Ana de Diego

My guest today is redefining what a modern production company can be. Ana de Diego is the founder of Spark & Riot, a female-led production company and film & television studio built on the idea that great work happens when talent meets purpose. With a background in socially-driven storytelling and a portfolio that spans global brands and long-form projects, she's built a company that doesn't just produce content, it builds meaningful, culturally relevant stories. From commercials to entertainment, Ana's mission is consistent: create, collaborate, and leave a lasting impression. We talk about scaling a company with intention, bridging branded and narrative storytelling, and why purpose-led creativity isn't a trend – it's the future. 

So join me for a cuppa tea with Ana!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

My guest today is redefining what a modern production company can be. Anna De Diego is the founder of Spark and Riot, a female-led production company and film and television studio. Built on the idea that great work happens when talent meets purpose. With a background in socially driven storytelling and a portfolio that spans global brands and long-form projects, she's build a company that doesn't just produce content, it builds meaningful, culturally relevant stories. From commercials to entertainment, Anna's vision is consistent, create, collaborate, and leave a lasting impression. We talk about scaling a company with intention, bridging branded and narrative storytelling, and why purpose-led creativity isn't a trend, it's the future. So join me for a cup of tea with Anna. Hey Anna, how are you? I'm great, how are you? Good, good. Thrilled to have you on my podcast for today, so thank you so much. What really stood out to me about your work is how you've built Spark and Riot with a very clear point of view, not just creatively, but in terms of purpose and impact. I feel that that blend of commercial work and meaningful storytelling feels particularly relevant right now, especially as brands are starting to move more into that space. So I'd love to first of all just explore a little bit about that journey and how you've made that work in practice both from the creative side but also the business reality behind it. So yeah, should we should we start there? Because I think early days you were you were working with uh National Geographic, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Well, even I think before that, so I I actually started as a line producer uh in the business and very early on started a non-union production company in 2010. And um and then from there, I had always volunteered and been very involved uh in in nonprofits and giving back. But as I'm sure you know, once you start working, your time just commitments change. And it was really difficult for me to find time to give back and uh be involved in nonprofits or in any way that I really enjoyed. So it wasn't until a few years after that when I started to weave social impact into some of the projects that I was working on that I realized that entertainment is actually the perfect medium to weave social impact because if you think about it, every production is a startup. And um what I realized is if you organize events for people to organize around and activate around, they really want to do it. I think it's just facilitating a way for them to get in, and that's what we do now at Spark Riot. Um, but uh the National Geographic piece, uh, the doc series that I did with um Ryan Pelota and Gal Gadot called Impact was something we kind of stumbled on. It was a story that we Ryan and I both felt really passionate about telling in Brazil. And we just stumbled on this story and uh came back here and turned it into a series that we uh sold to National Geographic Impact.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

So so the one in Brazil was the very first one, and then after that you got funding to produce the other five, which are all very very different stories, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 3:31

They are, and in fact, they were going to be even more varied. Uh the plan was to shoot this before we knew there was going to be a pandemic. So we had episodes all around the world, and because of the pandemic, we kept most of them domestic, uh, and then went back to shoot the second part of Brazil episode, which I think is the most interesting piece for me because we went to Brazil for the first time in 2016, and uh Ryan and I were basically doing everything, shooting, you know, shooting everything, pulling focus and doing sound and kind of a run and gun uh show, but with Alexa camera and just everything was so premium. And then we went back four years later uh in 2020 and to see the change in the favela and how these girls were impacted in the last years of by the nonprofit and also just by what was happening in in Brazil at the time was really really interesting for us.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

And and where can where can people see these stories? Are they just on YouTube or have they been streaming somewhere else?

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Yeah, they're streaming on Disney Plus. Um yeah, because NatGEO is owned by Disney Plus, so we sold it to Disney Plus uh a few years ago, licensing. Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

So they get quite a lot of eyeballs on it, which is which is fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

Yeah, and I think it's uh just in general, obviously what we do is not fully impact focused. I think most of what Spark and Riot does is actually impact focused behind the camera. So it's typically on any shoot that we do, whether that's scripted or unscripted, whether that's related to social impact, we always weave social impact into everything we do, even a commercial uh that we do that's a TVC commercial or a social media commercial, whatever it is, we always weave impact into everything we do.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, I read about that, and that's so fascinating. I mean, it's it's it, you know, I can understand it on paper and as a sort of a vision for the company, but how is that actually fulfilled in practice? I mean, are you working with specific brands that that care about um you know social subjects or is it really very broad?

SPEAKER_01 5:38

I would say it's it's pretty broad. We work uh two ways with brands. We work traditionally through ad agencies with any brand, and we work the traditional way of getting a brief from an agency and then uh working on a treatment and bidding a project with a director, etc. And then we do direct-to-client work as well. The social impact side typically comes after. So we talk about it when we're bidding just as an added bonus of working with us, but really where we activate is once we are in production, we have our coordinator start looking into the corporate social responsibility of whatever client we're working with, uh, whatever brand, whether that's you know, Walmart or Verizon, whoever we're working with, and we'll um do a lot of due diligence and really figure out what that brand stands for, what they care about. And from there, we will activate our coordinators to look for nonprofits locally that we then vet and we activate projects with those nonprofits. So rather than just signing a check, um, we donate a percentage of our markup to those nonprofits, but we do it by activating a project. So in the past, we've done water treatment projects in southern Mexico and Chiapas. We've donated uh irrigation infiltration systems for women to grow crop gardens in northern Mexico, refugees in Colombia, orphanages in Uruguay, literally everywhere we go, we try to leave an impact and we leave it better than than we found it, is kind of the idea.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

That's just so incredible. And so you're actually funding it with a percentage of the profit that you're making from the job. And then are you also asking the agency and the client to sort of like match donations or how how do they get involved apart from the fact that it may be on the back of a project that you're doing with them?

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah, so that's a great question. Sometimes, especially when we're working domestically, we'll have uh members from that nonprofit come to set and talk to the agency and the client about what they're doing, what we're doing together. Uh, sometimes we have more physical integrations with the agency. For example, we did a shoot in Chicago where we donated a bunch of things to an orphanage locally, and we ended up bringing some of the books that we donated and bought and bought to SET and had the agency write notes to the children and put them in the books. So we try to integrate when possible. Sometimes it's not possible, but it's tricky when you we talk about matching donations or having a an agency or client come on board. A lot of times it makes them uncomfortable because Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

It's too transactional, perhaps.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah, and more often than not, the the decision makers that would approve something like this are not in the room in productions. They'd have to go to their higher-ups and their higher-ups and so on. So uh I think what we understood from the very beginning that it was something that was going to be very tricky to get ad agencies and clients to be involved monetarily. So I think for now, I mean, obviously it would change if there was a client or an agency that felt compelled to be involved, that would be phenomenal. We would obviously welcome that. We have had instances in shoots in Los Angeles, for example, where we've had clients or agency say that they want to be involved with organization and then start to develop their own relationship with that nonprofit. So that's happened before. Uh but as far as financial contributions, it makes it a little bit tricky for them to and uncomfortable for them to approve or not approve being involved.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Right, right. And and the fact that you're non-union and the fact that you um, you know, have worked in the documentary background and and I assume you can be very sort of competitive financially, is um a way perhaps of of getting more bang for your back. Is is would that be a right assumption that that you can afford perhaps to to give a little bit back because you know how to sort of be very smart with the with the dollars?

SPEAKER_01 9:34

I'm not sure that that's exactly it. I think when we bid, we bid to the creative and right, we bid to that cost. So I don't think that there's necessarily a savings to being, you know, non-union, for example, or shooting internationally that would balance the giving or the part the the donations that we give. Uh I think it's just more of a cultural part of the business for us. It's not something that we really think too much about. It's more of this is just how we run our business, and a percentage of what we earn is always going to be given and allocated. The way that you know we pay our reps, a percentage is also allocated to a nonprofit cause, and it's just built into our business model.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Right, right. Yeah, because I think when we talked last time, you were talking about the fact that you can be very smart with the way you put your budgets together and very competitive. I mean, I guess a little bit because of your background and your knowledge and the fact that you've sort of come came up at a time when social media was sort of exploding and a lot of people were doing things differently, weren't they, in order to um, you know, satisfy the additional media that that we all need.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Absolutely. I think that's what what propelled me to start my the my company to begin with before Spark and Riot was really having had the experience of working for a union commercial production company for a few years in university. I saw when we graduated when I graduated that the budgets had just gone down drastically. And I remember, as I think I told you, downloading Instagram for the first time in 2010 and thinking to myself that this is a future of advertising. And if it's going to be this small, it's likely not going to be in the miltimillion dollars for every single commercial shoot we do. So I started a non-union production company for that reason. And for about four years, we had what we called branded content, which didn't have union supervision and allowed us to be very creative and nimble and shoot wherever we wanted, and really was a wild west of advertising, which was phenomenal and really fun. Um, and now obviously there's a lot more supervision, but also, you know, it's more competitive. And every year, younger and younger directors that are not necessarily interested in the traditional union path of being a DJ director or whatnot, um, they they can afford to do the same creative for a lot less. And I think in a way, content has been democratized. Yes. Yeah, which is a blessing. But also for those of us who came before, and even those that came before me, it's a challenging thing to adapt to.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Yeah, I know absolutely. And a lot of your directors come from a look uh a very they're very global, aren't they? And also you have worked in a lot of incredible places, you know, like Uganda and Egypt and and places that perhaps agents anch agencies wouldn't traditionally think that, you know, it was safe to shoot there. Can you can you talk about that? And and are you encouraging US agencies to go a little further afield now because of the budgets, or are you still sticking to the maybe more traditional places like Prague and Spain and Portugal?

SPEAKER_01 12:46

I think we always go where we can put as much money in front of the camera as possible. That's really what we're built on. And if we can get two days by shooting in Eastern Europe versus one day of shooting in Canada or the United States, we're if the creative needs it, we're going to push for that. I think we I would love to shoot everything in Los Angeles. Don't get me wrong, I think it would be phenomenal to shoot in my backyard. And also because this is where I shot my three features, and I would love to continue to employ those, the crew that I've that I have such close relationships with. However, you know, while there are jobs that will allow us to do it, we just shot here a couple of weeks ago. There's a lot of jobs that just will not allow us to shoot in Los Angeles or even in the United States. So we it's not that we encourage agencies to go further. It's just we really try to push for whatever is going to look best on camera and really accomplish our director's vision. A lot of times we really encourage our directors to expand on the agency's creative and make it their own. And that's, you know, that's pushed us in either direction to win jobs or lose jobs. But we always want to be hold that integrity of the creative, the creative directors, our director's vision. And if that means shooting in Eastern Europe or shooting in Thailand or shooting in Uruguay or Chile or wherever it is, that that's what it means. And a lot of times with agencies, it's really about educating the agencies and the client on what is safe and what isn't safe. We're never going to put an agency or client or ourselves, frankly, in danger. Um, so it's really about educating them on you know where we're going, why we're going there, and why it's beneficial and and also providing options. Yeah. We usually we usually bid three to four cities when we're bidding and we start kind of analyzing why one would be more beneficial than the other and and then present all the options.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Right, right, right. And and talking about LA, I mean it is sort of it's so sad, isn't it, to think about what's happened to the city and the film industry. Uh is there anything as a producer that you could suggest to the powers that be that would make it um you know, more realistic to be able to bring some of the work back here? I mean, I've heard that the the permitting is one of the big um drawbacks because it takes so long. And uh um but I mean obvious obviously cost is is is a sort of a major issue, isn't it? But I I know so many crew would would love the opportunity to to work in LA.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Um if yeah cost could be. I think that I I I think um it's kind of uh a snake eating its tail, it's kind of difficult because of course the cost of living of Los Angeles has gone up significantly, and so therefore our union rates have gone up, but yeah, it's it's unrealistic for a lot of productions to shoot in LA when the day rates are so high and union fringes are almost 50%.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

So we're paying 47% payroll fringes and union fringes total. Um, so you know, that's a significant, significant raise on uh cost. And I think aside from that, you know, just filming here, everything is expensive, right? Locations are expensive, permitting takes far too long.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

So I think if there was a more realistic maybe budget consideration that unions could look at where or allow for specific shoots to be non-union, if the budget is less than X amount of money, our union crew can shoot non-union. That would be that would allow for a lot more flexibility, and frankly, it would allow for their union members to actually be working. Because I think the difficult thing right now is that there's a lot of union members, but I think in a way, for some people, it's a curse to be union. Yeah. Because then they can't work on any non-union shoots. And I think if there was some flexibility where maybe there was a deal that said, listen, you have to submit your top sheet of the budget, and if your budget is below this amount, then you can you're allowed to hire union people for non-union shoots, that would make a big difference. But I I think that's a tricky thing, and I can obviously speak better to or to commercials and advertising that I can to features, but I do know that you know long-term filming in Los Angeles is also very cost prohibitive. So it would be great. I mean, we we shoot all the time in Texas, for example, because it's a right-to-work state.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

And I would say confidently that our crew makes the same amount of money they make here, um, but they it goes into their pocket instead of into, you know, the their union pension and health, which I know that obviously there's benefits to being in the union, but I think realistically for the budgets that we have these days, it's just it is what it is.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Yeah, no, absolutely. And can you talk a little bit about the three pillars? Um, you talked a little bit last time about it, and it was it was fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Of course. Yeah, so I um what we always talk about internally is our creative integrity is our first pillar. It's important for us to lead with creative first. That means obviously knowing that everything is a balance of art and commerce. Sometimes we'll get creative, that isn't the best, but we know that the budget is really good, and so we'll find uh something with our director creatively to lean into that we're excited about, whether that's something new that they haven't explored before, whether that's animation or something new in the camera department that they want to try out or um anything like that. But we really do try to put the creative first and we really lean into our directors, as I said, crafting the story they want to tell. Um, and that's important to us because what we believe is that work gets work gets work gets work. And I think if you start leaning into doing commercials that are maybe creatively not very good, then it's really hard to continue to work and get new work. And what we say to our directors that we're more interested in building directors and billing directors, and we really mean that. It's uh a shame when directors, and I've seen it before because as I said, I came up as a line producer, as a line producer. It's a shame when you see directors who have so much potential and start off with really good work, get lost in the golden handcuffs of commercials where all of a sudden the creative is no longer as significant as the paycheck, and the real just becomes, you know, not interesting. And then it's really difficult for them after a few years to continue to get work. So we really find a balance there. Sometimes it's commerce, sometimes it's art. In the best of both worlds, you get art and commerce meeting in the middle, and you get to go create good work. Um, the second pillar we have is a very strict uh no-asshole policy. We really like to work with people we want to work with and really build um relationships that are long-lasting, whether that's our line producers that we work with all the time, or um obviously our directors and agencies and clients that we want to continue to work with and build a relationship with that's very important to us. Um, and that's across even the board, even through PAs and DPs and the relationship that they have on set. We're very clear about the respect that needs to happen regardless of the position on set uh between crew members. And uh also the nonprofit side really comes into play there. It's something we talk about in the pre-production meeting and that a lot of our crew know that we do. And I think it creates a different dynamic already coming onto set when you know that there's also a purpose woven into the result of the production, which I think is really quite beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Yeah, absolutely. So do so. Do you have a lot of um repeat clients?

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Yes, yeah, indeed. Yeah, we do. We work with a lot of the same agencies, we've done a lot of repeat business with the same clients. We've single bid a bunch of jobs because of that repeat business. Um, and it's something we love to continue to build and grow. Um, and we also have brands we work work with direct, and that's also a really nice thing to lean into, and that's probably gonna start becoming more and more common as uh agencies continue to grow and grow and grow and be swallowed up by big conglomerates. Um, I think that's gonna start to happen more. So in-house agencies through through clients.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Yeah, yeah. Are you working with them at all or not?

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Yeah, yeah, of course we are. It's we're seeing a lot of brands split off from their traditional kind of AORs haven't existed in in a long time, but splitting off from bigger agencies to form their own in-house agencies, and so we are working a lot with uh brands directly.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Right, right, right. Um and of course, brands nowadays do they're much um more evolved, aren't they? In the creative, they they have very strong opinions often about casting or wardrobe or set design, especially on sort of global projects where you know maybe maybe certain things are important to them. How do you deal with that in terms of your directors? Are you um are you just very honest up front in terms of your communication with the director and with the client in terms of um the approach?

SPEAKER_01 21:52

That's a great question. Of course, we know that happens. You award a job, and then a week later, everything that you awarded and a Everything that was on the treatment changes. I think uh especially these days with AI, actually, that I think that's become even more increasingly more um of a pain point for directors where and even for agencies where the clients are so uh I would say specific about how a job was treated. And I saw this in the treatment, and it was exactly like this. And we all know those are references and those are you know mood pools or AI generated, and so getting that exact result is not necessarily going to be the case. But I think that's where a good agency steps in. We have built really good relationships with GCDs and ECDs, and I think when uh we're aligned with the agency between the ECD and the GCD and our director, I think that the ECD, GCD team or your creative director team can really be a good buffer there where they can align and a good account person, obviously, where they can align with the client on, like, hey, remember, this is the idea that you really liked. So when we awarded the job, and uh our directors have are really collaborative. Right. So I think for them it really is also about what makes this better, not just different. And sometimes when a client, for example, proposes something that maybe was not in the director's uh treatment or something that the director necessarily wanted to do, I think a lot of times for them they really think about will this make it better, why or why not? And if it doesn't make it better, then being able to have a compelling argument for why it shouldn't be the way the client maybe is thinking about it. But they also understand that the client knows their brand and their audience better than anyone. So they understand that there's a middle ground there, right? About really understanding what it is and what's underneath what they are trying to change versus the thing itself, right? Um the color of the background or whatnot, like what is really behind the note versus just the note itself. So it is a delicate dance, as I'm sure you can imagine, because you're working with creatives and you're working with clients and agencies. There's so many decision makers and so many people um in the room, but I think ultimately everyone has their place, and I think it's about respecting the role uh of each party and making sure that there's clear and honest and positive communication across the board.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Right. No, I think that's hugely, hugely important. It really is, and that you know, that idea of collaboration between a production company, an agency, and a brand, and and all having those conversations together.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

I think that that's also recently somebody asked me what I think were the benefits of being a female in business. And I I think that being female run, because it just so happens that everyone on our team is a is female. Um, I think that communication is a really big part of that. I'm not saying obviously men can't have great communication, they absolutely can, but I think that what we offer is very clean, honest, positive, good communication across the board. And we really encourage that throughout the whole process. We know things can get contentious or difficult, and production is sometimes a boilerplate for you know difficult situations, but we really try hard to make sure that there's thorough, consistent, clear communication, and that things are done in writing and that things are approved across the board. And if there's changes, the director knows immediately, and that there is just a through line so that no one's surprised when we get to shooting or get to set.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Yeah, I know that's fantastic. So you so you are a women uh founded production company. Um, you have female partners, are they partners or um how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 25:34

No, not partners. I'm the only owner of the company, but uh yeah, but um employees and um you know, it just so happened when I we were building when I was building the company, and I brought on Summer Griffiths, my executive producer, to be also now um a partner in the company, actually. But um it it just so happened that a lot of the people that we brought on happened to be women, right? And um we've kind of created this small ecosystem of women. And when we opened our offices in Mexico City, it just so happened that all of our team in Mexico City is also women. Um we love men, it just happened that way.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Yeah, no, absolutely. And but you do have a really good mix of female and male directors um absolutely on your on your roster. Um so you so you've you've broadened out there. Definitely, yeah. Yeah. And you started so young and and you are still so young. I mean, as a as a as a woman, have you have you come across um any challenges that that have you know made you stronger, been been difficult, and you've overcome them? Any sort of form of resilience that that you would be happy to share?

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Yeah, I would say that um I think everyone's been through some form of uh difficulty or resilience. So I'm not sure that it's necessarily because I'm a woman that it has been maybe more difficult. Of course, there are things that relate to my gender that have come up throughout my years of being um a producer and an executive producer in this business. I've always kind of looked very young. So even when I started my company and I was very young, um, it was interesting to see how clients reacted to getting to set and seeing me and thinking I was maybe Anna's assistant instead of Anna herself. Uh, but you know, I think times have really changed. When I started in 2010, there was definitely uh there were definitely a lot more men leading the charge in all facets of this business, like whether that was from the agency to clients to um, you know, production itself. And now I'm seeing primarily women actually running agency, you know, as agency producers or creatives. And uh it's been a really interesting thing and awesome thing to see change. Uh, but I would say that any challenges that I've had throughout my career, while some of them absolutely have to do with my gender, it hasn't really been something I've focused on because I also have a very masculine side to my personality. And my business side tends to be more masculine. So my gender hasn't really been something that I've focused on throughout my career because I have this kind of balance of masculine and feminine. But um definitely on more on the film and TV side, as I was working on um a couple of my projects, there were definitely a lot of comments made to me uh starting out about my gender and about uh, you know, my looks or my appearance or comments like that. But of course, I've swept under the rug. And I think that for me it's about having a community and a foundation. I'm lucky enough to have an amazing family that I can talk to about these things and not making that any of those uh difficult moments part of my identity, but rather things that happen to me that I can put behind me and kind of move on. Um, so I'm lucky enough to have had that perspective.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

Yeah, absolutely. And you were telling me that um, you know, because we were talking a little bit about AI, and you were saying that you've created this bespoke tool, which sounds fascinating. I'd love you to talk about that and how um how producers can use that, how that can help.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Yeah, so this started maybe 15 years ago, maybe 12 years ago. Um, I started to, I worked so much internationally and domestically shooting everywhere as online producer and realized that not only did every producer have their own way of working, but also every country had their own way of working. And it was kind of a hot mess, to be honest. And so I had this idea 12 years ago and started to teach myself how to use Adobe XD to create these wireframes for uh software I wanted to build for production. And pre-AI would have cost me close to a million dollars to build this. And with AI, I've now built the entire software myself, which is fascinating. So I was able to use all of these tools that everyone's uh using to build the software, and uh we are now testing it on our own productions, and this software canopy allows you to run a job from budgeting and bidding all the way through delivery and accounting and payroll and all of that good stuff. And all the creative tools are embedded into it as well as the financial and budgetary tools, and yeah, we're testing it in our own productions and we'll be probably going to market in the next three to four months uh with the tool. So obviously, line producers are our main customers, but also production companies as well.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

Yeah, congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Well, when you say you're embedding creative tools, what sort of creative tools are you are you so it'll allow you to do uh for location managers to upload location pictures to allow you to select uh locations, casting, uh create pre-production books on the same system, storyboards. Um, and then we are integrating AI tools into it. So the software will be smart enough that after using it or uploading budgets, historical budgets, it will be able to predict uh budgets based on creative that you upload, uh whether that's a treatment or agency boards, so that it can at least lower the days of, you know, maybe bidding producers or maybe give you more accurate historical data or information on different cities and bidding in Miami versus Atlanta versus Prague or Bulgaria. So it will be very uh AI integrated in that in that side of things.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

That's amazing. Well, hopefully it won't put too many people out of work, and hopefully it'll encourage clients to actually make more content, which I'm sure we're gonna need as the world goes on. Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

I think that if anything, it will um it will be a smarter way of working. I think you know, bidding producers are obviously still gonna have a job and and produce line producers in general. I think what this will allow them to do is maybe expand their thinking into considering other locations or other places to shoot than maybe they would not have considered before. Um so we're thinking of it more like that and more of a foundation to work off. So obviously, we're not expecting that this tool is going to perfectly budget a job, but rather that it's going to set the foundation for the job so that then bidding producers or line producers can go in and make changes, adjustments, tweaks uh to the budget and um, you know, work from there.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

And I and you know, I would imagine help producers also um explore long form and and sort of bidding features, you know, if they've if they felt very much in a in a zone of just commercials and they want to explore longer content, um, longer form content, I would imagine that that is a tool that can really give you the confidence and help you get there, um, which perhaps otherwise you couldn't do.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

Yeah, also the the tool is very inter very easy to interact with, but also uh the software, but also very familiar for line producers to use. Um, so it follows all the AI CP guidelines of budgeting, etc. But for younger producers who've maybe never produced anything, it's going to be a very easy way for them to understand how to bid and how uh the system works. Not to mention that I think that since the pandemic and since you know remote working and jobs going abroad, there's been a lack of um training for producers. And um, you know, I feel like it used to be much more common for line producers to take young people under their wing and teach them how to use budgeting softwares or how to bid or things like that. And that's kind of been far and few between few and far between in since pandemic and before. So this tool will definitely be uh a guide for younger producers to start bidding and to start producing their own content, short films, music videos, whatever they want to do, not just commercials. And down the line, I think our next iteration of this will definitely be moving into longer format. Right now, I think we're just imagining this for shorter format, but down the line, definitely for features and television.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yeah, yeah. So, so on the one hand, from a creative standpoint, you're you're producing very authentic work, you know, storytelling. And then, but on the other hand, you're using AI as a tool to be able to make you faster, leaner, and all of those things that we we need to be.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

I think that it's interesting because AI is such a catch-all term, right? And there's so many different ways to use it, and we're constantly being asked by agencies or even clients, like, how are you using AI? Because it's just the buzzword of our time. Um, and the reality is like we use it every day pretty much, right? So whether that's you know, asking questions and using it like Google or integrating it with, you know, how we run our jobs or getting information about filming in a specific city or building the software, for example. But also we're using it in generating moods for treatments and we're using it in post-production. We recently did a shoe where we needed to do some sign replacements and in the actual footage, and that was all done through AI. Yeah. And that's something that would have, you know, maybe cost tens of thousands of dollars to do in VFX and post will now cost, you know, maybe a couple hundred dollars. Yeah. So that's a, you know, of course, are there people that are gonna be put out of work? Absolutely, or less hours maybe. Yes. Um, but also new jobs will hopefully be created. And we're not seeing right now, we're not leaning at all into generating everything in AI. It's not something we're even interested in doing.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Um, but there are obviously companies that are doing that, and that's a for me a separate category of content, entertainment, whatever you want to call it. I think that there's still room for traditional, so to speak, media to to you know, to be created and to be made.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Yeah. Even even if at the end of the day you might need to use AI for maybe some of the localization or something like that. It's uh it's yeah. That's interesting. And then before we go, I mean, this has just been so so fascinating. I I know that you produce features as well, it which seems so ambitious for you know somebody um to, you know, with so much else on your plate. I mean, can you talk a little bit about any projects that you might have um coming through the pipeline?

SPEAKER_01 36:13

Yeah, so I have been, you know, dabbling in features for a long time. I produced three features between 2014 and 2016, and then of course the doc series with Guy and Ryan. And since then, I've been optioning a lot of properties. So we have a couple of features in development right now, um, based on IP, based on existing material. Um, and then we also have a series in um in development at MGM, which is a remake of another series that we optioned, um, which is going to be exciting once we kind of move forward with that. And then we optioned uh a couple other book series and that we're developing and one that we're taking out. So different stages. We are also going to be producing our own series fully, um, our own TV series. Um, and you know, I think for us, we lean creative again, the same way we do with commercials. So it's really about the taste level of what we want to be making. Uh, one of our shows is really about um the American dream. It's a drama, it's kind of like Ozark meets succession. But it's a series that really celebrates the American dream in middle America and kind of that picking yourself up by your bootstraps, American mentality that we feel is still around today, but obviously, with everything happening in the world, it seems um like it's getting further and further from immigrants and uh and also the American people. And we want to kind of celebrate that and bring that back. Um, the the other series that we have is a romantic comedy that we're doing. It's a half-hour uh rom com, well, 40-minute rom com. Um, and the features are kind of everywhere. We have one that's a little bit like Harold and Maude meets the lobster. It's uh going to be written and directed by Colin West. And um, it's this kind of really beautiful, quirky dark comedy and drama, and that we are hoping to start shooting next year in um in Spain, actually, with an international cast. And then we always encourage our own directors to pursue film and TV. And so one of our own directors we're developing and um in pre-production on his feature, um, which is called Local Visitors, which is an original script comedy, very outclair, very quirky. Um, so yeah, kind of all over the place. And gosh, lots on your plate. Yeah, yeah. We love collaborating with with different studios, and we're working with anonymous um on some of these projects, which is great.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

Yeah, oh fantastic, yeah. And will you do you think brands have you? I mean, are you experiencing brands wanting to get involved with natural features as well? Is that something that you can you can predict? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Yeah, I think that that's a very natural place for for brands to go and also something we are actively talking to brands about. Right. One of our series we're actively speaking to one of the to a brand to be a key kind of product placement, but also more importantly, sponsor of the series, and they'll be woven into the entire um show or into the entire episode in a very natural integration that makes sense for the series.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

That's fantastic. Well, it has been such a pleasure talking to you, it really has. And um, yeah, best of luck with everything, all the work that you've got in the pipeline. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Thank you, Sarah. Thanks for the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

Okay, bye bye. Thank you so much, Anna. These are exactly the kind of stories I want to bring to this platform. Honest, thoughtful conversations about creativity, resilience, and building something that matters. Thank you for being part of it. If you enjoyed this conversation, please do follow, review, and share. It really helps the podcast grow. And as always, thank you for listening. Till next time.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Bye, I'm not sure.