Do you want to start a video production company today or become a filmmaker? I imagine you will love this interview with Jonathan because he is a video producer in Bulgaria.
He's working on a TV show right now. He's also working on getting into eSports and becoming a partner with Facebook.
What I am sharing here with you is an interview that we did recently, edited into a format we think will be helpful for you to present our experience with both of us being video producers that can help you start your own video production company.
We begin the conversation by just talking about thinking about how you get discovered. When people find you, especially if you're gaming, this might be helpful for you.
If you're wondering what to produce on YouTube, which if you're going to be a video producer and have your own production company as a filmmaker, think about what you want to produce and how people are going to find it, that is essential.
We begin by talking about how people discover you. What do they want to see when they get there? Jonathan and I compared viewpoints. I share some data in terms of how long people keep watching old live streams.
Jonathan tells the story of how he started his own video production company from scratch in Bulgaria and has worked his way from just reading magazines and doing stuff for free in school to now having a TV show that he's working on producing in Bulgaria's capital.
I think you'll love this interview about "starting a video production company". You'll find it really inspiring to hear the stories and hear his journey of being a filmmaker.
Therefore, I think this will be really helpful if you want to start your own video production company online and become a filmmaker. It's easier than ever today and this is what I make videos about.
If you'd like to see videos that'll help you become a YouTuber, get your videos out online, teach, and earn, I trust you’ll subscribe to my YouTube channel and turn those notifications.
Jonathan and I recorded this live in one of my webinars and if you'd like to join me for the very best help I have to offer, go to jerry/tips/partner where you can join my mastermind and even get some private coaching if you'd like to really take the fast track.
Thank you for getting started with this. Here's a fully edited interview from Jonathan and I talking about "starting a video production company."
Jonathan: When I'm doing something that I wanted to retain value, I think of it as if someone is opening up this video 3 years from now, I need to not be ashamed of this video.
So, I write my text first and then I record it. I then cover it with a relevant video and then I upload it to YouTube. It's like a piece of content that has value.
It's not me going — aaa, this and then backtracking “Oh, I forgot this other point when you're trying to explain or say something live”. Of course, sometimes when you're live, you get inspired and you have something like a 3-minute rant which is super great.
Yeah, of course, you can clip that out of that stream and inhabit as a piece of content that stands alone but just huge ass recordings of streams where you're answering questions and you're saying things like “What you're doing tomorrow” and that type of thing is just so bloated.
I don't do that a lot. What do you think about that?
Jerry: I think I've seen on my videos people have watched some of my live streams for years and I don't even know how they're finding it or why they're watching it.
But I trust that viewers can sort through things that they want to see and I might as well let people watch whatever I've put up there.
So, if I've done a live stream on Facebook, it's easier to just leave it up there and sometimes people are enjoying it months later. I've stopped gaming and people are still watching like gaming streams I did 3 years ago.
Jonathan: Playing devil's advocate though. Let me try an argument from the other side. How about in terms of the quality of the videos that I produce?
There are the videos that I produce for YouTube and then re-upload them to my Facebook page as well. Then there are videos that are recordings of my streams which are not as interesting, not as punchy, they have zero edits, yada yada yada.
So, I go somewhere and someone sees someone with my shirt or with some of my merchants says “JoXnka” and they're like, “Oh, who the *** is JoXnka". They type in JoXnka on Facebook, click on the thing, click on the videos and when they click on videos currently, they will see like 10 videos.
10/10 will be edited. There are 3, 4, 5, 6, 7-minute videos that they can go, watch, and be super impressed that there are such videos in Bulgarian.
If I had my stream recordings there, they would see someone with my shirt, they would click JoXnka, click videos and they would see like maybe one of these videos and nice stream recordings that are 4-hours long each.
They are full of me droning on the same strategy game that they've never heard of and talking to chat that's not even there anymore.
They'd be like, “Dude, is this like a streamer or what the *** is this?” and I'm more like a video maker like a YouTuber. I stream but I really don't do highlights. I don't even do stream highlights.
Start a video production company today
You can go, look at the clips and twitch but highlights, I've never seen value in that. I think they detract from what I want to show my audience if it's not live and if they're not there as part of the show because I do IRL as well.
I go out in the city and I'm like, “Come on everybody. Come here to this place and let's have burgers”. That's cool while it's happening while it's live and I don't want it cluttering up my video feed on my page. At least that's what I think. Maybe I am wrong. What do you think?
Jerry: I think you've got a very good point that I've recently been working on myself with my YouTube channel. The way I was creating was just for YouTube search.
If you come to my channel, there's a whole bunch of videos. None of them, in particular, have that many views. Lots of them aren't relevant. I worked really hard to get somebody to find out about me and then they're not impressed when they come to look.
I've just recently been through with my channel like “Alright, I'm gonna start doing a video once or twice a week. I'm gonna promote that one video a bunch”.
Then when people come to see me, they're impressed like “Wow, this video has a hundred thousand views. The video has a hundred thousand views. Wow, this guy's something”.
I guess it's all about creating the image. Now that makes sense for YouTube and makes sense for where you're delivering videos.
On Facebook, they have an option at the top of a page where you can put your highlighted content up there which you can control what people see first and almost the only way people see stuff on Facebook is through the newsfeed.
People hardly ever go to pages and scroll through. Almost the only way people see stuff is if somebody shares it. So, lots of times on Facebook, your videos on demand can be really helpful to get people watching your new live streams.
If somebody shares an old video on demand on their page, someone's probably not going to watch like 4 hours of it but they might come to click on your page and go find your new live stream or watch some of your videos on demand.
But if you delete the old videos on demand on Facebook that somebody shared when they were live, then it just says “Attachment unavailable”.
You've removed the opportunity on Facebook to get found on something somebody shares.
On Facebook, the videos on demand are very helpful for building a live audience but on YouTube, it's often better to just put them on listed or make it so if someone discovers you, they see your best content first and not all of your videos on demand.
Jonathan: On Facebook, I think a really good solution for that on their end that they could implement is to just have the videos and live streams be in separate sections on the page itself.
Jerry: Yeah. They've got it all grouped in videos right now but there is one thing you can do to control that as well. On your page, you can just post something new after you stream.
Like you did a live stream, after that, you can just reshare one of your old videos if you want somebody to watch it. You can do a picture saying when you'll be live next time.
You can control pretty easily on Facebook what's on your page and since Facebook is so deep, things get buried on Facebook easily but I like to have everything up somewhere as much as possible.
The only things I try and remove are things like “I don't want anybody to watch anymore”. Like “I don't want to promote that thing anymore” but I trust people that if they find things in the right context, they'll come to find the newest stuff.
Like, if somebody shares a video on demand, they'll come to find whatever I'm doing newly. This is really important if you want to start a video production company.
Now, they probably won't even watch the video itself very long but like on YouTube, I've learned this the hard way, you really do need to control when someone discovers you like what they find right away.
Most of the minutes viewed on my videos are the featured videos. They get the most views. Then my last Livestream got the next most minutes viewed. After that, somebody watched 3 hours or people collectively watched 3 hours of a live stream I did a year ago.
I don't know if those videos on demand can be really helpful. I can't imagine why people were watching 3 hours worth of a live stream I did a year ago.
Jonathon: Maybe they forgot their phone.
Jerry: Yeah, maybe somebody clicked to start it and walked away from it or something.
Jonathan: They were falling asleep watching another video and then it autoplay for 4 hours after that while they were sleeping and they didn't even know it happened.
Jerry: I'm getting views consistently though on lots of my older videos. Like people are watching 10, 20, 30, 40, minutes of videos. There are only 1 or 2 people lots of times.
So, people are watching some of these really old live streams.
Jonathan: I have a thing for being like a trailblazer and weird things.
Jerry: That's great. You are a trailblazer. You will be on gaming in 2002. Good Lord! How did you get into gaming in 2002?
Jonathan: I wrote and I was a member of the forum organizing the IRL forum meetings of the oldest paperback gaming magazine that was relevant back in the day.
Before people had internet, we would use to buy this paperback gaming magazine which came with like a CD-Rom with like demos, wallpapers, and ringtones. It was like the beginning of nerd fandom in Eastern Europe.
Yeah, back in the day.
Jerry: What do you do now? Do you stream? Like, what's your life and business?
Jonathan: Well, I've been involved in like doing production for a bunch of the bigger players here on the entertainment industry and on the interactive entertainment like seen here in Bulgaria for a number of years.
But about 3 years ago, I got some people together and we founded our own production company. So, now I kind of do that. I take orders for things like organizing lands, doing some sort of after-movie corporate party, Drum & Bass rave, hip hop gig, a concert or whatever.
I do creative. I do reviews for hardware. I just do vlogging at different events just because I want to visit them. I work with some international brands like I do some work for ESL sometimes on some of their videos, some of their production, and some of their eSports events.
Just all sorts of small and moderately large projects involving gaming in nerd culture.
Right now, we've been in pre-production for youth TV show kind of thing which will focus on different mini-shows, some dealing with like cooking, some dealing with modern technology, hardware, gaming, fashion, urban culture, street stuff, music, electronic music, and hip-hop.
So it would be kind of like a 4-minute mini show back to back and you have a host that's sending you along to each next one.
It's really interesting and I think it is a unique concept because I don't think I've seen a TV show like this where it's kind of like gags, you know, just a number of back to back but each has its own host in its own theme.
So, one might be about, you know, going and test driving cars. Another one might be about going to the best fast-food place in the city.
One might be a review of the hottest party that happened in the city last week and you just get this cultural bomb that just gets you updated.
What happened? What games came out? What kind of music came out? Which celebrity died? So, it’s like everything. Everything you need to know that keeps you in the cycle of work and you know less and less about everything nerdy, everything on the internet and everything that's happening in your city.
Like kids throwing lime scooters in the river. You know, we curate all the interesting, funny, and cool things that have happened and we kind of like place them in little sections.
So, even if you don't have time to watch the entire 2-hour show, you can just like get to watch the gaming section, the tech section, the music section, the cooking one, the outer one, party one and the fashion one or you can have your own mix.
They're all in different playlists on the view on-demand. That way we can have different sponsors and try to have different connections and leverage how relevant the thing is to whatever company that we're trying to pitch it to.
So, like we didn't have an outer one, right? We didn't have one that dealt with cars but someone said like, “I can get you a meeting with the guys from Ford”. They are doing all the Ford stuff in Bulgaria.
So, you're like, “Fine. Let's pitch them an outer one”. So, we just thought of a good host for that.
We did a little presentation for it and we're like, “We have a cooking show. We have a fashion thing. We have this, this and this. We don't have an auto one but if you work with us, it will be kind of your thing to put a lot of focus on your stuff” and they're like “Whoo”.
It's modular in that way so that you can make new mini-shows. I'm really excited about that. I don't know if you can tell. By the way, I've been droning on about it for like quite 5 minutes.
Jerry: I love it. The long video format seems to be a great format and I like how you said each section will have different hosts. Where are you planning to distribute that? On YouTube?
Jonathan: The main focus is the TV broadcast itself on one of the Bulgarian TV channels but after that, we cut it exactly into those chunks because it's like a 2-hour show but it consists of like 20 4-hour shows with 1 minute of a host in between each of the mini-shows.
So, basically each show has its own host and it's shot in a different way in a different place. So, the party gets shot at the party. We pick a party and we have one of the teams which is the hostess for the party thing and a 2-men assistant operator team.
They go and they cover the party. They've already done this. They know how to cover a party and get a little bit of Bureau.
When you're looking at it in chunks, all they are supposed to provide is like a 4-minute end product, right? This is really important to understand if you want to start a video production company.
So, it's much more manageable to be able to submit their stuff and in the same way, the cooking team, they have to just submit a 4-minute show as well. So, it's not that stressful and then, in the end, we just put it all together.
The biggest challenge was getting all the hosts to have a similar familiarity with the camera and the viewer in the way they talk. You know, some are more strict. Some are more like uptight. Some are more like — Yo ha ha you know, more off of the script.
You need someone to be like a producer or like someone who's consistently at all these shoots to try to like hype up the ones that are a little bit quieter, maybe tone down the ones that are a little bit louder.
So, not only do you get visuals like editing and color correction style but the entire thing which you get. It’s like a consistent attitude, the kind of in-tone that it's doing. I don't know if I answered your question or I just left moving off-topic. This is really important if you want to start a video production company.
Did I go off-topic?
Jerry: No, that was on topic.
Jonathan: Oh yeah, then these individual things are going to go into playlists.
Jerry: How did you get into this whole world? Like, how could somebody else who kind of loves the sound of what you do like positioning themselves to get into it where they're at?
Jonathan: Being fortunate enough to be in either your country's capital or like somewhere, where there's a lot of stuff going on without you having to travel to be close to where stuff is happening.
That's like one thing which is super important because I live in Sofia and Sofia is the only place where stuff happens in Bulgaria.
Like, if I was in any other city in Bulgaria, I would have no access to events or anything. And then try to get your foot in the door as early as possible.
I started applying for the opportunity to write for paperback magazines about computer games all the way back in 7th grade.
So, my first published article was about something I don't even remember. It was a crazy taxi or something like that. A racing game and I was like that in 8th grade back then.
That's the thing that always drew me. I was going to school. We had kiosks like newspapers and magazines and stuff. A lot of the kids would go for comic books.
I would go for both of the 2 rival ring PC games magazines. One of them was called “PC Mania” and the other one was called “Gamers Workshop”.
Like other kids would get Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse comic books or like Spider-Man Marvel stuff, I would get the gaming magazines.
I can still remember like opening them up and the smell of fresh ink on the page you know. After reading about gangs, when I'd go to an internet cafe, I would know which game is cool. I wouldn't know what to play and I would know some stuff.
So, that was really my thing. I was really into computer games like anything they had to do with computer games, I always wanted to be there.
The first exposure to high technology that we have had. I wrote letters because these paperback magazines used to have like sections for a fan mail. I was constantly trying to engage anyway.
It wasn't beneath me or above me to write them. Some people were like, “Aaah, not gonna write. What do you mean to write him?”
Some of them are like, “Oh no. I couldn't write to them. I'm too ashamed. I'm too afraid”.
If there's an option to do it, you'll do it. If they have an email somewhere, you write them an email. Even if you just want to say, “I'm the biggest fan. Thanks for doing what you're doing”.
If they have a number, you just call them and say, “I love you guys” and just hang up. This is really important to understand if you want to start a video production company.
If they have an address, you can bake them a cake. You just go, leave it on the front door, ring the bell and run away if you have to.
Just try to do anything you can and that's kind of what I did. I went to the first big event that they had here like a big festival. I went there and volunteered. Just volunteer. This is really important if you want to start a video production company.
That's the second part of being around where things happen by putting yourself in a lot of situations where you can even casually bump shoulders with people who are further ahead in that thing than you are.
So if you're wanting to do something like eSports or if you want to get into games or whatever, just go where these people are, go where these people work, go to their venues, offer yourself, sell yourself, give yourself away for free.
You have to do so much free work to get on people's radar. You have to be amazing and you have to be really easygoing and you have to be valuable. This is really important if you want to start a video production company.
I've had people come up to me and be like, “Hey, I can do video editing. I really like what you do or I can shoot videos. I'm an operator. I really like what you do. If you ever need something, call me up”.
So next time I'm like, “We need someone to cover this or we need someone to go cover that event. Let's try this kid out”.
We try someone out and then if he's low maintenance, it usually works out. Just put yourself out there and not be afraid to work for nothing. Like, people get way too touchy about getting paid.
I mean, of course, you always want to get paid. Of course, your time costs money but a lot of people don't realize that they really need to have something concrete to put on the table before they can be so dramatic about being offered exposure.
Dude, I'm so good. I'm like the leader of my country and some of the things involved in gaming and still I do shit just for exposure which costs me upwards of 8, 16, 20, 30, 50 hours just for exposure.
I kiss ass and go thank you for the opportunity to whoever because this isn't banking. This isn't medical or engineering. This is still gaming. Compared to other spheres, it's the Stone Age.
We should be thankful for anything we get. We should be martyrs for it. I know it's not glorious. I know we deserve much better. I know better than most about every drop of sweat, blood, and tears that it takes me to get to like a 14-minute well-edited video but you just *** got to do it, man.
You've got to do it. In the end, you do it for yourself. You do it for moments like this where I can come on here and flex and be like “Dude, I’ve done it”. I don't care if I have like 3,000 views and like some Fortnight, Minecraft, League of Legends streamer has 3M.
Look at one of my 10-minute videos and look at one of his 10-minute recordings because they don't even do videos for most of these content creators.
You'll see that I'm the full package you know. I'm a filmmaker. You've got to go through everything and like when you're doing video production, it's super important when you're doing stuff for a team to know like every part of the process. You gotta be confident in it and you gotta be well-versed in it.
So, if I wanna make a video with a bunch of other people, it's gonna be good because I can give feedback on each step of the process.
Like, I can write, alright. I can do research. So, if someone else is doing the writing, I can look at their writing and be like this and this, maybe you should fix this.
If someone's doing the reading, the audio for it, you know, I've done that. I can provide feedback on that. If someone is doing the editing, I have a professional understanding of that as well as of the grading and of every step of the process.
So there's no one who's like doing this thing and he does it half-assedly and it kind of goes through the cracks and no one notices.
I'm gonna notice each and everything. There's no one who can *** me thinking that it's good enough because I'm gonna be like, NO. I'm just going to elbow him a little bit, grab his keyboard, do it better than him and shame him in front of everyone else.
When everyone knows like whoever's in the league can sit down and do it better than you if you make him mad then everybody tries to do their best. That's the way you get respect from your team.
So, whether you're working with an operator, a video editor, an audio guy, a designer who's making your thumbnails, someone who's drawing your art or whatever, you have to spend at least a week getting familiar with the work they do in order to show both yourself and their respect.
You know, when people get this thing where they can't even change one pixel and they're sending you this huge thing like “One letter is different”.
And you're like sending it back with an email, reuploading the thing and then you're getting version 4 back just because you can't change it like “One letter” you know.
Whereas, when I work with the designer, I’m like, “Give me the PSD and if it's something minor, I'll just do it myself”. It's like just changing a word, a typo or something whereas, other people don't even have the software.
They just look at the rendered PNG and they're like, “Ohhh, one letter is wrong. Let me just write him an email and call him. Did you get my email? I need the new version” and he has to come back home from something.
You know, it's just so tedious whereas, I have all the software. I have everyone's software. I have Premiere, After Effects, everything. So, anyone can send in your file and I can cover them. This is really important if you want to start a video production company.
So, that's at the core of how I got into things and I'm confident when someone calls me up and asks me, “Hey, can you guys do a after video for my event or can you guys do live streaming for this concert or can you guys do something like this social media campaign for our product?”
I'm instantly like, “Yes” because I know I can do all the things you know and then I try to offload as many as I can to people who I'm confident that they can handle like parts of the thing.
I just put it together, present it and make sure everyone makes a buck. That's what being a production company is basically all about. This is really important if you want to start a video production company.
What is production? Production is anything. People call me up for so many different things. The other day, a rapper called me. He's like, “I need €600 to shoot my music video and this is the song, this is the text and it's all about weed".
I'm like, “Okay”. I thought about it a little bit and I was like, “Alright, we have the Bulgarian legalized movement”. So, I was like, “Hey guys, this guy's doing a super 420 song. Can you get €200 for making a call to everyone to come to the legalized protest next time?”
They're like, “Yeah, sure”. Then I called a bunch of guys like a company that do grinders and I was like, “Dude, there's really a 420 video of a really famous Bulgarian rapper coming out. Do you guys mind being shot by some chicks?”.
They’re like *** yeah dude and then I listen to the song and the third verse was about growing indoors with like grow boxes, lights, and stuff.
So I’m like, “Hmm. There's a grow shop that sells all that type of equipment and stuff”.
I was like, “Hey guys, do you want the third verse to be in your guys' shop like with your guys like growing tech for a backdrop?” They’re like, “Dude, that's sick”.
An hour later, I called up the guy and I was like, “I just made 3 quick calls and I've secured your budget” and he said, “Dude, I want to hire your production company to help me out with everything”.
I've never done a production for a musician at any time. I've never been a manager or producer of a musician but this guy, he's like one of the top 10 rappers in Bulgaria. Now, anything he needs, he calls us and it's like a different thing.
He's like, “I'm at a party. It's a pirate theme. Can you find me a pirate costume quickly for tonight?" or I have this video, I have this song but I don't want to do a big video with like a huge video team and like a big video shoot.
I just want something real gangsta and simple here in the hood. You have your phone, you have your gimbal, let's do it.
So, like his last video is shot for an hour and a half outside our building as he's my neighbor. So it's shot outside our building here in the hood and then I edited it super quick for like an hour and a half.
Now it's got like 200,000 views and it's a super ghetto. It looks good. Most people wouldn't even say it's shot with a phone. I mean, I did a good job out there with a 3-hour project I think.
There are small things like hooking me up with this and hooking me up with sponsors for the 420 video.
So, now I'm doing that as well. Randomly, I got into doing videos for different IT companies as well because I spent some time working on IT as well while I was doing on and off.
I missed another really important thing about productions. Sometimes you just can't make the bills happen. I've had periods of like 6 months where I didn't have any work in terms of production, in terms of streaming or whatever.
So, I've been back to IT you know back to the drawing board but you work for like 6 months in IT and you're like, “Oh no. No, no, no."
So, you get a good idea, then you quit and you are all in on that again. So, I've been through that a few times and when I opened up the production company,
I was like, “Dude, I'm getting too old for this accursed cycle of working IT for 6 months. Then doing the production stuff for 18 months. Then crashing, burning, and finding a job for another 6 months”.
I'm good at it too. I'm good at IT too but it's definitely my thing to do the production.
If you feel it, you feel it. I mean it gives you a rush in the end like seeing a production that's good. Like seeing a video that looks good. It looks professional and you know how many sacrifices you have to make, especially when you're doing stuff on a low budget.
You don't have Red cameras. You don't have the $5,000 DGI gimbals and stuff but you're using what you have in the best way you can and you're getting something that's watchable.
You've paid attention to the things that you can do in software like the grading, the editing, attention to detail, you know the things that you can do. They're not skipping over.
In the end, when it comes together, you watch it. You see your happy client and it gives you the best rush. There's no other way to explain it. I love it.
I love it and that's why I want to have my videos front and center circling back to what we were talking about promoting videos on Facebook.
Like when they click videos, that's what I want them to see unlike recordings of me playing a boring game for like 4-hours because I put everything into the videos like the VOD and like the standalone shorter ones.
Jerry: Well, I appreciate you sharing your experience with this because I run into lots of people online. They want to kind of go through the process you've been through and I see a lot of the hang-ups you mentioned as people don't want to do anything for free.
Jonathan: Yeah, you've got to do a lot of free work. I mean, some people are lucky and fortunate enough to not have to but most of us have to go through a lot of that.
Jerry: I like the story of how you got this guy's video done, that's as clever to me as you did. The guy asked you to do his video, you find some sponsors for it and bam. You've hooked him up with this video and that's what I love here in that story.
Jonathan: Thanks. It's kind of a roll. It's kind of acting and it's kind of like fake it till you make it sometimes a little bit because you gotta force yourself to constantly talk about that, to think about that, and to watch tutorials about that.
The way I've always motivated my teams to talk about eSports is because if you look at an eSports team, that's exactly the ultimate model of how anyone who's really striving for success.
Like eSports players want a lot of gold. They really *** want it, dude. They want it a lot and that's why they are trained for like 14-hours a day. In Korea, Starcraft pro teams, they live together in actual team houses like an almost competitive level.
They live in the freakin team house together. They sleep together. They eat together and they have dieticians, personal, physical, and mental trainers. They train in very specific ways.
They have group training, individual training, mechanical training and all types of training, for what?
To be good at a game. This is really important if you want to start a video production company.
If it's like a MOBA game which is a team-based game, where they have to play 5v5 there. They have communication training like super-short call signs in ways that are most clearly and efficiently communicated.
Hierarchy, pre-built strategies, backup strategies and then they do an analysis of other team games in very specific ways with checklists after they watch their opponents' games.
They know they're going to be playing Team X and then they have a very specific way where they look at team X's previous games and they run them down.
So, this is super professional and that super is thought out and laid out. That's why they are so good at what they do.
It's the same way as a production company or with any team that's doing content. This is really important if you want to start a video production company.
If you have a person who's doing social media posts, a person who's like the technical guy setting up all the streams, the alerts yada yada yada and then you have your guy who's the personality or whatever.
There are so many different arrangements of teams but in each of these cases, if you want to really excel at what you do and you really want to make a living out of that, you've got to go all-in and you've got to go crazy like that.
I've pulled so many overnighters with my editors and they're like, “Dude, what the *** are we doing? It's 5 o'clock in the morning. You've ordered like a second pizza now. It’s been 30 hours since we have been editing this freaking godforsaken video”.
I'm like, “Yeah but just in the past 12 hours, you learned how to speed ramp up. You learned color grading and it's just such a huge upgrade”.
We go through things that are extreme. We spend a lot of time together. Sometimes we have huge discord calls upwards of 6 hours, you know.
Stuff that even in a normal corporation would seem absurd and we have these really in-depth complex documents in Google Drive where we have to fill out timings.
How many hours have you done this? How many hours have you done that? Everyone's got a schedule. Everyone's got meetings. Everyone's got daily tasks and everyone's got to come into the document once a day to check out their daily tasks.
So, to a lot of normal people, that's like a lot dude. That sounds like a lot of pressure. A lot of responsibility. You gotta be on top of your emails, your dailies, the to-do list, be in discord call once a week, etc.
You've got days of shooting. If you're an operator, you might have like 4 shots in one week. It's like so much but then again, you're turning that into a living that is replacing the alternative which would be 10 hours of sitting somewhere in doing something for somebody else.
In the worst-case scenario, not learning anything, not gaining anything out of it, and not enriching it.
So, yeah. It's serious and if you're gonna say, “Yes, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do production or I'm gonna do content creation”. Then, by all means, treat it as seriously as you would treat a job. This is really important if you want to start a video production company.
If you're smart enough, you’ll treat it even more seriously than you treat your desk job.
I think this happens so many times. We have teams of people who are like, “We're gonna do a streaming project and really gonna divide the revenue, the sponsorships, this and that”.
When it's about them getting their share and their pay, it's always on time and they always expect it to be there, of course, but if you're doing a meeting, there's always someone who's late.
There's always someone who says, “Dude, I gotta do this whatever thing and I can't come to the meeting and someone's got an excuse for something”.
At some point I asked him, “Dude, would you do that if you worked at Microsoft?" If this was your Microsoft day job, would you just call up your boss and be like, I make plans with my girlfriend. Would you?
You would expect them to pay you just like you expect you to get your cut of the revenue of this project but then you don't put the same type of respect and seriousness into it.
I know it's gaming. It's fun. It's YouTubing. It's vlogging. It's kind of a fun thing. It's a personality thing but another day, if you are on the side of the world which we're trying to make this into a living, you have to treat it super, super serious and even more serious than a job.
The job at Microsoft is out of Bill Gates's pocket. This is out of your own pocket. It's out of your own connections. The way I think of these people, like every time they run late for a Discord call, it's not just me.
It's also the 6 people waiting for the 7th person for 10-minutes which equals 60 minutes of production time lost. This is really important if you want to start a video production company.
6 professional waiting for 10-minutes on you is an hour which is pretty expensive you know.
So, yeah. You've got to get the right attitude, you've got to put yourself out there and you've got to work a lot, but it's a sphere where there's not that much work yet or at least not as much as you know other spheres.
So, we should be thankful for any work we get. Being thankful is really important if you want to start a video production company.
Jerry: Well, I think that's a really good note to end on Jonathan.
We've had a great call and you've also helped me to see that the value I can offer in these is positioning people like you with the ability to share your experience combining with mine and everybody else's, and we can make a really helpful show.
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