LocKDin - Episode 9 with Kyle Odefey: Balancing Video Production and a Filmmaker Life

Can’t ya’ll believe 2 more months and we’ll be halfway through 2026?? JHEEZE 

Anyway, Kyle Odefey is in the house with me today. Kyle’s an awesome dude, when he’s not producing/directing/leading all things video at Synthesia, he’ll be working on his short films as that’s been his passion for a long time. Kyle went to film school and has since been working full time in a role that marries both worlds. We talked about a lot! From the nitty gritty of what is really involved in film production, to Kyle’s experiences working at one of the world’s leading AI scaleups, and of course how he balances his time amidst all this!! Did I mention Kyle’s been travelling a lot for work too? Or that he’s worked with Jensen Huang of NVIDIA as well?

Here's one interesting thing Kyle mentioned: “When things are getting overwhelming, the important thing is to just take a break. Take a step back and evaluate everything and prioritise the most important things that will influence the chain of events on the other tasks. 

🎧 This episode is for you if you’re interested in film, what it is like to work at a leading AI scaleup, how Kyle handles the creative demands from both his work and film and how he balances his life!! 🔥

Enjoy the episode, hope this inspires you to just start, and do let me know what you think!!

Kyle Odefey's links: 

1. Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@kyleodefey 

2. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/kyleodefey/ 

3. LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyleodefey/ 

My links: 

1. Idris Creative Instagram
2. Idris Personal
3. Youtube
4. TikTok 

Interested in being a guest? Hit me up at - idris@idrisdinproductions.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever the heck you guys are tuning in from. It's your boy Idris, and today's an exciting episode because it well, quick context. I got Kyle Odefy over here with me. The funny thing is, and I'm not sure if you remember this, but we actually met three years ago uh at an event hosted by TikTok, if I'm not wrong. It was like a content event, like how to hack content or whatever. Um, and then it was just like random. I went I went there with my manager, was trying to learn some tips, and then we we bumped into you, and then you were like, Oh, I just like started it. I don't know if you started you just started living in London, because I know you studied in University of Lincoln, right? Oh, yeah, you probably moved to from the uh London.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

The context was I had just started at synthesia like three weeks before. So I was literally just starting in London at that point, which is wild to think about because so much has changed since then, you know. But like it was it was insane. Like, I I when you when you reached out to do this pod, I was like, oh my gosh, dude, like it's already been like three years, but like we've not we've not we've like messaged each other back and forth a little bit, but like yeah, I've obviously followed your journey, you've been following mine, so like it's just so wild how that works sometimes, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

I know, yeah. So exactly, it's it's just exactly that. So it's just freaking wild that like yeah, three years on and uh we were connected, we're we're doing this, so which is yeah, I'm super grateful for. Um, and I love that we've been in touch as well since then. How about you give an introduction to yourself, man, and about like what you do at Cynthia, um, and then also what you do on site creative as well, and uh we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Yeah, sure. So um I'm Kyle Odify. I am a creative video producer working in the European tech space. Over the last couple of years, I've worked for a company called Synthesia, which is the world's leading AI video platform. And I've had lots of different responsibilities and roles over the last couple of years in that space. I started as a video editor and then moved into um video producing, but I also do a lot of freelance with like, you know, different journalists and influencers and have the opportunity to like really collaborate with people to talk about what European tech looks like on social media. And so that can range from doing you know very small scale UGC projects to you know very large-scale high-end shoots with like customers and clients where you're communicating about you know AI and European tech across various types of formats. And so it's been very, very versatile. But on top of that, I also write and direct short films. I've been a filmmaker since I was uh growing up in the Midwestern United States, and I still currently write and direct a lot of shorts. I'm currently in post-production on my latest short film in Search Mildred Weather, which is gonna come out later this year, which is uh really exciting.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Awesome, dude. That was a strong introduction, man. I appreciate it. I love that. For for anyone listening who who aren't that familiar with what you do on a day-to-day, what does being a video producer look like in synthesia? And also, I guess when you started out as a video editor as well, like how has that journey been?

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Yeah, it's changed rapidly over the last three years, I'd say. So when I started in March of 2023, I was hired to work on TikTok content. We had uh a synthesia TikTok channel called AI Explains AI, which was UGC. It was very much uh, you know, you have an AI avatar presenting news information, and so there was no, it was faceless content pretty much. Anyone could make it, you just have to like go on synthesia, make an AI avatar, type in what you want the avatar to say, and then you go bring that into like Premiere Pro or whatever, and you make a little TikTok video. And so it was much more news organization, it had nothing really to do with the company whatsoever. So the first six months or so we're we're just mostly making these like TikTok videos that were going, you know, just on TikTok. We occasionally we did some some live streams as well. Yeah, but over time we kind of realized that like that wasn't the best use of our time and resources because we're obviously not promoting the company as much. It wasn't like you know, pushing the company narrative and everything. Like it was obviously showing the technology, and at that point it was so very new, you know, because it was like AI had only just kicked up, I think, in in November of 2022 at that rate. And that when I joined, it was like six months after that. So there was a lot of of momentum and movement there, but to like really share the company narrative, we needed to pivot. And so six months into the job, our whole team gets transferred into marketing. My boss gets let go, and we start fresh. And we have this content and community team which is focused on just doing social media for all the synthesia channels. And over the two years that I was working under that team, we basically realized that video and and like real practical video was essential to sharing how synthesia communicates with their audience and their followers. So, in my sense, you know, I come from uh a film production background. I went to school for film production, I had all these skills, and I'm I'm sitting here editing these TikToks, and I'm like, I could do something practical here. You know, I could actually really sit down and like talk to the people that are making these avatars or talk to the people that are engineering or coding or whatever, and hear their side of the story and talk about how synthesia is a great place to work. So initially, what we started to do was these like internal test testimonials, like internal company testimonials where we were interviewing like different C level executives about joining Synthesia because at that point, you know, we were hiring and building out our team, trying to figure out what like the company was like. Yeah, and all that put together, you know, we started to get lots and lots of video projects out that were talking about the company culture and promoting synthesia across social in a way that we hadn't before. And then throughout that, we also started doing client testimonials where we'd go to live events and we'd shoot, you know, customer stories where it was like, oh, here's this really cool thing that synthesis allowed us to unlock and do. And then we uploaded those to the website, kept building those out. And over the last two years, it just became so apparent that you could have somebody internally running this video department to produce content for the wide spectrum of synthesia as a company, not necessarily just social media. So I started doing PR projects, I started doing cons, I started working with influencers and celebrities and like basically being the go-to video guy for whenever anything needed to be communicated. And most of my day-to-day was social media, but then there was also things like product launches and announcements and keynote events that we would do where I'd travel and go to like Copenhagen or wherever to film those. And now we're actually in this kind of weird period where it's pivoting again, and we're actually now focusing more on like comedy skits and shorts, and we're kind of switching up the narrative from being more like B2B to B2C, which is very different. And seeing that transition and seeing that change has been very, very interesting. But it allows you to create in kind of a different way than we normally were for the last couple of years and do something that's a bit different and exciting. Um, and that also for me means I get to travel around a lot and and get to like be in different places where the business is represented. So, like I'm going to New York this week, for instance, to go and shoot content at a live event. And like that's super cool because like we get to actually be front and center with customers, share their stories, talk to people about the event, what that's like, and then actually go out and like really get some cool content out of the deal that can be like a really good conversation starter for what Synthesia is as a company and as a culture.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Yeah, that's super cool, man. There's so many things that I want to pick out from. But during the time when you guys were pivoting, uh at least during the time when you were video editing, mainly on TikTok, were you the one driving that more of a storytelling element push? For sure, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

I think there was there was a lack of understanding what the company culture was from the outside, simply because nobody had those skills of actually sharing that. They had done videos before that were like large-scale advertisements that were like it was like kind of like a pitch video where they showed like what synthesia was and they hired like an agency to shoot it and everything, but they had never done anything that was like a visual stamp of like this is what synthesia looks like through motion and through video. And over time, you know, we we developed a brand team which you know kind of built out how like graphically things look, but then also video was so crucial to that because so much of social media's output is video, right? And so I got the chance to work alongside like our brand and our peer and comms teams and social to actually shape what that sort of style of storytelling and that style of of sharing that narrative looked like. Um, and that's something that we're always constantly evolving, I would say, on the day-to-day, but it's still one of those things that like I get to be hands-on with all the time, and and no one day is ever the same, you know. You really get to be flexible with it.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

I remember watching uh I think it was a podcast that you were on as well, uh Ventures. Uh I think it was Ventures, yeah. And you mentioned uh you mentioned about the how the audience uh in TikTok was like they were just degrading in in in a way in terms of because they was just used to seeing that AI stock, and that's why I I assume the engagements, the views uh weren't just converting uh from a synthesis point of view. And I think that pivot to more of that behind-the-scenes storytelling definitely drove that um increased engagement, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:20

It was a it was a huge factor in it for sure. I think the interesting thing at that point with TikTok in like early 2023 was that like if you had done it in if you had started like a TikTok channel using AI in 2022, you were already way ahead of the curve of so many people because it was like that that that level of creating with that that type of content just didn't exist. And those who came to it first got ahead of the curve, they were able to build a really big channel following. And AI Explains AI was very much a product of that, of that time. And as we saw more and more AI channels popping up in 2023, obviously everything got very diversified and audiences are going to you know various types of channels. And when the company wants to like actually really promote what it is as a company across social, it's like that's not really if you're just talking about news and technology, like from a UGC perspective, if this was an individual creator, that would make sense, right? Yeah, but it's a company that's backing it and they need to see like tangible results. And so there was this big discussion of like, can we still kind of do this sort of content or can we pivot? And actually, most of the stuff we do today on TikTok is still a lot of that like news kind of like if you want to use this a tool, you can use it to help boost productivity or whatever, or also just share like AI news and updates around the world because I think so much of that social flywheel is coming from different announcements in AI and then being able to jump on it and say, okay, here's how synthesia could integrate into this, or here's how AI Avatars could integrate into this, you know? Yeah. So there is still a very big part of that, but I'm hands-off on TikTok now. I've not done anything with the TikTok channel since uh would have been January 2025. So been a long time. Yeah, I have no time anymore to do it, but uh it's still one of those things that like I I like watching, and I'm I'm glad I got to be a part of it when I did. I had some really cool successes as well. Like one of the videos that we did was like an AI podcast. It was around the time Notebook LM came out, it was pretty, very exciting. I love Notebook LM. And uh yeah, it's super cool. And we did like this podcast video where it was like it was a it was like some viral clip that somebody had made of these two um podcast voices realizing that they were AI, and we humanized that with AI avatars. That video got like 3.7 million views. We did another one that also got like another 3.7, and then that became a parody on SNL that they did in January with Timothy Chalamet, which was wild. That was insane. I'd had nothing like that before, and I was like, that's crazy. And that was right around the time that I I jumped off of TikTok. And so yeah, I was just super thrilled that I had like a really nice win right before I said, I'm done, I'm retiring, I'm moving on to like actual video production stuff because that's where they needed me, you know, that's where that's where I need to be.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

So wow, dude, that's awesome, man. Looking at your role now, so you it sounds like you're much more hands-off, and now your role now requires you to, to your point, travel around, sort of bring C to customers and just showcase whatever that uh synthesia requires you to showcase to customers, and that would include, I guess, PR and any more of those uh like live journaling, if I'm not wrong, or like just like storytelling.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

Yeah, I would say it's it's more um just like how, yeah, how synthesia is is shaped, like what the narrative of synthesia is, why you should join, um, interaction with customers. Um, a lot of the stuff I'm doing these days is like production management as well. So, you know, if we're hiring agencies to work on larger scale projects, I'm directing those agencies and basically telling them this is the sort of video that we want to create. Because when you're a one-man person in an AI company that does video, you're obviously going to lack resources, even if you have all of the professional gear and stuff. And we have another team that's not actually in social, but they do avatar production, which is um still in the company and they still like operate and everything, and they've got some film production experience, but most of the work that we're doing is like you know, very small scale. But if we ever need anybody that's like larger or like larger productions, then we bring in other people, and it's up to me to manage and like set expectations for what sort of content we're creating. And so that can be like customer stories or yeah, skits or social media stuff, like you know, stunts or whatever it might be. Um, all that stuff is very flexible. And so, like I said, it really you really jump around each day, depending on what's going on and and what sort of you know content we're trying to produce.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

The thing that I find interesting is you are doing a full-time job that really allows you to flex and bring in some of the learnings that you've got from your film production, if I'm not wrong. And it it was even before then, I know you've been doing short films for like I I guess would you say it's been like close to 10 years now? Uh oh yeah, yeah, for sure. Or even maybe longer than that. I don't know. I'm sure you have some other videos that aren't in YouTube, for example. How would you say your overall life is like day-to-day? Um, do you feel fulfilled? Do you feel enriched that you're able to go through this uh without I guess being fatigued? Because just because the reason why I'm asking is because some of my guests, for example, my first guest, he's like a sustainability analyst, but he does stand-up comedy on the site. Two different worlds that you really wouldn't expect to happen. And I think for me, uh, when I'm speaking to you, it's like it seems like it's like a marriage of both worlds.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

So it for sure is. And I I think um interestingly, one of the the really nice things about this job, and something that that surprised me very early on was how supportive synthesia as a company is to side hustles and like really just making the most of your own projects outside of work because they know that if you go and do these projects and they do well and stuff, you can then take that knowledge and transfer it into the work that you're doing on the day-to-day. So very early on, I think in my first year, I had worked on a short film that I had written maybe in two or three months, and I shot it, I think, in in May of 2023. And it was very, very small, but like I posted on my LinkedIn and like the COO and the CEO were liking the post about it and everything. And I was like, hey, that's actually pretty good. Like that means that I can do this and not feel like weighed down by it or feel like I need to put that aside. Because I've been at companies before where if you do something on the side or you're trying to build out your own social media brand or whatever it might be, the company might be very apprehensive to that and say, like, oh, you can't do that, you know. And I've seen that more often than not. So when I found that out, when I realized, oh yeah, like I can still do this and still get a lot of support from it, that has allowed me now to then go and do other projects on the side. But I think going back to your question about um like feeling fulfilled and feeling balanced, I do because I have the ability to do both these things on the side. And they don't necessarily eat into each other because it's a different discipline, you know. Like social media as an art form, if you will, is is very different in terms of structure, in terms of pacing, in terms of how you're conveying a message. Yes. Whereas film is a much more meticulous process, it takes a lot of time. It's uh you know, it's acting, it's a it's multiple people coming together to create something rather than you as an individual. You know, both can be a team effort, but in truth, it's like they have such different mindsets where you can kind of just switch your brain off the second you're done for the day and then prioritize something like a film, whether it's writing, whether it's directing, whether it's acting. Obviously, it's a much longer time frame, like a time uh you know, window to create that sort of stuff because you're spending so much of your time at work, but you can still do that in my case and get really good results from it.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Wow. Dude, that that's awesome. I love that. I really love that. And what you mentioned segues into uh you probably touched on it already, but it this is a favorite question of mine that I love to ask one, I guess. But what's the transferable learning that you've taken from each side uh of your your life essentially, and how have you applied it to one another?

SPEAKER_02 17:12

Sure. Production management, number one, probably being the most important, which is like how do you organize and manage people, crews, equipment, you know, like what it what's the sort of like outcome that you're trying to get with the resources you have? Also, how can you maximize with what you have? You know, you like let's say maybe you only have uh like so much time, you know, like what what sort of schedule can you create to like get through the shoots or the shots that you need to do on that day? Um, it's allowed me to just like understand what's possible given the like limitations that we have.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

And then also like people as well. Like surprisingly, like a lot of the folks at Synthesia in the early days, we actually had like a production studio, and a lot of those people are in the film industry and we're in the film industry. And so, like a lot of those people transferred over then into my own work, into like the the films and stuff that we were doing. So, like networking is another crazy thing, which doesn't always happen, but like that was huge for getting my film off the ground and making it a reality. Um, but aside from that, more just like understanding how to direct, understanding how to can like communicate with people, especially like clients or celebrities or journalists, when you need to like just really get to the point on something, like it's allowed me to be a better director in a lot of ways, where I can just say, Okay, I want to do this, we're gonna go through this process today. You know, like I direct avatars at synthesia often, where like if a journalist will come in, like the BBC or Forbes or whoever, they'll come in and I will say, Okay, here's how we direct an avatar. And that process is is like tedious, it's repeatable, yeah. But also like that same sort of like way of speaking, that way of thinking, you know, very much goes into the stace, the space of of actually directing actors on set, where you can be like, okay, this is the sort of intention that I'm going for, this is a sort of mood or vibe that I I want to convey in your performance. Let's try to find a way to get through this together because it's all about that communication back and forth, trying to say, okay, this is what I want to be doing, and uh this is what I want you to achieve out of this um from my perspective.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

And has it improved you in your ability to be a better filmmaker overall as well?

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Yes, 100%. I would say, yeah, I agree. We definitely would be because the amount of opportunities that I had to just flex my creative muscles at synthesia through some of the various projects that we did, whether it was even just shadowing like larger agencies or larger production companies, like that was so valuable to then when I turned around last November and I worked on my film for three days, you know, I was working with a crew of 20 people, I was managing expectations, understanding like what I could and couldn't do, you know, again, very different disciplines and stuff. But like a lot of film sets are very much the same. Like it's the same thing in principle where you set up a shot for 45 minutes, you know, you wait for everything to get to get set up, and then you run and you roll it for two minutes, and then the next thing is you're moving on, you're doing a completely different setup that takes another 45 minutes, and then you're kind of just like waiting for stuff to happen. But once things are happening, once you're locked into it, then it's like, okay, let's get going, let's do this, and then you go from there. So I've been able to learn a lot from the job and through the different opportunities I've had to just like work in my craft, work in my skill set, and then transfer that over to the film world.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

You reminded me of a time, it wasn't too long ago. I was an extra in um what was it? I don't remember. It was like a film or something, like a short film. Oh wow, and yeah, I I my my partner got invited to become an extra, and they needed an extra person. So I was like, I would love to do that. And when you mentioned about like, yeah, 45 minutes and just like once it's action is locked in, yeah, it's totally true. And I'm like, you have to account for the multiple takes, you have to account for like okay, if someone uh if or if the lead actor isn't the most expressive in certain shots or whatever, then it's like retake, and it kind of got me thinking, wow, that there's actually so much, so many factors to take into when you're creating a short film, and you don't really think about it, at least for me, as someone who is uh sort of like a film enjoyer, but once you speak of someone who does it, or once you're involved in it properly, then it's like wow, okay, that's so much things going on.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

100%. It's all about intention, right? So the world of a of a film director or somebody that's writing and directing something, you know, they obviously have a kind of a grandiose vision, which is often distilled down to a theme, you know, some idea that they want to convey. Um, and that's told through the story and the characters and the acting, and then also how you how you light it and what space you're in and like. Like what the environment is and how you're pacing the scene and editing the scene. Like, there's so many little parts to the process, whether that be a short film, TV film, you know, whatever it might be, there's a larger narrative happening, and there's so many choices that are being made that like subconsciously you wouldn't think have been thought about, but they have. Somebody on a department has been like, oh, we're gonna do this this way because it helps support the larger theme. You know, it actually builds towards something. So for instance, my film, In Search of Milder Weather, is a movie about displacement at its core. It's about these two immigrants that have recently broken up and they've come back together for this family wedding, and they are together kind of in the the early morning of this wedding before it happens, and they're trying to like reconcile and connect, and it's very, very difficult. And, you know, what we were thinking about the whole time was like the space and the environment. So we actually shot in a very like wide open room where the actors could move around the space and be distanced from each other, which at a very, very like high level allowed kind of for that distance to happen between the characters, and then we'd obviously bring them closer together when there was you know larger conflict. But then like thinking about how they're positioned in the frame and like who's got the higher uh level of power in the scene, like who's kind of leading that, you could be very, very intentional with that. And even as an example here, like we had what's called the shot reverse shot, where you kind of go back and forth between the two characters in the edit. And in some of the shots, if one of the characters was relying more on that character, you would see them kind of on the side of that person's frame. So you'd have your, you know, like our female lead character would be the same, like the main person in the subject, the main subject in the frame. And then our male lead was kind of off-center on the other side. And then when we cut back to him, he's the only one in his frame because she's not caring for him the same way that he's caring for her. Oh, okay. Holy cow. That is dope. That is dope. So that's how that's how deep you can go here. And that that's been used by many, many people. Like, I don't want to say that that's not my idea, right? But that is something that you can do. And it's just like one of those really like small things that not a lot of people would pick up on, but it works, you know, it does a job. It's like just very, very subtle things that kind of push you towards thinking, oh, this character is maybe leaning more towards this way, or this character is definitely much more closed off because they're on their own. Yeah, you know, so you can use it in a lot of different ways.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Yeah, yeah. It kind of makes sense. Like when I watch certain films, for example, certain characters are maybe they're they get more light, and certain characters get more like more shadow, and then that sort of is uh uh what's what's what's the right word? It's like a foreshadowing of like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um that's really cool. When I watched the trailer from In Search of Marvel Weather, yes, yeah, I didn't know that that was the part at the time until you you shared it with me, but even when I was watching the trailer, it I could feel the sort of that was tension that was like you know, that was being invoked, and it didn't really take long for for it to just shine through. And I I I I'm just amazed by how how that was done. And and I feel that when I watch some of your like films um on YouTube, by the way, I have like a uh list of favorites that I I like by the way.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

Um my gosh, I'd love to hear them actually. I'm super excited.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Oh my gosh, wow. I love I love I love how how you how you did it in a way is like you you know like when you watch like certain like videos, and by the way, this isn't me trying to uh say it's like for light, but certain videos, like especially on music, for example, that they'll make like certain like sound effects like like that, yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, so that when I was watching that, I was like, oh okay, that's cool. But then like even then towards the end when you were just like mashing it all together, I was like, huh, that's interesting. Um six hours indefinitely. Uh I love it because I feel the the male lead, for example, I I feel like I could relate to him as a person just because it's more of a realist. And at the moment, I'm trying to work myself moving from a realist or pessimist, let's be real here, to a more of an optimist, which is what that was portrayed in the female lead. So that was pretty cool. Notebook poems, volume two is specific. Yeah, yeah. So I'd say those those three are my top three, but then obviously I'm gonna need to re-watch all of them again, but like those are the ones where I I felt something basically.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

I gotta say, like I'll say like Dormscape was one of those films for me that was really special. I made it when I was in university, and we got we got sent to a film a few film festivals at the time, which was very exciting. It was one of the first projects that I had that like I actually got to like claim as my own film that got in. It was like my my own thing that I did, and it was such a cool project. I mean, for context, for anyone that's that's curious, it was a film about you know taking multiple objects in a dormitory in the US and just like making a soundscape out of them. Yeah, and that was one of the first, like I think like even today, I'm like I could probably do even more with that concept, like I could have just gone like even a couple steps further. But I I I loved just experimenting around with sounds and like seeing what I could build. And that's gone into many other projects that I've done as well, where you use sound as a way to convey narrative and like think of more about emotions and how things are going. But at a very high level, like Dormscape was just kind of an experimentation of how do you kind of merge sounds together in a way that's fun and interesting. And then Six Hours Indefinitely, which is one of my I think all-time favorite films that I've ever done. Uh, that film for me was like one of those films when I made it, I was like, this feels like a natural progression. Feels like I've actually done something here that is so much more aligned to a style that I want to tell in filmmaking. You know, it's obviously very like romantic drama. There's you know, it's very slow, there's a lot of chemistry, you know, between myself and and our and and our female lead, who I actually was dating at the time, which was very weird to say. We also broke up two weeks later, so that was very crazy as well. Yeah, um, but you know, that film sits in a very interesting space and time for me where I watched that and I'm like, this was such a cool project to work on. And like, despite the situation, like yeah, it really was one of my favorites. And then that carried on into um A Birth in Kalmar, which was the follow-up to that. And now Milder Weather is almost kind of like a continuation of those ideas in its own kind of separate space, but in a much more mature way, I think, in the way that those two films didn't do, which is very, very exciting. Um, and then notebook poems as well, also really fun. Those were done during COVID, and it was me literally just writing stuff in a little notebook and then just taking kind of clips and material from shorts that I hadn't finished or didn't really know how to develop and kind of put them into these little vignettes. And that was really fun to just test my cinematography and like see what I could actually do. And um, yeah, I think elements of all three of those projects have kind of led themselves into what In Search of Model Their Weather is now, which is you know, much more high budget, you know, better performances, better acting, you know, better cinematography. There's a lot more intention in it, but like they were all foundational pieces, which got me to the place where I am today, where you know, I spent a whole year and a half developing this new short on the basis of the shorts that came before, and you know, was able to use all of those as stepping stones to get to where I am today.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

For those who don't understand how long it takes to develop a short film, like can you uh talk me through that realistically what is actually involved? And I think you've mentioned some of it previously, but uh I'd love to hear how what's how long it'll take, what's involved, etc.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

Sure. So let's let's break it down into two categories. You can do like super uber low budget or no budget short films, which for a very long time, this was what I was doing. Um, where I'd have an idea, I'd get together with some friends, we'd maybe write the script over a couple weeks or a month or whatever it might be, and then we film it over two or three days, sometimes even just a day, depending on what's going on. For instance, six hours indefinitely shot with four of my friends in literally six hours. We shot it just over one evening in January. We then turned that around and edited it, I think somewhere within like a month or two months. And then that was released, you know, pretty quickly afterwards. Um, no film festival run for that or anything. It was just kind of going up on YouTube, and then eventually it did get into film festivals on the side. But that whole process I think took maybe five or six months to produce. Whereas in Search of Melder Weather, which is the first uh like proper budget film where I've actually got a budget behind it, where I've raised money to make the film possible, that film took well over a year and a half to develop. So from the very beginning, you know, I came up with the idea in I think it was August of 2024. I didn't start writing it until November, December 2024. Gotcha. And I must have written the drafts for five or six months. I finished writing the film, I believe it was at the very end of July of last year. In the meantime, I was starting to cast and look for actors. I was working with producers to figure out logistics. I was bringing on a larger crew of people, um, folks like cinematographers and gaffers who are like lighting design people, hair and makeup, that sort of thing. And those are all people that are obviously specialized and are working in the industry professionally. So, you know, negotiating rates, organizing like our budget, knowing how much to spend in different places, working with our producers to like manage all of that and bring on people at the right moments. Then when the script was written, we then had to figure out the location. I actually knew uh the people that we rented the location from. It was um it's actually one of our old studios that synthesia used to use for avatars. So it worked out really, really well. Um, and then just like literally logistically figuring out when we were gonna film it. And that took the longest time. Okay. We were supposed to film it, I think, in early to late May. We had a draft that was like pretty much good to go, and we were gonna film it in May, May, April time. Yeah, and then we pushed it back because we needed to raise more money and we need to like just figure out what we were gonna do with it. And then over the summer, I raised more money, figured out what I wanted to go with it, and then we shot it in November. We hired, yeah, 20 plus crew members, all industry professionals, people that were working on like Apple TV shows and Netflix shows and stuff like that, just through personal connections, right? And then, you know, making it work over those three days. You have eight hours basically each day to shoot so many scenes. And for us, the the film was 16 pages long. That's about 17 minutes of screen time, give or take. Okay. And you know, for that time, some of the scenes are a lot longer, some of them had some really interesting camera movements and stuff. So you obviously have to schedule and plan that in. That's where like an assistant director comes in, where you're working with somebody on the scheduling and management of every of everything. You're obviously doing rehearsals with actors in the buildup to those three days. Yes. And then once the three days happens, it's just you're running gun. You're just going as fast as you can, getting everything you need, making compromises. You know, there's always going to be things that break, things that don't work. For instance, my cinematographer, my camera guy, got sick the morning of our first day of filming and he had to drop out, which is horrible. That's always really hard to deal with. Now he and I had been working together on the film for well over a year at that point. Yeah. And it was like, what the heck do we do? So our gaffer, who's our lighting guy, actually stepped in and became the the camera guy, the DP. And we worked with him. I worked with him over the first day. We kind of, you know, tried to see if it was a good fit. And by the end of the day, I was like, yeah, this works out great. He's doing a fantastic job. So I got very lucky, right? But we shot with him over the la the last two days, and yeah, it worked out great. It was a really, really fun project, really worked out well. And then after that, now we're in post-production. So we actually just got the first cut of the film today from my editor, which is very exciting. And then we're gonna do things like sound mixing, score, you know, like organizing the edit, doing like festival run and stuff. So our plan is to get the film done within the next like month and a half, two months. So you know, we'll then be ready to go and send it off to film festivals and you know, go back on that circuit and share it with people, and then hopefully we'll share it to the public sometime later this year, maybe, or early next year. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

And and uh, how can the public tune into that? Like uh will it be in, I don't know, like every man or something, or will it be on YouTube or how how how does it usually I think eventually, eventually we'll do YouTube or like a Vimeo release for it.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

Um it will take some time, you know. Usually with with short films, when you go and put them in the festival circuit, the idea is that you want to uh kind of have them be exclusive to those places so that people can actually go and see them, right? And then that also gives you as a filmmaker the opportunity to connect with people at these at these screenings because they're also people that are like promoting their own films, and then that can lead to better collaborations and more networking, and then you go from there and you get to really make something special uh again with these new connections and people that you've you've met. So um eventually YouTube will be the release. I'm looking probably later next year for that to happen, but there's going to be probably a premiere screening um with like friends and family and stuff before that as well, which will be very exciting.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

That's so cool. This is really cool, man. Um, this is really exciting for me just because like I love understanding how things work and like what what goes in the nitty-gritty side of things, and with just the way when you're explaining to me, it was yeah, it was just like wow, how do you I don't know how you deal with it, honestly, but like it really shows that you you really enjoyed this. So um, yeah, so so that's amazing. And out of curiosity, like how does the funding process go? Like, how much of it was crowdfunding, how much of it was, I guess, personal as well, or even from like you know, friends and family donations.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Yeah, so I mean it was kind of a mix of a couple different places. We self-funded it mostly, so I put in a lot of my money to make it happen, but a lot of that came from both paycheck and then also freelance opportunities because I do freelance on the side, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, where I'm actually working with like influencers and content creators to help produce their content across socials. So um a chunk of it came from that, which is very nice, and like those guys are gonna get special thanks, of course, because they're financiers of the film. But in the future, um, the plan is to go like and get grant funding, which is where you then go and you actually like get you build kind of like a pitch deck and all the materials about like what your film is trying to do and say, and you send it to places like the BFI or yeah, you know, different councils around England, and you can then use that um as leverage to then get more money to actually make the film possible. And yeah, looking ahead, the next film that I do will definitely need to utilize that. So yeah, we'll we'll get there when we get there, but like I I just wanted to do a film that I could like fully control at this race, and um there's a lot of pros and cons to that, but overall, like it was well worth it, you know. I like the fact that I got something out of it that I'm very proud of uh was was huge.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

So yeah, no, for sure, for sure. And I realized when I was watching some of your films, they're all like film nominated or like festival nominated. Uh most, yeah. How how how does a film get nominated? Like what's the process for that? Do you do you essentially just pitch to a specific festival, they review it, and then they'll they'll just nominate you for a particular category, or do you nominate yourself for each category that you think is relevant to um what your film thinks can I don't know can get nominated on?

SPEAKER_02 37:45

Yeah, it really depends. So sometimes it can be a situation where you literally just reach out to a film festival and you say, Hey, we've got this film, we think it would work really, really well in your program, and you know, would you be interested in hosting it? Um in other cases, often the case is you just go and submit on to like a there's a there's a place called Film Freeway, which is kind of like a film portal where you kind of host your your short and that is then shared with film festivals. You can like select film festivals that you want to apply to. You usually have to pay a little bit of money to get into the film festivals, and that's not a guarantee that you actually get in. It's still a gamble, right? Okay, but you know, you at least get to try and go from there, and then if it goes, the idea is that often you go to the film festival and you get to do like a QA or a promotion or whatever it might be, but it is a gamble, like you never know. I've had some films where I've submitted and I've not gotten in into any of the festivals I selected, you know. Yeah, other times I've gotten to all of them, you know, it really just depends like what the what the goal is. And when it comes to film festivals, often what they'll do is they'll program blocks of shorts, and they're often looking for does it fit within the context of the stuff we're programming, and is it like long enough, short enough to fit alongside a bunch of films? Because ideally, what a lot of film festivals are doing is they're probably trying to program you know shorts that are anywhere from five to fifteen minutes, and then they can block those in and do like a larger kind of program with them. So it really does depend, you know, depending on like how high profile you are, you can also just you know often reach out to film festivals. And if you've got some leverage, you might be able to do that too. But yeah, in general, like it's kind of just like trying your luck and seeing what you can do. So it's never a guarantee, but still, you know, it's a really fun thing to do. And when you get that recognition, of course, it's super great because then you can share it around. And that also I think just gives people awareness of you of like your credibility and like what you can actually do and how you create and how you think. So that's that's a it's always a good sign to do that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

Yeah. And what would you say is your that how how were you able to get most of your films um shortlisted or or nominated? Was there a formula that you eventually noticed or you cracked, and then that's how you're able to get a lot of them nominated? Not really, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

Like, I think the thing is, like, there's no secret to this, right? Like, this isn't uh this isn't like a hacking the system sort of thing. It's actually more like how how is the programmer thinking about the the selection of films that it's putting in? Does the film make sense for the context of what the festival's about? So if there was one way to kind of hack the system, quote unquote, it's looking for film festivals that have a track record of showing films that are similar, or maybe like looking at like what they've done in the past to then say, okay, maybe my film would fit in here. And I think that often works for a lot of film festivals and a lot of like submissions. I never did that back in the day. It was more just like, oh, I have these regional film festivals. Like when I was living in Minnesota, we had the South Dakota Film Festival, which I got to go to over many years and I got to know the programmers there very well. And it was like, oh, I know my film would probably work here. And you know, every time I'd submit to them, just about every time, they were like, Yeah, we'd love to see it. And that was always so, so nice, you know, because like I I understood like what they were going for and like what types of films they show. Okay. So that that helps, you know, but it's not necessarily a given every single time, right? Gotcha. Sometimes there might just be a certain festival that programs certain films and you're like, Oh, I'd like to do that, or you know, it might just be one that helps with notoriety, like a Sundance or Can, you know. Yeah, but those are obviously very, very high level and very competitive, and you might get in, you might not. And then with those two, when it's high level like that, often they'll want you to premiere the film there if it goes through, which disqualifies any other film festivals you've you've like submitted to. It's like exclusivity, right? Okay, so it's like a gamble too. Yeah, so you really have to think about it and be very strategic.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Right. Do you have a particular festival that you eventually one day you're like, I want my short film made by Kyle Odefy to be premiered in?

SPEAKER_02 41:52

I mean, Sundance would be really, really cool. Can would be amazing. I I feel like any of those would be great. TIFF, Toronto International Film Festival, would be really nice. Um, I think Telleride in Colorado would be really, really cool. I mean, just anywhere that can get me in the room with like more talented creators and start to network and like really show what I'm able to do on a wider scale. I think it's always this kind of constant step up, this like you know, constantly learning and evolving and trying to figure out how can I make something at a higher level. And I think if I can show that through my directing or even through my social work or whatever it might be, you know, that's always the goal. It's always this kind of lifelong learning thing. And so any opportunity I can get to keep showing and sharing like stories with people, that's my end goal, I think, in the grand scheme of things.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

Yeah. And and I mean when I check out what you're doing at Synthesia, I mean, most recently I saw I love what you guys did with the it was like a it was like a news reporting thing where the hackathon. Yeah, that was freaking cool. And even then, I I I've seen the one with uh NVIDIA, Jensen Huang. You were you were the directing that if I'm not wrong, or you were producing it?

SPEAKER_02 43:02

I was I was filming, I was shooting it. So that that's a fun story. Um that was really crazy. So I was with my parents actually the like Tuesday night before it happened, and I get a text from my boss. My family's visiting from the US, by the way. So like it's rare that I get to see them normally. But like my my boss texts me on WhatsApp, and he's like, hey dude, this is crazy, but like Yensen Huang's team wants us to come to their hotel tomorrow to film some content around you know synthesia and around their uh they they had like this European tech event thing that we're doing. And so they were like, Are you gonna be around tomorrow to do this? And I was like, Yeah, of course, obviously. So I I go over to the office that morning, I grab the camera, I'm like, okay, we're gonna do this. We go hop on a train, we go to Hyde Park Corner, go to this super fancy hotel. I'm talking like white lotus vibes. This was like crazy, dude. And I go up this this elevator, go into this like rooftop bar thing, and they're like, Okay, Jensen's gonna come out this door. Make sure everyone's got the mics ready and everything and good to go. You're just going to film for 20 minutes. They're going to have a conversation. He's going to give him a gift and he's going to go. And it's like, okay, all right, let's go do it. Let's lock in. Let's do it. And he shows up. You know, we have this conversation. It's just me holding the camera, going back and forth, back and forth. And I'm just like, this is so wild. Because like I've seen this guy on so many videos where he's literally like leading the AI kind of race. Everything is going on because of Jensen. And I'm just like, dude, he's right there. He's right there. And at the end in everything, he's like, let's get a photo. And it was like, okay. So we all just got in the photo together. And it was like, it was crazy. Like it was such a cool deal and such a nice guy. I mean, one of those people that is just so like is on another level when it comes to thinking about AI and tech and business strategy. You know, like he clearly made so many right moves. And he could also be so technical as well. Like he's got that very hardwired brain for CPUs and GPUs and all these different types of computing processes. And just hearing them go back and forth, Vic and Steph and Jensen, like there was such an interesting conversation going on that, like, for the most part went over my head. But like I could tell, you know, it's so important. It was like these guys are leading how AI is being communicated. It was one of those moments for me that was very special. And I'm so thankful I got the chance to do that and to be there and to be a part of that. Because that I mean that was a real highlight. It was just like, wow, all of these things that I gotten to do have led to this point. And I'm doing this and it's fun. You know, it's like a really cool project. And we then had to turn around after that, like we had maybe 24 hours to turn, or it was 12 hours. We had 12 hours to turn around the social content. So I went back to the office and I edited the material super fast. And then we had to release it the next morning. And it was like, there you go. We were also the first people out of all the companies that Jensen met with, the first company to actually release content surrounding that visit. I think 11 Labs, Waymo, and a few other people were there. Yeah. They all took like an extra week to get the content. And the the whole purpose of the video for NVIDIA was release it that week, release it the next day. Yes. And so it was like we it was speed. You know, it was like you just gotta go fast. You gotta do what you gotta do, get it done, and go from there. But it was a great exercise, and like that mentality of just like locking in and just saying, okay, yeah, here we go, we're gonna do this. That's huge. That's so important at synthesia, and like that's one of the reasons why it's been such a fun and exciting job for me.

SPEAKER_01 46:33

Yeah, no, that's amazing. And and obviously, that's on your portfolio, you you know, Yensen Huang and all that. So I'm sure that it'll all feed into what you're trying to achieve in live filmmaking one day. Sundez is gonna come, bro. I I promise you. Um or a T I C C TIF? Sorry, TIF. TIFF yeah, yeah, all those, all those. So yeah, I believe, I believe. Um I'm very curious, in within the world of filmmaking, like where would you say is your first love? Because there's so many moving parts to it, right? That there's like I don't know, the the scripting, the sort of like organizing, now that you you've refined that as as you've gone on throughout your whole experience, um, organizing with talent, etc. What where would you say it is for you?

SPEAKER_02 47:17

Gosh, I mean I started doing film when I was a kid, right? So it initially started with post-production. This is actually why I started as a video editor, because like I had done so much editing throughout uh high school and then also in university in the US and the UK when I moved here in 2021. Um, you know, all of that came from just like working with computers and like understanding how pacing works in the wider scope of telling stories. But as a kid, it was less about film and more about just telling stories and sharing stories. Yeah. And for me, this is something that has been transcendent of any medium that I'm working in, which is the idea to tell human stories and stories that matter. And in the grand scope of things, like that started through um post-production, but then moved into writing and directing, and then also editing, and sometimes even acting, depending on what was going on. Yeah. Um, but now it's to the point where it's like if I can just convey a really interesting story with a really interesting company or a really interesting product, or it's a narrative about you know something I really want to share, and it's it's very personal to me, you know. Like I will find ways to to make that happen one way or another, because I do think it's important to share human stories, and especially in the context of of artificial intelligence, when everyone is so afraid most of the time. And uh, as we've been as we talked about earlier, like this idea of AI slop and everything, like we're no strangers to that because it's like it's part of kind of our ecosystem and we're a part of that. But you know, it's this idea of like where are the human stories within AI because all of this stuff is being developed by people and people first, you know. So working in that space and and and being a part of it. But filmmaking as an art just kind of came naturally over time. It was one of those things where I realized I wanted to write, it was where I was like, I could edit, I can kind of share a vision and also share that to multiple people, and then those people can help kind of bring that vision to life as well. Yeah, and when you have that kind of symbiotic relationship where everybody's collaborating and coming up with something very special, you then can like tell a really, really interesting story and find ways to tell it in ways that maybe somebody else hadn't thought of. And yeah, uh, that for me is like probably the best thing, like how collaborative it is, you know, and getting to work with people that you really care about, which is yeah, really, really great.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

It sounds like you've been through a lot of journey, especially with regards to you know your journey in synthesia, also your personal journey as a filmmaker as well. How do you balance your time? Um, when you when you're working at that, obviously a fast growing um is scale up the right term right now. Obviously, you guys just uh scale up or you know, you're balancing a demanding creative job whilst also pursuing your own film projects. Like how does it work in a day-in-to-life week of life of uh Kyle? I mean, gosh, it's not easy.

SPEAKER_02 50:11

At the end of the day, it's like you are you have again kind of that brain where your brain is switched on for social projects that often never stops after you know 6 p.m. rolls around, right? Yes, you are constantly, constantly thinking of different ideas that could be used across social, across film, you know, and often the runway to create shorts or films, you know, could take months to years to decades, you know. And in the space of my life and what I've been able to do, it was really understanding that I didn't want to give that up because so many people, when I was in university and high school and all these places, they had that ambition or were like, I want to do this and I'm really interested in this, but then they didn't go and do anything with it. They kind of just got their day jobs and they just kind of sunk everything into that. And I've always been somebody that gives everything 110% for better or for worse, right? And there's also this, you know, very large pressure of me being an immigrant as well. And I think you can relate to this in some ways as well, but like the idea of like always having to just put your 100%, 110% into everything, because if that's taken away, it's really tough and you don't know what's gonna happen, right?

SPEAKER_03 51:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 51:25

So for me, it's like you also like you have to in your nine to five, nine to six, you gotta do everything you gotta do there. But then if you actually want to make a difference in the things that you enjoy and the things you like and the things that actually give your life true meaning, you do need to prioritize that. You need to find a way to work with other people to help bring that, you know, make that possible, or you know, schedule time for yourself, block some time out, you know, over the weekends. You know, so much of my writing came from you know, full days where I was locked in my room here, just writing and writing and writing and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my my story. It came from casting calls and producing and like you know, immediately getting off of work and being like, okay, I'm gonna switch into film brain and I'm gonna try to figure out what I want to do with this short and how I want to, you know, tell it. It just meant giving like that extra amount of energy to it when you maybe would have to like turn down hanging out with friends or going out or whatever, going for dinner, like going to see movies, you know, all of that had to be put aside because that's that's what I needed to do to get the film off the ground. And I understand too, you know, I'm in a very privileged position. I'm in 27, you know, I don't have a partner, I'm not married, I don't have kids, you know. Yeah, but like you can still do this, I believe, even with those things in place. It's just you know, making sure, like knowing how where your limits are and what your prioritization is exactly. Um, all of that is so, so crucial to doing things that you love. And I think that's that's at the at the very core of it. It's like, I love doing this stuff, it brings me happiness. I know if I just did synthesia day in and day out, I would be miserable. It's like you gotta have something that drives you, and it's not necessarily film for me all the time, too. Like I journal, I write, I you know, will we go and watch movies? Like it's like doing film theory and film history and like learning about different things, you know? Yeah, like it's it all kind of funnels into understanding how to be a creative and like what it takes to do that. And as we said before, it does transfer back into the job, but it's a very different way of thinking. And so for me, it's always just been like, yeah, what does it take to to keep it going, keep it running, and and do it in a way where I feel very fulfilled on both sides of the of the coin. And I feel very, very lucky to have to still feel fulfilled in a lot of ways by both sides of the job and and the work that I'm doing as well. I just wish it would take a lot less time to make films, you know, that's the only downside. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:51

Would you say you live by your calendar, you time block a lot? That's the one way that you keep it sustainable. And also as a follow-up as well, would you say your current way is sustainable?

SPEAKER_02 54:02

Yes. I would say calendar is an essential way for sure, especially when I'm also balancing things like freelance and other projects, which are often editing, you know, centric. Uh, you do need to kind of like set limits at each, you know, each each level, depending on what's going on. Is it sustainable? I've learned as I've grown in the company and as I've grown in responsibilities, that parts of that can be and parts cannot. And where I think a lot of people get it wrong in terms of like making stuff happen, especially from a film perspective, is that it's a collaborative process. I've been I've talked about this a bit already, but like you know, film only happens on a very like grandiose level when you have lots and lots of people working together to make the vision. And the reason why milder weather got out of my head and in onto a film set is because I had people around me that were willing to support that vision and make it happen. You know, we had a writer's group which went on for about six or seven months in late 2024, early 2025, where there were maybe six different films being incubated to actually be produced and shot over 2025 and 2026. Now, of those films, I think all five have been in production or are wrapping up production right now. And that purely came from people that were actually, you know, either through synthesia, the synthesia network, or people outside of it that I connected with that were like, we want to make art, we want to make stuff creatively. Yeah, and that's a really huge part of actually making it sustainable. It's like, do you have people that actually support you on your journey of making that happen? Because you as an individual, exactly holding you accountable. That's the main thing. Yeah, because if you don't have that, you're gonna procrastinate. You're just gonna be like, I can't do it. I'm I'm tired, I'm lazy. Sure, I've been working for 13 hours or whatever. Like, I don't have time for this. So it's like, you know, it's it's those people that are like, come on, come on, Kyle, let's keep going, let's keep going. Yeah, and that's huge these days. I think that is a very good motivator. And the the further down the line we look in the next year or so, like this is gonna be a really important part of getting like my next short film off the ground, which is going to be a you know a larger budget piece where there's gonna be lots of stakeholders involved to make it happen. And it still will take a long time, but it's one of those things where I will have those people around me that will say, let's get it done, let's make it happen, and I can workshop it and try to figure out what I want to do with it and go from there.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

So yeah, that's huge. That's huge. But I'm quite also quite curious as well, like were there moments where you felt creatively burnt out overall just because on one hand, your day job, nine to six, that's creative creatively demanding on another part of your brain, and also with the filmmaking, that's another uh demanding uh side, which you know takes a lot creatively. How have you dealt with those moments?

SPEAKER_02 57:00

I've definitely experienced burnout on a couple occasions, especially earlier this year as well. There were some moments where I was like, wow, I'm handling so much right now. Yeah. And when it comes to that, you know what it really is, Idris? I think it's literally just taking a break, you know, like actually sitting down and saying, okay, I've done way too much. I need to A, sit down, just relax a little bit, figure out what I need to do, put some things on the side, and then prioritize. Yeah. See what you actually need to focus on, what's the most important thing in the chain of things you need to do, prioritize that, and then work your way down and say, okay, now I can go and do this sort of thing or this other project. And for a while earlier this year, like my older brother had to be on the back burner because I had so many work projects to prioritize or like freelance projects to prioritize, where it was like super quick deadlines, super quick turnarounds. So it's like, okay, I got to prioritize this first, do this, this, and then I can come back to the film. And thankfully, the film is now mostly out of my hands. Like I am directing it still, but it's like people are working on different levels of it at different points. And I am still involved, but it's also just like they're taking it and doing what they need to do on that front.

unknown 58:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:08

And then I can come back to it later. But yeah, it's just like it's more like really making sure your time is managed well, and then when it's not, yeah, re-assessing, re-evaluating what do you need to do here to actually you know get yourself back on track. And that can take a while, you know. It took me like uh like a week to be like, okay, let's just let's just chill, let's just figure out what we need to do, and then and then go from there. And I was I was back on my feet, but it was hard, you know, it was really hard. It's not easy uh to go through periods like that. And you know, you you need to kind of just be aware of yourself and be aware of like where what level you're at and where things are, and when just take a step back and say, okay, maybe I'm doing a little bit too much here, you know?

SPEAKER_01 58:50

If someone were to ask you, hey Kyle, I'm thinking about starting a short film. Obviously, one one one of the ways that people usually give, uh, I'm sure the advice that you might give to someone is hey, just start, but how would that person actually realistically start? Like, say, would they need I don't know, 300 pounds? Would that be enough if they wanted to shoot like a low budget film, um, for example, just to get like boots off the ground?

SPEAKER_02 59:15

Yeah, I mean it totally depends on the the scale and scope of the idea. Um, you know, like if you're doing something that is a little bit more complex with like camera movement or acting or whatever, like yeah, you you could theoretically do something, you know, very small scale if you have the resources or whatever. But it let's say if you didn't, you know, it'd just be finding people that can actually make it happen with you. Again, film is a very collaborative process, right? I I don't think anyone that you know makes stuff on their own is gonna get super far, even if it takes them you know years and years. Like there's a time a time frame, you know, like if you're doing everything on your own, it will take forever. If you're doing things with people, that's gonna you know shorten things quite a bit, but it can still take a while at this rate. It really just depends on like what your vision is and how you actually want to go about it, right? Yeah, and depending on that, that you then have to ask yourself a bunch of other questions, like should I raise money for this? Should I you know hire actors? Should I get a producer? You know, at the end of the day, you're probably gonna need to hire crew, and that can be you know quite a bit of money in itself as well. So it really just depends. But if you're just starting, like let's say you're just brand new, right? Like you just don't know what you want to do. There's a ton of resources online, yeah, no network, right? You just kind of start on your own. Maybe you just watch some YouTube videos. There's a lot of good resources out there, you know. Go to film school, you know. Uh a lot of people have different thoughts about that. I've gone to two different film programs and learned a lot through those. You know, my bachelor's and my master's were two different film programs. I went to Minnesota State University, Moorhead, uh, for my bachelor's. And then I came over to the University of Lincoln in 2021. And like both of those had very different disciplines, very different projects and practices. Um, that actually was a really great way to understand how you work with a team, how you develop ideas, you know, how you like also gives you like a trial run place to like really start to figure out what sort of type of narrative or creative person you are, where you can just kind of throw things at the wall and see what sticks. Yeah. And I would argue as well, like kind of help you find your creative voice in quotations, which is um, which is helpful. But yeah, like there's plenty of good resources, and then also, yeah, literally just start creating stuff. You know, you can use your your iPhone, you can use uh, you know, a camera, whatever you got lying around. Like it doesn't need to be super, you know, large scale production equipment. I I have a red Komodo camera, which is um like entry-level cinema camera, and when I bought that, it was like $9,000, 9,000 pounds. Oh, yeah. And now it's like 2,000 pounds, and I've rare I've rarely ever used it. Like, it's not about the equipment, it's about like how you're actually thinking about the scene and the cinematography and the lighting. And you know, I think what a lot of people get wrong too is that you have to do everything. You can specialize. And especially in the context of the film industry, specializing is the best thing you can do because that allows you then to like really nail a specific type of way of creating, whether it be you know, mastering cinematography with with lenses and cameras or doing lighting tests or whatever to become a better gaffer. Uh, writing and directing is obviously very hard to get into professionally. So, you know, you have to have really good ideas for that, or you know, have some you know track record of doing this stuff well for people to trust you with that. But even then, you know, like if if you just start doing stuff, you start creating, you know, you can really start to figure out pretty quickly what are the types of stories that you want to do and how do you get there. And there's so many good resources online for that, I think, to start.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:50

So do you have an example of a good resource online?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:55

Oh man, it's a good question. I I know of some channels. Danny Gerts comes to mind. He was one of the guys that was very, very um influential. He's just kind of like a corporate run and gun guy, but he also does a lot of narrative documentaries. He did a narrative feature film that was like fully um financed online through like Kickstarter was really, really cool. There's a guy named Noor Nayez who's really, really interesting. He's like uh based in, I think he's based in Singapore and uh does some really, really cool projects um where he does like corporate client projects for like Samsung and all these other places, and it's very much like a like very aesthetically pleasing way of like thinking about how to create and packages everything very, very nicely. But is also I both those creators are very down-to-earth and very open about their processes, which I think is is very useful, and they were in different ways very good guidelines for me at different points in my you know filmmaking journey that were like, Oh, these are actually really interesting ways of of thinking about this, yeah um, and making stuff you know work and and be good for for myself, you know. I was able to adapt their thinking into my own way of of creating.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:05

You mentioned something that I want to track back on a bit where you said specializing is is is the key. Yeah, there's a thing which is like well, what is it, Jack of all trades is a must- or nun, basically. Um I I can relate to that because I made music on the side as well, and yeah, the my first three songs I it was just end-to-end produced, uh written everything all by me. And I remember as soon as I met this producer who I met by the way, I I don't know if you know of this um there's this boat on near I think it's near Victoria or something, but it's like a pub as well, but like they do it's like a yeah, that one. So there was this like uh creative event, and I went there, I went there on my own, there's loads of other people, and then I just bumped into this guy, we just started started talking about music, and he was like, Oh, I'm a producer. I was like, Oh, no way. And then the moment we start hitting it off, and then there was this one moment where I was like, Oh, I have this project that I've been sitting on for like a year, and I went over to his studio, and he literally just like just he just did magic to it, and the song just finished in the span of like two hours. I was like, dude, how the heck do you do this? And he was like, Well, you already just laid laid the foundations. I just added the I just you know made it extra nice, and I was like, Wow, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:25

Well, spent your head really yeah, and you're hitting on the other really great part of this too, which is networking. I mean, there are so many great events and things you can go to, no matter where you are in the world, you know. London, of course, has a lot of really great networking events for film and the arts and even music production and such. Like the the opportunities that you can do to connect with people who have the same interests, sometimes that also just gets the ball rolling, you know. And that, like you said, I think can be a really great motivator. Um, because again, it's all about people, it's all about like working with people together to make this stuff happen. You can you know rely on yourself to do all this stuff, but yeah, it's gonna take a lot of time, it's gonna burn you out. You gotta have people that can actually support you and be your champions, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:10

I I think in my eyes, would I change my approach for my first three songs? I wouldn't because it taught me the foundations of oh uh what actually goes into things, but now I see the huge value in actually uh outsourcing areas which you may not be the greatest in, but someone is better than you, and that you know you trusted their abilities.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:33

Um and we haven't we haven't talked about this as well, but I think it's also important mentioning just because this is also about marketing and social, that like in the social space, actually knowing how to do a lot of this stuff, even if it's at kind of a basic level, is so integral to getting work in the creative spaces with like social media and marketing, where it's it's it's a very different from film, whereas film you know, film is like, yeah, you should specialize, you should do one thing. Social, if you can shoot like work a camera, you can do some like basic lighting, know how to work a microphone, like that is great. People are like, yes, please, I want more of this. And that has put me in some really great positions in the last couple of years where it's been like, you know, do this, you know, do this, you know, this great, go do this. And that's obviously stressful, that can be difficult because then it's like, oh, you might not know how to do something very well, but yeah, you know, you at least have a very basic understanding of those skills. And to your point, it's like you should just go through maybe making a film on your own or maybe making a music track on your own, just to see the process and do it once. But then if you have the ability then to bring other people into it, you know, a lot of the synthesia projects we do, for instance, are multiple people working on it. So like the skits and stuff that we did, the hackathon video that you talked about you talked about earlier. Yeah, that was a combination of three of us working on that over the course of a couple hours. You know, we all had to pitch in and like one of us was doing camera, one of us was doing microphone, one of us was acting. You then would switch it up depending on what we were doing and like what we were creating. And often with that, we were also writing it on the fly, you know, it wasn't like a thing that was like fully scripted. We had a base idea, you know, make an ESPN style video at this hackathon, and then figure out a way to tell that story creatively. So for us, it was like, okay, we're gonna start with like a little play-by-play thing, we're gonna see what the the vibe of the event is like. And then, you know, it was us. We were like, oh, what if we cut away and it's just them working and it's really boring? And it was like, okay. And then so we did that, and then it was like, okay, we need like an MVP because one of the things that they told us was like, you need to show off this like technec massage booth thing that they had because it was like a nice, like it was like a thing that the engineers got to have if they needed to like, you know, relieve their back and everything. Oh wow. And so we were like, okay, we're gonna do that, we're gonna get a little shot of that. And so we were like, oh, let's focus on like an MVP, who was just one of our friends, you know, at the company. And we're like, okay, we're gonna do like a little review, we're gonna do like a like on the sidelines, and you know, we just we just riffed it. And that content, I think that kind of content where you you link it to a larger event or you link it to a larger kind of story that the company is sharing and wants to share, that makes the best, I think, social content when you're conveying your brand and conveying your message. But yeah, all those skills I think are, you know, going back to what we were saying before, all the skills of like kind of knowing how to do things at a basic level in marketing are very, very, very useful, I think. Um, and can be yeah, very essential, I think, to to to getting into like entry-level jobs and stuff. Yeah, and then actually showing how you you use those and why you use them the way you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:35

Yeah, no, that's amazing, man. We are almost coming to time, and usually during this section, I like to ask my guests some quick fire rounds um of questions. Okay, I'd love to hear your take on this. So we're gonna start. And first question is favorite city to visit and why? Gosh.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:53

Uh favorite place that I visited that I can think of off the top of my head, Montenegro, Couture Montenegro. I visited when I was 17, I was on a cruise with my family. I did kayaking in this basin. They have a basin there where the cruise ports that go into this port, and it was lovely. I mean, one of the coolest places I've ever been. I've not been back since, but it's always been one of those places that I've wanted to go back to and and and visit. Um, just a beautiful like city. It's it's it's surrounded by mountains and everything, gorgeous weather, you know, nice people. Was really, really cool. I'd love to go back there someday.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:30

People don't usually talk about Montenegro as a place to visit as well. So do would you say it's an underrated place?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:36

I think so. Yeah, definitely underrated.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:38

Okay, well, I should add it to my list. Uh moving on. Um, favorite movie. And this is something I'm very interested to hear from your team.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:46

Dude, you asked me the worst question. You know, like people usually I can give you so so I have I have a lot of answers here. Usually I I go to four. Um do you care if I'm niche? I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go real niche, I think. No, no, go for it. All right. So Don't Look Back, Bob Dylan. Uh it's about Bob Dylan in the 60s, directed by a guy named DA Penebaker. It was about Bob Dylan's 1965 European tour around the UK. Now, from a documentary perspective, it's one of the coolest documentaries about modern celebrity. It still relates to so many crazy things today about how celebrities portrayed in the media, how words are twisted, and how an artist is kind of struggling to like define himself in this kind of sea of journalism and like all these people thinking and kind of projecting what he is as an artist. Um, even if you don't like Bob Dylan, I think it's a really, really cool documentary that I'd really recommend. There's a movie called Before Sunrise, which is directed by a guy named Richard Link later. He did Boyhood and Days and Confused. Um, Before Sunrise is like a romantic drama following these two people that meet on a train. One's American, one's French. It was a major basis for uh Six Hours Indefinitely and then a birth of it but it's a very conversational, it's very romantic. Um, shot in Vienna. I mean, gorgeous movie. There's two other ones that follow it, which are also very good. Um, aside from that, marriage story, which is done by a guy named Noah Baumbach that's got Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson in it. Oh, cool. It's a really interesting take on divorce and the lives between two people growing up in both uh Los Angeles and New York. Um, shot incredibly well, amazing acting, amazing performances. And then what would be my fourth? There's a movie called Tar, which was directed by a guy named Todd Field. It has Kate Blanchett in it, and it's about a composer that is living in Berlin, she's like world famous, but over the course of the film, her life slowly starts to deteriorate. And there's not much more I want to say about it because it's one of those films that like when you watch it, it's very like it starts to like pick up, and some of the stuff in there is so shocking, you're like, whoa, this is not what I expected the film to be. Yeah, but it goes in so many interesting directions. And by the time it wraps up, I was like, I could watch another three more hours of this. Like it feels like I could just keep going. It just kind of puts you in this headspace of this very meticulous, very like hardcore um, you know, musician, composer, and her life as it's just spiraling out of control, which is really, really good. But I have plenty of other ones as well. Like Star Wars was like the main thing that you know got into filmmaking and stuff. But that's that's all I'll say about that. There's there's my there's my answers.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:37

Yeah, those are all strong answers. I'm definitely gonna check those out, but particularly Tar, because uh yeah, yeah, I I I like watching ones where they start taking a turn for the worst, not particularly because I just like when shit hits the fan, but more like how does it develop?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:53

Well it's interesting, right? It's like it's like it puts it puts your characters in very interesting situations, and like this was a huge part of milder weather too, like kind of seeing the deterioration of of a couple, you know, in real time. There's something really interesting about like looking th at things from a very different angle than they're portrayed in in real life. And film gives you the opportunity to explore like different places, different mindsets and mentalities that you yourself might not experience, which is you know eye-opening. And I think though that kind of film, yeah, is is really really important to to watch and to take in.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:29

Huge. If if I have time, might tune into that like later on, but we'll see. Favorite food or cuisine to eat?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:37

I really like Italian. I'm a huge Italian fan. That might be stereotypical, but like you know, like pasta spaghetti house here in in London, which is not even Italian, but like that's it's good, it's great, you know. Um, I'm a huge fan of steak. I like steak a lot. I don't have it very often, but like that's just pretty good. But uh yeah, like any like like a carbonara or you know, um like villain is fantastic, it's really really good.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:02

I have a friend that works in uh Osteria Angelina if you've been there.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:06

Oh, I've not, but I know about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:08

Yeah, uh Liverpool Street. It's it's uh it's dope. It's dope. And very cool. I don't know if you tried Bancone as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:15

I haven't. No, I need to check that out.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:17

Yeah, silk hangout pasta. Yeah, yeah. It's it's probably the cheapest on the menu as well, but it's pretty good. So yeah, sweet, awesome. Um, favorite song.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:27

Oh gosh, that's really tough. Um My Sweet Lord George Harrison, probably. Okay, um, yeah, really good. I think it's one of those songs that like when you listen to it, it is so life-affirming, it's joyous. There's like this kind of the repeated mantras and everything, and it just like every time I listen to it, it's always one of those songs. Like, it's not even a hype up song or anything, it's just kind of like it's a nice reminder that like life is is really great and really special, and yeah, it transcends beyond so many things and beyond ourselves, you know, which is good.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:02

Yes, great. And uh favorite quote.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:04

Oh my gosh, quote. Um, I don't even know. I don't even know if I have a favorite quote. What's your favorite quote?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:11

Mine is fortune favors the brief, and it's from this book Call Cain and Abel by Jeffrey Archer. And when I when I saw that when I was growing up, I was like, oh, you know, it's like money. I I equated fortune and money uh for like from just being brave, but now I equate it to more of putting yourself out there, taking risks, and then opportunities will come. So that's what I what I yeah, what I took away from it, basically.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:40

That's great. That's great. I I don't have one. I I honestly don't I don't I don't have enough quotes in the in my backlog that I can.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:47

Yeah, yeah, no, no, all good.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:49

All good, no worries. What does locking in mean to you? Locking in means giving something the amount of time and energy that you think is acceptable enough to make an impact in the places that you yourself want to make an impact in, right? So take my kind of my goal of sharing human stories, right? Yeah, yeah. What does that look like on a high level? It means you know, looking for opportunities to find unique situations, scenarios, people, companies, businesses, influencers, journalists that can tap into something or share a story that might be unfamiliar or different to people, and then send that out into the world and hear different people's thoughts and start a conversation, you know. On the film side, it's like understanding what things are relevant in my world or my friends' worlds, and uh distilling it down into an idea that can then be placed into a film or a short or whatever it might be, and then going on the film festival circuit and seeing what people take from that. It doesn't have to be exactly what's in my brain, but you know, oftentimes I prefer it's not, you know, I oftentimes are just like people that make it their own thing, and that's happened on so many occasions, and it's so special, I think. But being able to share stories, being able to engage in discussion about the world and how we think and how we uh we are as humans is so so important today. Um, and looking ahead, you know, I think it's gonna be even more important in this age of of artificial intelligence, and uh for sure, you know, yeah, it's very, very important.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:33

So it sounds like storytelling is sharing human storytelling is your North Star. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, love that. And uh what would you say is next for you, Carl? Like what should people look out for? How can people get in touch with you if they do want to get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:50

Yeah, I'm uh I'm constantly working on lots of different projects across the board. Um, synthesia continues on after three years, and um the journey has been fantastic and wonderful. I'm still doing lots of amazing PR projects and comms projects. I do freelance, so you know if anyone's interested in post-production work or any other like editing, ideation, content creation stuff, uh at Kylotify on Instagram or my LinkedIn is the easiest way to contact me. In the grand scheme of things, I'm still gonna be creating shorts. Milder Weather is gonna be coming out later this year on the Film Festival circuit. We've got an Instagram page for that uh in Search Milder Weather. Mild Weather Film, I believe is what it's called. If you want to go check that out. Uh, I'm working on a brand new film as well on the side now, which I don't think will be out for another year, year and a half. But that's very exciting without saying too much because it's so early days. That's a film about you know, kind of like everlasting friendship and the pursuit of change. And I don't want to dive any more any more deep into that, but like that's where I'm at right now. And it's a very personal film, but um something I'm very, very excited about. So, you know, stay tuned for for that in the next year or so.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:03

Yeah, that's amazing. No, that's this is really amazing. And by the way, guys, I'm gonna put all of Kyle's links um as always in yeah, on YouTube, Spotify, etc., wherever this this goes and gets distributed. But um, Kyle, what a what an episode. What I I can't believe time has gone by so quick, and I feel really bad that like yeah, we've gone way over. But um this has been so fun. I I really, really appreciate the time uh just to hear your your journey and how amazing it is and how awesome, and also just like hear what your North Star is, how you've been balancing both sites, how also it's really cool that you know your day job allows and encourages everyone to just pursue their uh site hustle as well. So, yeah, no, um, this has been such a great conversation, man. Time really went by super quickly. So um, but yeah, I I really appreciate it. And uh, but yeah, guys, um stay tuned for this episode when it comes out, but also stay tuned for the next one as always, and I will see you guys soon. Um bye. See ya.