Episode 55
From Corporate to Feature Films (ft. Braveman Media)
Damian Fitzsimmons took the long way into the film business. Born in Liverpool and trained as a screenwriter for the BBC, he moved to the States with a romantic plan to write the next great film from his apartment, then found himself detailing cars on weekends just to stay afloat. Instead of waiting for a break, he set up Braveman Media out of his bedroom, brought on head of production Ian LaQua about two years in, and built a South Florida studio one reinvested dollar at a time.
In this episode, Damian joins Dario and Kyrill to trace the whole arc: the scrappy early days of making a $2,000 video look like a $5,000 one, the years of pouring every cent back into the work, the corporate and commercial clients that finally paid the bills, and the leap that gives the episode its title, going from corporate video to directing his first feature film, Across the Rails, a 1970s period piece shot in the South Florida heat with his Emmy-winning best friend behind the camera.
Key Takeaways
- Reinvest before you profit. In the early years Damian and Ian poured every dollar into each production, so a $2,000 job looked like a $5,000 one and the reputation grew faster than the bank account.
- Build the body of work first. For the first three or four years, essentially everything went back into the productions, which is how a bedroom operation earned the corporate and commercial clients that came later.
- Pick a partner who fills your gaps. Damian edited until midnight and Ian LaQua, a night owl with a key to the apartment, took over until five in the morning, turning two people into round-the-clock turnaround times.
- Let corporate work fund the creative swing. Steady corporate and commercial projects, and larger budgets over time, are what eventually made a half-million-dollar feature film even thinkable.
- The relationship greenlights the big job. The feature happened because a corporate client trusted Damian with a personal story, his own 1970s bar, and let him package it into a real movie.
- Constraints shape the shoot. Braveman set and shot the period piece in South Florida partly as a budget decision, a reminder that limitations often decide the creative plan as much as the script does.
Timestamps
From Liverpool and the BBC to South Florida
Damian’s route into video was anything but direct. He grew up in Liverpool in the north of England and built a career as a screenwriter, including writing for the BBC. But he hit a ceiling: to advance, he would have had to write for the soap operas he could not stand, so he chose to head back to the States, where he already had roots. He arrived with a romantic idea, that he would write the next Schindler’s List from his apartment, and a far less romantic reality of a day job in a cafe and weekends spent detailing cars, always broke. Rather than wait to be discovered, he leaned on what he already knew, writing, editing, and shooting, and started Braveman Media out of his bedroom. It is the kind of unglamorous origin story the show hears often, not far from how Dario and Kyrill first started Creatives Grab Coffee.
The Bedroom Days: Making a $2,000 Video Look Like $5,000
About two years in, his business partner and head of production Ian LaQua joined, and the two of them ran on adrenaline and odd hours. Ian, a night owl, had a key to the apartment: Damian would edit until midnight, Ian would let himself in and edit until five in the morning, and clients marveled at the turnaround. The money was tiny. A $2,000 video felt like a windfall, they would barely break even on it, but they poured everything into each one so it looked far more expensive than it was. That instinct, spend the budget on the screen and protect the reputation, is the same tension every owner wrestles with when setting video pricing. It also shows why a complementary business partnership can be worth more than an extra hire in the early days.
“We would barely break even, but because we put everything into the video, it looked like a $5,000 video.”
Damian Fitzsimmons, Braveman MediaGrowing Into Corporate and Commercial Work
For the first three or four years, essentially every dollar went back into the productions. Slowly it compounded into something real: a studio, a roster of solid corporate video clients, good commercial accounts, and steadily larger budgets. That base, the promotional and brand work that keeps the lights on, is what most video companies live on. And through all of it, Damian never stopped wanting to write and direct, the exact pull between paying the bills and chasing the art that the show has dug into before in passion versus business.
The Leap to a Feature Film: Across the Rails
The bigger budgets eventually made the unthinkable thinkable. In 2016, a corporate client came to Braveman with a personal story: he and a few friends had opened a bar in Freeport, Long Island in 1972, back when a bar built for young people was a genuinely new idea. Leaning on his screenwriting background, Damian packaged the anecdotes into a real movie script, and the project became Across the Rails, a period piece with a roughly half-million-dollar budget. The decision to set and shoot it in South Florida was part creative and part financial, a reminder that budgets shape films as much as scripts do, something the show explored from a different angle in the rise and fall of the film industry in Louisiana.
Making it was a baptism by fire. They shot in the thick of a South Florida summer, decking out apartments with no air conditioning to pass for the 1970s. What made it possible was a relationship, not a budget line: Damian’s best friend since he was twelve, the Emmy-winning cinematographer Colin Watkinson, offered to come and shoot the film for a fraction of his usual rate. Watkinson would go on to shoot the first two seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale on the same vintage Canon K35 lenses. Across the Rails went on to win awards, including Best Film at the Liverpool International Film Festival, and is available on Amazon and iTunes.
“I'm like, bro, we couldn't afford to pay for your sandwiches.”
Damian Fitzsimmons, Braveman MediaFrequently Asked Questions
Who is Damian Fitzsimmons?
He is the creative director and co-founder of Braveman Media, a film and animation studio in South Florida. Born in Liverpool, he wrote for the BBC before moving to the States and starting his own company.
What is Braveman Media?
An award-winning film and animation studio based in Delray Beach, Florida. It produces commercials, corporate video, 2D and 3D animation, and narrative film and television, led by Damian Fitzsimmons and head of production Ian LaQua. Site: braveman.media.
What is Across the Rails?
Braveman Media’s first feature film, shot in 2016. It is a 1972-set biopic filmed in South Florida on a roughly half-million-dollar budget, and it won awards including Best Film at the Liverpool International Film Festival. It is available on Amazon and iTunes.
How did Braveman Media get started?
Damian started it out of his bedroom about fifteen years ago, and his business partner Ian LaQua joined around two years later. In the early days they reinvested nearly everything, making small-budget videos look far more expensive in order to build a reputation before a profit.
How did Braveman move from corporate video to feature films?
Steady corporate and commercial work, and steadily larger budgets, made a feature feasible. The jump happened when a corporate client trusted Damian with a personal story, which he packaged into the feature Across the Rails, shot with his Emmy-winning cinematographer friend Colin Watkinson.
The Hosts
Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov are the co-founders of Lapse Productions, a Toronto video production company, and the hosts of Creatives Grab Coffee, a weekly show about the business of video production.
About
Creatives Grab Coffee is a podcast about the business behind video production: sales, strategy, pricing, team building, and everything that happens off camera. New episodes every week on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Lapse Productions is a Toronto-based video production company serving tech, finance, healthcare, and manufacturing clients with corporate, promotional, event, and testimonial video. New to commissioning video? Start with our guide to the types of corporate video.
Braveman Media is an award-winning film and animation studio in Delray Beach, Florida, led by co-founder and creative director Damian Fitzsimmons and head of production Ian LaQua. The team produces commercials, corporate video, 2D and 3D animation, and narrative film and television, from concept through delivery. Its first feature, Across the Rails, was one of the few independent features shot entirely in South Florida, and its TV series Life’s Rewards streams on Amazon Prime. Learn more at braveman.media.
Full Transcript
Read the full episode transcript
Auto-generated and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors. For chapter deep-links into the video, use the Timestamps section above.
Kyrill00:01Oh, you got to head out at two, Damian.
Damian00:04Um, no, I'm good for like an hour and a half, so… Um…
Kyrill00:09Okay, we'll try to stick to the one hour mark for the episode and we'll see if it goes any further.
Damian00:14Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Dario00:17Cool. All right, well, I guess we'll just, oh, I'm starting. OK. So hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode. And we have a, OK, let me just restart that. I'm a little rusty. We haven't done a guest episode in a while. Hey, guys. Welcome back. Today we have another exciting episode for you. We have Damian Fitzsimmons from Braveman Media. So Damian, welcome to the show.
Kyrill00:17All right, Dario, take it away.
Damian00:41Thank you, thanks for having me guys, appreciate it.
Dario00:45So I guess we'll just start with the backstory. We'll get that out of the way and then we can dive into some more exciting topics. Because I know everyone always gets annoyed by the backstories, but hey, we've got to know who these people are, right? So, David, I'll let you. Yeah.
Kyrill00:57The 411. Ha ha ha.
Damian00:57Yeah. All right, I'll try, I will try and give you the Cliff Notes. Yeah. So I'm Damian Fitzsimmons, I'm the creative director and co-owner of Braveman Media. You might hear that I got an accent. I'm originally from Liverpool in the North of England. I moved back here about 15 years ago. I used to write for TV. I wrote for the BBC.
Damian01:26It was cool. But I got to a point in my career there where if I wanted to advance, I had to get onto one of the soap operas. And I don't watch soap operas, I hate soap operas. And I just was like, you know, I'd rather just come back to the States where I had some roots. So I came back to the States about 15 years ago. I had this super romantic idea. I was going to write, you know, the next Schindler's List in my apartment. I had a day job in a cafe. Next thing you know, I'm detailing cars at the weekend always broke and I'm like yeah I got to do something else. So I was a very competent writer, I knew how to edit, I was a pretty good shooter and so I set up a little company in my bedroom called Braveman Media. My business partner and head of production Ian LaQua joined me about two years after I kicked it off. And yeah, that's where we're at today, you know, no longer a starving artist, which is great. And it's, you know, it's challenging because I still, my love is still to write and direct. But I feel fortunate that I am in a industry that allows me to be creative every day.
Kyrill02:34Thanks for watching!
Damian02:53And so, so yeah, that's, that's where we're at. So I guess that's the backstory. Ian and I are both really keen on film and making films. So we started out of my bedroom and it was kind of funny. Like we would have like these crazy insane deadlines and we would do double shifts. Ian's a bit of a night owl. So he had a key to my apartment. I would like edit till midnight and then he would let himself in and then edit till five o'clock in the morning. We'd get our edits out, you know, Oh my god, these guys' turnarounds are insane. They're so good. And we originally, you know, again, this is 15 years ago, someone would say, hey, we've got $2,000, can you do a video? We'd be so excited. Oh my god, we've got $2,000. And we would like, you know, we would barely break even. Making no profit we would barely make break even but because we put everything into the video It looked like it was a $5,000 video. So That's how we progressed, you know and for the first Three or four years we just everything went back into the everything was into the production into the production. So eventually we got a studio, you know and We got some great corporate clients. We had some really good commercial clients and And we're regularly doing much larger budget projects. Then we had an opportunity, 2016, we shot our first feature film. So a client of ours approached us, wanted to do sort of a biopic, but it was fun. Him and a couple of buddies opened up a bar in Freeport, Long Island in 72. And at the time, a bar for young people was a new thing. So he wanted to tell that story
Damian04:52anecdotes and I'm like oh we need to let's package this into a real movie which is what we did we packaged it into a real movie script and then again leaning into my experience as a screenwriter and yeah it was a lot of fun we had a half a million dollar budget so you know and we made the decision to shoot in South Florida to set it in South Florida That was a budgetary consideration, but it was a period piece. It was set in 1972. And my best friend from high school is a very successful, he's an Emmy award-winning cinematographer called Colin Watkinson. And if you've seen The Handmaid's Tale, Colin shot the first two seasons of that. He's, yeah, he's about to go out to Thailand to shoot Alien.
Kyrill05:40Oh wow.
Dario05:41and
Kyrill05:47The new Alien movie?
Dario05:47Wait, they're doing another alien?
Damian05:49The new TV series, TV series with, who's the show runner, with the show runner from Fargo. Noah, I forget his name, but the show runner's, yeah. So anyway, so Colin's like my best friend. We've known each other since we were 12.
Kyrill05:51Oh.
Dario05:53They're doing an alien series, huh?
Dario05:59Oh, yeah.
Kyrill06:01That's pretty cool.
Damian06:07We really became close friends around 16 17 and We would like we just dreamed of living in America, you know, that's just you know, we these kids from Liverpool. So Just just as an art, you know, so I said, hey, Colin, I'm shooting this movie. You know, I got a little budget. And he's like, send me the script. And I send him a script. He's like, dude, I'll come and shoot it for you. I'm like, bro, we couldn't afford to pay for your sandwiches. And he's like, no, come on. I'll take a few weeks off work. I'll tell my agents I want to do something different. So, and that was an experience of a lifetime to shoot a feature film with your high school best friend who's still your, you know. just was fabulous, was really, it's called Across the Rails. It's available on Amazon and iTunes. I can always, yeah, check it out, check it out. So that was cool. Baptism by Fire.
Dario06:46What's the name of the feature called?
Kyrill06:57definitely check it out.
Damian07:04We shot in the middle of the summer in South Florida, it was brutal. And we needed these apartments. We got a free apartment, we decked it out so it looked like it was from the 70s. But it had no AC. You have no idea, it was just like… But anyway, we got it done, it was really cool. We won a couple of awards. And actually Colin…
Dario07:21Oof.
Damian07:31That was before he did Handmaid's Tale, so he actually got to play around with some stuff on our movie that eventually… I'm not taking any credit for Colin, but like the same lenses that we shot our movie on, they shot the first two seasons of Handmaid's Tale on these Canon K35, so it's old lenses. Yeah, super cool. So that was awesome, and then because of that, you know, we… Oh, sorry.
Dario07:49Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Kyrill07:50Oh, that's really cool.
