Social Media is Changing Video (ft. BTV.UK)

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Dario Nouri00:00What do you mean you don't have any coffee? You haven't had coffee?

Kyrill Lazarov00:01All right. I didn't have time. I started with just I only have water right now. So.

Dario Nouri00:07The name of the podcast is Creatives Grab Coffee.

Kyrill Lazarov00:10So Jake, get this, Dario does this thing where like every few months he likes to say, that's it, I'm done with coffee. And then like three weeks later, he's like just like casually drinking it as if like he never said it. It's like a trend for him. It's like a three week, one month cycle.

Jake Barrett00:16and we'll see you next time.

Jake Barrett00:21Ha ha ha!

Dario Nouri00:24I have an excuse, I have, listen, listen, I have an excuse, okay, it's allergy season, that stuff, that medication puts me to sleep. I need something, what am I gonna do?

Kyrill Lazarov00:33There's always an excuse. All right. Well guys, let's get into it. Welcome everybody to another episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. Today we welcome our next guest from the UK, Jake from BTV. Welcome Jake.

Dario Nouri00:35Ha ha.

Jake Barrett00:48Welcome, how are you guys? You well?

Kyrill Lazarov00:51doing all right. It's like what, three o'clock, your time there right now and we're just…

Jake Barrett00:56Yeah, it's two in the afternoon at the moment. Yeah, so where is it's Creatives Grab Coffee for you guys? Obviously I'm in the UK, so I have tea.

Kyrill Lazarov01:04just before you move on to the beer in the evening, right? Right?

Dario Nouri01:06that yes i was gonna say that that

Jake Barrett01:07Yeah, absolutely. There's about a 3pm cut off for that, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov01:12Oh, 3pm is the cutoff. Nice. Before we kind of like jump into the conversation a little bit, Jake, give us a little background on who you are and who BTV is.

Jake Barrett01:14Yeah.

Dario Nouri01:14Hehehehe

Jake Barrett01:23Yeah, okay, no worries at all. So yeah, hello, my name's Jake Barrett and I've been working in the world of film, TV for about 12 years now. I studied film and television and then went straight into essentially the work straight after that. So I had the decision of whether to choose to go to university or whatever I decided I wanted to do. But I'd met so many people during my time studying film that I thought, actually, I'm just gonna get straight stuck into it essentially. So… Went straight into work experience, did a year and a half of just doing work for free and just grafting for as many people as possible. And did a few nice TV shows over here, so a couple of documentaries for Channel 4 over here, as well as a show called The Gadget Show, which is quite a well-known show over here. I'm not sure if you guys have heard or have that over there. But essentially did that and then very quickly got into the world of advertising and commercials. So it's a much more… approachable, much easier in the industry, I suppose, rather than working in broadcast, etc. So I've owned production companies, I've then worked in-house at agencies as head of film managing their clients, and I've seen various roles, of course, over my career, but essentially I'm now at a position where my strength is as a producer, and I set up BTV back three years ago now, so about two weeks before our first lockdown. COVID, which was an interesting time to start a business, as I'm sure you could imagine. But, you know, we continue to grow. We've had some fantastic relationships with some of the marketing agencies that we work with, you know, who we've got good relationships with as an approved film partner. And one of the first clients that we managed to secure was TikTok. So back in the day, we had an inquiry come through for this new social media platform called the TikTok. And we're literally sitting here going,

Dario Nouri02:55Yeah.

Dario Nouri03:19Haha.

Jake Barrett03:20Right, okay, what's this all about? Essentially, yeah, so they, we ended up doing, I think it was about 365 films for them through 2020. And these were all their ads that they were then putting out on Snapchat and Facebook, Instagram, trying to convert people essentially to this ever-growing new beast, which is of course now TikTok. So that was really sort of the start of the work that we were doing here at BTV. And then through…

Dario Nouri03:21Hehehehe

Kyrill Lazarov03:22Oh.

Kyrill Lazarov03:32Whoa.

Jake Barrett03:48the last two and a half years we've just grown really from there from strength to strength. So there's four of us internally as a team and as a unit and we are many producers and that's why we said that we're a producer led video production team and by that we've got a slogan called the bigger picture and what that means is that you've got the end piece, you've got the end video that you produce, you know, and that's all good but the amount of times that we speak to clients who say to us… Oh, it was good, yeah, but the process of getting there was just an absolute nightmare. And that's what we're here to challenge. It's looking at all of those things around production that could go wrong that we make sure don't go wrong. And that's why we call that the bigger picture of looking around that end piece that we're producing. And that's the focus of our business. So… There's the four of us who manage that day to day, and then we've got around about 150 freelance professionals who we pull in and build the right teams for the right projects. So everything from directors through to runners and everything in between. And essentially, yeah, that's who we are as BTV, and I'm sure we'll get into a bit of the work a little bit later on, but that's a bit of an overview anyway for you.

Kyrill Lazarov04:44Mm-hmm.

Dario Nouri04:59That covers a lot of the landscape for us again.

Jake Barrett05:04Okay, I'll leave them. Thank you very much.

Kyrill Lazarov05:04A lot of the questions, a lot of the, yeah, yeah, that's the shortest episode ever. Yeah, like I had like a few questions and then as you kind of were going on that I feel like a lot of them were answered right there. I'm like, all right, he only started it three years ago. How has it already gotten to this point? And then when you said that you rode the coattail of the TikTok growth, I'm like, oh, okay, that explains a lot of it right there.

Dario Nouri05:13He answered it.

Dario Nouri05:28How much of an eye roll did you do when they're like, yeah, we want to shoot a lot of this, like all this content in 9×16. You're like, ugh, coming from film and TV, you're like, oh my God.

Jake Barrett05:34Yeah, well there was a lot of

Kyrill Lazarov05:37It's…

Jake Barrett05:39There's a lot of challenges around that, of course. And yeah, we were finding that it was interesting to try and learn how to adapt to film, because of course, the thing is, is that they also wanted the assets to be used in 916, obviously iPad 4 Max as well. So we're literally going, we've got to shoot it all this wide. There's no depth of field now in the shots whatsoever. It's all flat. And essentially that's, we've…

Kyrill Lazarov05:45Ahem.

Jake Barrett06:05So we ended up shooting it all from two camera angles in the end. So we'd have the same creative, but we'd literally have two cameras married up next to each other so that at least we could get some shed of quality out of the assets that we were trying to produce.

Dario Nouri06:17Hehehehe

Kyrill Lazarov06:20Oh, so it's kind of like the hot, like, uh, like what happened with Peter Jackson and the hobbit where he had like two reds right next to each other, except you had one camera reversed for the vertical format, right? Ha ha ha ha.

Jake Barrett06:29Yeah, exactly.

Dario Nouri06:30Wait, why do they have two cameras for…

Kyrill Lazarov06:34Oh, it's cause he was doing 3D. So he had it with like two reds, kind of like one was like filming this way, one was up here on a mirror filming sideways. It was a very weird setup, but yeah. Anyways, like, oh yeah, like, you know what it is? 3D is now, look, it's like it's in your home when in reality it is in your home now with Netflix. So,

Dario Nouri06:38Uh oh.

Dario Nouri06:42Oh, okay. Oh, interesting. 3D that kind of just went away. You don't hear about that anymore.

Dario Nouri06:58Hehehehehehe

Jake Barrett06:59Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov07:02The other thing I was going to ask was, basically, we can now attribute to the success of TikTok, then to you guys. Is that correct?

Jake Barrett07:10Well, maybe in the UK we've had something to do with the growth anyway. Yeah, it's it was it was really interesting. I think that I think that since Tick Tock, you know, not only with just my work, but actually as an industry as a whole, you know, the shift that we've seen in the type of work that people want to produce has changed dramatically since there's likes of Tick Tock coming, coming to form. So, you know.

Kyrill Lazarov07:19Ahem.

Jake Barrett07:36Maybe it's not a great thing that I've been involved with that launch and maybe sometimes it is, I'm not sure.

Dario Nouri07:41What would you say is the change that you've noticed?

Jake Barrett07:44So I think if, you know, the sort of general run of the projects that we do can vary massively. So we'll have the run of the mill day-to-day projects, which are, you know, corporate interviews, just shooting them as nicely as possible for people, through to we've currently got a TV commercial in the works for a large automotive brand, which is really exciting. And that's us kind of relaunching this brand into the UK. So that's a… positive and exciting one and we're lucky to have a variety of projects there but what we've kind of seen on a whole is that the industry over the last six months in the UK has been a real challenge. You know, the average spend on TV and broadcast content is down about 67% on a whole compared to last year and then even more the year before that. There's been a real… sort of difficult time for people and we're finding that that's because people are turning to this always on content. So it's this always on content where, you know, people would decide to instead of spend, I don't know, £20,000, £30,000 on one single piece of 30 second film, they're spending the same budget but this time it's going over multiple assets and actually that's got to expand over a three month period. and these particular projects that they want to create, they're quick, they want them turned around fast, they want them to be on trends with things that are happening currently with either current affairs or certain topical things that are happening in the world. And we're finding that we're having to, we're getting briefs, you know, with far less lead time than we used to. And we're finding that the deadlines are so quick, so, you know, gone are the days of us having two months notice for something. We're now saying we need this on air in a month, and it's a large project, and you're thinking, okay, fine, we're gonna have to move a lot quicker than normal. So we're finding a lot more of that. But I think people's sort of appreciation of a lot of the content that we produce isn't as high as it used to be. And I find that what we're finding is that, people don't care if we say that we're shooting on reds, and if we're gonna get this in, we're gonna use these toys and whatever. They're like, yeah, great, cool. How is that going to be better?

Jake Barrett10:00than me doing it on an iPhone. And actually, that's the alternatives for them, is that they're kind of having to value that difference. So, for example, in a restaurant, they're not necessarily that interested in creating high-end content. If they can go out with their iPhone, use a little gimbal, and go and get some nice cocktail videos, because at the end of the day, if that gets them conversion or interaction on their Instagram channels, and therefore people are booking their restaurants and sitting down in those seats, that's all they care about. So… trying to justify the level of quality that we produce, I find is becoming more and more difficult. And I think that that's been something that I think has really changed over the last two, three, four years. Now, whether that's TikTok and the likes of platforms like that, or whether it's because of the pandemic, I'm not sure. But there's something that's happened and there's been a real shift in the industry.

Dario Nouri10:51I wonder if that's just because you need to constantly post on a lot of these social media apps so the budget just wouldn't be there if you have to do like a high level production versus like something that's lower budget but at least it can pump out more content because that's generally how these algorithms work right? You're constantly posting content.

Jake Barrett11:09Absolutely.

Kyrill Lazarov11:11quantity has become like the currency almost in a way now in the industry because like before even TikTok, so much content was being thrown onto YouTube as it was. I forget what the statistic was, but it was like 100,000 hours are like uploaded every day onto YouTube or something like that, maybe even more. And then when TikTok came around, you're now even posting more and more and more bite-sized content. So to compete, you need to… you need to have more that you can post on a more consistent basis. And because of that, I'm like wondering like how the perception of quality has now changed. Like back in the day, people would be like, oh, that 30 second ad or whatever was like really cool, you know, the great story, this and that. Whereas now it's like, did you manage to tell the story in like 10 seconds and do you have like 10 versions of that? That is a quality piece then, right? So I feel like things have really shifted in that regard when it comes to producing like quantity content which are changing the perception of quality at this point as well.

Dario Nouri12:12I wonder if it's just an additional thing. Like you still need to create the high quality content, but now you also need to create lower quality, but quantity content or whether it's just replacing.

Jake Barrett12:12Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov12:23It's not that it's lower quality, but it's like different quality.

Jake Barrett12:24Yeah.

Jake Barrett12:28Yeah, there is. I think it's moral.

Dario Nouri12:28It is lower quality. I mean like social media content is not high quality content. Let's be honest here It's meant to be because even when they when you do get like the briefs from clients is meant to be like hey We can't make this look we've literally gotten some briefs where it say don't make it look good Which means make it look like like an influencer or a normal person shot it right? Shake yeah. Yeah, like literally got that on briefs. So because yeah, they're not I mean you're asking a non-professional to

Kyrill Lazarov12:32That's true.

Kyrill Lazarov12:41Yeah, I know.

Kyrill Lazarov12:48shake the camera as much as you can.

Jake Barrett12:49Yeah, exactly.

Kyrill Lazarov12:53Yeah.

Jake Barrett12:53Yeah, right, right.

Dario Nouri12:57create content, it's not going to be good.

Jake Barrett12:59You are right, people definitely want more organic looking, user generated content, 100% and that is something that we are seeing with the majority of briefs that we are getting for people. In fact, people don't want to be advertised to, and you look at the minute that you are scrolling on your feeds and you see that something is an ad based video, people just scroll past it basically.

Dario Nouri13:20You know what my theory is on that though? They don't want it to look like a good, like an ad piece because they want you to get tricked by it. Because sometimes when I'm on reels, I'll go, and then sometimes it'll take me like five seconds to go, oh, wait a minute, this is an ad, and I'll skip it, right? That's what I think the real reason is for it. Just get, have you on it long enough to go like, okay, we register the statistic, and then whatever, they skip it, what not.

Kyrill Lazarov13:23Ahem.

Jake Barrett13:36Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov13:37Yeah.

Jake Barrett13:39Yeah, I agree.

Kyrill Lazarov13:46You know, you know, it's like a filter for, oh, sorry. Go ahead, Jake.

Jake Barrett13:46It's- I was just going to say that I think it's really interesting how much content we consume now, you know, compared to previously. So I think now, you know, even if you look at the way that we watch mainstream content, a two hour film feels really long, you know. And actually, you're very used now to watching things in a 45, 50 minute burst, going making a drink, me tea, you coffee, whatever it is that you want, and then going back and watching another, you know, 45 minutes, whatever. I think that has changed, but I think it's the same on social content as well. I mean, just by way of experiment, the other day, my girlfriend loves a little bit of TikTok and she'll sit on it in the morning, even if it's just for 10 minutes, and she'll have a little scroll through. There might be a little bit of a session on it, even after dinner. And she's not on it a lot, but that's why I wanted to test this theory of somebody who isn't actually on it a lot, how much content they're really consuming on there. And I spent…

Kyrill Lazarov14:30Cough cough

Jake Barrett14:45You can go onto your data and whatever else and you can see how many videos you've watched. And basically, in a day, she'd watched about 680 videos, you know, and you're looking at that. That feels like a ridiculous amount. But if you're sitting there just kind of, no, no, you're soon getting through them. And that's the point. I think we're all so used now to literally having that much media thrown at us all the time that…

Kyrill Lazarov14:53Whoa.

Dario Nouri14:54God damn.

Jake Barrett15:09you try and create something that's a little bit more long form, even as a 10 or a 30 second high end piece, and people are just like, nah. People's attention spans are completely gone and I think that's a society change as well, as just an industry thing really, or the way that we market products. There's a lot of adaptation that we're having to do.

Kyrill Lazarov15:30This basically goes back to like how the way we used to be advertised as a society was people would sit down in front of TV or computer and these would be platforms where they will throw the ads at you and you have to sit there and watch it because that's the broadcasted program. It's not like you have the choice to choose what you're watching or anything like that. And then Netflix was one of like the first… platforms that allowed audiences to kind of choose what they watch, how long they watch it, what they want to watch. And now with TikTok, the power is so insanely easy. Like you said, it's like, you could make like a 10 second piece that is amazing and someone can go like, eh, eh, eh. That decision is so fast now compared to what it used to be. And I feel like it's only getting faster. Like the second you said that you watched 680 videos in one day, I can see it just like this going through the videos. And one funny thing I've noticed was some reels. Like as a filter, if it starts with music, it's usually an ad. If it starts without music, it's not an ad. It's like a regular, it's a regular piece. Yeah, like think about it. Like when you start watching, who makes like a random video and decides to start with actual music? Unless it's like someone on their bike riding, you know, and they want something cool, like to accompany what they're doing. But if it's like someone's like sitting down doing something and there's music that starts playing like.

Jake Barrett16:25Thank you.

Dario Nouri16:32Oh, that's good. That's a good catch.

Kyrill Lazarov16:52in the background, like that's usually an ad. That's what I've noticed now. Ha ha ha.

Dario Nouri16:55That's a good catch man

Jake Barrett16:56That is a very good point. It is a very good point. Yes, that's the deal. Maybe it is, maybe that is the case. You know. So what we've had to do over here is we've got BTV as this more traditional production company by way of producing higher end, more single 30, 10 second pieces, as well as the corporate world of things that we do. And that will always be there, but…

Kyrill Lazarov17:00So no music in your next reel. That's the trick.

Dario Nouri17:02Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say…

Jake Barrett17:25The start of this year was incredibly quiet. It's been the quietest period that not only I've known for my career, but it's been echoed massively through the industry over here.

Dario Nouri17:38Is it, how's the, what's the economic state in the UK right now? Like, like I'm just trying to see if maybe it has to do with the, the, the economy there, like, uh, yeah. Okay. So same, same here.

Jake Barrett17:42What do you mean, sorry?

Jake Barrett17:48Well, the economy is awful. Yeah. How, I mean, yeah. Well, we've, I mean, okay, so yeah, you know, energy bills are through the roof. It's the worst that it's been in years, you know, just everything, energy bills are through the roof. Bills that used to be £100 are now for £400, £500 a month. You find that you've got the likes of, you know, there's companies that are sadly going bump or being taken over all the time.

Kyrill Lazarov17:54It's always awful.

Dario Nouri17:56We've had good periods.

Jake Barrett18:15There's just this cost of living crisis essentially is what we're going through right now and because of that so many people are tightening their belts and sadly you know video for marketing and marketing as a whole is one of those easy overheads to cut fairly quickly and I always say that it's first cut sort of lasting you know reinstated essentially and that is something that we've had to fight. You know the as I say the I think that a lot of, I mean, it depends on what side of the industry you're looking at, right? So broadcast and TV shows, they're really quiet at the moment because a lot of people made shows and almost banked shows during COVID. You know, they made a lot more content during that period. And because of that, they've kind of come out of it. And actually, they've already got content for two or three years already made. So you find that the broadcast side of things has been quite quiet. From an advertising perspective, as I say, a lot of companies are sadly having to cut their…

Dario Nouri19:01Okay.

Jake Barrett19:09you know, cut their overheads and they're cutting staff and all the rest of that just because there's so many industries right now that are going through a really difficult time and because everything has just gone so expensive. It doesn't matter whether it's supplies and you're a building company or, you know, even whether it's what we do, you know, camera kit is up 35% in certain areas. There's just nothing that you can do about that. So because of that reason, we've had to, we sat there at the beginning of the year and The January wasn't too bad because we had a fallout of work from December. But then the minute that February hit, up until mid-April, it's been a really challenging time of just no emails coming in, no phone calls happening, sitting there every day going, we're ready for these guys. Where is this work? What's going on? And we sort of sat there and said, what are we going to do? So what we decided to do was come up with a separate brand, which we called Dash.

Kyrill Lazarov19:40Ahem.

Jake Barrett20:11Dash Video, which is this digital first ultra-fast video production team. It was a package-based video solution for people who essentially need video on the regular to feed these voracious, hungry social media channels and digital channels. Now, it doesn't have to just be social media. It could be a company that needs to do a range of how-to videos, for example. or product explainers or they want to recruit staff and they've got various roles that they want to put videos out for. Show homes and property companies that want to show people a little tour of a new development that they've been building. There's so many different uses and applications for this. So essentially what we came up with is a package based solution, three price points, somebody can choose which price point works for them as a base and then essentially we're looking for either a six or 12 month commitment.

Jake Barrett21:02for that fee they get a certain amount of assets from us every single month. So it's either 5, 10 or 15 depending on which package you choose but it meant that essentially they committed to us which naturally gives us some guaranteed income of knowing what's coming through the door. It's no longer a project by project basis and we can plan ahead but also it means that they're always going to have content fresh for their channels and it means that it can continually be refreshed. and they're not every month having to think of, oh, well, this is getting a little bit tired now. We need to do a recut of that. It's automatically planned in every single month. So this is a brand new sort of scheme, essentially, that we've set up this company. It's only been going for about three weeks. We've had some fantastic feedback on the initial launch of that so far. And hopefully that will get us in with some agencies that will commit to us. And there's a couple of ways we can do it, either as a direct client, you know, just for conversation sake, BMW, you might want to say, okay, well, we will commit to a Dash package for six months. But actually, certain clients might not want that commitment, and if that's the case, the marketing agency or a marketing agency can make that commitment to us, and then they can use us on different clients every month if they want to. So, fine, if you want to put us out for that one, cool, no worries, we'll do that. Next month, actually, we want to use this month's quota for this client, okay? I don't mind. You can do whatever you want with that. but essentially it means that you've got constant flow of stuff from us coming in and you can allocate it where we want and we know that we're getting the work come through. But it was a way that I'm really trying to support the industry over here massively. So there's not much over here in the UK by way of communities, groups that really sort of bring everybody together in the creative industry. There's not really many unions or anything like that. It's just that everybody's basically freelance and it's a free for all. And there might be a few community groups that people do it, but that's it. Everyone's after each other and that's just the way that it is. There's people that of course try. There's things like the BFI, there's the APA, which is the producers association and that's there for more production company level. But in terms of for filmmakers, boots on the ground people.

Kyrill Lazarov22:59Oh, wow.

Jake Barrett23:19The lack of support for people is something that really bothers me and I've seen a lot of people through this difficult few months find that really hard because of course they're working from home, they're on their own, they don't know where to find the work because they're waiting for production companies to give it to them and they're not, you know, with respect, the best business people in the world to go out and understand how to get that work so they're working for production companies because they're great creatives. So What we've decided to do is we would love to develop Dash as a platform and potentially through BTV as well, whereby the entire process becomes app based. So for clients, they download the app, they essentially can choose their package, they sign up to it and it's almost like having a gym membership. Every month it'll say time to choose your options, time to choose your bits and bobs, time to book any film dates, all of that works through the app. On the flip side of that, you're a member of crew who can become Dash. approved or BTV approved. We've pre-approved you with understanding of your creative level, your skill set and interaction with people, but also your camera equipment and what you've got on hand. We will pre-agree rates that are almost like universal across the board. So you won't have a cameraman who's on £500 and another one who's on £1000. It's a flat level for that role. And what will happen is that once you become approved, you'll If a DASH or a BTV job comes in, it pops up on the app to that person, almost like an Uber driver would, job available in your area tomorrow. They can press on it, the brief is all on the app, they can see all the information, they can accept the job and then basically off they go, they do that job, submit everything through the app back to us in terms of their mileage, any additional costs, they sign it off at various stages, they send the footage back through to us, either… depending on file size, right, we transfer or on a drive, and then job done, they get paid for that job and away they go. But what we see is that actually that becomes something that, you know, could potentially become a little bit of a paid service from Crew. Now we don't want that to be a lot, but we're saying that, you know, if you were able to become part of the Dash or the BTV portal for £9.99 a month, for example, not only are you giving yourself access to the jobs that we can bring in for you,

Kyrill Lazarov25:34Ahem.

Jake Barrett25:43We want to have different things on the app, so we want to have forums, we want to have mental health support where you can talk to somebody anonymously to help you with things. There's video podcasts much like this one where we've spoken to professionals, etc. It becomes this real portal and source of information for people in our industry and bring everybody together as a community with events and awards and all sorts of things like that. And at the moment there is nothing like that whatsoever being done. and we think that that is the future for how we can get, you know, bring essentially production and crew all together under one roof and manage it with our sort of level of high standards that we expect from both parties really. So I know I'm waffling on a little bit, but that's where I can see where we want to try and take production and move it away from everybody working siloed and individually and just not really knowing what progression there is for them.

Kyrill Lazarov26:35Yeah, I don't think anyone's done anything like that anywhere, to be honest. Like I, the, like there are some companies like here in Canada where they've had like a network of production companies and creatives that the, like, that basically would sign up for jobs or get reached out to for certain jobs. But those are all unique and specific types of jobs, whereas like you're trying to go with the more packaged kind of style for it. At least like trying to standardize everything on the client side and standardizing everything from.

Dario Nouri26:35It's pretty interesting.

Kyrill Lazarov27:07the crew and supplier side. And I think that's the only way really to potentially make it work. So I'm really curious to see how that goes. Definitely let us know how you progress in that.

Dario Nouri27:20I also like how you're looking at it from like the you're trying to help out freelancers in a way. Because I feel like that's a lot of times like what Kierl and I do is like we do have a roster of freelancers and we do like giving them work and whatnot because it helps. It helps the, you know, the community out in a bit. And it's good. I like I like that angle.

Kyrill Lazarov27:26Yeah.

Dario Nouri28:31for f-

Kyrill Lazarov28:31They had, there were some at one point. Like there was a source called mandy.com that used to be decent in the early 2010s. Cause I managed to get a few.

Dario Nouri28:42What do you mean by research? Like trying to find freelancers, you mean?

Kyrill Lazarov28:48Okay.

Kyrill Lazarov28:52Yeah, it's not good anymore.

Dario Nouri28:54It's ancient, yeah.

Dario Nouri29:11We don't really, I mean, like us in particular, we don't use union. We have our roster of creatives that we've built through like a referral network, and then that's basically how we've been able to find our crew members. So usually, for example, if like we, over the years we've just been connected to different people and then, you know, if that person's busy, they'll connect us to other people, and that's sort of how our network has grown. There is a, yeah, there is a pretty big.

Kyrill Lazarov29:13No.

Kyrill Lazarov29:35Like a spider web.

Dario Nouri29:39producer facebook group uh… things called a new producer i need uh… what is it the the but i

Kyrill Lazarov29:45I need a producer, fixer, this and that basically. It's like this one massive Facebook group that a lot of people like go to for jobs and things like that.

Dario Nouri29:54Yeah, but we, yeah, for jobs like, yeah, that's usually how you can find some freelancers, but for us in particular, we've just been using a lot of referrals because I like, again, I like the industry is big, but it's small at the same time, it's a lot of word of mouth. So you don't want to bring on someone that is a dud because it does. Like it could potentially kill your, your, your job prospects with that particular client. So we don't like to take risks like that. So yeah, we don't have like a big resource in terms of finding freelancers. There are ways to do it, but we usually try to take the safe approach.

Kyrill Lazarov31:12Oh well.

Dario Nouri31:43I think we're kind of like that in Canada, then it's sort of isolated. But because Canada is so big, that's the thing, right?

Kyrill Lazarov31:48Yeah. Well, there's a lot of different types of industry in Canada because of how big of a country it is. So there's different, like from what we've talked with a lot of different creatives in different provinces, like the types of clients and work and industry that they focus on in their regions is completely different to like what we would be doing here in Toronto, Canada or anything like that. It's funny that you mentioned in terms of building the community aspect, which is kind of like what we're in a way doing with Creatives Grab Coffee as well. Kind of like interviewing all these different creatives in different provinces to kind of build a network of people that can trust each other or at least reach out to, with confidence saying, hey, I was on the show, this is what I do, yada, yada, yada. Here's my episode if you wanna get to know who I am. I think building community is an essential thing in any part of the world for this industry because I agree, when you start, you start completely alone as a creator or as a videographer or whatever. You don't know where to start, you don't know where to go and then you just kind of get connected to some people and then you just kind of start hopping from network to network to network, depending on your skill, depending on what you're trying to do. And there's no like… one main resource to kind of look to and think like, all right, this is where I can get like some solid advice. You know, there used to be YouTube when I started. I'm like, all right, what do I do? All right, all that's available is YouTube with random people creating video content and tutorials. This is how I'll begin. I'm sure it was something similar for you when you began, right Jake?

Kyrill Lazarov34:26Yeah, but I feel like when you get those early jobs with the lower rates, that's kind of the time to try things, to learn things. That's when you build your first initial experience. I remember the very first videos we were creating, or the ones that we were creating was $150 a video. Blanket rate, and that's all we were doing. But I found that we were doing such random projects that we were able to kind of learn different things quickly. rather than just, you know, it's like, all right, I'm not gonna start charging like a really expensive price right off the bat. You may not get as many jobs in the beginning and then you won't learn as quickly. I find like in the beginning, like you said, do free work, obviously to an extent, or like really low rate work, so that you can do a lot early on and you can learn quickly. That's the best way to learn. Like do as much as you can, as fast as you can to learn.

Dario Nouri36:33Hehehehe

Kyrill Lazarov36:46Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov36:53Yeah.

Dario Nouri37:38Hehehehe…

Dario Nouri37:49Well, it's always gonna be like that. It's only a small percentage of people that will see past the superficial and go deeper.

Kyrill Lazarov37:58Well, that's like a desire that people have had for decades. This is not something new in terms of like, I wanna be famous, right? But the definition of famous has kind of changed in terms of like, what do the younger generations consider to be a famous person? Where like back in the day, we used to think movie stars, that was the famous person. So everybody wanted to be a famous actor. Now everybody wants to be a famous YouTuber or TikToker. Yeah, exactly. Those… Yeah.

Dario Nouri38:17Now it's TikTok stars. No, no, social media, oh, influencer, that's what they all want to be.

Kyrill Lazarov38:24Or influencer, but I did hear that now, like the top job that a lot of younger people say they wanna be in the future is a YouTuber. That's like one of the highest, like, mentioned dream jobs that a lot of kids now kinda say, which is like, that's such a broad term now, especially as well. It's like, you know, you can create a YouTube channel about, you know, like fixing cars. You know, that's a YouTuber right there. You could be, I don't know, like, I don't know what there's so many like you see that's that's what I mean. I can't even like think of one off the top of my head that easily

Dario Nouri38:58I think you can just sum it up to they just want to be popular, right? Movie stars are just popular people, right? It's just a symptom of society, you know? Something wrong with society when people just want attention.

Kyrill Lazarov39:01That's it, yeah, they wanna be famous.

Kyrill Lazarov39:06Exactly.

Kyrill Lazarov39:14Attention is the currency. Yeah, attention is the currency now Love exactly. That's what it is

Dario Nouri39:16Gotta love your kids, people. Love your kids, give them attention. Hug your kids, god damn it.

Kyrill Lazarov40:19Don't know about that.

Dario Nouri40:20I think, I wonder because I see a lot less of my friends posting about their personal lives. I can't even, I don't even know how people have the time to post about it to be honest with you. I just go on these social media apps for the reels and I just send them to the same five, six people. I find something funny, send it to them and that's it. That's the only reason I go on these apps anymore is just find funny stuff to send to my friends while I'm just taking a quick 10 minute break.

Kyrill Lazarov40:28Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov40:45Cause they're, sorry, it's because now our generation went from like posting about personal stuff to posting about their careers, right? I think we talked about this in one episode where like.

Dario Nouri40:58on LinkedIn.

Kyrill Lazarov40:58When we were younger, everyone was on Facebook. Everyone was on Facebook posting this, this, this, and this. And then everyone got jobs and they got their careers. So now everybody kind of migrated to LinkedIn. So on LinkedIn, that's the business world. So everyone's gonna be posting about the business side of things. And if you look at any of like other people within our network who is in video production, what do they post on social media? Behind the scenes, on set. some of the work that they do and everything like that. And it's funny that you mentioned that Jake, where you know like everyone's kind of sharing their behind the scenes or the best projects that they're kind of doing. It's like, okay, that is like the best project, but we all know that there's at least another, for that one ad you did, there was another 10 talking head interview videos that you did that, yeah, I know, I know.

Dario Nouri41:39Well, they're just doing marketing, Kjell. It's like, well, I mean, like a lot of the time, like, you know what, though, Kjell? Like a lot of times we have freelancers on our socials that we follow, and yeah, they're marketing themselves and what they do. And that's good, because that's the only way I'll remember them, right? So, but in terms of personal, I think it's gone down. I don't know. I think it's just boomers that do it now. They just post on Facebook and then that's it.

Kyrill Lazarov41:51Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov41:55It's true.

Kyrill Lazarov41:59It's gone down.

Kyrill Lazarov42:23Yeah.

Dario Nouri42:37Mm-hmm.

Kyrill Lazarov43:06Hopefully it's like a cycle.

Dario Nouri43:08We're gonna get to the point where it's such short content, it's just gonna go to photos. Like, back to photos! Hahaha!

Kyrill Lazarov43:14Back to photos, yeah. Video dies, just back to photos. Ha ha.

Dario Nouri43:2160 seconds, 30 seconds, 15, 10, 5, 3, 1 second content.

Kyrill Lazarov43:27The biggest benefit guys that we have in our industry is that our audiences will get bored eventually with whatever they're watching. And the trends will just keep changing, they'll keep shifting. And whether they go back to photo for a bit, they come back to video or long form video, back to short form video. Like you said, Jake, you have to be flexible. You have to go with what audiences are watching or wanting to watch. And then that's how you will survive as a business and as a creative.

Dario Nouri43:56You know, one positive thing that's happened is that a lot of the B2C type of content is also being applied to B2B type of content. So you no longer need to make like a five minute company profile video because no one used to watch those back then. And now finally.

Kyrill Lazarov44:05Yeah.

Dario Nouri44:14A lot of the marketers there understand that, okay, why waste the time? So they're trying to make fun, uh, corporate content, which, which is good. I think that's probably been the most positive change. Cause now when we talk to clients, they ask, we always ask like, how long do you want it to be? And whenever they tell us like a minute and a half, two minutes, I'm like, that's already too long. You should just be thinking 60 seconds or shorter and makes the content more fun for us to make and makes it more marketable for them. So.

Kyrill Lazarov44:14Catch you going.

Kyrill Lazarov44:25I agree.

Kyrill Lazarov44:36Yeah.

Dario Nouri44:46Yeah.

Dario Nouri44:52that's harder.

Dario Nouri45:34Hehehe

Dario Nouri46:18Just get real.

Kyrill Lazarov46:20Yeah.

Dario Nouri46:36Jake, you gotta head out in three minutes, so we'll just end off with how did you come up with the name BTV? And what does it stand for?

Kyrill Lazarov46:38Yeah, I was gonna say.

Kyrill Lazarov47:29Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov47:48Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov48:06When I first heard your name, yeah, no, that's great. But the funny thing is the first time I heard your company name, I don't know why it first went to, did Dario reach out to British television? Was that? It sounded very like.

Dario Nouri48:06I like behind the vision. Behind the vision is good.

Dario Nouri48:19Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Kyrill Lazarov48:25Like it was like, like you said, like one of those BBC type network ones. And I'm like, is this one of those, the big ones over there? Like, not to say that you're not big. They're like, okay. Like, you guys are definitely getting there in three years. Like having only been around for three years, it's really impressive what you guys have done.

Dario Nouri48:29Hehehehe… Hehehehe…

Dario Nouri48:36Hehehe

Dario Nouri48:47Listen, if you came on, if you're on this podcast, you're one of the big ones in your city. So because otherwise I won't be able to find you. So that's how I found you. Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov48:54Yep. Exactly, exactly. That's how we found you. Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov49:02Exactly. Cool. Well, Jake, thanks again for joining us on the show. If you're ever on your way over to Canada or Toronto specifically, let us know. We'll grab a beer.

Kyrill Lazarov49:19For sure, for sure. All right, thanks Jake.

Dario Nouri49:21All right, thank you, Jake.