Remote Production - A Versatile Model for Modern Times

In today's world, remote production is becoming more and more utilized as a tool for creating projects. In this episode, host Candice Bloch focuses on remote production through two engaging interviews with professionals that are highly adept and knowledgeable about the production model. First up, a conversation with Brandon Bloch, founding partner and executive producer at the global remote production company, Hometeam. After that, a discussion with Gary Adcock, a workshop instructor and the program manager of the Remote Production Conference.

• To learn more about Hometeam, visit: wearehometeam.com 
• For more about the Remote Production Conference, visit: www.remoteproductionconference.com
• For more on Post Production World Conference: https://www.ppw-conference.com/

Transcript

Welcome. I'm your host for this episode, Candice block today, our focus is remote production. What follows are two different conversations on the topic? The first focus is on a remote production company and the second on remote production conference.

 

I'm here with Brandon block, a filmmaker with about 15 years of experience, who is a founding partner and executive producer with the global remote production company home team with clients ranging from TV networks to production companies, ad agencies, brands, and music labels. Home team has revolutionized and polished the method of modern remote production to not only deliver beautiful and creative results to clients, but to do so with a better production model for today's.

Case and point home team just created a whopping 56 unique artist background packages for NBC's American song contest, which currently airs live every Monday evening and features contestants from every single us state and territory. These profiles were shot by local crews in each of the artists hometowns and were all completed within the span of about 10 weeks uh feet, not possible without utilizing remote production. 

so welcome to the pod cast, Brandon, and thank you for joining us. 

absolutely so good to be here, talking to women in film and video. And I go back to knowing about the organization from my days at American university, when I actually won an award sponsored by with

excellent. Well, we can talk a little bit about that in just a second, but before we get started, in case any of you listeners have noticed Brandon and I have the same last name are in fact related. He is my big brother. So hi. Hi brother. 

Hey, good to finally get a chance to chat.

Brandon is joining us from Austin, Texas right now. So before episode, as we know is focusing on remote production and we're gonna chat a lot about home team, is a, your company that is a remote production company.

before we delve into that a little bit, I like to let listeners get to know a little about, who we're talking to. how did you get into filmmaking? And when did you begin bringing visual stories to screens? 

I started working at the state department doing documentaries with them and a lot of video for social media at main state there in DC. From there, went out on my own after a few years and started making a lot of like short documentaries about artists and culture makers and just exploring with my camera basically And then. Moved up to New York after eight years in DC to just keep going in that direction. And then that's when I started getting hired by, you know, big ad agencies and brands to like make short content for web. And and then I. Took a couple of years and shot some TV. I was a DP for an MTV show and a couple other reality TV shows.

And then after that kind of started running my own production company, I guess you could say. And so did that for a number of years and my client. For the most part, I've always been like agencies and brands, like making branded content or commercials. And then at the start of 2020 which is, the inception of what we're talking about today we started home team, so a couple. Friends and longtime collaborators who I'd worked with through the years and DC and New York, we banded together to start this global remote production company at the outset of the pandemic, I ran my own production company called film Mason for a few years, but that was like sole proprietor, you know, director for hire. I was represented by a couple of production companies one which is important to the story of home team. But when I was in New York, I was with commission content which was actually 10 years ago, or even less.

Doing global remote production. We did a bunch of campaigns for Starbucks and different like Instagram, Google different hotel brands. So with, so Harrison, winter owned and operated that production company. And I was a director for that. And so really got to like learn the ropes of remote production before.

Like it was even a thing really. And before there was definitely like this urgent need for it. So it's important to mention, cause it's not like in April of 2020, we just woke up one day and said global remote production. 

That's Yeah, that's wonderful. It's fortunate. It's great that you have that and experience in that realm.  just even also talking about how that came to be obviously home team merged different companies and home team was established at the beginning of the pandemic.

you think that home team would have come into existence? Had there not been a Panda. Was it something that you saw as an eventuality in a way, or was that something that pushed it to happen?

 it already was happening. And in this really coincidental way, my, my partner at magic seed Ligon and Harrison and I in starting in like December January, 2020, we were all talking about  with our decade plus of experience in film production, like how could we do this better?

So it's really interesting, on the Eve of the pandemic, The three of us were like huddled up, just, you know, identifying pain points, identifying places for improvement. Like how could we build a better production model? And so in this really like I said, coincidental sort of fortuitous way, like the pandemic came along and forced us into this model, which we've now realized is.

So beneficial beyond just the pandemic. So this has become our new way of doing production and I can walk through all the, what that looks like and all the different benefits of it. Beyond the obvious one, which is  the ability to keep production going 

right, 

you're not able to treat.

 Creative solutions to problems is sort of a of yours. Is that something that you find drives a lot of you do in life? 

Finding, 

it's a common thread. growing up and our dad who is a designer and always looking for how can you improve the world through good design or innovation or entrepreneurship?

 that's different. Kernel that was planted deep in our brains. And so I don't think of myself as like a filmmaker storyteller. 

 you said you don't see yourself as a storyteller, but do you think you would have thrived as much in. Insurance or, you know, some other thing where you're finding creative solutions to, you know, 

to a 

what I'll say. Cause because the answer could be, if I was designing better insurance, honestly maybe I could get just as excited about that. But what I'll say is what I love about home team and what I'm doing right now is it just blends together. Everything, you know, it doesn't feel like there's any part of my.

Passions and background that isn't being tapped right now. And so that's why I feel like especially excited right now, working on home team because it just, it blends together, innovation, entrepreneurship, filmmaking, working with people who I've met through the many years who make up our global network of filmmakers.

Brings in a lot of like personal relationships I've developed over the past 10, 15 years. And then just a lot of experience, like all the knowledge from working with brands and agencies and entertainment companies there's no problem or no, no brief that we receive that feels  super foreign.

It's all. Tapping into some experience I have in the past.  

it seems like, you're basically experts in remote production. It does seem to have way more positives than negatives.  are there any negatives that you see to this new model other than maybe just like not having an in-person connection  

of course, like you're not there on set. So there's some distance between,  if you're trying to work with an actor, let's say on a set, like you're not there helping them shape their performance,  right in front of them working as a team, you have a screen between you.

 I do see so many more positives that quickly outweigh,  if I if you were to ask the negatives, it's like a list of three or four things versus the positives, it opens up this whole world of possibility. And maybe that's why I'm the right person to do this is because I just see it as so beneficial.

And another one, you know, is like people do like traveling. I'm lucky because I got that out of my system. I could say, like I spent a decade,  traveling all over the world. So there's that, there's a degree of that. some people might be in my position, say what a bummer.

I don't get to like, go to London or Tokyo or. Toronto or LA like the travel part, the adventure production is not as like acute in my role anymore but I've done that,  before home team started, I had made the decision. I wanted to stay off the road as much as I could.

 Ultimately, you can tell it's definitely the way things should be now, given that there's like a massive positives list compared to that miniature little potential negatives list.  let's let's talk about some of those positives. I know not only with less travel, that means less.

Less cost and time and know, environmental effects as well. 

the best way I think, to introduce home team to people, especially like an educated audience, like for this podcast is to talk about kind of like how things used to get done versus like how we do them with home team and then the opportunities that the benefits of that logistically and creatively.

Right after the pandemic hit. And we announced that we were building home team. We got on the radar of the voice on NBC. So since then,  we've done the past three seasons of the voice doing all the home follows. So if you watch the show and you know, when they introduce a contestant, they are in Montana or Idaho or New York city, they do a little package introducing,  what.

Their home life looks like. You know, the way that used to be done would be put a crew on a plane, usually from LA I would say, and fly them to Montana. And then they land. They, they have a travel day. They might have a scout day. They have a shoot day. They probably aren't flying out on the shoot day.

So they have another down day, maybe a travel day overnight. Same thing. So you could have, if I were say shooting in three cities might take 10 days to do all of that, right? 

Yeah. 

With home team, we work with crews locally and all the cities. So we have the go-to team in Montana, in Idaho, in New York city.

And so those teams are shooting locally. They know the local lay of the land. They work with local crews. And so we are able to shoot that in either three consecutive days, or we could even do all the shoots on a single day, like for HBO, their show, legendary. We shot 17 contestant packages in three cities on the same day.

Well, 

that's another. For brands, you know, we shot like a high-end holiday campaign for LG to launch their new TV with celebrity talent in San Francisco, LA and Toronto. And I directed that all remotely from my home here in Austin. Felt like I was on set in San Francisco in LA, in Toronto, and I didn't have to get on a plane.

I didn't have to travel. And the end result, which you can see on our website, people are not even aware that was shot remotely. Like the finished product looks as good as if we had flown a crew and I had flown everywhere. 

You think in that particular instance, you being the director on all three helped it all have the same look. Cause I understand for the one that you just talked about where you had like 17 locations and things, are you dividing that among other members? I mean, I'm assuming you're dividing that among different directors and things like that as well.

Actually for the legendary one, I think I was pretty much, you would call me the director on that one for all of 

it. 

wow. 

And that just looked like sitting in a war room on the day of all these shoots and, you know, the secret sauce is how we do that. And you know, I can't like divulge the whole process to, to everybody, but I'll, I could say.

You know, it has a lot to do with just really solid pre-production pre-visualization and sending very clear shot lists and shooting approaches to all the crews and also curating the crews. Well, you know, making sure the crews we bring on for any given project or like the right team, they have the right experience.

They have the right look to their footage, they're using the right gear. So what we do as home team, Create a consistency across all these shoots.  so if you watch the voice, nobody's aware that those were shot. I think we've done 33 or more of those home follows by now.

I would say,  all shot by different teams. And if you watch the show you have no, no idea, they all look.

Yeah. So I'm talking about that team and curating your team and the people that you work with. What is important to you?  what do you look.

for in deciding who's going to be who you collaborate with and all of these places all over the world. 

 right up there is experience, because we are handing off a lot of responsibility to these teams on the ground. We want to make sure. There they've been there and done that. Professionalism, trustworthiness, it's not enough to just say you know, how to operate a red camera or whatever, like it's saying you have. aesthetic ability, storytelling instincts is another one, right? 'cause when you're on the ground in the field, you need to think quick. And we consider all of our, we call them filmmakers.

We don't say like camera operators, because there's so much more than that. it's a lot of skills and a lot of soft skills, a lot of hard skills, a lot of like experience.

with the increasing technology and all of that stuff and being immersed in different environments, do you see one day actually even doing more and VR type things to be in certain areas, there's all these like multi-camera things to, I don't know. 

I've thought about that. I don't know. I'm not sure where it's going.

It's just it's an interesting thing of these immersive experiences and how that as a concept is growing as well. And so perhaps they, you know, as they grow together, there could be other intersections down 

Yeah, I think there will be, you know, we're always kinda like tuned into where the technology is going and each new app or piece of technology that's developed for filmmakers. We take a look at it and see if it's useful. I did a project last year, maybe my biggest project last year for a major like AR developer and a.

Really like immerse myself in the world of AR for a good three months. And there's definitely a lot of potential there. I'm just not sure what exactly that'll become. It's very interesting. I think it's like a super powerful platform and like use of technology. I'm just not, I haven't had the aha moment yet of like how it hooks into what we do for.

But you have that now that knowledge sort of banked and you're aware of all that stuff. So you can pull from that. If you need it down the line as a possible piece of a solution, 

Yeah, I'll also say, you know, just the tools being developed very quickly for remote work and remote collaboration, like we're using all those, right? So like the ability to. Meet a client, meet a crew, like develop an entire project, collaborate on the pre production, shoot it and do all post-production all remotely with teams all over the globe, frankly, that you never meet in person once.

I mean, it's that's what we're fluid in and the tools are being developed every day to make that a smoother process. All the more reason to believe that like remote production is here to stay, you know?

Oh, for sure. I mean, even this is a type of remote production that we're doing right now. You're in Austin, I'm here 

Yeah. 

and we're having a conversation and thanks to, you know, technology, the internet, all of that It's becomes a seamless experience.

It's also like the client's willingness to do it. Like as clients get more used to this and understand.

 yes, you can save money on flights, airfare per DMS, baggage fees, car rentals, hotels. Great. So that is great. More of your budget goes into the production. You save time because like I outlined before you're able to like compress timelines, we could.

You know, we've done this much. The Starbucks project was shooting in 30 some cities on a single day. So we know that's possible. So you can compress your schedule, but what, where it gets really exciting and fun is talking about the creative opportunities that opens. And so that's why I think more people are coming to us and more people are seeing the creative possibilities that are unlocked.

For example,  with a tech client, let's say a global tech brand and we work with a number of them. you want to tell the global story of that tech brand? Well, you don't want to just shoot that. LA, or you don't want to just shoot that in Atlanta, like for this AR client last year, we shot that in Tokyo, Sydney, London, Paris, New York Boulder, Colorado San Francisco LA, i, you know, in a number of other places. And so it's all to say, like we're helping people tell their stories. On a global scale, people listening to this, you know, in DC, I used to work at the state department, so I know for sure we wanted to tell the story of America and the world and how America interacted with the world.

So at the time I had to go, and if I wanted to tell a story, I had to go choose one story and had to go fly there and go tell the story. But now I would say we'd be able to tell. That story of America for a federal government client, you know, more complete way. You know, we could if the story was what does American education look like or something I'd say we don't need to just cherry pick one or two schools.

We could say, what is the first day of school look like  in every one of the 50 states. So it opens up like just. 

It expands all the possibilities. 

creatively. And you could tell more diverse stories because you're not going to the same places all the time. And more unique stories it's, you know, at the end of the day home team is a tool to use to tell your story.

And so once what I get excited when clients start to realize like, oh, okay, now we can think differently about what's possible because of what you guys have built.

Yeah. And as you said, there's also the benefit of the knowledge and expertise of each locale that. You're drawing from people that are there 

Yes. 

you know, 

 You know, with home team, when we're working with like a crew, then in Philadelphia, they're local. They've lived there and worked there for 10 years. And you know, they've over the course of doing work in, in, in Philly, they've learned all the different cool locations.

So they were able to say like, we don't need to go to like the usual Rocky steps, types of locations. Why don't we go to this little park in this neighborhood that nobody knows about, but it's really beautiful and permitting will be easier. Or. You know, why don't we go down this one? Cool alleyway that has a lot of cool texture and color that we shot, you know, a fashion thing for last year.

And now we could, stage one of our scenes there. So yeah, definitely  it helps. We tap into the local knowledge of our filmmakers also and add  a lot more authenticity to the shoots.

Yeah. So it's almost like exponential growth on experience in a

Yeah. I mean, I haven't even like thought about this too much, but it's also helping like local economies. I mean, like we're bringing a lot of national and international level brand work and entertainment work to these smaller markets. you're not just feeding all of that. All of those resources into the same.

Big hub cities, let me look at where we're shooting this week. It's like today we're shooting in Ohio and Georgia and Tennessee on Thursday. We're shooting in Idaho, Connecticut, Fremont, Tennessee, South Africa. So like your. You're working with local teams, you're bringing really cool global projects to these local teams who might otherwise not get the chance to bid on those projects, work on those projects.

Another benefit as well is the environment. Side of it Cause I know we all have to, as this future and the world we're in is becoming more remote and you know, the world is shrinking.

It's also, there's still some bigger issues with the climate and everything. So it is good to be on the, contributing so much to fossil fuel use and all that as well with less travel 

that one is something we could definitely get behind and. We joined green, the bid, this organization who opened our eyes to how much of a footprint production has, and a big part of that is travel. you don't think about it, but the amount of resources and and pollution and things that flights contribute is pretty high.

We're doing a network show right now. That's being shot in all 50 states and six us territories. So imagine that many flights, like we're taking all those flights off you know, and so the carbon footprint is going to be lower for that production than it otherwise would have.

I mean, one, we also did. It was cool. Like last year we did this broadcast commercial for this organization called America's all in and it's, you know, about kind of rebranding the climate change conversation. So that's what they do. And so what a great opportunity for them to say, we're like walking the walk, right?

Like it's not. We're a climate change organization and we're going to fly crews all over the place. It's like we're a climate change organization and we're working with local crews so that we can lower the carbon footprint of this production. And for that, we shot in, we did 12 shoots in nine cities across the U S and nobody ever went on.

Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you've really pointed out how many of these projects could not have been done any other way than without remote production. It's not like a, an alternative to something. Sometimes it's the only option to get it done a certain way. 

Oh yeah. Unless you have an infinite budget and infinite timeline. 

Which is. Pretty much. Yeah. That doesn't exist. 

Wonderful. Well, is there anything before we let people know where they could learn more? Is there anything else that you wanted to mention or talk about that's particularly exciting about remote production or about home team? 

we love meeting new people. And my favorite part of what we're doing right now is like I said, kind of introducing people to our model, but then helping them. Have that aha moment and explain, explore, like what it's capable of doing creatively.

And we just love getting on a call with agencies or brands or entertainment companies or production companies, and just,  explaining what we do and then helping them think through having that kind of like mindset shift of what's possible with remote production. So we're very available.

Meet people and chat through that with them. And you could also, you could just see so many examples of the different sizes and shapes of projects on our website. 

Yeah. So let it, let everyone know for if they, when they want to learn more and perhaps reach out about any collaborations or anything potentially. is the website? 

Yeah. So our website is we are home team dot.

 Well, thank you so much for talking with us today about this. It sounds like there's a lot of really exciting things in home team's future. And it's sounds like a fantastic new way. To do things that it should or may become the standard way to do things in this new world.

But yeah. thanks. again for chatting. 

Yeah, no happy to do it. And yeah I hope it becomes adopted, you know, it's not perfect for every taste in the book, but there's definitely a lot more that could be done with remote production than people think 

I'm here with Gary ad cock is seasoned  producer, director and new technology advocate in media and entertainment. He's currently the executive director of film scapes, Chicago, which is the Midwest's largest education focused film and television trade show.

And he was also just recently a workshop instructor and the program manager of the remote production conference, a multi-day online training. Focused on remote production and that conference is what we're here to chat about today. So welcome Gary, and thanks for joining me on the podcast.

Well, thanks, Candice. It's great to be here. 

 before we dive a little bit into the specifics of the remote production conference,  you are a new technology advocate. So would you say remote production is something that fits under that umbrella of new technologies? It's not new anymore? Is it, I mean, obviously still new stuff keeps coming out.

See, but that's the thing is it's new to a lot of people, but it's not new to me. I've been working remotely for, don't know, almost decade now. And it's this advent after COVID where we started aware of how we need to interconnect and how we need to interact. Without making contact with one another.

We used to do it when we were on location, you know, your cell phones and you've called it and all of that, but now it's become functional part of society as we go forward. I mean, I don't know that anybody who in big business anymore, doesn't think about the fact that, well, do I want to go back to my office?

Do I want to, you know, stay safe because of doubts on COVID, but it's also. It's allowed us to expand our workforce. And this is a real important part of what remote production has done is by expanding the workforce. It's allowed access to people that are not geocentric located to your position.

And that brings in the ability to hire, know, more women, people of color, people who are disabled into the workforce because we're no longer bound by geographical limitations. 

Yeah, you have the whole, the whole world at your access.

Yeah, And that's an important part about this, because that shows that this flipping COVID, that panicked everybody, and now we're going to do remote learning.

It became something a little bit more when you take it in context of how it has the capability of changing our future and for the future of those around us.

Yeah, definitely. The pandemic has a uniquely weird silver lining for remote production. At least getting a lot more people accustomed to what it is as even people outside of the production world. Everyday people have had to use a lot of the tools of remote production, we're doing at. 

point, Candice, because it's that? Yeah. I mean, it's people that never thought they would ever do video conferencing, you know, from their home, you know? Oh, we had, we have video conferencing systems in our. Offices, but they didn't have at home. found out how difficult and how complicated it was to actually maintain a remote connection, what they needed.

And I think it's a fundamental change in the way workforce is going to go forward. Particularly for those people who do things like writing editing graphics. I mean, there's a lot of things that you can now do where you don't have to be. Co-located office. I think that's a change for the good, for most people 

We want to focus on the remote production conference. Obviously this year's one already passed. It was February 4th and fifth. So just, if, can you give us a little background about what their remote production conference is, how it came to be?

Well, it came to be?

in the beginning stages of COVID. It was actually the second one, the one on February 3rd and fourth was actually the second of the remote production conferences. We did one last year in March, before when an AB was going to. And we saw it a way to try and bring our 

Um, 

back together try and educate and enlighten the people that we've been working with long time. The through future media conferences and future media has been an integral part of doing post-production world at NAB the visual storytelling conference, But it's a bit about a community of. Artists and filmmakers that get together and share ideas.

And the collective group has education, you know, business industrial municipals.  one of the people I talked to the remote production conference was actually Videos for the city of Ottawa, Canada, you know, municipal videos for the city of Ottawa as a, business aspect.

you don't think about those kinds of uses for video production as they become.

What were some of the highlights of maybe some of your favorite speakers or programs that you offered this year?

Well, all of those speakers of my favorite because I invited my friends to talk. I invited my friends to share their ideas for how to do this stuff. Rod Harlan, who's a regular purse. They're a member of the graphics media group and you know, the post-production world. He came on and talked about hiring people remotely and the kind of interview process you would do when you're hiring content when you're not working together.

was a really interesting session. did a session with a legal friend of mine Worrisome. we talked about contract law and how you need to look at contracts and some of the things that you have to go through when you're working in business and how wow. You know, why the legal language that are, that we use is so from that opinion.

So we covered wide range of topics that allowed more than just, oh, it's just about graphics production. It's just about, you know, how to configure your camera. It's about how to do audio, how to do graphics for it, how to be able to take this content and use it in multiple different ways, whether you're shooting normally, or doing vertical video or square video for the web, how you can repurpose content by changing the graphics.

And elements of it, how music and audio makes a big difference in what your remote productions are like and all of the tools that we have as filmmakers. Come to bear in this kind of environment. And it's interesting to be able to start talking about wireless connectivity and sharing things. And I did a whole session just on mental health, because I think the mental health aspect of working alone and being individualized in this environment has affected all of us.

 

Yeah. 

things are important discussions to have and something that, that was really important for me to have a talk on the young filmmaker that I worked with on that she was, she had just moved from New York city to Austin, Texas a month before COVID hit.

she got stuck in the middle of an environment where she had no, anybody. She didn't have any friends and she was all over. And it became imperative on her to reach out to the community, become interactive an environment where she didn't know anybody, but zoom and the kinds of remote tools that we have allowed her to grow her business and become an even better filmmaker in the process. 

Yeah. I mean, the, these tools, you hear a lot of stories that coming emerging from the pandemic, where there are people that have worked together for up to even this entirety of the pandemic and have not yet met in person. I mean, I know I've made some great friends and worked with people as well and not actually physically being in the same space, but you still have the ability to have that connection form through these Mediums, which is great.

But I do like that you did have focused on mental health as well, because it is uniquely, you know, humans are social creatures. There is something that we need about physically being in the same space. So that's one of the, one of the challenges or the potential downsides of remote production. It sounds is you lose a little bit of that in-person thing, but it sounds like there's still so much more than people realize that you can continue to do in this.

there's an inherent isolation in what we, as artists do anyways. I mean, we work in dark rooms. We work on far away locations where, you know, subject to long hours and grueling schedules. But that's a part of what filmmaking is and how we do that. But a lot of people, they don't think about how filmmaking is different in different environments, in different cultures.

Concepts. You know, I do a lot of stuff where I'm working on large sets. I've worked on tent poles where, you know, it's the feature film world where there's hundreds and hundreds of people on set or regular television series where there's 130 people in the regular crew. So for a lot of documentary filmmakers, who've never worked that way.

This is an even more isolated area. it's just to remind people that we're in this. And it doesn't matter who you are, where you are or anything else You need to be as cautious about your own mental health you are the details in your production, because that's an important part about this.

a really specific need that, you know, for a long time, we talked about safety on set, whether it's, you know, injury to camera, people are wrong, outdo long hours or anything else. now we're talking about just the sheer loneliness has a lot to do with how people are going to grow as we go through.

And it's important for everybody to talk about it, 

Oh, for sure. 

to remind us that there's, know, now entire universe of just everybody has to look like. I want my crews to be diverse. I want to see, you know, the women on my crews. I want to see people of color.

I want to have people that don't look like me around because they give me a broader sense of appeal. They give me a better range of knowledge. They give me information that I might not have. that's an important part about how to grow from this. Now it's not about the old, you know, it's not about an old boys group.

It's about how do we bring other people who. Just as passionate about filmmaking, as we are back into the fold, how do we get them as part of what we do as we go forward? How do we bring the people that don't look like us, that don't look like me, you know, to the forefront in the industry and why aren't we making a better play for it? 

Yeah, and different experiences and culture perspectives, and all of that as well is fantastic. And it is obviously one of the main and major benefits of being a more interconnected globe. We are now citizens of the world, and it's easier to to work with people from everywhere, which kind of leads me to my next question.

Do you know  Anything about the attendees from this conference, how far and wide they came from? Did you have people representing how like 

numbers of countries 

countries 

47? Wow. Okay.

countries were represented at the remote production conference. I was lucky enough to talk to people in Australia, India, in Japan. There was actually someone who was working the Beijing Olympics because this is where the Beijing Olympics were going. And he was watching overnight while he was doing his work and, you know, doing the overnight uploads and the truck and the editing and things.

He had the remote production. On in this suite just to be able to see us and keep up with us. I, that was shows the kind of nature of all of this. It's not about just what we do in one place. It's how we make sure that the tools and the techniques spread across the globe and empower people everywhere to be better.

So what do you think personally, what do you see as the future for remote production? Do you think there's going to be even more accessibility? For even more and more filmmakers, it's just going to keep growing. Are there exciting things that you see on the horizons for like new technologies that will help make this a smoother process for more?

Well, I mean, look how smooth it's gotten so far. We can plug in and. Turn on your camera, turn on your browser and you're ready to go. I maintain a separate camera system and audio system because I've ended up doing a lot of calls like this. It's become a major function of my business. So it's like now I just have a studio set up in my office where it's right behind my desk so I can finish my work whenever I want to I think it's going to be, that's going to continue. Oh, yes. I think that the virtualization. Of pre-production and meetings and things has simplified that task for everybody. I mean, it's no longer just a conference call everybody's on a phone call, even if you're in the same space, because you can all then interact that way we can share media, you can look at screens.

I've done a couple of really nice pre-production meetings on some stuff that's going on. And we're able to share concept drawings and discussions and, you know, spreadsheets and everything. Unlike what we used to do on the phone. And I think that this whole aspect of video meetings is not going to go away, especially when you're doing sales or marketing and those kinds of things.

Yeah. 

there's still place for like in hand production. I still like teaching person because there's something about making contact with people. do I think it's the only way it's going to go? No, I think it's, I think there's some shows will suffer for it. It's we're going to figure out in the next year or so as we of slide in and out of.

Related terrorists of how we go from this on. 

Yeah. 

expect remote production to continue for many years to come and become a functional part of our normal business aspect. 

But the, but you know, just like we went from telephone calls to now you know, video calls, do you see another step in terms of Augmented reality, being something more mainstream and common and things like that. Is there are you seeing new technologies that might end up being what we consider the standard?

That's a good question. I'm under NDA on something about that, so I can't talk. 

Ah, so, so maybe yes.

fundamental shift in film production towards we're calling virtual production, doesn't have anything to do with remote as much as it has to do with the marriage of conventional filmmaking technology and industry you know, having game development engine content behind you on an led.

This has been a technology that fundamentally is going to change filmmaking for the future for everyone. this is not 3d. This is interactivity in a way that we've not understood, having the capability of being able to put an actor in front of a virtual environment where you're only propping the foreground going to fundamentally change filmmaking for a long.

And it's real interesting because everybody sees the Mandalorian and discovery in Westworld and they see all the science fiction shows the ones with really heavy visual effects. But one of the other aspects of this there was a show called station Eleven's for HBO max that shot in Chicago and they had to tear the sets down.

So they went in and shot photogrammetry digital and conventional photography of this. And now they're able to put an actor up in front of these backgrounds anywhere in the world to do an inset, to do a pickup, to do anything else. that's an aspect of this process that.

I don't think anybody's thinking about.

And this has come out of the virtual production industry because we had time while everybody was cloistered away to be able to explore some of this technology. And it rapidly came to the forefront in the world of modern television production, 

Wow. Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm always impressed with creators and creative minds and in general, about what we'll do, what humans do to solve problems. You know, we can come up with so many wonderful things. Anyway, so getting back to that the remote production conference specifically itself since this one already.

If people do want to see some of that interesting content they, I understand can still purchase some of the recordings and things like that. How would someone go about seeing stuff from 

the past? 

to remote production, conference.com, all one.

word. And the content is all available there. If you came to the conference and witnessed it those files are now available for you to download. It's kept as an archive for about a year. And then we store it away until the next one comes about.

But we shot. 52 sessions the two days. 

Nice. 

a bit of 

Yeah. 

there are three tracks of information. We had people from black magic talking about DaVinci resolve. We had an entire set of sponsored show segments that were put on by Adobe.

One of our real interesting was the keynote where they, the golden state warriors started using frame iOS camera to cloud workflow to be able to deliver real time assets for use for social. Because the low resonates or the, content wasn't really affected you know, this distributed content was not really bothered by the fact that it was being used on social media and the master archives can be kept somewhere else.

The golden state warriors took something that was literally groundbreaking and used it to advance their social media status. kinds, those are the kinds of things that I find really interesting where they take something that. That's to cloud it's this new, great new thing. But literally what they did was they accelerated the speed of their workflow for, you know, daily social media production by using something that is being sold to audiences as the preeminent workflow for post.

And I find it interesting that here's something that was built for one part of the industry and the other part of the interest. It goes, wait a second. I can do something with that, bring that back here 

Yeah, 

fun with it and builds a whole new community around it. And I 

one. 

are the kinds of things that remote production is to the table.

It's forcing people to think outside of their, the corral of their life and their life force. And now. You know, live and work in an industry that is constantly changing. I think it's fascinating that people are going to actually adopt some of these great new tools and ideas. I mean, look, how much mobile has had a fundamental change in how we do filmmaking and how 

Yeah. 

mobile itself is a part of not only re remote production, but production in general.

 

Oh

for sure. 

fundamental 

everyone can have this in their hand is 



Exactly and it's and the fact that it's accessible to so many people, it's no longer, you know, you have to be a specialized filmmaker to get this equipment. Everyone just has it all the time with them. So that is definitely part of the huge, a future of all this. 

and 

Yeah. 

look at it too. not just every aspect of it. We think it's everything that happens outside of our mainstream can be remote production. 

 it's an exciting to see what's going on in the future. So yeah, just let people know where they can find any of this. If they want to learn more.

The remote production conference.com is a great place to start from. There's also a post-production world or ppw.com. As part of FMC conferences. And the list of conferences that we're involved with. I mean, it's Adobe max it's final cut pro world. It's you know, Adobe world. I mean, FMC does a lot of related content for this but always know that there's content available for anything that you're trying to do.

And it's wonderful groups like women in film and some of the other ones that I talked to recently that are sharing the knowledge amongst your local filmmakers and helping them out. And remember that always reached your local community first, because it's more, that's the most important place for you to start?

Not in Hollywood, not anywhere else, but wherever you live the first place you want to start being a filmmaker and work together with other people, just like you. 

Yeah. And then beyond that with remote production, you can expand that to anywhere. 

Yup. 

but yeah. And the post-production world that you mentioned in Las Vegas, that will be April 21st through 27th, correct? 

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

I actually have a a remote production workshop. Put it on association with Doug Dalton and rich Harrington, where three of us get together and actually have a physical hands-on workshop. Talking about some of the remote tools that are coming out.

I'm going to talk some about some of the new Teradeck stuff and some of the other things that are out there, I know rich is going to cover live view and lighting and producing. So we've got a two-day hands-on workshop called the remote production workshop prior to NAB that's part of post-production world.

So that's going to, I'm looking forward to that, cause that's going to be. 

Wonderful. Yeah, it sounds like you've got a wealth of knowledge in this world. And I know everyone is going to need to learn something about it at some point. So, all right, well, thank you so much for sitting down and talking with me today.

Thanks, Candice. I appreciate it. I'm happy to have been here. It's a wonderful talking to you.