hockey games than I do in the stills than I do with anything else with it anymore. But, you know, it's still there and they can do stuff. And yeah, it's it's definitely a big thing to consider. Do you want to buy or do you want to rent?

Craig53:40But when you're talking about renting or leasing, if you can do the 0% financing and lease a camera that you're going to use, they.

Dario53:47Got rid of that seven days. They used to be nice. They had 0% financing.

Kyrill53:50Oh, they got rid of it.

Dario53:51Oh yeah. It's like I think it's like 4% now. Well last time I checked months back I think there is a 4%. You know, when Apple got rid of the 0% financing for their phones, that's when you knew everyone else was going to get rid of it. If Apple does it, that's a bad sign.

Craig54:08Yeah, Canada is pretty good. Like both Kent and Sony both have that like that's why. And then probably the same as as YouTube. That's why you get this camera.

Kyrill54:15Yeah Sony has it was I, I saw in like some some camera shop. They had the 0% financing for the six at 24 months. So they probably they.

Dario54:25Still have.

Kyrill54:25Pop it out okay. They still. Yeah I this was recent and they probably have it come up as promotions every now and then. But like even if it's not 0% like the benefit of doing the financing is that if it costs you like say 3 or 400 bucks a month to finance a camera, that's the same as a day rate for renting it out anyway.

Kyrill54:44So exactly. If you see yourself using a camera more than twice in a month, then you've then you're already getting your money's worth rather than just paying a rental house. And then at the end of the day, you get to keep it right. So it's it it just comes down to like, what's the best business approach? Right. And that's probably also what a lot of like bigger productions also do.

Kyrill55:03It's like and like DPS. It's like if they see themselves using a certain camera multiple times in a month for depending on their gigs, it sometimes makes more sense to just buy rather than rent. Unless you're someone who wants to keep trying different things.

Dario55:17There's also the, again, when it comes to buying outright and financing or leasing, there's the the tax implications, right? So if you buy it, you have to do five year amortization versus financing it. You could write off the full amount I guess, or whatever.

Kyrill55:32Had a monthly basis. Yeah. Because it's a different kind of expense system that you're that you're doing right and you can't amortize finance costs.

Dario55:39Our accountant told us financing would have been better for us. So that's what we went with.

Craig55:44Yeah. You just listen. That's why you pay to pay them to do that kind of stuff. We do something else entirely. Not have to worry about that at all for sure. Not not worry about it. But it's just like that.

Dario55:53Also would have been hard to to spend. Like, how much was the C70 like 6000 bucks times. Two. That's 12 times another two. That's 24. It's like 30 G's all. And we have to get the extra battery too because you can't just have the one battery for sure.

Kyrill56:09And those batteries are like 600 bucks.

Dario56:11Yeah.

Dario56:15Yeah.

Craig56:15No I mean.

Kyrill56:16Yeah it's just a is it's a crazy industry when it comes to this stuff. And it's like everyone's situation is unique, you know, depending on your work. And you just have to find the best solution that works for you.

Craig56:26Yeah. For sure. And really, cash flows are was super important, super challenging. And if you can manage that well then you have a better it's just going to create less anxiety for you and I years and years and years ago because it used to be like super busy and then be quiet and busy again and then quiet stuff like that.

Craig56:44And at the time I was like, I just needed to change. Like, I can't be like super busy. And then, you know, wreck my home life because I'm just working so much all the time. And then, then, then then I'm around too much and stuff like that, like what I want to do is like, I just want this to kind of be.

Craig57:00I said, I remember saying at the time was like, I'm going to try to even that those that sine curve from really big peaks and valleys to like just a nice even up and down. So I was kind of I was like this and it happened, but I don't think it was anything that I did necessarily. But I definitely if you can kind of manage that.

Craig57:15So, you can manage the, the, the work so that it's not all happening at the same time and get some of that control, which is kind of what happened the last, sleep like from March till about two weeks ago, things were just like super busy all over the place. Great problem to have. And, the challenge for me and stress for me was just that I had I didn't have as much control over the schedule all the time.

Craig57:41If I have control the schedule, I just be like, okay, we're going to Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Monday, Tuesday and we'll edit this and but a lot of things are happening like now we're going to everyone wants to do everything on Monday and Tuesday. And like five people want five different clients want to do it. So it's like, oh like how can I make it work?

Craig57:55So that's always a big thing and I always tell people, you know, if you can just always get back to people when you're trying to deal with in terms of communication, it's like, don't leave your communication too long at all. Like if you can respond back to people right away, that's that people really, really appreciate that.

Craig58:13And it's our job to worry about, trying to make things happen for them and responding back. And, you know, they're most people on the client side, their jobs on video. That's what we're here for. So if we can make that easier, faster, more responsive to them, then that's always the best way to go, for sure.

Dario58:32How do you handle how do you handle when you have like 2 or 3 projects on the same day? Because, I don't think you mentioned you have like other producers to help you remember.

Craig58:40You do know I mean, I don't we I've have a good, trusted network. And that's the thing when I started out there wasn't, oh, it's me really. And I have people I work with, but really, it's kind of. I have to split my brain, like, four different ways, to kind of make everything happen, but, kind of works out.

Craig58:57But if things happen, if things have to happen on the same day, I have a couple people that I trust to shoot. Like, there's a lot of people that shoot. Well, for sure, but when we're dealing with clients that I want to have a build a relationship with or have a good relationship with, and I don't want to burn it because it's not me there.

Craig59:17I there's very few people that I trust to kind of go shoot for me. Just because honestly, because most people, even though they're going to hire spider video, they're hiring Craig, and his team versus spider video. Rando, who's going to come in and do the work for us. So I try not to actually have multiple shoots on the same day.

Craig59:35It's pretty rare. And unless it's something where it's like, oh, it's just a B-roll shoot or yeah, something that really it's not working with clients from the interview side, I will not, aside from you to where I can fly to Ontario to kind of do it. I really rarely ever have emails to an interview. And even if I did have someone do an interview, I'll do what I did with yourselves and I'll kind of remote into it and stuff like that.

Craig1:00:02Yeah. It's just I just, that is my specialty is dealing with people, face to face and having them be relaxed on camera and getting them to tell their story, whatever story it is, marketing or some sort of life story, whatever it is, having them be relaxed and authentic on on camera. And that's what I'm kind of good at, so I don't.

Craig1:00:22So I don't trust anyone else to do that. I just I don't have another one of me, but I have a couple of people that work with me and who I am getting more confident for sending them out to do different things. And there's there's a lot of cases. I'll have them go and shoot different things. But when it comes down to the interviewing side of things, it's usually me on on site for sure.

Kyrill1:00:41It's very hard to find people that you can trust with. Like luckily for Dario and myself, is that there's two of us, so at most we usually, we would have, like, maybe two, two projects on the same day. Or if, like, one person has to handle certain projects one week and then the other one can handle other ones, at the very least, we can both kind of pick that up.

Kyrill1:01:02Similar situation as you. It's hard to it's hard to find though. Other people where we where we would ever need it. And like occasionally we send out, shooters if it's like something very simple and straightforward that, that our client will be also, here's the thing. You also have to hire shooters that also know how to at least communicate and coordinate with clients.

Kyrill1:01:21Well, because that is also a skill that is very hard to to, to find. And there's like very few people that we know that we can just trust to just go out and and do it like that because, like, there could be a situation like where Darren and I are tied up on a, on a project, and a client needs something shot.

Kyrill1:01:39Tomorrow, it's like, okay, we call a few, like a handful of people who we know who can do it, and then that's it. But in terms of just pure producing, it's not I mean, I don't I wouldn't say like we don't really have anyone specifically on that unless we're hiring another production company on our end to help us.

Kyrill1:01:57Kind of like how you hired us to go in to help you because you were remote, because there are situations like that where it's like, okay, maybe you you can fly because you're technically available, but there's like, what happens to all the other projects that you're working on back home. It's it's very difficult like that. Right. And like last year we did a project, where we had a client needing something shot in, North Carolina and in, Seattle.

Kyrill1:02:23And it just made sense for one of us to fly out to just kind of produce. We hire local. And I was able to take care of that. While Dario was able to handle some of the other projects that we had on the go in Toronto. And it's but it's it's not always you don't always have that luxury of being able to travel.

Kyrill1:02:38You have to sometimes put your trust in the people that are local, like we do with, with Jake, one of our previous guests, who, who is, out, in, out in the UK. We've hired him for a few projects for one of our own clients. And you have to find those relationships and build them. You have to take a chance at the same time sometimes.

Kyrill1:02:57But, Yeah, it's it's tough.

Craig1:03:01Well, I've got a, pretty strong network of people all across Canada and now some into the US. And because I sometimes I same thing I need to shoot in BC or Calgary or San Francisco or like I have a project upcoming that we need to find a couple production companies in Florida and, Philadelphia and things like that.

Craig1:03:22And I've even heard people in the UK, in Ireland and stuff like that, and even started looking people in Mongolia and stuff like that, like it's all live in Mongolia.

Kyrill1:03:30Wow. Yeah.

Craig1:03:31Yeah. It's just it's like, is there even anyone that I know in Mongolia? But, luckily the client has somebody already on the ground there, but yeah, it's been hand based here and just having as much traction or length of time working with people over the years, I can just usually reach out to people like, I think it was Adam Lawson that recommended me.

Craig1:03:53You to me, and just only because I worked with him once or twice and I'm like, hey, do you know anyone in the area who can be like me? Because he shoots like myself, very similar myself. And I trusted his judgment. And that was the biggest thing. Even though you can Google search and find any kind of review you want and look at people on social media, really the best way is a is a recommendation from somebody who knows somebody.

Craig1:04:16You can say, oh, hey, this person is not a clown or stuff like that. So that's yeah, the best way to do it for sure.

Kyrill1:04:22Yeah. Like that's the best way to get a good sense of like who it is that you're hiring because like you said, reviews, they only tell you so much. And a lot of the time they're reviews from the client's perspective, right? They're not reviews from people that have worked with them on the back end in a way. Right.

Kyrill1:04:38So and I wonder if there's like, if there's like some kind of like video production database, you know, where like people review companies that they've worked with, I don't know. But yeah, like you have you have to get a personal recommendation because then it's like, okay, they've they've actually worked with them. And it went well. There was no problem from a client side or anything like that.

Kyrill1:04:57Great. And now I can also trust them because I trust them. It's like a trust by association kind of thing. And that's how this whole industry works. You know, people tend to hire people when they have some kind of recommendation. That's why you always seeing posts on even socials where it's like, hey, looking for a first day, see, on their like, Instagram Stories or something like that, because they're looking for people that they know to recommend someone, right?

Kyrill1:05:22Because that's the best way to find people, rather than just going on Facebook and just googling for like, crew positions that are at random because you never know what you're going to get at that point.

Craig1:05:31Versus for sure. And we had a large project or we had two just recently, like, the a month and a half ago, I had, I had, we were going to do a four day shoot with Ford and Lincoln with a photographer friend of mine. And I had, brought on another be camera person to do, to be on my team.

Craig1:05:53And so I said yes to the job on like the Wednesday before the for the Monday. And then the next day a client, another client of mine said, hey, remember that project we were talking about like three weeks or a month ago? They want to do it one day. And I'm like, oh, crap. It's like, how am I going to pull it off?

Craig1:06:13Because the relationship, was super important to the client that like, my relationship to my contact was, is it was important good. But their relationship to the end client was like extremely important. So and I was like, okay, well, I can send my, my trusted person down to do that. And they're like, okay, as long as you trust, you know, 100% that they can do what you do, you know, be you, because that is really important to us.

Craig1:06:38I'm like, it sounds like I have to be there as well. But this one was one was already happening. So what what I end up doing was that the the Ford project wasn't happening, was it was kind of like following this media tour. So we they were meeting about an hour and a half away from where we were shooting originally.

Craig1:06:57So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go to the shoot in the morning, and then I'm going to, I'm going to get send my other person, be camera person to go start the other project or the other shoot. And then I'm going to when I finish my shoot, I'm going to get my other person to drive me to them and beat them.

Craig1:07:13So it was a lot of balls in the air for that one. But we definitely made it happen. It was it was pretty. Again, the things were, going back to the idea of like when things are not in your control in terms of schedule, like that's when things can get pretty stressful. So, yeah, you just have to work hard at it and talk to your clients because sometimes people are like, okay, we want to do this shoot on Wednesday.

Craig1:07:33So this is okay. Well, just happy Wednesday. Can it be Thursday or Tuesday? Does it really matter? Because sometimes you're just like, okay, I'll do it no matter what. I'll make it happen. But it's like, well, maybe it's better if you do it on the Friday instead or something like that.

Kyrill1:07:47Scheduling is always a challenging thing. And, we actually just recently went with one of those kind of situations with, our client for a shoot we did yesterday. Originally that shoot was supposed to be today. And what happened was it was basically going to be today. And then the day before was like a set up. They were I went in and just kind of set up everything for an interview.

Kyrill1:08:09It was an interview type setup, right, with teleprompter. Nothing too crazy, but, you know, it's still important stuff for the client. And then on the Thursday, the client reaches out to Dario and says, like, hey, so we just found out that the talent, is, he actually has his flight schedule on Wednesday because he thought we were shooting on Tuesday, when in reality it was Wednesday.

Kyrill1:08:30And so they were talking to us about like, yeah, we just ended up moving everything. This she said, is it possible to have to move the shoot to Tuesday and luckily we did technically have the Tuesday booked off for the set up. So for the shoot itself was not a problem. But it was like if we had something else booked on the Monday, then that could have been potentially a challenge because then someone would have had to go to set up on the Monday for the Tuesday shoot, because the Tuesday issue was scheduled to start very early morning, so we didn't want to spend any time prepping the shot, making sure everything looks fine,

Kyrill1:09:01like we wanted to have like a whole separate half day that was just devoted to that. And then, luckily it all worked out for us. But like, same thing on your end. Like, imagine if we had another shoot on that day. It's like, okay, how would we have.

Dario1:09:15We would we would have been able to make it work because luckily there's two of us. So if both of us were on on different projects and then that happened, that would have been tricky. At that point, it would have had to have been a situation where it's like, if they absolutely had to do it, maybe we could have asked like, another production company, like if they could have helped us with it, like a producer, like we know from another company.

Kyrill1:09:41There's so many ways you can go about it. Like, like at the end of the day, if like if you and I were both scheduled for a shoot on the, on the, on the Monday, it could have potentially been something as simple as, like one of us would go for, for for the client with this one and then hire, another DP to kind of go with the other one on the other shoot.

Kyrill1:10:00So every situation is different, you know, and it's you have to find the best solution, like with the resources you have. And Craig, yours sounded kind of crazy, but you made it work. You know. You know, sometimes that's that you have to do it like that. Like there I've known some producers where they basically had like two crews and for two different shoots, and then they started like half day with one and then go half day to the other, which is kind of what you did.

Kyrill1:10:25You, you did more of like a Jenga type situation where you were kind of like trying to figure out, like the precise timing of it. But you you made it work. And as long at the end of the day, as long as the clients are happy, then you've done your job.

Craig1:10:37Exactly. And I mean, some things happened on the first shoot that was that was that really I needed to be there for? Honestly, that the client was my my first contact to the client was that's what they're paying me for like that because they trust, need to manage things and stuff like that. So yeah, I was a balance for sure.

Dario1:10:55This. Sorry. I have a meeting and in a couple minutes I gotta run to can I. Yeah. It seems like you guys still want to chat. If you guys still want to chat, can I just, leave and then.

Craig1:11:04You could actually, my my time is kind of getting tight here now.

Dario1:11:08Oh, okay. Okay. Good, good. So let's let's let's end the episode then.

Kyrill1:11:12We're already at an hour anyways. Yeah. That was that was good.

Craig1:11:15Yeah. But anytime you ever want to talk again, like. Yeah, let me know. I mean, I love talking about stuff like that because like I said, there's not a lot of people we always get to talk industry to stuff with. So that's great.

Dario1:11:25So guys, if you want to find Craig go to spider video the TV and you guys are based out of oh. Like I forgot the.

Kyrill1:11:34Name Dartmouth, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Dario1:11:36Yeah, exactly.

Kyrill1:11:38What are the two?

Dario1:11:38What what are your, what are your socials? Is it, just,

Craig1:11:42Spider video across the board?

Dario1:11:44Yeah, yeah. So at spider video, follow him on social media and, Yeah, man, thanks for coming on board.

Craig1:11:51Well, thanks. It was great to talk to you. And again, really appreciate, the work that you did for us, there a couple weeks ago. And the stuff looked great. And you did you basically did exactly what I would do had I been there on the day. And that's what I really appreciate.

Dario1:12:06Thank you.

Kyrill1:12:08I video here.

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