Steve Luebbert: Show Development from Idea to Screen #112

In this episode, Pete Salsich III, The Screen Lawyer, sits down with Steve Luebbert, Executive Vice President of Original Programming at Coolfire Studios. 

 Together, they dive into the fascinating world of project development and uncover the magic behind turning good ideas into truly amazing shows!

Original Theme Song composed by Brent Johnson of Coolfire Studios.
Podcast sponsored by Capes Sokol.

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Transcript

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Welcome to this week's episode of the Screen Lawyer Podcast. My guest this week is Steve Luebbert, Executive Vice President of Original Programing and Coolfire Studios. And we're going to explore all things about how a project goes from an idea to a screen. Stick around. Hey there. Welcome to the Screen Lawyer podcast. I'm Pete Salsich, The Screen Lawyer. Today, I'm joined by Steve Luebbert, Executive Vice President of Original Programing at Coolfire Studios here in Saint Louis. Steve has been a long time friend and he knows more about how I got started in this business than probably anybody else. And we've been together a long time. Yeah, I'm great. Welcome. Years and years, right? Yeah. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. And it's kind of interesting because I've usually you're familiar with cameras and production and all this stuff, and I have been around the edges and walked around, but, you know, it's a lot better. I do, but I'm not usually here. I'm usually over there. That's true. That's true. Similar. All right. Well, so let's talk about that. One of the things I think is fascinating about this process is when you talk to different people in the production world and a lot of times we focus on legal issues. Obviously, you know, you and I have worked with contracts over the years and trying to figure out how to negotiate things. But what fascinates me about your work is you're you see the big picture. Tell us a little bit about what it is to be head of original programing. What does that mean? Yeah, I mean, primarily my role at Coolfire is even as the head of original programing, it's still mostly development. So coming up with ideas and developing, developing them into concepts that could be sold to television. And, you know, as we like to say, and I think you and I used to say even back in the day, is like there's a massive difference between an idea for a show and an actual show. And my job is to cover that middle ground and put all the pieces together so that it's not just an idea, it's a show. And that's why we have a great development team that I get to work with on a daily basis. And then we have a lot of contribution from the rest of the Coolfire employees who provide ideas, concepts, thought starters. I mean, an idea can start anywhere. An article, a person, right? Intellectual property. It runs the gamut. But I think the fun part and actually the meat of development is getting it from the idea to an actual show. So so taking it from, you know, a brainstorming session. And you guys do, don't you do really cool. Talk a little bit about that mandate program. So when you guys get a you know notice from a certain networks are looking for certain type of stuff, how do you guys get together regularly in an open brainstorming session? Yeah. So we have through our agents at A3, we are given what are called mandates from the networks, and it's a list of basically categories, topics, areas that they are looking to develop in or buy in. So types of program types of programing. And so that list is then sent out and we get that list and we use that as guide rails for brainstorms internally, at Coolfire. And so, you know, that's a really fun process. It's it feels it's informed, so you feel like, you know, we're taking quality shots. That said there, I think it's important in development to always balance your ideas because a lot of times it's the networks don't even know what they want, you know, they don't know what they're looking for. And so I always think being in development, it's important to have a balanced approach of, hey, we're going to go target these concepts because we know they're looking for them. But then you got to have this pot over here of. No one asked for this. No one was looking for it. Right. And then it came up and smacked you in the face. And that's how like, you know, some of the biggest shows came about. No one was looking for. And that's precisely why they made it through the noise of everything else. It sounds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You said something to me one time. I always struck me as is There's, there's what? You know, what the public wants to watch and what the network thinks the public wants to watch. Those are not necessarily the same thing. Yeah, that's one of the hardest parts of our job is like trying to discern between those two things. Because even if you think the public would love something, they're not the ones buying it. It's the network. Yeah. So that's a balance too. And but that's also part of the job is learning how to speak about your concept to the networks in a way that resonates for them. And you may pitch it on the street one way and you may pitch it to a network exec a different way. And again, the same idea. But I think framing is is important when you're pitching. Oh, absolutely. I would think so, too. I mean, and but so when you're talking about the pitching, though, I mean, this comes back to you know, everybody's seen the movies. Oh, it's, you know, Beastie Boys meets Godzilla or something. Right. And you have to develop that. You have to I don't know, make a note. Yeah. Right on this day. Right. Is do you have to kind of boil it down to ways to combine things people have already seen? Yeah. I mean, that's that's one way to do it. I don't think you have to do it that way. I think what we've found is more and more now, as you know, our attentions are being pulled in multiple different directions with all the amounts of screens, right. And apps and platforms. If you can't convince the network what your concept is within, you know, a sentence or two, then how are you going to convince a viewer and stop that if it's not there thumb right, right, even turn on the TV instead of their computer or phone. So, you know, yeah, I do think that's important. And whether you use that, you know, combining of two different things or, you know, there's a lot of why now we talk about that a lot. Like why does what is it why should this show happen now? Like, why is this relevant now? And is it because there's a trend or something that's happening in the real world that this, you know, is reflecting. So all of those things are important when you're pitching a concept. Yeah, Interesting. Interesting. Brevity does does help. Well, and people have said that to me before. I've never really believed it(I’ve said that to you) Yes. As a matter of fact, you have that's true. So let's let's do this is very cool. I want to take a step back a little bit and talk kind of about the history of how you got here and we had Jeff Keane on the on the podcast a couple of months ago. And we got to talk a little bit about how kind of Coolfire got started from his point of view. Yeah, but you were part of that group that came back to town. Yeah, that and I've kind of described it in the when Coolfire Media grew into what became Coolfire Studios. Part of it was a collection of talent coming together. And you were part of that first wave. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about how that happened. Yeah, well, I was I was working in Los Angeles, in television. I was actually in scripted television, so I was at ABC in comedy development and was loving love, my job and loved working there and never really loved L.A. and was thinking about how do I kind of translate the skill set and come back home. But that doesn't really make sense in the Midwest. And what does that look like? And so started taking some initial meetings with Jeff and Mike Leopold was actually the one who brought me in the door. Oh, really? Okay. And there was another guy there. Tim was a colleague of mine at the time, and we were kind of instrumental in the launching of the original programing side of Coolfire. So yeah, I think it was a, you know, intentional effort. It was a concerted effort. We I think the big thing that I preach when I came in there is we have to partner up with bigger companies, right. To get established in this marketplace because you can't walk in there as Coolfire in St Louis and someone hands you a TV shows is not how it works. Right? And that plan worked. Well, some would argue too well, you know, the two shows we co-produced, we were Smash Hits, right, with Pilgrim. But that those were “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s” and “Fast and Loud”. Yeah Both of which had multiple seasons. Yeah. Seven or eight. Yeah. So which is wild. But that plan worked. And so then we parlayed that success into producing our own series. And that's that was the focus of our team at the time was selling our own series, you know, through the course of the first, you know, I don't know, six, seven years of the team. I mean, we were pretty genre agnostic. We always talked about not wanting to be pigeonholed into one specific thing. We were pretty Midwest focused at the beginning. That wasn't that was kind of part of the selling point. That was a big part of there's a very big audience that's not on the coast that has an appetite for shows about the it's the people watching history, talent, Discovery Channel at the time. Right. And we used to say like, well, people on the coast, Google these characters. We get in our car and drive to their house. Right. Right. And that landed for people and that worked for us for for a long time now, since then, appetites have changed. Sure, things have changed. You know, we we don't position ourselves as a midwestern production company, though. What we how we do speak about it as we say that our “Midwestern-ness”, if you if that's what we want to call it, informs how we approach our development and our talent. So authenticity, right? That's a big thing for Coolfire. We try to bring a lot of authenticity to our series. And the second is like that again, the Midwestern-ness. This is like it informs how we approach work, how we work with our crew and our talent. Like, what do you mean, yes, No, no big egos. And we just like life's too short to work with *censored*. Literally. That's what we say. Yeah, and good point. And I think our talent responds to that. And so that's kind of how we approach it. You know, that's and you've had it, you've had a certain like obviously the company has full time employees. Yeah. But then you have this a large group of really consist and dedicated freelance crew that seem to come on project after project after project. Yes. It's an I, I've got to believe that is intentional and also the byproduct of a good working environment. Yeah, I'd like to think so. I mean, I think there's a lot of people that, you know, when we started St Louis had a very and still does has an incredibly strong production community. Yeah, but I think that came originally from the advertising side of the world. But you know, lot of talented crew shooters, editors, producers and it was fun getting to work with them because of Coolfire obviously, as you know does both television commercial branded right And so getting to work with all these talented crew across all of our different mediums and finding which people like to work more on the shows and which people write more on the commercials. And, you know, it's been tough. I think a lot of the people that we've worked with started to progress and then they decided to move to the coast. Yeah, but that's part of that's, that's how it goes, you know, And yeah, and we're still grateful for, you know, I think again, the talented crew that's here. Well, you guys have you guys have built a really strong ecosystem and it seems, you know, over 20 years in the in the town and doing this business, which is not easy to sustain that, that's for sure. And obviously, one of the reasons it's sustained is you've had some hits, you've had some successes. You had, do you know the number? People ask me from time to time. And I think that's always and I thought, this is an ongoing joke, Jeremy. And I think it's it it's 19 now. 19 television series that we've sold to either broadcast networks I'm sorry, cable networks or streaming. Okay. So that's cool. 19. Yeah, that's it's a if you would have said that, we could have done that right when I first moved back, I would have said, there's no way. That's that's crazy. Yeah, but, but we have and I think it's a testament to, again, the talented development team that I get to work with every day and the crew that we have. And then, you know, our agents have been helpful. Yeah. How does that talk a little bit about that project? Because and I want to frame this, you know, for for listeners and viewers, because this is a question I get a lot. Yeah. We in our practice we were, you know, and we I can handle all of the contracts. You know, you and I have been through this for years. All of the rights acquisition process. What do we need to put in a contract to get somebody to agree for a period of time that you're going to have the exclusive rights to try to develop their story, that talent option agreement, that initial shopping agreement. Right. And so we do that work and I see that process. And then we can help people raise money for an independent film. You know, to all of the production legal. But one of the questions that I never really know how to answer, yeah. Is somebody who's very talented says, well, how do I get someone to find me? How does my you know, I we can do all the production, but how do I get in the door? Yeah, and I know it has. The agency world agents play a big part in that. And you guys have gone through different agents at different times. Yeah. Talk a little bit about that and maybe how somebody might get into that world if they. Yeah, you know, coming in wanted to do now what you guys did 20 years ago. Yeah. I mean I think well if, if the question is how do we do what we did a while back is I think again it's partnering with bigger companies. Right? And so you need somebody to bring you in the door the first time when if you want to go, take a step back. Because I think the first part of your question and why you don't have a straight answer is because there is no great answer, because you always get this chicken and the egg answer of like they say, don't come pitch me until you have an agent. And then the agent says, I won't take you until you have a project and it's this. And so I really feel for independent producers out there who are pounding the pavement, hawking their wares and trying to try to get something right. That's that group. Yeah. And so there is no straight answer. I think one tip I would give is trying to find smaller mid-market production companies like Coolfire, right? Who will, if they catch you on a good day, take an incoming pitch. Right. You know, and I think I just took one last week. This guy, he had no agent, no reference, no heat. He referenced a couple advertising people he'd worked with in the past. He past the crazy test a little bit. Right. And and it was a well-thought out email and was like, you know what? I'll take the pitch. Yeah. So I think and so that in just right there. Yeah, that's the concept of the independent producer that's that's a lot of who we end up talking to these people that are, that are talented, they know their business, they can, they've got a relationship with the subject matter, Maybe they've got a script or they've, they've put the whole thing together, but they're not a physical production company. Right. And they need that somewhere either from the network, which is very hard to get by yourself. Right. Or they need to find somebody like, Coolfire. Yes. And so what you know, we we would exchange an NDA. Mutual NDA to protect us and them. You cut you wrote it I think pretty sure And and then then they would pitch and then we would decide if Coolfire if I was interested in moving forward. I think the thing that I've been telling people a lot and this is more of how to pitch Coolfire, I would imagine most of this translates to other production companies, but the way I look at it is the things that we find most valuable in an incoming pitch are an association with a character, a real life person, because as we, you know, we're talking about non-scripted TV primarily. And so like, do you have a relationship with the talent? Is it a talented designer that's going to go on HGTV? Is it a alligator wrestler that's going to go in Discovery Channel, whoever it is, bringing that relationship, right? That's one to is some rights or access to intellectual property. Got it. A book title, life rights magazine article any of the above and that that that's something of value that that producer is bringing us and they will so that independent producer will have before coming to you. Yeah. Obtained that access and or rights or maybe some combination of both where they are the presenters slash gatekeeper for this subject matter. Yeah. I never might be. And just say it in layman's terms. I couldn't have gotten this thing without that person. Sure, they're helping me get to that thing. And the third part is kind of involved with the IP, but it's access to. Yeah. Can you. Okay. You've got you've got a relationship and you've granted me exclusive access to the Atlanta Police Department? Okay, wow, now we're talking. So, you know, I think a lot of times we get these ideas of like, Hey, I had this fun title and this fun like pitch for a game show. And it's just like, that's yeah, that's tough for us. You know, that that's that's not what we tend to get excited about when a producer is coming to us. It's, it's a, it's that relationship with talent or some sort of intellectual property or access. Interesting. Yeah. So that's and for that and then that person if they're if it's successful they come in. Yeah. You guys put something together. Yeah. Then gets pitched, then they ride along with you and they'll get it an executive producer credit or a co-producer or credit or something. We'll break it down in three buckets. And you've written these contracts credit. There's three things we can give, right? Credit, creative involvement and money. Yeah. It's very simple. And we dial those up and down, depending on the producer. Some people want, Hey, I want the check in the mail I don't need to be involved. Right. I'll go find the next one. And some people want to be very involved and they want to use this show to build their own production chops. So involvement more important and so we can. Yeah. Because sometimes that person may really their whole pitch is to be the showrunner on the show or to get some level of production staff where they can get a credit for that as well as whatever, correct? Yeah. And obviously showrunning out of the gate is a tall order. Sure. But yeah, involvement that could be there. They see it as a way to advance their own production career, which is fair and makes sense. And I think the way we look at those fees and is just the more fully baked and ready to go, the concept is, the higher the credit and dollar amounts tend to be. I mean, and I know sometimes it's it's just like I said, this is great. Other people are going to be buying this. We want it competitively and it's competitive. We're willing to give them richer than we're giving them a favor kind of thing. But you don't really give favors, right? You know, there's too many is very .... Yeah, that's a good way to say it, because there's so many ideas and you've got to figure out, I'm going to get somebody's attention for one or two. Yeah. I mean, if we engaged an independent producer in a co-, what we call a co-development agreement, that's the relationship. We're not messing around. Right? We intend to develop that, sell it, take it out and we don't have time for like I guess you can say we can take a flier every once in a while, Right. But there's no favors there. It's. No, no, it's not, yeah. And you as you said, you. Because in that contract one of the things that you make a commitment to do. Yeah. As put together all the marketing materials do you know commercial reasonable best efforts to go shop this and everything. And so you have a you're making a legal obligation contract your obligation to do that. Yeah. And plus it would be really bad business not to and I think there's people out there who do that work just like get say people say people take people off the market, they take it off the market, they sit on it. Interesting. I think I mean, I guess that's true. I think those are bigger companies that and maybe they're doing it because they have something else that's competitive for that concept or just to be, I don't know, prickly, but like we don't we don't do that. You crafted the agreement specifically, so we don't do that, right? We we do have an obligation to pitch the concept or develop it as best we can. So what does a little bit about how the people receiving those pitches have changed over time? Because in the early days it was a bunch of cable networks and they were fairly independent of each other. Yeah, that's right. And then now we have also streaming platforms and even new networks that keep popping up. Yeah, it's it's a double edged sword. It's it's exciting in the sense that there are new players out there. I mean, obviously we've Netflix has now been around for a while, so we can't talk about them as new anymore. But, you know, you have Roku and Freevee. These are platforms that are now buying programing, particularly non-scripted programing, and they're also buying scripted programing, too. But that's exciting. The other flipside of that coin, though, is the consolidation of the networks and the platforms. And I think where that gets tricky for producers is when, you know, there's a I'm not going to name a network, but a portfolio of networks and one executive there is responsible for servicing this portfolio. And so now I don't get to pitch something to there, there, there, and there. I pitched it to this guy. Yeah. And if I catch that guy on a bad day, Right. That's no fun. Yeah. And that's basically wiped out. You wiped out four networks for me. Now they're not all like that. And that's not that's not how they all go, but it's created a lot of challenges for for producers. Yeah. In terms of the pitching process specifically. Do you think that the and for non-scripted. Yeah, I've had people ask me this in this world where you're operating this is the writers strike SAG-AFTRA strike do those things yeah help or hurt are they you know neutral it's interesting so we talk a lot about this we've been talking a lot about this internally. You know, obviously we stand by, you know, the unions in their ability to do what they're trying to do. That said, we're you know, we're producing nonunion shows, so we are outside of that. But it just is for a pause here. I want to make this clear because we that's always in all the contracts. This is a nonunion production. Yes. But all that really says is that the company is not a signatory to a collective bargaining agreement, mean they will must do everything via union, because most of the non-scripted world doesn't operate that way and you wouldn't be able to pay that, you wouldn't be able to get the budget, couldn't couldn't do it. But whenever you are shooting on location in L.A., for example, and all of the crew is union, you pay union rates and you pay all that. I mean, it just depends on the scenario. Yeah, but I think what you it's not an anti union stop for us. I think people sometimes misunderstand that. And I think what people also don't realize is that a lot of times we're still abiding by those rules. Sure. In terms of breaks, how long we're working for, perhaps what we're paying people. And so I think that's a big misnomer. But as it relates to the strikes specifically, I think, you know, the initial reaction is, oh, the writers and actors are striking. This is going to there's got to be a boon for non-scripted TV, right? We haven't quite seen that yet. I think now that it's gone on a little bit longer, you might you're seeing a little bit of that, I think, from what we're seeing. But now we're at the point with the way the market consolidating the way it is and the strike continuing to go on now, it's that the sinking tide is sinking all the boats just nervous networks are getting nervous. Okay. Ad budgets are getting restricted. Got it. And so it's not like, oh, I'll go buy this over here in Non-Scripted, I'll just go buy nothing. And so I think the longer this goes on, the more that's going to be an issue. And so God love ‘em I hope they get it figured out soon. Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah. And you know, we have had some other guests on podcasts in different time. We've talked about sort of the impact of streaming and how, you know, so much of the economic life of everybody in the industry, companies, producers, writers, talent, everybody was tied to, you know, 26 episodes a season. And then possibly you get enough, you know, 100 episodes, you get a syndication deal and your residuals and these are just all every one of those things generates new revenue. Yep. And now you have a streaming platform that buys six episodes for a season. They live forever. There's no residuals. They're always there. And then it's a year and a half before they come back again. Yeah, you start looking at kind of the the details in the accounting of the way these writers are getting paid. The writers in particular. Yeah. And it's it's not hard to see why they're out on the picket line. Right now. And you've got now AI which is another thing I wanted to ask you, have you guys as this worked its way into. Yeah. You guys at all or you using ChatGPT to give you a quick development pitch. Yeah not a not not the ideas but I do think again I think like any new technology you can, you can run from it and you can be scared of it. Yeah. Or you can utilize it as a tool to advance your own work. And I think that we've had lots of conversations about it. I think it's going to take shape in a lot of different ways from editing to concept development, right all across the board. But I think we've mostly just use it as a tool to save time. If you're if we have an executive's time and I'm typing this up and I need a polish or, you know, I need some research done, sure, it's a great tool for stuff like that. And again, there's the editing side, and we should have some of our editors on to talk about that. I mean, yeah, that's exciting, but also exciting. Slightly horrifying. Yeah, sure, Sure. Yeah. But again, I think for us, we're a smaller company and we're always it's, it's adapt or die, you know. And so interesting you take take the technology you use it how you can and you know listen I understand why people are scared like oh, this is going to put people out of work. It's a it's a fair argument. But I think the way we're looking at it now is just it's a tool that already talented people can use to be more talented or more productive, that that's just how we that's that's the thing I it's the more productive I hear more than anything else Yeah that's a real that's a real value If you have a six figure employee who's doing typing this thing, is that worth that person's time to spend 4 hours when AI could help them do that research or type that thing? It can take a half an hour to do the polishing. It's already done. Yeah. No, I gotcha. So this is been great. Steve, thank you very much. I think you give it a really good insight into people thinking about how this how it how it germinates you know how bill comes a law. Yeah exactly I think a lot of the songs on that. But I want to do something here that we and we've talked about before. I do this on every episode with every guest. And I always like to ask this question, what's on your screen? And that and the premise behind it is that, you know, as you said, we all have the screens everywhere, right? And we have them in our pockets. We have them on our walls and when our laptops and everything. And so at different times, people answer that question, what's on your screen? Maybe immediately, oh, there's this thing I got to get back to at work or Oh, there's this game I'm playing on my phone or this is show I watch? Yeah, whatever it is. What's what's on your screen? Well, I so I'm late to the party because I was going to watch it with my wife and then she finally bailed and like, I'm watching it by myself. I've been watching “Jury Duty”. Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, man. And as a you know, it's obviously a non scripted show, but it's highly produced and slightly scripted. I just think it's a it's an achievement. It's phenomenal. Yeah. And I you know, it harkens back to “The Joe Schmo Show”, which is, you know, the where the guy was the only one not in on the joke way back when. Mike Darnell I believe so. Like I'm loving that cool. But I know it's I'm late to the party on that one. That's well, I'm even later to the party now. And you're the second one of our guests now who's mentioned that show. And I've yet to get it. Was Jeff the other way? No, it was a different guest. And it's it's I it hasn't crawled its way up my list for whatever reason and partly because kind of like you said, you’re waiting for your wife to watch it. My wife and I do the same thing we have. We're in an open television relationship. You know, we have shows we watch together and shows we each date on our own. Yes. One hasn't fallen in one. Yeah. We're still maybe, you know, dancing around the dance floor on that one. And I'll bring that one back up top. Well, that's great. Hey, Steve, thank you very much. This has been a treat. Folks, if you are interested in learning more about Steve's work at Coolfire and their long litany of shows, check out Coolfire.com. You'll find all the information there. And if you enjoy these podcasts, find and follow us wherever you are listening to your audio podcasts. Thank you. And we're happy to be in your ears. And if you're watching us on our YouTube channel, be sure and hit that like and subscribe button. So you get all of our episodes and all of our content at TheScreenLawyer.com thanks everybody. See you soon.