Episode Transcript
Matt Blackburn 0:18
All right, everybody, Episode 30, we made it to the third decade. So Episode 30, MOCK the podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Today, we thought it would be cool to talk a little bit about production. In general, it’s one thing to create an idea and then to sell an idea. But then you have to bring the idea to life. So I thought that would be a cool topic, and to do so brought in a good friend of mine, and the first art director that I worked with in the business.
What’s up?
Rob Broadfoot 0:53
Matt Blackburn.
Matt Blackburn 0:55
Thanks for having me, man.
Rob Broadfoot 0:56
Yeah.
Matt Blackburn 0:56
It’s been awhile.
Rob Broadfoot 0:57
Matt works with a company or owns a company called Order. And they’re a content company and production company. So he, among other things, has created tons of great content and produced a lot of cool things, including documentaries and stuff, we can talk about some of that. But anyway, I thought it would be cool to talk about production. So tell us a little bit, I guess, about order and what you guys do and how you approach production? And we’ll just kind of get right into it.
Matt Blackburn 1:26
Yeah, absolutely, man. So as you mentioned, you know, you and I worked together a long time ago, as a creative team in the early 2000s.
Rob Broadfoot 1:35
Right.
Matt Blackburn 1:36
So did a tour in the advertising world, myself, and really was exposed to a lot of the gauntlet, the creative runs to be, you know, created and brought forth into the world. And so, you know, we wanted to focus on the production aspects, the live action aspects, animation portion of it. And so I branched off and started order in 2016. And one of the things that we set out to do was to really be able to bolt on to a creative team as an extension of their team. To help them navigate that gauntlet of handing off a project from, the approval of a concept to the creation of a concept, which, as you know, it can be a lot of things. It can be stressful, it can be, really hard to keep the integrity of the work intact.
Rob Broadfoot 2:32
Right.
Matt Blackburn 2:33
And a lot of things like that, because you’ve got a lot of players involved, right? You’ve got, basically three verticals, you’ve got the production company, you’ve got the agency, and you’ve got the client. And in each one of those verticals, you have different stakeholders who have different visions about how that creative can be brought to life, either personal preference or what’s right for the brand, and usually a combination of both of those things. So how do you get all of those stakeholders together on the same page?
Rob Broadfoot 3:00
Right.
Matt Blackburn 3:01
So that then you can bring it to life so that everyone’s expectations are hopefully exceeded.
Rob Broadfoot 3:06
Right.
Matt Blackburn 3:08
And so what we do is we start by really listening and understanding what the idea is. You know, we really want to understand what that vision is, what the tone of it is, that wants to be brought forth. As you know, if you talk about, for example, an intergalactic antagonists who’s who’s kidnapped a princess, that can be Star Wars or it can be Spaceballs. You know?
Rob Broadfoot 3:33
Right. Both excellent.
Matt Blackburn 3:36
Both excellent. And, you know, if you’ve got an agency who wants to do something with a more comedic bend to it, you know Spaceballs and a client whose vision is a little more Star Wars. It’s when you when you get on set, if those two visions aren’t even closely aligned, there’s going to be a lot of, you’re set up for failure.
Rob Broadfoot 3:59
You’re set up for failure.
Matt Blackburn 4:00
Yeah, for everyone’s sake. And a lot of times, obviously, it’s a big investment. It’s a big investment for the agency, it’s a big investment for the client. And, you know, we want to make sure that the work sees the light of day and in the best possible way. But the way we do that, as I mentioned, is first by listening and then really trying to work with the creative team to nail down their vision of how this idea best comes to life.
Rob Broadfoot 4:31
Right.
Matt Blackburn 4:31
So we go into the exploration of you know, working off of the mood boards and the storyboards that are provided in scripts to to really dial in the appropriate tone that they have in mind. So it really is, you know, more Spaceballs? Is it more Star Wars to stick with that analogy? And then thinking about ways to use the medium holistically. So that we’re we’re dialing in everything from you know, the the score to the sound effects to the visuals to lens selection, how we how we evoke emotion, the appropriate emotions with that. And that’s where the the creative opportunity is for us as we see it. You know?
Rob Broadfoot 5:14
Well, it’s kind of like another analogy, it’s kind like building a house, right? And so it’s the relationship almost, between the architect and the builder, right? The architect comes up with the ideas and draws them up, and they look beautiful and great. And then the builder comes in and goes, okay, well, yes, we can do this, but here’s how we’re going to make that happen and tries to figure out how to build the actual house. And sometimes those things are in perfect alignment. But a lot of times, they’re not quite, and the builder is going to come in and go, You know what, that’s a beautiful door that you drew up sliding glass, whatever, but we can’t really do that, we’re going to need to make it 12 inches smaller here or a foot bigger here, whatever else. So I think that goes back to that true partnership, and what everybody sort of brings to the table in terms of skill sets and bringing the thing to life.
Matt Blackburn 6:10
Right. Absolutely. And sticking with your analogy, there’s also sometimes budget implications, on that, too.
Rob Broadfoot 6:18
Right, right.
Matt Blackburn 6:18
So you’ve got another boundary or guardrails (laughter).
Rob Broadfoot 6:21
Often the most important!
Matt Blackburn 6:23
A budget
Rob Broadfoot 6:23
Yes, right.
Matt Blackburn 6:24
So what can we in budget that’s going to keep the aesthetic integrity, intact, and, and be able to be functionalat the same time?
Rob Broadfoot 6:36
So do you guys bring in? Do you bring in outside shooters? Or do you guys shoot or what? How does that work?
Matt Blackburn 6:42
So we shoot, we bring in crew, obviously, from a support standpoint, you know, to to make it happen.
Rob Broadfoot 6:49
Sure.
Matt Blackburn 6:51
And you know, that’s technically another vertical, I suppose, where you have to have everyone aligned. That’s building, you know, to your analogy. Again, the folks who are actually putting the house together, need that solid blueprint to be able to do it, obviously. And, you know, that’s another part of the process that is important is that planning and sort of pre-vis phase. You know, one of the things that we found success in, is being able to, take a storyboard and once we get that visual tone nailed, is to be able to bring those those shooting boards to life in a way that’s going to provide an accurate description of what the composition of the shot is going to be, including depth of field, and like, lighting. And so we actually render those shots, using multiple 3d packages, to give an accurate representation of exactly what that shot is going to look like in terms of scale, in terms of subject matter in relation to the camera, how much of the frame, they’re taking up, what the lighting looks like.
Rob Broadfoot 8:05
Yeah.
Matt Blackburn 8:05
And what that provides is not only a great roadmap for the stakeholders, within the agency and on the client side, but it literally provides a schematic for the crew. So they know exactly where the lights need to be, they know what lens package we’re using to set up the camera, and all that. So when you sit down and you look at the monitor, once the first shot is set up, it’s basically pixel for pixel what you’ve seen in the shooting boards, which alleviates a lot of stress. And, you know, just again, getting that alignment across.
Rob Broadfoot 8:37
Do you find that Like..? I know we do, but sometimes clients I think, maybe don’t fully understand everything that goes into bringing something to life, right? And I don’t mean that in a negative way. But I think that certainly in the age of technology that we’re in where everybody’s got an iPhone and thinks their photographer now, you know, or, this chat stuff going on everybody’s a writer now.
Matt Blackburn 9:04
Right, right.
Rob Broadfoot 9:04
Well all you have to do is ask Google. But we find that sometimes, you know, here’s a great idea and wow, to bring that to life and to see their vision is going to take a little a lot of time, effort, money, skill, all of those things. Do you run into that often? Or not so much?
Matt Blackburn 9:24
Oh my gosh, man, if I had, you know, $1 for every time I heard the clients, you know, short of suggesting to shoot it with an iPhone, right? Because obviously the cinematic mode and a lot of the advertisements that Apple does to show the capabilities of the phone. It really does blur the lines for a lot of clients that don’t understand the nuance difference between shooting with you know, a Zeiss lens versus you know, a fixed wide angle on your phone.
Rob Broadfoot 9:24
Right, right.
Matt Blackburn 9:56
You know? So that is a challenge, it’s really is difficult when you get into the nuance, because a lot of that also comes back to subjectivity, you know?
Rob Broadfoot 10:10
Ya.
Matt Blackburn 10:10
And sort of a taste level. But again, you can, you can get over that hurdle in the pre Pro, pre production phase showing the difference between. You know, and to introduce another analogy we’ve used for years is the car analogy.
Rob Broadfoot 10:28
Yup.
Matt Blackburn 10:29
You know, yes, you can buy a car for $20,000, but if you want a luxury experience, you’re gonna have to spend a little bit more. It’s like, showing the visual, you know, parallels to that.
Rob Broadfoot 10:29
Yeah.
Matt Blackburn 10:31
You can kind of do it. And usually, you can get people there.
Rob Broadfoot 10:48
We use the car analogy, often.
Matt Blackburn 10:50
Yes, it’s a good one.
Rob Broadfoot 10:51
It’s a good one.
Matt Blackburn 10:52
Yeah.
Rob Broadfoot 10:52
Do you want the Honda Civic or do you want the Bentley?
Matt Blackburn 10:56
Right!
Rob Broadfoot 10:57
Both have four wheels.
Matt Blackburn 10:59
It’ll get you where you want to go.
Rob Broadfoot 10:59
Both have engines and steering wheels, and we’ll get you where you need to go.
Matt Blackburn 11:03
But again, when you get into the nuances, like you could also have a stock version of that car.
Rob Broadfoot 11:09
Right.
Matt Blackburn 11:09
But man, the seat warmers are really nice.
Rob Broadfoot 11:11
They sure are? Yeah. I don’t know about the autopilot. That freaks me out.
Matt Blackburn 11:16
Yeah, that’s a little scary man.
Rob Broadfoot 11:19
Well, let’s shifting gears for a second. I want to talk quickly. Just give us kind of, you shot a documentary in Nepal I believe?
Matt Blackburn 11:28
That’s correct.
Rob Broadfoot 11:28
Blue kandling?
Matt Blackburn 11:30
Kangling.
Rob Broadfoot 11:30
Kangling. Tell us a little bit about that, and what that experience was like.
Matt Blackburn 11:36
Yeah, absolutely. Well, so it started out as an idea for a pilot, we wanted to do a series on. On the idea of the concept of death. How different cultures experience, express, and process, the concept of death. With, you know, the different pageantry that’s involved the different ceremonies that are involved. And we found this burial ceremony that Buddhists performed called a Sky Burial. Where basically, they take the body, the deceased body, to a mountain peak, and they offer it to vultures and vultures come descend on the body and dispose of it.
Rob Broadfoot 12:19
That’s heavy stuff.
Matt Blackburn 12:20
It’s very heavy. And it’s very symbolic. To the to the Buddhist philosophy. It’s very sacred, obviously, they believe the vultures are representation. So, they call them dakinis, which are sky angels that descend down and take the body, to the heavenly realm.
Rob Broadfoot 12:36
Right.
Matt Blackburn 12:38
And so when we got into it, once, we started to sort of uncover more of the symbolism and the philosophy, and as we started to actually have conversations with people in the culture, you know, we felt like we uncovered something that was worthy of a full feature length.
Rob Broadfoot 12:55
Yeah.
Matt Blackburn 12:55
So we decided to just make it into a feature length. But, you know, one of the things that we set out to do was get the perspective of people within the culture. To not only show like a collective consciousness or collective idea view of it, but also, people in their clergy who perform different aspects of the ceremony, and people who are just, you know, living the philosophy on a day to day basis.
Rob Broadfoot 13:26
So let me ask this question, thinking about it from a production standpoint, right? Getting back to the initial idea, you’ve got this great idea, cool idea, super cool. Step one, to making it a reality, right? When we move into pre production, how do you? Who do you call? What do you do? What’s the step one? Because I imagine that’s not an easy conversation to have for them to let you into this ceremony that’s sacred.
Matt Blackburn 13:52
Correct. Well, a lot of it was a leap of faith. To be honest with you. Because we had to trust the information that we got was accurate, you know, the stuff that we were able to source. And then, how do we get access to these people?
Rob Broadfoot 14:11
Right.
Matt Blackburn 14:12
Was a big one. And obviously, because it’s a documentary, we’re not following a script, we don’t have the luxury of, you know, being able to plan around the shots and and have control over what people are going to say.
Rob Broadfoot 14:25
Right.
Matt Blackburn 14:26
So we found a production partner in Nepal that could act as sort of line producers on the ground that could get us access to the people that we needed, get us the locations that we were hoping to get. And you know, they were able to logistically kind of put things together. But we were in one of the two remaining Buddhist kingdoms in the upper Mustang district of Nepal. The other one being Bhutan, where they literally have a king that represents the kingdom. And we were in very remote places, you know, we were in the Himalayas, like around 16 to 18,000 feet.
Rob Broadfoot 15:10
Wow!
Matt Blackburn 15:11
Yeah. So we were there.
Rob Broadfoot 15:11
How long were you there?
Matt Blackburn 15:12
We were there for a month.
Rob Broadfoot 15:14
Wow!
Matt Blackburn 15:15
Yeah. And so very limited resources in terms of electricity, obviously, no Wi Fi. None of that. So we had to plan for those scenarios. And one of the things that we wanted to do, to present it as authentic as possible, was to keep the and also from a logistics standpoint was to keep the production itself nimble and small. So we were using available light. We were using one camera.
Rob Broadfoot 15:44
How big was the crew?
Matt Blackburn 15:46
It was there were six of us. Sorry, seven.
Rob Broadfoot 15:49
Okay.
Matt Blackburn 15:49
Yeah, we had four from the production company in Nepal. And we brought three people over. Myself, my partner who’s the DP and so many other things, and a producer.
Rob Broadfoot 16:03
That’s incredible. I mean, I’ve seen the movie, it turned out great. It’s fantastic. But what a cool experience.
Matt Blackburn 16:11
Yeah!
Rob Broadfoot 16:11
Just for you to have!
Matt Blackburn 16:12
Oh, it was amazing!
Rob Broadfoot 16:13
A month in Nepal, like just exploring, that’s insane.
Matt Blackburn 16:16
There may have been some selfish intentions (laughter).
Rob Broadfoot 16:19
I can imagine. You know,we’ve talked in previous podcasts about why we love the business, and a lot of it is the learning that we and the experiences that we get to have in different places. And that certainly seems like it would be a pretty awesome one.
Matt Blackburn 16:36
Yeah, it certainly was. And, you know, one of the things that we kind of uncovered. I think it might have been subconsciously to some degree, but to really see at the end of the day, these people. Who live and operate under a certain philosophy, very different from a Western philosophy, in a very remote place, just how similar they are as people. You know, at the end of the day, people are people. Like, people have the same or very similar motivations. They want the same things out of life, you know. And it was really interesting, from an experiential standpoint, to see that. You know and that actually kind of surfaced to a bigger role in the piece and the film. You know, it’s to kind of prove that, at the end of the day, we’re all we’re all kind of motivated by the same things.
Rob Broadfoot 17:32
That’s awesome. Well, we got to kind of wrap up here, but for anybody who wants to see the movie, go watch the movie, and I encourage you to do so it’s really well made and just a cool story. It’s just the corner of the world. Where can people find it?
Matt Blackburn 17:48
People can find it on LoCo+.
Rob Broadfoot 17:50
Okay.
Matt Blackburn 17:50
Yeah, LoCo+ is a is a really cool thing. They’re actually a streaming platform that started here in Atlanta. They’re looking to really be a launchpad for local artists, and local creators. And yeah, you can find it on LoCo+.
Rob Broadfoot 18:05
Very cool. And the movie again is called Blue KangLing.
Matt Blackburn 18:07
Blue KangLing and a little bit of backstory on that. The KangLing is a flute that is made from a human femur that they use to summon the vultures.
Rob Broadfoot 18:18
Fleemer?
Matt Blackburn 18:19
Femur.
Rob Broadfoot 18:19
Fleet flute fleemer.
Matt Blackburn 18:21
Fleemer. Yes, I guess if you combined them. Yeah. A fleemer.
Rob Broadfoot 18:25
So bad.
Matt Blackburn 18:26
Yeah. Very cool.
Rob Broadfoot 18:28
Well, hey, thanks for stopping by. Thanks for having me man.
Thanks for the fun chat and very, very cool stuff.
Matt Blackburn 18:33
Appreciate it.
Rob Broadfoot 18:34
And we’ll have you back some other time. But right now we got to take off so we will see everybody next time.
Matt Blackburn 18:40
Thank you so much.
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