Fully Remote: Exploring PostHero's Blackmagic Cloud Editing Workflow

In this episode, we talk with Secret Weapon Studios Founder & CEO Greg Olliver about the future of post-production management and the pivotal role of environmental responsibility.

We cover:
‣ Secret Weapon Studios' production tools - PostHero, PlanetHero, ProductionHero, and CrewHero - for maximum production efficiency
‣ Sustainable film production via PlanetHero
‣ Blackmagic's Cloud storage and collaboration tools

And a whole lot more!

📧 Be sure to subscribe to the free VP Land newsletter to get the latest news and BTS insights 2-3x a week: https://ntm.link/vp_land

Connect with Greg @ Secret Weapon Studios:

Secret Weapon Studios - https://secretweapon.studio
YouTube -  https://www.youtube.com/@secretweaponstudios 
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/secret-weapon-studios
Twitter/X - https://twitter.com/studios_weapon
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/secretweaponstudios
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/secretweaponstudio
Greg Olliver @ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-olliver-92a976164

📝 SHOW NOTES

Secret Weapon Studios
https://secretweapon.studio

PostHero
https://secretweapon.studio/posthero/

CrewHero
https://secretweapon.studio/crewhero/

PlanetHero
https://secretweapon.studio/planethero/

ProductionHero
https://secretweapon.studio/productionhero-technology/

Blackmagic Cloud Store
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagiccloudstore

Blackmagic Cloud Store Mini 
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagiccloudstoremini

Blackmagic Cloud Pod
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagiccloudpod

The Conversations Project
https://press.hulu.com/shows/the-conversations-project/

Studio 666
https://www.studio666movie.com

#############

PostHero is a collection of tech-enabled tools developed by Secret Weapon Studios to assist filmmakers with post-production workflows.

👨🏻‍💻 Blackmagic Resolve offers cloud-based editing and real-time collaboration, making it a valuable tool for remote post-production.

🌍 PlanetHero provides an easy way to offset the carbon footprint of film shoots, helping the industry become more environmentally friendly.

📊 ProductionHero aims to be a comprehensive hub for managing all aspects of film production, including crew management, scheduling, and more. There is no single solution for managing production processes, and companies often use a combination of tools from different providers.

🛠️ Large companies often have siloed systems, with different teams using different tools for their specific needs.

🎬 The film industry requires investment to develop new tools and services that can improve production workflows.

#############

⏱ CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction and Overview
01:10 PostHero for Remote Workflow
04:15 Case Study: Using PostHero for Hulu's The Conversations Project
07:10 Challenges and Solutions for Editors
12:55 Using Blackmagic’s Ecosystem for Remote Post-Production
17:00 Collaboration and Real-Time Editing in Resolve
24:50 Carbon Offset and PlanetHero
31:50 Introduction to ProductionHero
35:10 Project Management Tools
37:10 The Lack of a Single Solution
37:50 Siloed Systems in Large Companies
38:45 Coming Soon: DroneHero

Transcript

Greg Olliver: 0:05

​I'm a filmmaker, and then found out I wasn't just a filmmaker, I was a problem solver, as most filmmakers actually are. That's

Joey - Shure Mic: 0:10

Greg Oliver, and one of the problems he's solving is how to enable a team of nine post production editors and assistant editors to edit a Hulu series completely remote. Greg's the founder of Secret Weapon Studios, a tech house that creates tools for filmmakers.

Greg Olliver: 0:24

We were talking to clients and they were like, about a year ago, they were like, how can you help with post workflows? Everyone's remote, but there's not one turnkey spot that doesn't.

Joey - Shure Mic: 0:31

Welcome to VP Land, where we talk about the latest tech and tools in filmmaking. I am Joey Dowd, your host. In this episode, we're mostly going to focus on PostHero, their remote editing solution using Blackmagic's cloud hardware, but we'll also talk about some of their other tools like CrewHero and Planet Hero.

Greg Olliver: 0:46

We can literally offset the carbon footprint of a film shoot now with a couple clicks on our website.

Joey - Shure Mic: 0:52

All the links and references we talk about can be found in the show notes or in the YouTube description. And for the latest news and behind the scenes breakdowns in virtual production and video tech tools, be sure to subscribe to the VP Land newsletter. All right, now let's jump into our chat with Greg. Thanks for coming on Greg. Appreciate it. So let's nerd out about post-production stuff. Let's start with PostHero. So just gimme an overview of PostHero, and then we'll jump into, uh, the case study.

Greg Olliver: 1:21

PostHero was part of a collection of tech enabled tools that we built at Secret Weapon Studios which is I'm a filmmaker and then, uh, found out I wasn't just a filmmaker, I was a problem solver as most filmmakers actually are. then once in a while they get to be creative. So we launched Secret Weapon Studios as a tech company to help filmmakers. And we built in like tools by one at a time. And we built CrewHero to help you find crew. I think that's how I met you.

Joey - Shure Mic: 1:44

Yeah, I have used CrewHero. It's been great. It is an awesome tool for finding vetted crew. That, that's always a problem that pops up where I'm like, I gotta do this. Shoot somewhere randomly. And then you start reaching out to people and you're like, Hey, do you know someone in the spot? And then- but yeah, Crew- I've, I've been so impressed. Uh, found someone in Shanghai to shoot some stuff. Worked out great.

Greg Olliver: 2:02

Nice. Thank you. So thanks for using it. You're like one of our regular customers, so we are, we're like, like Joey needs crew. Um, everybody all hands on deck. So we built that and started working and then we were talking to clients and they were like- about a year ago, they were like, how can you help with post workflow? It's just not, it's everyone's remote, but there's not one turnkey spot that to that does it. And you guys claim to be helping people with turnkey tech. And so um, we, that's how the, that's how this started. A client asked for help. And then literally, that month, I was meeting with a friend of mine. It's Jim Rota, who's the Director of Blackmagic Design North America. And he is also a producer. He produces all Dave Grohl stuff and all like the Foo Fighters doc series. And their, their movie, uh, was it 666 or whatever it was called, that horror movie they did. Oh, Studio 666. It's very cheesy horror featuring the Foo Fighters. Um, and so, but I knew he did that, but I didn't know he was, uh, working at Blackmagic Design. And he heard me talking about our tech and he's like- he's like, dude, you gotta see what we're doing with Resolve now. And Resolve has editing. And it's not just editing, it's editing cloud-based editing, and it's super turnkey. And it's hardware-software combination and it's brand new technology. Would you guys like to hustle it at Secret Weapon? And so we did. And that's, um, we, we called it PostHero., All of our products are heroes. Um, and we called it PostHero. And we started pitching it around as like, Hey, we can- you know, this is the new wave of editing. Everyone's, you know, there's Premiere, there was- Final Cut's gone now for professional stuff, right? So you have Avid and Premiere and there's always these waves of change. And all these editors we've been working with started saying, yeah, we know that Resolve is coming. It's coming. It's like, really good. They're getting better. It's smarter Hardware, software. Um, and then that, so Jim was saying, since you guys find crew, if you bring talent to the table for this, I think it'll be an easier sell than Without, like anything else, people are like, okay, cool, you can, there's better technology, but does anybody know how to use it? Are they using it yet? So our goal was for PostHero to bring everything together totally turnkey. So you can- we have editors, AEs, uh, anybody, colorist, sound mixers, that everybody that's like Resolve savvy. And then we bring the hardware and software together so you can edit on this like cloud platform that they have which is called, uh, Collaboration. Um, and that's how it started. And we started hustling that, um, about a year ago and pushing it around. And we, we, um, landed a Hulu show with it. And if you wanna hear about that now, or you wanna wait to talk about that? And that was like our first real client with that.

Joey - Shure Mic: 4:31

Yeah, and I know that was a case study. I think we posted a bit about it and it was going around the internet. Um, but yeah, so well, I guess back one thing though. So one thing that was interesting. So you're not only providing the te, the connection and the technical support, which we'll get into, but also like bringing assistant editors or editors that are familiar with Blackmagic network and the Blackmagic, like this new remote setup from Blackmagic.

Greg Olliver: 4:54

Yeah, and training, like it's, the idea was like What's the hurdles are like, okay, this seems smart for saving money, saving on shipping, saving on ease of just post-production and, and, and everything across the board. But then the biggest hurdle becomes like an editor not wanting to do it, or not knowing, you know, not having been trained on it yet. And so we were like, well, we have editors that have done it. We've, that, that know how to use it, that are excited to use it. Or we'll train your editors, we'll talk'em into seeing how easy it is. And then we'll also hold everybody's hands during production. So we have trained personnel that make it easier for everybody regardless of how familiar they are with the software. And that sort of us being the glue of all those parts made it like a no-brainer for the Hulu show. Uh, and just I don't, you know, I don't know that they would've done it without- without us, they, you have to go out and buy these drives, train editors, like get, get them connected with Blackmagic team. Try it. And it's something that'll eventually start picking up'cause more and more people are cutting at it, but we're making it just like super easy. So there's no reason to say no, except you just gotta get, and if your editor doesn't wanna do, we had a, we had some tough cookies that we had to work through on, on Hulu show that were old school Avid editors, but they ended up digging it.

Joey - Shure Mic: 6:00

Okay. So yeah, let's we jump into the Hulu show. So this was The Conversations Project, right? And so it's, it was a series, dinner conversations, uh, some multi-camera, I imagine lots of long takes.

Greg Olliver: 6:13

Yeah, it was like a six part, um, six part series, uh, shot in New York. It was multicam conversations like dinner and drinking, uh, shot in New York And, and I can't remember, I think they shot on Sony's. Um, and they had, uh, they, they said like, we're gonna have two editors, couple of AEs, some story producers, and ultimately need like nine systems going. Can we do that? And so we put together a plan with Blackmagic to say yes and um, so they shot in New York. That aired in- it launched in August. So we shot in New York last February. Or no, this, sorry, it was this February they were shooting it. Um, and what we did was, um, you have one main drive that the, that was on set. And our, our workflow architect loads the media to that drive and, um, and it spits it out to everybody else's drives, the proxies. But to back up, we had to have calls with sar- this is the best part that we- the producers wanted to do it. We were working with, uh, Rick Van Meter, who was one of the producers and knew Secret Weapon, and he knew what we were doing. And he's like, this sounds really smart, it sounds like it's gonna save us money. And I'm like, it'll definitely save you money on hard costs and it'll save you headaches. But he's like, but my editor, he's like, it's up to the editors. He's like, the editors are, they've, they've, they've worked on a pilot and a sizzle for it. And we were like, we, we wanna stay with these guys, but they're both Avid editors. So if you can sell to editors, then we'll do this. And I was like, okay, let's go. So we set up a call with, with our two editors, uh, and then the Blackmagic team and our guys. And I, I was the first one on the Zoom call. And one of their editors, I think his name was Chris, got on the call. And I'm like, hey, Chris, uh, nice to meet you. I'm Griga with Secret Weapon. What, uh, what's your role on this? And he said, I'm an Avid editor. I was told to be here That's literally what he said. I was like, okay, great. This dude's gonna be a tough one to crack. And that's where I invented the word Avid-tude. Avid-tude. He had total Avid-tude, man. We were like on a call for an hour and he was saying, I don't, you know, I'm so good at Avid. I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna switch over. I have an old trash can that I don't want to update because, um, it's got the older Avid on it, and if I get updated, I can't use my older Avid. And he's like, and if I I can't, I can't even use it. So this is a moot point and I shouldn't even be on this call. I was like, dude, if you just stay on the call and, and I'll then give me your address. I'll send you a brand new Mac and this hardware just to test it out. Like, stop, you're a dinosaur with this old trash can thing. And you, you're at some point it's gonna die and what are you gonna do? And so he, he agreed. And so we gave him like all the hardware to test it out. He started with like a new Mac and the, the hardware and you know, a couple of phone calls with the, these two Avid editors and a couple AEs and the Blackmagic team doing these walkthroughs, they really like started to see how easy it would be. And they ended up saying, you know, after sending them hardware and waiting quietly for few, few weeks, we got a call back that said, okay. They said, let's do it. Uh, and so that's how we got the gig. Um, and the show started shooting. And then those, those, um, you know, the, what's nice about Resolve is you can set it up pretty easily to match Avid or Premiere the shortcuts. And then I think the biggest complaint was like, I don't know this shortcut, or how come I can't drag all the audio files at one time? And they're like, oh, just push this button and not that button.

Joey - Shure Mic: 9:21

The muscle memory adjustment.

Greg Olliver: 9:24

Yeah, it's sort of normal adjustment of learning something new, but it ended up not being anything major. It was like lots of little things. Um, but then, so to back up to where I backed up from, we, each one of these, so we had the main hard drive in New York, an 80TB drive that we would dump the raw media to. And through Resolve, it automatically makes proxies. And it would send the proxies as they're making'em up to the cloud through, um, through Dropbox. And then anybody on their Post team that had permissions through Blackmagic has these little Cloud Store drives on their desk, which are 8TB, and the proxies would go straight down to their little Cloud Store drives. So the media goes up and then goes down to them wherever they are. And so then everyone gets all the media at the same time. And if they're not plugged in, they plug in later and the media automatically goes to their drives. And then the beauty of it is you're editing, you're not relying on the internet speeds, you're editing with media on your desktop, on your desk and that. But whatever you're doing, that project is instantaneously sent to all the other teams. So everyone sees what's happening in real time on the timeline. Um, so the editors could see that the AEs in the bins and the AEs can see the editors cutting. And you can literally color grade shots in the timeline while you're editing it'cause you're already in Resolve.

Joey - Shure Mic: 10:38

And everyone's on the same project.

Greg Olliver: 10:41

Everyone's on the same project. Yeah. And you're not, there's no EDLs being shipped. There's no edit list, there's no, there's no media being FedEx-ed. There's no other drives being FedEx-ed. There's no chance for mistake. And, and you know, like a doing, picking the wrong files or whatever, and you can, everyone sees what they're doing at the same time. And then, um, the producers could log on and they could watch it in real time if they wanted to. We had a Slack channel going with um, all the editors and AEs and the Blackmagic team. And for the first like week, it was like chaos and all these questions. And then it got quieter. And it got so quiet to the point I'm like, shit, is this Slack? I was like, something's wrong'cause it's too quiet. And I checked in with one of the editors and he was like, no, it's going good. We're good. And it just was nice and smooth. And so those like grumpy Avid editors were all of a sudden happy because they were just- the one guy was on a laptop with his little hard drive. We sent him and he was in Puerto Rico, then he went to la then he went to New York, and he was hopping all over the place, and he was just jumping on and off the project and seemed really happy. And he's like, this is so mobile. It's so simple. It's so awesome. You could cut on the plane'cause you don't need internet to cut. You know, you're, you're cutting off of your project locally. And then when he plugged it back in, anything he did gets updated. So, yeah, it went, it went like that and, and sort of proved- it was the first show that they had done on that platform. Like the first series that Blackmagic had done. They had done a bunch of other, like Disney projects and other things.'Cause all the- a lot of the guys at Blackmagic are filmmakers. It's pretty cool. They're all like hands-on filmmakers, which is why I think there's stuff so intuitive and like easy to understand.'cause it's like, oh, a filmmaker built this menu, not like somebody that doesn't use, doesn't do film. Right. Um, but we were the first to, to do that. And it was like a six months and it was- and then they delivered it and there was no issues. And I got all the hard drives back and we're like, holy shit, it worked.

Joey - Shure Mic: 12:25

All right, real quick break. If you are enjoying this type of content, if you like staying up to date on the latest tools and tech and all the things that are changing the way that we are making movies, then you will like VP Land. It is our newsletter that goes out two to three times a week, three times when more stuff is happening. We don't like to fill your inbox with useless junk. So if you want to have the newsletter, which covers stuff like we're talking about here and a whole bunch more, go to ntm.link/vpland and subscribe. All right now, back to the interview. That's awesome. So, I mean, so, uh, to take a step back or just to go through like Blackmagic's ecosystem, so the big hard drive we're talking about, so the Blackmagic, they got the, the Cloud Store, which is the server that's configurable. You had an 80TB system, but that one you could- I don't remember the range, but you could adjust, pick your size, right, of storage?

Greg Olliver: 13:11

Yeah, I think it goes up to 320. Like they'll, they, they, they start at 8, and then 20, then 80, and then 320. I think they're adding more to it. Yeah. We had an 80TB for the master-

Joey - Shure Mic: 13:21

Okay. And so that was on set and that was just where the media was getting, um,

Greg Olliver: 13:25

Yeah.

Joey - Shure Mic: 13:25

Uploaded to.

Greg Olliver: 13:26

Yep. And so once they were, once they wrapped, we moved that. That was in our office. And then at the end, we just moved it to the PostWorks in New York. So they had all the raw sitting there. You can send the raw out of that if you want to, to drive, but it was just like, it was more about what's, where's the safe place for this to be? So, um, and, but then we were also backing it up on other drives. But yeah. it was a 80TB Cloud Store.

Joey - Shure Mic: 13:45

Okay. And then they have the Cloud Store Mini. And so that's the 8TB standalone cloud-connected drive that's plugging into everyone else's computers. And so that's what's getting the proxies.

Greg Olliver: 13:54

Yep.

Joey - Shure Mic: 13:54

And so you have to use, uh, Dropbox or Google Drive to be the like intermediary. Like there's no- like Blackmagic doesn't have a native cloud storage.

Greg Olliver: 14:05

They don't Yeah. Yeah. No, they don't have a native one yet. But it can, you can do it any way you want. And there's, uh, NAS systems. You can do it like in, if you have a big post house, you can connect it any way you want, but what's nice is that they've worked so carefully with like the folder structures on Dropbox and Google that it's, it just works faster and smoother and it's less, it's less hands on. But they, you can absolutely do it on- uh, we were working, we're working with IBM on a project and they were asking us about can we do Box or can we do other things? And answer is yes. So you don't have to use it. But, um, we used, uh, Dropbox and I wasn't a big Dropbox lover user until this, and then when we saw like Dropbox, we had unlimited So we were just backing up the, the raw and the proxies every time. So it was just there and not just on the drives. And then it was just so easy to add team members to it, and it just became super simple workflow where one guy on our team ran the whole thing. And so I think that's what the beauty of that is. Just like they, they, they describe it to me as this, the file structure. And the way Dropbox handles files and separates permissions and things, it makes it just easier to work with.

Joey - Shure Mic: 15:08

And then there's the other, the third thing, the Cloud Pod, which is bring your own hard drive, like a device the cloud connects, bring your own hard drive. So you didn't use any of those, but that is another option-

Greg Olliver: 15:17

No, no, no. We had Everyone was on the 8TB and then our main drive was the 80. So, um, yeah, we haven't used the Cloud Pods yet. but I know you don't, you don't need any of that. Actually, you can use a hard drive on your desk. You can do it- I think you can do a hard drive without the Cloud Pod. It's just the more are the hardware that they, that you're using that's Blackmagic, the more the, the faster and more like instantaneous and just plug and go it is. There's less work to, you know, like on, on the Hulu show, you literally, if you were already a user on that project and you plugged, you packed your stuff up and went on an airplane and landed and plugged that thing back into your computer, and as soon as you're on the internet, you're just connected, you're good to go. Everything goes to where it's supposed to go on the folders, it just drops in instantaneously. So it just ease and time-saving, you know, headache-saving.

Joey - Shure Mic: 16:02

Even prior to, uh, the Blackmagic Cloud, did you go down the rabbit hole of just like other remote workflow options or things, or just other networking options? Like either, um, I. Uh, PostLab, which has a bit more Final Cut or Premiere-centric, uh, Iconik, uh, any of these other sort of like cloud media management collaboration tools. Uh, no. I mean, the question of can we help fix workflow came from a, a client not liking all those other ones And having gone through all, and they do a lot of reality shows and they were like, can you find something better for us? And that's how we found this. So we, and then it just was so easy to have access to the Blackmagic team and they were so eager to help us that we didn't, we at some point we're like, should we do this for Avid customers too? And then we're like, nah, let's just keep going with what we're doing and just'cause And it's like, you know, I think at some point we might Need to offer other services. But it's really fun when you have a, an, an exciting, eager company with new technology that sort of crushes anybody else's third party stuff that, uh, we haven't had to. So, no, not Could you configure this? So I mean, if you did go down the Avid route or you do another NLE, like could you configure this to work with another NLE? Or would it would, this would be a completely separate solution?

Greg Olliver: 17:14

The answer from that question was posed to me that I asked the Blackmagic team and they said we were not going to answer that as that would be a conflict of interest So I, I think you can, like, I think in theory you're, if you're using Resolve to make your proxies and you could create a project and share your proxies through the cloud to everybody's drives, right? And then you could just use those proxies for whatever you want. You don't have to

Joey - Shure Mic: 17:38

Because these proxies are just showing up as a files on a mounted hard drive, and then,

Greg Olliver: 17:42

Yeah. Yeah. So I would think you can, it's just not as, like, what's be, what's beautiful about it is like, you know, that, that project file so that, that you're editing in ha everybody's, you know, anybody working on it in real time is only working in Resolve, right? It's like, that's what makes it beautiful. Um, and they, they also have this, uh, this, I forgot the name of it. I'm gonna botch it, screening room, or I forgot the name of it. But they, you, if you're not even in resolve, you can download software to watch what the editors are doing and sort of show your client or your director. Uh, the what's happening and you, everyone can log in and see it in real time, and your colorist can show you the color on your iPad or your phone or your laptop if you're, you know, even if you don't know, resolve. And those, those directors and producers or whomever's looking at it, can put notes in there and it'll drop into the, the notes will go right into the timelines that all the editors are using.

Joey - Shure Mic: 18:30

Okay.

Greg Olliver: 18:30

it's just so simple and so interconnected and like the color If you're using the color thing and on your own iPad, it'll override the color settings on your iPad to make sure it matches the colorist settings. So there's just, just taking human error out of everything. It's so nice and so like we showed this Blackmagic showed this to a client the other day and they're like, holy shit. They were like, how does this, like, it didn't even know this was possible. It was so exciting to see this client and a really big post house in the UK face light up. He's like, this is changes everything.

Joey - Shure Mic: 18:58

So is this what was used? Because my other question is like, what other tools, if any, were kind of used in just the day-to-Day remote post-process? Uh, one of them was gonna be like cut reviews. So was this the solution for like a Frame io kind of cut review? Like it just could all still be in the Blackmagic Resolve. um, Ecosystem.

Greg Olliver: 19:20

Yeah, now it's all in there now and even since we used it on Hulu more, more has like improved. Um, so this This, it's their version of Frame io. Basically it does that, but it's like in their own software and it's like the notes are coming in you, you could add notes just like you do in Frame io, but they get dropped right into the timeline so everybody can see it.

Joey - Shure Mic: 19:37

You don't have to do that. Import to bring your stuff in.

Greg Olliver: 19:39

Yeah. You don't have to import anything. They also have, um, trans instant transcription- you know, not instant, but their own in-house internal software transcription services. You don't even, it doesn't go up to the cloud. It's all internal. And it'll, you can do paper cuts now with their transcriptions that will automatically do a string out of your paper cuts into the timeline. So that's super easy. Um, and you know, you can do color in there, you can do Fairlight as the sound. You can do it all in there without leaving at all. I think, I think on Hulu they mixed outside of Resolve. They did color on resolve and export, you know, delivered it in resolve.

Joey - Shure Mic: 20:15

Nice. And were- so original question. Were there any other tools then? Uh, project management, media management, just anything else, uh, in just managing the, like you had nine people total on the Post team that were, that were all remote.

Greg Olliver: 20:28

Yeah, everybody was remote. And then our lead guy, Justin, he was basically the media manager. He was the like lead AE media manager sort of became his title, became like, uh, workflow architect. You know, he was the one just keeping everybody smooth, running smooth, and make sure the media was Managed properly, but everything was done and resolved like the proxies were made in resolve everything else. I don't know what other tools there are that I'm forgetting. I wasn't actually hands-on on it. I was watching it

Joey - Shure Mic: 20:53

There There was a Slack, so there was-

Greg Olliver: 20:55

it was a Slack channel. Yeah.

Joey - Shure Mic: 20:56

Did solve, uh, team communication yet so-

Greg Olliver: 20:59

But now they have their own. Since then they have their own chat. Within your project, you can now chat with your team, whoever's working on it remotely, and you can, that chat stays within your project. So it's nice. So it's, um, anybody can just be chatting within the Resolve software as they're editing and, and it like, gives you a little note that someone's saying something to, you're like, unlock that bin, and you so you don't have to even be on Slack anymore. It's crazy.

Joey - Shure Mic: 21:20

All right. Maybe they, maybe they did solve team communication too. It sounds like it went smoothly. You did have Blackmagic support where you feel like if you're going forward, like assuming you don't have Blackmagic support and you're like Slack, any like roadblocks or any sticky points where it's just like, um, or that like stuff that could just be like the next thing that you would do differently or like the next project you would do differently.

Greg Olliver: 21:43

I feel, um. No. You know, it was like the mo, the most of the support they were there for was, um, answering like the little questions that the editors needed to not like lose speed, right.'cause they were like, once they started going, no, nobody, like no editor or a e. Has time to really learn everything before they start work, right? So it's like anybody else, they're like, I don't wanna learn this shit until I start, when's my payday, oh, it's Tuesday. I'll start doing it on Tuesday. And so to keep things moving at high speed, the Blackmagic team was answering those questions in real time for, for them, you know, but it, nothing was like, there were no roadblocks that we really needed them for that. Editors could have figured out those shortcuts they were talking about without them eventually. Um, and so I feel like going forward on, we're we just, we're shipping out drives today for a commercial that's like shooting in LA and coloring and Prague and VFX somewhere else, and also director in London. And I feel like we, knock on wood, we, uh, we probably don't need Blackmagic to help us on it. Like our team can handle it, you know, it's a smaller, uh, shoot. So I think if you're doing it on your own. it is just up to you to like learn the um, the connectivity of the cloud and the media management was super simple.'cause it's just going, you need a Dropbox account, it goes, you need a Blackmagic account. It goes up and down, it goes to your drives. You can see, you can see where it all is. There's a really nice, uh, control room, like monitor we set up so you can see where all the data is.

Joey - Shure Mic: 23:10

Oh yeah. Did you use their, cause that has like an HDMI port to like, for like a status screen. Did you, did you use that?

Greg Olliver: 23:15

Yeah, it looks super cool. Yeah, why wouldn't It looks like control It's all these like purple blocks moving around. It's like this, is it working Yeah, we did use that. Um, but yeah, I think um, once it was up and running it, it's, you can do it. It's just, it's like a little bit scary.'cause when you have nine people, then you have like a lot of questions coming at you. Right.'cause everybody's gonna Probably have some of the same questions. And so I think that was just daunting for us to be fielding those things. But that's why the Blackmagic team helped us out. Um, I dunno, we're meeting with some big, some really big clients right now that want to do this and possibly scale up and they're, they call Blackmagic and they're like, how, what's the best way to do this? And I love it that Blackmagic says, call Secret Weapon Studios.'cause they'll hold your hand through the whole thing and you won't have to ask us how to do it. They'll show you and they'll have all the hardware. And so we we're becoming like, um. The solution for that. Like, well, shit, I'm not sure if I want to do it. But now we can make it really easy. And also you don't, you know, right now if you wanted to do it, you without us, you'd go buy drives, you're committing, you're buying drives, and you're like, okay, now they're our drives. We better love this thing.

Joey - Shure Mic: 24:17

Yeah. Um, it tell me about, uh, we covered, uh, CrewHero. You've got two other heroes.

Greg Olliver: 24:24

Do we? Oh yeah, we have, um, the, my exci, the exciting one is that we we have a ton of heroes, man. We have like list-

Joey - Shure Mic: 24:30

You have a League of like, uh, filmmaking. Yeah.

Greg Olliver: 24:33

We do. And the thing that sucks is like speed at which we can build heroes without like serious venture capital. Um, and so we have like a small lean team. We're still in the fundraising pre-seed fundraising thing. We're sort of having fun, not being too panicky about it. And we, so we launched CrewHero. This is PostHero. We just rolled out a PlanetHero, with a partnership with, uh, NASDAQ's Puro platform, which basically offsets carbon for any industry. And so we We can literally offset the carbon footprint of a film shoot now with a couple clicks on our, on our website. And we did that after..I, I got, I do, I direct a lot of brand content and shot a film for NASDAQ about carbon offset. And I went into it rolling my eyes and like, what the hell is biochar and storing carbon? And why can't we just like, use all electric, you know, be green. And you know, if you know film, you know that we just cannot be green fast enough to actually do make a difference, right? There's just not enough of it. There's not enough electric generators and enough, you know, crew that's not gonna commute in their pickup trucks, you know, from far away. And so, I was like learned about the science of carbon offset, which seems like it's growing in popularity over the past year that you can actually store carbon through biochar as one of the methods you can do it. Um, and that can help offset whatever you're doing. So you pay to create the carbon storage and then therefore you're helping offset your own carbon. And NASDAQ has like the most regulated, um, like marketplace for this. And then we, they, they were excited. I said, do you guys do, is anybody doing this for film industry? And they're like, no. They're like, you should be the first. And so we became, you know, as far as we know, like the first to make it super easy to, to just offset carbon. And there's a lot of services, like the UK has a lot more of it right now. For some reason the UK has like a, a, maybe a closer knit industry where, and most of it's London based, so it's easier to do green things there. Um. And so they have a thing called Albert and some other services where you can tabulate your carbon footprint, but they're like really, really comp complicated services where you often need a consultant to come in and they're like, they really get into the nitty gritty of like, okay, we're gonna offset help you offset your carbon, but what kind of gas is your grip department using on their vehicles? And what's crane using? And how much power is your crane pull if it's electric? And it's like, it could take you days to do that, that kind of math, to even understand what your carbon footprint is. So we took, um, averages that we found on various sources from the production guild to Albert, to all these different companies have this data that they've done the hard work on tabulating, which is like such an, it's such an exhausting thing. We're like, let's just take all them, build some averages. So you could look at, you could say, oh look, I'm doing a three day commercial shoot and the average footprint is X amount of tons of CO2. And then you can just buy those, offset those same tons with your credit card and it's like around 200 bucks a ton to offset it. And we already offset our- we're fully remote so we offset our, our general operations for a year through it. It's, it's pretty fun. And I don't know like how fast it catches on, you know, but it's like we've been getting a lot of, uh, a lot of, uh, ex enthusiastic callbacks saying, this is really cool'cause we've been thinking about this and it's always been really complicated and thank you for making it. Super simple. And so that's planet hero. And then eventually you can't just rely on carbon offset. We're eventually gonna, that'll be a home for green products. So we're gonna start reaching out to all these green providers and saying, you know, make, have like a really easy to search green list of green providers.

Joey - Shure Mic: 28:02

Film-related products-

Greg Olliver: 28:03

Yeah. All film stuff. Yeah. And then like sustainability coordinators and green training for PAs. There's so many things that we need to do to actually change An industry, you know, like if you've got, I don't know, where do you, wherever you live, if you're near a film shoot and you go walk past it, there's gonna be like a dozen or more vehicles and half of them are idling.

Joey - Shure Mic: 28:21

It's circus. Yeah,

Greg Olliver: 28:23

It is like a circus on diesel, man. It's like never gonna change. And it's be, and it can't change. And because that circus isn't one, one entity that owns all those things, right? It's like you need like 50 or 100 businesses come together for that single day of shooting, right? If you think about like the catering to the walkies, to everything, it's- so all of that has to be green before a shoot is green. So we're trying to provide a little bridge for that in the, in the short term. And so kind of fun. That was-

Joey - Shure Mic: 28:49

uh, last episode, I, we were, I was talking to, um, uh, FinalPixel, which did, uh, F1, um, reveal spot. And they were talking about, I didn't, it wasn't really even on my radar, but they were like, we had to track the carbon and like offset the carbon and like keep every like doing a virtual production, kept everything very green'cause I didn't actually have to drive the car. Um, and that the only thing that was like carbon hea-wise,as the director flying from LA to London to like bring the drives and like finish it. But then they like had the exact number like of how, of the carbon footprint and how they ought to offset it. They're UK-based, and I don't know if that was a uk I, I didn't dig into it, but I don't dunno if that's UK thing or then I was thinking of like, oh, F1 has this whole like zero free, uh, um, initiative. So I'm not sure if that was like an F1 thing of like the teams have to do that. But it is definitely like something that even with the promo shoots, they're tracking and, and, and offsetting.

Greg Olliver: 29:38

Yeah, and I think California just passed a law where if you have a company over a certain size, you have to, you have to publicize, you have to make it public, your carbon footprint now, and it's like a new law. So like there's, there's more and there's so many articles coming out about like carbon, carbon this, carbon that, like people. Or it's clearly people aren't, aren't leaning to electric fast enough and you know, all the solutions. So there's a lot of activity in the carbon offset world. And so it's there and it's like, it's kind of dumb. Like if you're, shoot, if you're spending a. A, you know, a hundred thousand dollars a shoot for the day and you're creating all kinds of carbon, like out of the, it's like several tons of carbon. If you can offset that, at least do something and like offset it for 200 bucks per ton, you know, and it's gonna cost you maybe a grand or two, uh, odd on top of your a hundred thousand dollars day. Like, why wouldn't you do that? So that's what like sort of what we're, we're gonna like shame our industry into using the offset tools until they're there. So it's it, when you start thinking about it, we are not doing anything as an industry to change fast and it's just'cause we can't. I don't think it's'cause we don't want to. It's just'cause we can't.

Joey - Shure Mic: 30:43

And with PlanetHero, you can put in some of the parameters of like your shoes and what it entails, and it'll give you the estimate of like of what, uh, the carbon footprint was.

Greg Olliver: 30:52

Yeah. The hardest part is the math. And so we were, we were playing, trying to simplify the really complicated calculators for a while. So you could come in and say, oh, I'm shooting for two days in Toledo and here's like the basics, but it really gets mind-boggling, complicated if you start to do your own math. And so what we did was we took all everyone else's math that has done the math and created averages. So you can just sort of see an average of a documentary shoot or an average of an episodic series and you can look at that and be like, oh shit, this is 27 tons per, per project for, you know, and so I can offset that for X amount of dollars. And so you're just sort of looking at what averages are. And then you, you pay to offset X amount of tons for your project. So you, you, I don't, we can't say that it's a carbon neutral. You can't, it's not like certified carbon neutral or any of those things, but it's like I know that I offset 10 tons of CO2 for my shoot for X amount of dollars. Thanks to PlanetHero. So, it's doing something instead of nothing.

Joey - Shure Mic: 31:48

Yeah. Noble Mission. Um, and then the last hero and, and the Captain Planet Ring, um, ProductionHero.

Greg Olliver: 31:58

Yeah, ProductionHero is the beast that is like, imagine it as the glue that holds everything together, that it's taken longer to build than we want, but we're getting there with it. Ultimately you should be able to go to ProductionHero and start a job. Add your own crew to it from your own database, or find crew through us. Set a post through us, offset the carbon through us, find cast through us. So it's gonna be like this hub where you can do everything. And because it needs to do everything, it becomes a very complicated, uh, even just a, we're starting sort of like with Airtable style, you know, spreadsheets that have all these these unique ways you can work with it, but then you need it, like, then it has to interact with your crewing and then, and then it has to interact with posts. So it's coming. And that's sort of like the, the mothership that will, we're gonna make that free. And so then anybody who wants to use it, it should be able to, like, it'll be able to import your call sheets and take your crew and start building your own network of your crew, like your own network of your own crew through, through our software. And then you can organize'em there the way you want. And you could build a new call sheet, build a new job, check their availability. Uh, and then if you're like, oh shit, we need a boom op in Toledo, click here and then we'll find that for you. So imagine like a, it'll turn into like a call sheet that finds things for you.

Joey - Shure Mic: 33:05

Okay. So is it more on the crew scheduling, uh, the contact management end versus like a shot list or a production?

Greg Olliver: 33:15

Yeah, but I think so what it'll do is because we can't build everything ourselves and the beauty of Tech is, there's so many awesome tools out there, right? There's so many tools right now for locations, casting, budgeting, you know, payroll, um, and we can't compete with all that. But what we're gonna do is bring it all together and connect it all. So it'll, it, it, once it's working, it'll every, like, literally anything you need from starting a job from scratch all the way through payroll and delivery, and post. We'll be under that little umbrella of ProductionHero and it's, it, we should probably take it off our website cause it doesn't work yet. But it's like, it's like the idea, like I want know, hey, this the idea.

Joey - Shure Mic: 33:50

It's on alpha mode or something.

Greg Olliver: 33:52

Yeah. It's not even in beta yet. But yeah, it's kind. And I think we were, we were, you know, we, do you use Airtable ever? Like a lot of production?

Joey - Shure Mic: 33:59

I love Airtable. The problem is when you need to add people for seats, their seats are pretty pricey.

Greg Olliver: 34:05

Right. So we're, we're working on ways to let you access what we're doing through Airtable. So like an Airtable plugin. So we might have a ProductionHero, airplay table plugin, or a CrewHero version of that. Um,

Joey - Shure Mic: 34:15

So it would based in Airtable, but you would just like, like use their, your extension in it or something.

Greg Olliver: 34:21

Yeah, we would be, yeah, sorry, that's the word. An extension. So we're working on a CrewHero extension. So then if you're using it and you're like, oh, I can just connect Mike to CrewHero and they'll find crew for me. And then later on we'll bring ProductionHero in as that.'cause we were, because of the seat thing, we were building our own version of Airtable so anybody could use it. And the goal is to make most of what we're doing free, right? Like Airtable is mainly free until you start using it in more robust ways and then you need to pay for seats. We wanted to make everything we do free unless you, you know, need to buy some carbon offset. We wanna make crew searching free, um, and just make it like a hub where everybody can use it. But that's, that's a beast to build and taking longer than we wanted. So now we're focusing, we built everything- our backbone of our, all of our software is through Airtable mainly with all these other parts connecting to it. So just trying to now lean on that so we can release, um, ProductionHero a little faster, but in the form of Airtable.

Joey - Shure Mic: 35:12

Any other tools, not even from you, but I mean, I just like talking about tools and managing productions and posts and stuff. Any other tools that you've been using that's been on your radar that's like, uh, help streamline stuff?

Greg Olliver: 35:24

So we've been using, I've been shooting a lot. I don't like see any, I mean, I don't know, nicer cameras, more expensive lenses. Um, I'm trying to think of what I've seen out there That was exciting. Um, oh man. Is there something that you have that you've been using that you've been excited by? Like, has anything

Joey - Shure Mic: 35:41

I mean, project management, everything we've just been doing, click uh, ClickUp. Um, and I mean, I tried a bunch. Tried. I tried Notion. I tried, uh, Monday, ClickUp. It's got its issues, but overall, like it's been the one-stop shop'cause it's got like doc supports, we can like keep our documentation in it. Uh, we could like map out all our videos tasks. Um, their guest policy is one of the best ones I've seen where we could add guest seats. They have like full access to those tasks and you can do things and we don't have to pay for them. Um,

Greg Olliver: 36:15

Oh, that's So you like that better than Airtable.

Joey - Shure Mic: 36:18

I still use Airtable. I mean, Airtable is super fast. It's much better at just like database stuff, which is what it is built for. Uh, ClickUp can be a little bit sluggish and slow when you have a bunch of records that's like its biggest issue and they're trying to speed it up. Um, but.Uh, we could kind of keep more stuff managed and, and chat and comments and all sorts of stuff inside ClickUp. Uh, whereas Airtable, um, gets its limits. I use Airtable more for like, uh, either tracking, um, once we post stuff like have automations that go and and the Airtable and we can kind of just track, uh, metrics and stuff in Airtable. And, um, a lot of research stuff. I'll like scrape it and put it in Airtable, so it could be a database that we can out for like research things.

Greg Olliver: 37:00

It is crazy though. Like there's not, like, you know what our goal is. There's not, there's not one spot to go to that'll fix all these problems, right?

Joey - Shure Mic: 37:06

And especially with the needs that are kind of specific for like media production and like all these things, even with at ClickUp, it's like, yeah, well we kind of hacked some stuff together to get it to we need.

Greg Olliver: 37:16

yeah, Yeah. And so it's a fun time to be seeing like so many solutions, but not one spot. So we're hustling to make one, one little home for everything. And we've had calls with everybody from like MTV crewing to Warner, discovery to other ones where we're like, you must, you know, you're a billions of dollars sized company. What is your proprietary software? And the MTV guys said, we were told we have to learn Airtable And I was like, okay. And then Warner, I, I direct a lot of brand content for Warner and they do the same thing. They work off Airtable and keep all their crew in there and organize their stuff. And so it is not, there's, you know, there's not a single solution. It's like a little bit of this, a little bit of that from each one of these places.

Joey - Shure Mic: 37:53

That's interesting to hear.'cause I felt like, I hear that, heard that like Airtable was shifting more towards like enterprise customers and away from solo or like the smaller seat users. And that, I'm like, okay, well that confirms of stuff I heard where they're like, that's their target of like big seat users. I feel like with like larger companies, too, I mean, is it because they're so big? Is it like more like teams kinda just have their own, like is there a company wide systems or is it more like, uh, the marketing team has their system and the finance team has their system? Is it, does it get siloed?

Greg Olliver: 38:27

Yeah, they do. I think at, at Warner for, I directed there forever and I've never, there has never been like one platform that everybody's on. And I think it's the same thing. It's like, um, so there's not like a single industry-wide home that would be a beast to build. Right. But I think if we can just sort of get the, the crewing and finding crew,

Joey - Shure Mic: 38:47

And yeah.

Greg Olliver: 38:47

Just the production end and, and basically we wanna, um, you know, we're working on a, we we're rolling out DroneHero. More for like prosumer level. Um, we can just put in the address that you need droning on it. Auto search the, the fly bowl if you can fly it or not. And then it'll find a drone op for you to go shoot. If you want to have less money, you can say, I, I have five days for the footage or whatever. And then a drone op could go do that in an hour. So we're, we're doing like tool like from drone op to casting drone drones to casting to locations, to, to like, um, mark, uh, punch us up on, punch up on scripts. Like anything you can think of. Should eventually be like on our app, push a button and you get, look, I need my crew, I need my, you know, I need a drone up. I need a boom up. I need a cast, I need pay. Uh, maybe I just need payroll, or I need a van, or I need to talk to somebody for help. Uh, and all that should be under one hub where no matter what level of production you're on, we should be able to help you because all those tools are out there, or we're building the ones that aren't, and then putting'em all together. So, um, it's a fun, it's a fun time. All we need is more money, You know, any investors that like to invest in.

Joey - Shure Mic: 39:51

I'll let you know if I find them. Cool. I appreciate it, Greg. Thanks for, uh, thanks for chatting and nerding out about all sorts of production and post-production stuff.

Greg Olliver: 40:00

Yeah, man. Well, thanks for using our CrewHero service. Now I gotta talk to you into using PostHero and offsetting your carbon with PlanetHero so whenever you're ready. Thanks taking the time to talk to me. All right.

Joey - Shure Mic: 40:09

Thanks a lot. And that's it for the episode. Thank you for watching or listening. I'd love to know your thoughts. So head over to the YouTube link if you're not already watching it there and leave your thoughts in the comments. That's the best spot to leave your thoughts and discuss about what you heard in this episode. And thanks to Greg for coming on. I appreciate the time. If you want to get more content like this, be sure to subscribe to VP land, our newsletter ntm.link/vpland. And also, if you did like this podcast, be sure to subscribe in your podcast app of choice or hit subscribe on our YouTube channel and give it a thumbs up slash 5 star review, depending on where you're listening to it. There are many multiple spots you could watch or listen to this podcast. Thanks for listening or watching. I'll catch you in the next episode.