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#31 - Chris Hocking: Saying Yes, Solving Problems, and Building Tools That Ship

• Natural Genius • Season 1 • Episode 31

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0:00 | 55:04

Say yes, solve the real problem, and ship the work. In this conversation, Chris Hocking shares how a childhood around backyard films, touring, live production, and generous mentors led to nearly two decades building LateNite across film, post-production, and software.

Sam and Chris talk about impossible briefs, collaborative crews, underwater bars, burning beds, Final Cut Pro tools, CommandPost, Blackmagic RAW, and the kind of practical creative problem-solving that gets useful work over the line. A fun, generous conversation about staying useful, keeping things moving, and building with people who have your back.

This episode explores:

  • nearly 20 years of LateNite and why Chris still says yes
  • family, grandparents, and early access to film, live production, and backstage work
  • Tweenies, animatronics, and growing up fast in touring
  • why collaboration and mentorship matter so much in film and TV
  • impossible projects, small budgets, and making the brief work anyway
  • CommandPost, BRAW Toolbox, and solving workflow problems for real editors
  • how software became both a business line and a creative pressure point
  • AI, product thinking, and why Chris cares more about shipping than perfection

Guest bio:

Chris Hocking is the co-founder of LateNite, a Melbourne production studio he has helped build since 2007. His path has spanned animatronics on the BBC Tweenies, lighting design for live productions, post-production supervision, filmmaking, workflow design, and software development.

Alongside production work, Chris created CommandPost, BRAW Toolbox, and other tools used by editors and filmmakers, and runs FCP Cafe. His credits include The Wizards of Aus, The Legend of Burnout Barry, Lambs of God, and music videos for artists including Peking Duk, Cosmo’s Midnight, Rufus du Sol, Casey Donovan, and Guy Pearce.

Guest links:

Chapters:

  • 00:00 Chris introduction
  • 01:29 Nineteen years of LateNite and saying yes
  • 07:14 Backyard films, family influence, and early making
  • 12:11 Tweenies, animatronics, and growing up in touring
  • 18:18 Collaboration, impossible projects, and making things happen
  • 30:09 From tinkering to CommandPost
  • 37:02 BRAW Toolbox, software pressure, and AI
  • 49:35 Mentors, communities, and a rolodex of geniuses

Explore further:

Discover your Natural Genius one-on-one with Sam: https://naturalgenius.com.au
Learn more about Sam: https://samanthabell.com.au
Subscribe to hear future episodes

About Natural Genius:

Natural Genius is a podcast by Samantha Bell exploring how thoughtful people build, lead, create, heal, and live in ways that are true to who they are.

Across conversations with guests from many walks of life, Natural Genius looks for the live signal beneath the noise, and offers insight, encouragement, and practical wisdom for hearing what matters.

Credits:

Hosted by Samantha (Sam) Bell in Violet Town and Melbourne, 17 March, 2026.
Produced at the Violet Town office, 17 March - 3 April, 2026.

SPEAKER_02

Welcome to the Natural Genius Podcast. We're here to help you tap into your natural genius. Let's go. The amazing Chris Hocking is a powerhouse in the Australian film industry and beyond. He has contributed to many productions across lighting and setting up software and editing. And the list goes on. He has been a fantastic, collaborative, generous peer to so many in the industry. He has a joyful curiosity in a childlike sense and has also run a business for nearly 20 years late night here in Australia. I hope you enjoy listening to one of the most collaborative and generous people in my life, Chris Hawking. Amazing Chris Hawking. Welcome to the Natural Genius podcast.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02

Hi, brother of one of my very, very dear friends that I and person that I also really care about. In the intro that I do for these, I was saying how warm and welcoming you always are and how much fun in the few moments that we've had in life together. How much fun we've had.

SPEAKER_01

My sister Jackie is very good at bringing people together.

SPEAKER_02

She totally is.

SPEAKER_01

And then disappearing.

unknown

Disappearing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. We see you, Jack. I'd love to hear what you're up to at the moment, Chris. It sounds like you've got lots of things in the pipeline. And I was delighted to see that you've been in business for 19 years. It's a real milestone. Next year, there's, as I said to you, there's got to be some sort of 20 20-year party to stay in business for that long in the Australian film industry is very impressive, I would suggest.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's in like I honestly didn't realize that 20 years. I know I'm this is my 10th year wedding anniversary this year, but yeah, 20 years next year, late night makes me feel very old.

SPEAKER_02

And very successful if you're running cash flow and that many people and contractors and risk and contracts. Chris, what you must must have seen.

SPEAKER_00

We haven't died yet.

SPEAKER_02

The attitude. What are some of the outtakes do you think, or the real gems that you've learned either to do with the Australian film industry or what you wish you'd known early on?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know. I can't even reference where 20 years ago, like I feel like once you start having kids, it time becomes irrelevant. Like we basically, because we've been living where we currently live since my eldest was born. So that's sort of our reference for how long we've been living in our current home. And then everything beyond that is who knows? Yeah. I know, yeah. We've been married for 10 years. I don't know how many years before we were together. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00

It's all time is irrelevant.

SPEAKER_02

Time is irrelevant. So, Chris, I've got to ask a follow-on question then. How do you decide? How do you keep focused? Because you would be across a lot of productions. I've been delighted in the last couple of years to see the apps and the um like the different tools that you've been building in a technology space because prior to that I just assumed that you were very busy on creating productions and uh in your LinkedIn before I noticed that you'd done lighting at the start of your career as well as editing. So yeah, just tell me a bit more.

SPEAKER_01

Um yeah, I'm always juggling a billion things. Um I think me and my business partner, Nick, our biggest flaw is we have never learnt in the last 20, 19 years to say no. So we say yes to things that we really shouldn't do, and we still do that today. Um but yeah, we just keep bashing along. And like I we can always joke that we've never had a real job, and late night's never been a real business. It's really just a charity of film nerds. Um but we like every day is different, we're always doing crazy things.

SPEAKER_02

A charity for film nerds.

SPEAKER_01

Because honestly, like hopefully in year 20 this will change, but really, like, if we look back at the last 19 years, we really haven't made any profit off our creative projects. Like we've done TV shows, feature films, music videos. We're generally always running at a loss on a creative project, even if it's commercially successful. Um so all our income has come from corporate advertising and in the last five years, I guess, software. Um but hopefully, hopefully that will change when we finally join the big boys club and do a show that goes mainstream.

SPEAKER_02

And is that uh US-based, Chris? Is that what you mean about the big boys club or just international as big boys club?

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I mean, it doesn't have to be US. I mean, if we made the next Bluey, then I'd be very, very happy. Like it could be a very Australian kids show. Um, so we've got a we've got an ABC kid show in development at the moment, a live action show based on a book. Um we've got three um 2D animated shows with US networks in development at the moment. Um we've got a feature film script and a couple of TV shows, live action sort of adult drama sort of thing. So we've got a really wide slate of projects, but as with anything, we've been saying we're nearly there for 19 years now. Because we did our first feature film, I think a couple of years after university. Um, like very low budget. We shot it over three days, um, all self-contained in the one house. I don't know. Have you ever seen Hannah and the Hasbian?

SPEAKER_02

Uh I'm I'm not too sure if that's the one that Jack's shown me. Could be. Um yeah, maybe, maybe three girls in a share house. No, I've seen a wizard one, I think.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah, that's Wizard of Oz. So yeah, we did a series for um SBS, which was three TV half hours, a crazy wizard show. But yeah, years before that, we did Hannah and the Hasbian, um, which was yeah, a low budget feature film, but um yeah, it probably hasn't aged as well as it could have. Um, but it had some really like we had some amazing people work on it, and we had her artists who did um all like illustrations for it, who's now like she does stuff for Disney and she's designing Disney princesses and that sort of thing. Um so yeah, it's never it sort of ended up in our drawer and it's never been publicly released for reasons that won't go on to another podcast, but um yeah, we've been doing this for a very long time.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, Chris, keep talking. I love hearing this. I must I'll fast forward actually. I've this aspect of you and the business around technology. I want to hear more. Like, how did you get into the tech that you've developed in the last few years? Was it driven because you were starting to tinker with it, you were finding what was working for you, and then what was the tipping point to then commercialize it or to build it to something that was for bigger uh for more people?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so to go back to the good old days, like my brother and sister, so my sister Jackie, who you obviously know, she works in sort of um filmmaking as well, but she's very much in the making the world a better place sort of avenue. Um she's based in Singapore, and my brother is a scientist, he works at the museum in Tasmania. Um, so I'm the only one left in Melbourne. Um, but as kids, we were the kids that literally made Star Wars films in the backyard, and some of those videos exist on YouTube. I will not share them with you.

SPEAKER_02

And Chris, was this driven by your grandpa? I was trying I've I've got this memory of a grandpa. Um and yeah, I'll I'll come back to that. I've got a story that I'm not totally sure whether I've just made it up, but um yeah, please keep telling me. And even some of the origin story about your grandpa and how you came to be in video as well. I think you like it.

SPEAKER_01

Like he was just, yeah, my mum's dad was like the biggest movie fan. Like he just loved movies. So every school holidays we'd go, we'd stay at their place in Mornington, and we'd he'd take us to the cinema at least a couple of times in a school holiday. Um, so we would saw a lot of movies, but he was like um definitely on some spectrum because he just was a collector of like recording everything on VHS, like he had thousands of VHS tapes, he would just record everything and every family event he would be filming it on his VHS camera. And I think like in retrospect, it it's he's it's he sort of just didn't want to participate, so he sort of viewed it from the outside. Like, I guess I don't I haven't yeah, need to go to therapy to work out what the story is behind that. But I mean we've got like every like every major family event that he was there, he filmed, and it wasn't like he was just rolling the whole time, so you captured like real life human moments, it's all sort of there on VHS tape somewhere. Um so anyway, yeah, Dave, Jackie, and I would always make Star Wars films in the backyard and rope in the local neighbors and that sort of thing. And like our grandparents were just awesome. Like my granny dressed up as Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars, like um, so like they were very supportive.

SPEAKER_02

And never before would I have realized that a grandmother doing that is like world's best grandma, Jabba the Hutt. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Um uh yeah, I'll send you the link later. Uh yeah, so they were they were amazing. Um, so yeah, me and my brother and sister always were watching movies, love movies. Um during high school, I had the unique opportunity. My dad was working in um like freight forwarding and logistics, and in sort of uh later primary school, I guess, he started doing more like concert logistics and transporting stuff for concerts and live events because his passion has always been music. So he sort of took his freight forwarding thing and sort of pushed that into the music world as well, um, which I think he loved doing, but was also very stressful because of this the music industry is very crazy. But he's got lots of crazy stories about like he did the Pavarotti tour around the world, so he got to make a sandwich for Pavarotti and crazy things like that.

SPEAKER_02

Um but he's not gonna be on his headstone because he's got plenty of other things to be proud of.

SPEAKER_01

Um but yeah, so he he used to let me come along to all kinds of things. So I would help out, like just pushing row cases at trade shows for I don't know, fashion shows and things like that. And then I'd go and hang out with the lighting designer for a Jimmy Barnes concert. Um so I got to like really be backstage for a lot of things, and there was like a big um pretty much like whenever we went on like interstate or holidays, the rest of the family would go have a holiday, and I would go and work at like a music conference and go help out, hand out lanyards or whatever, and sort of be invested in that sort of world. Even I I can't remember when I started doing that, but I was probably in primary school, pretty, pretty young. Um and then when I think I was in year eight in high school, we were at the Melbourne show, and he called me up and said, Hey, could you come on a plane to Sydney? I need some help on a BBC kid show called the Tweenies, um, which were basically like the telly tubbies. So, anyway, the next day I flew up to Sydney, I think I was only 16, maybe. Flew up to Sydney, and basically my job was they were doing sort of a regional tour across like all shopping centers and like Melbourne show and that sort of thing. Um, and there were like four big animatronic characters, so people in costumes with animatronic heads. And my job, I was literally just a minder. So I would hold the hand of one of the characters and bring them on and off stage. And I thought that was that was really cool. But what they didn't factor in was that because they were we were traveling, we were, I think we had shopping center performances in every state in Australia. Um, and what they didn't factor in is that these animatronics were very fragile and we're just getting trashed going from Melbourne to Canberra, Canberra to Perth, whatever. Um, and they only had one animatronic technician on this sort of promotional tour. So by default, I became his helper and sort of learnt animatronics and did that. And we got on really, really well. So that Christmas I went to the UK and helped out in their Christmas show and did their Christmas tour. And then I did that.

SPEAKER_02

Were you 17 by then, or were you 16 still?

SPEAKER_01

I probably time is a relevant, and we've already been through this.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, sorry, okay, we have. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

But yeah, I was I was pretty young. I was pretty young. I was probably 17, maybe on the first Christmas tour, maybe.

SPEAKER_02

And Chris, tell me, did you have an interest in animatronics or mechanics like before that? And and with the when your grandmother had been Jabba the Hutt, had you been doing some of the mechanical aspects of those productions?

SPEAKER_01

We didn't we didn't really have any animatronics like that. But yeah, I'd always loved buttons, wires, making things do things that shouldn't happen. Like the start of our Star Wars film is um we basically, it's terrible, but I printed off a bunch of credits on a printer, like with horrible word art. Um they were held up by like fishing line, that sort of thing. And then we had we didn't we because we only had a like a VHS camera and no like proper equipment. So we basically had our um a record player playing War of the Worlds, which we looped into the VHS recorder. So we had the War of the Worlds as our opening soundtrack for our Star Wars film. Didn't care about copyright infringement back in whatever year it was, 90s something. Um so yeah, I'd always yeah, always loved doing the like I'm I guess I enjoyed the making process better than this, like I'm not a natural storyteller, in the same way that I think my brother and sister are pretty good storytellers. Whereas I was more interested in doing the opening credits than making sure the story made sense. I think that's been a flaw through my whole career.

SPEAKER_02

No, I don't know about that. I feel like you're surrounded. I think your sister is incredible at telling a story. And um tell me, is is that because you're more interested in the visual, do you think, Chris?

SPEAKER_01

Or yeah, I think yeah, my brother explained it good the other week where he said, like, um he said, like, we're talking about like neurodivergence, that sort of thing. He's like, Yeah, you were like reading visual basic books when you were like 10. Like that is not normal. I was like, oh yeah, I didn't really think of it like that.

SPEAKER_02

Um I think I did that when I was in university, but not 10. And I quite enjoyed it in university, you and me both. I'm keep going, please, Chris.

SPEAKER_01

So anyway, so yeah, so basically I did this 20s tour, did the you the Christmas tours, and um yeah, it was pretty surreal because I was, yeah, only a teenager. A lot of the like the cast were probably like in their mid-twenties, I guess, something like that. They're all pretty young because they're all like the it was very demanding being in this because they were for whatever reason, the original animatronic designers built it in a pretty unfriendly way because they wanted good performances. So, for example, the boots of a tweenies character were really heavy because they wanted the adults to walk like kids, because kids, yeah, kids clump around. So they made the boots really heavy to get natural performances. Um and like the animatronic head on on the stage, you could sort of see through the mouth because you're on a big arena and it doesn't matter. But in the TV show, it's all covered up, so you're trapped in this sort of head with motors going everywhere. And um so yeah, I think I ended up doing I did the Australian Promotional Tour, I did the Australia Arena tour, and I think I did two Christmas tours in the UK. So I think I did four tweenies sort of things all up. Um, and that was yeah, I think I the last one I did was when I was studying year 11, it must have been. Um, so yeah, so yeah, I sort of started off in a like thrown in a teenager thrown into an adult world doing trap like touring, which is a completely different beast, touring with adults that are all have their own issues and complications, and um so yeah, I sort of had to grow up pretty fast in terms of that because yeah, there was yeah, lots of times. Like I remember being sick in the UK because I had like a really bad cold and I just didn't know, like I don't know, I've never been to a pharmacy to buy drugs, I don't know what to do. Like I don't have anyone, I can't just call like go to mom or whatever. And this was probably in the days that I probably didn't even have a mobile phone. Um my gosh.

SPEAKER_02

And mom's a doctor, so it would have been helpful if you could have gone.

SPEAKER_01

It would have been really helpful, yeah. But yeah, little moments like that when you're touring, you just sort of, yeah, or even like washing clothes. Like, I just didn't think about the fact, oh yeah, I'm touring for like four weeks, like have a logistically so I have to befriend the costume people like, please, Emma, can I use the washing machine? And can you also teach me how to use the washing machine?

SPEAKER_02

Um Chris, this is outstanding. And I what I observed, my sister was in and out of film in her, I guess, 20s and 30s, and so in that I got to see this incredibly collaborative New Zealand and Australian and US a bit uh film industry. And at the time I was working within corporate, like big business, um, and sometimes in and out of like social goods, like charity smaller organizations. And what I was so enamored and delighted by was the ease of collaboration across uh like with strangers coming in to do a new production in New Zealand, for example. And I think one of them was my sister who was working on a Honda commercial in in New Zealand, and uh and then suddenly, you know, she'd talk to one person, and then the whole production crew would turn up because of this one person would lead to the right contractors and the right bits and pieces, and the runner and the um the raw materials that they needed to build a set and all this sort of stuff. Um I I noticed that in you and what you've just described so well is that you came into that in primary school, which is just amazing to be amongst that level of uh I want to say audacity, but like that, like the kind of of course we can do that. No wonder what you said before that you just say yes to things, because that the magic that comes from impossible projects and that they do often work out, but they're madness on paper, or if we were to plan them out and do theoretical strategy around it. Um so to hear about the start of your career, Chris, what a delight. And so we sort of started talking a little bit about how you prioritize, and if you're constantly saying yes, there's so much in the media about having boundaries, and uh I wonder with you and others that are highly creative and successful, whether you actually say yes and then you work it out, and there's a magic around you to be able to get a lot of things done. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01

I think I think going back to the backstory, I think the reason that myself and my business partner are so collaborative now is because he also started, he was a child actor, so he's been working since he was a toddler, basically. Like I think he did his first big job was working on a um a US McDonald's commercial with like the crew that are now directing Academy Award-winning things. So he's been around for as longer than me, probably, um, in terms of working professionally in the industry. He got his first paycheck before I did. Um, but I guess because we both have been doing it for so long, and we learnt from such a young age, we've always people have always supported us because when you're a 16-year-old, like they had to support me because they had no choice. I was there, they had to teach me everything. So I've always had like a billion mentors that have always been so open and honest to tell me whatever I needed to do. So it's never really been a problem. And jumping forward to like now, like every bat shit crazy project we've done, there's always been someone in my past. I go, for example, we've done a short film where we had to make a spaceship and we built it for real, and it was like six ton. And I went to my rigging people and went, All right, can we like lift this up and add pyro to the bottom? And it's like it's really heavy. I was like, yeah. Yeah, it's like okay, we'll do it. And so we did that. And then years later, we came back and we wanted to do a build a music video underwater with a bar underwater. So we went back to Tiny and his company at Showtek and we're like, hey, you know how you helped us with this spaceship. How would you feel about helping us with a underwater bar? All right, we'll come do it. And I mean, there was always lots of issues with all these things because who knew that wood floated?

SPEAKER_00

Uh I think we needed like 10 ton of weight to get our set to the bottom of the pool.

SPEAKER_01

Um but and then again, like when we did a we did um the fairy tale unit for a big foxtel show called Lance of God, and basically they the it was a big budget Sydney production, and they just didn't have the resources, time or they basically had this whole major part of their script that they couldn't do up in Sydney because they just didn't have the thing. So they sort of handbought it to us with a smallish budget and an insane amount of complications. Like, we want this, there's a fight in the snow. Could we do this? And we're setting a bed on fire, and there's a giant hallway with that looks infinite and a black void. And we again we just called our friends and go, hey, pyro guys, snow guys, can we make a snowfield in a studio? Can we set a bed on fire? Can we make a giant black void? And yeah, we're just lucky that we've got a team of people that if we can't like, yeah, they just help us problem solve.

SPEAKER_02

And Chris, I wonder if you are motivating to others because you enter into the conversation with a assumption that it's possibly it can happen.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, totally. A great example is with that Lamps of God. So Lambs of God was a great example because it was a big Sydney production, and they basically trusted us to do all this story, um, fairy tale component of this very serious show. Um, so they sent down their heads of the department, like their production designer, their head of hair and makeup, um, costume designer, that sort of thing. And all these people had just come off doing, like, I don't know, eight weeks in Sydney at Fox Studios with big budgets and that sort of thing. So the first meeting with the production designer came into our little late-night office with a bunch of teenage-looking guys go, All right, we're gonna do this. And he's like, All right, how much money have you got? And we've got we tell him, and he's like, pulls out this giant scroll and goes, This was one small component of the Sydney shoot. It had 80 times the budget that you've got for this whole entire thing. How the hell are you gonna do this? We're like, oh, well, this is gonna be a fun couple of weeks. But by the end of it, he was literally like one of the most senior production designers thing. He's literally like mopping things at the studio, helping us load trucks, like this older legend of an industry legend, like he's just on the tools, like helping us problem solve because he just realized that yeah, we can all collaborate together. He didn't have to boss us around because if we didn't pull it off, he was screwed anyway. His show would look crap, so he needed us as much as we needed him, I guess. Um, so I think that's sort of infectious.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I would I'm so pleased you use that word infectious, because I was gonna say, do you think it's also that people are attracted to the fun or the madness or the crazy or the whatever that you can do about the outcome that you come up with?

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think they just realize, I mean, the only people there's there's no there's no financial incentive to work in film and TV. It's a terrible, terrible industry to work in if you want to make money. So none of the people at the top are doing it because they want to get rich, they're doing it because they love movies. So this guy clearly loves movies, and that's why he demands the best, because it's his reputation on the line. If the show has a few scenes that look shit, then he's ultimately responsible for it. And these were like because these were like fairy tale moments within this wider series, I think it was a three-part mini-series um on Foxtel. But these were like key story moments, so they had to look really good and they had to fit in. They could be a little bit fantasy because like there's a fight in a snowfield with it and that sort of thing, but they still had to look really great because he is the production designer for the show. No one's gonna care if we screwed it up because we're we don't probably not even in the credits. Um, so I think it's in yeah, I think he realized that yeah, if I if we're gonna make this work, we need to go all hands on deck, and he was amazing. Like, for example, we needed to um for the snow fight, it was set in a forest, and we were building this in Dockland Studios. Um, so we had to get someone to cut down a bunch of trees, and then we had to build our own metal things to hold up all these tree stumps. So he was giving us ideas to pass on to a welder, and we didn't have a lot of money, so we had to jump on the welder and help and do it ourselves and that sort of thing. So it was really all hands on deck. And same with like you'd think with like, and I'm sure it's changed now, but when we um first proposed it to Docklands, they're like, All right, we need to set this bed on fire, and they're like, You can't set a bed on fire in our multi-million dollar studio, but like, but it's a film studio, like surely you've done this before. I was like, no, we've never set a bed on fire. So we had to have fire trucks there, and like every single person that worked at Docklands just came to watch because they never set a bed on fire. Um, so yeah, everything was a bit of a process, and everyone was sort of excited and a bit like it was like, surely you've done this before, like you're a film studio.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01

No, I think the it when it came to risk assessments and that sort of thing, it always got cut down, but we sort of just had pushed through because, like, well, you have to be able to do it because you're a film studio. Let's do it. Amazing. Maya, what do you need?

SPEAKER_00

We've fired truck, we'll get you a fire truck, we'll solve this problem. And in the end, it looks awesome because it's not visual effects, it's just we literally the guy covered in petrol threw a match in and boom, it went.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, amazing. That is incredible, Chris. I'm I'm kind of stunned and delighted. If something in this conversation lit you up, there's a signal in that. If you want help tuning your own signal into a clear next move, start with a three-minute signal check-in at naturalgenus.com.au. And if you want focused support, book a signal lab and we'll work through it together. Now back to the natural genius. So I never realized actually that your family and my family, the similarities. No wonder we've all been friends because my sister did a lot of events, and sh I remember her being briefed. I think it might have been something to do with the Australian Open back in the 90s or early 2000s, to for a potential and she's like a creative designer, so and has worked in Australia and then in weddings and events all across um Asia and then into New York and LA. And somebody briefed her to do. Do you remember like there was that TV show where people would grab as much cash as they could? So there was like the equivalent of that on a trailer with tennis balls. So grab as many tennis balls as you can, and it was meant to be like traveled around Australia. And uh, and my sister, like you, was like, yeah, we can build that. And then she would have been like you on the phone to who knows who, like you going through the chain of event a chain of people, like, can you build this or can you build the trailer? And then can you get the 3,000 tennis balls? And then you so and I was thinking of when you were talking before, you need a t-shirt that says audacious, just batshit crazy, crazy, maybe that's even more approachable. Oh, that's great. And so now with the so you were telling me also about the tech. So tell me how you came to be moving into Yeah, sorry, we went on a random Chris, it is so perfect. You are a delight to be in conversation with these stories, they are outstanding.

SPEAKER_01

So the software stuff. So basically, what I was saying, as a kid, I was a nerd and loved all that sort of stuff. We were very fortunate that my dad had, as part of his work as a freight forwarder, had access to laptops because it was a big German company. They wanted everyone to have the lace technology so they would supply laptops and things, but no one knew what to do with them or how they worked, or it's a laptop. Okay, good, good. I guess we put our coffee on it. I don't know. Um, so he would bring it home and then I would jump on it and learn how to use DOS. I think the first one was an IBM 286 laptop with DOS on it. I don't think it was before Windows was available, and eventually we got Windows 3.1, and I learned that. So I've always been interested in um computers. And when I was in primary school, someone showed me a Mac computer and showed me BASIC. I was like, wow, basics amazing! You can you do that on a PC? Oh, yeah, it's on there, and then I'd learn that. And um, so I'd always been tinkering with programming and just working out how things work, and I would take apart computers and reconfigure things and blow things up and break things and just tinker. When I left film school, I went into post-production. I was a post-production supervisor for a number of years, a place called the Butchery in the refinery. And I was all PC up until that point. We bought our first basically when my brother was doing year 12, he did movies. Um, as part of his, he did visual arts and wanted to make a movie. And I was working full-time as a lighting designer, so I and I was never home. I was living at home, but I basically lived in Sydney, so I had a lot of disposable income because I was just working the whole time. So I spent all my money buying gear for my brother to do his year 12 thing. So we bought like a Sony Z1P camera, which I think was about 15 grand at the time. He bought an E Mac Mac computer, we bought Final Cut Pro Express, we bought lights, green screens, all that kind of thing, just for my brother to do his year 12 thing, which my sister ended up using for her year 12 thing this as well. But we basically built our little hawking studios at home at our parents' place so that they could do their year 12 stuff. So I wasn't really at that stage, I wasn't really into movies. I was quite happy being a concert lighting designer. That was sort of what my childhood dream was to like rock concerts. And I was sort of doing that and I had this money, so I spent it on my brother and sister to buy gear. My granddad was still alive when I went to film school. So he was that was probably his most proud moment was when I got my degree at film and TV. Um, but yeah, he was still around when I did my third year uni film. He was literally helping me push spaceships up our giant driveway, and like it is a giant drive. Yeah, so yeah, they were very involved right through my university, and nothing was ever an issue, like everything would be falling apart. And my I don't know if Jackie's ever told you about my third-year unifilm, but it was the hard one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. Um, but that was just me and Jackie just like solving problems, like everything was going wrong. And Jackie and I would just yeah, fix things. Um, but yeah, they were still around for that. Um, but yeah, jump forward many years later. We edit everything in Final Cut Pro. I'm in a lot of Final Cut Pro nerd Facebook groups, and one day a guy called Scott Simmons, who's a great US editor, asked, he liked edits in Final Cut Pro, and he was annoyed that when you're editing with hundreds of clips, you can get lost to know which is the current clip you're on. I was like, well, surely this is a solvable problem. So I did some tinkering and made something that kind of worked. He's like, Oh wow, this is great. Here's a list of 50 other things that I'd like you to fix. I was like, okay, and then that's how my open source command post thing started. I just started trying to make Scott happy and just kept on adding stuff and adding stuff, and then it sort of grew out of control.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it grew out of control, but then you must have found something or some things that were um strong enough to turn them into what is it, an app or is there um Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So basically, yeah, it started off just a bunch of scripts that I just gave away for free. Um, and then years later, I can't remember what year it was, but a guy in um Queensland, David Peterson, contacted me, who was a filmmaker, but also had studied software engineer. I think he was working for Lassian at the at the time. He's like, this is really good. Here's a list of a hundred things I would change. And then he taught me everything I know about GitHub and programming. And he took, I my originally it was called FCPX hacks, and it was like one text file, which was like a billion lines of code. He's like, you really need to split this up into multiple files because it's just overwhelming and it's like verbosely documented, and you're writing stories in the code and you don't need any of this. So he sort of teamed up with me and we started doing he and I think he came up with the idea of calling it command post, and we turned it into command post, and now it's used by a lot of people. I think I'm trying to look. Yeah, last time, so I recently have changed the licensing model, it's no longer free, sort of, but yeah, when at the time before I did it, it had 277,000 downloads. It's been used by like all of the um Apple's WWDC videos, they color grade using command post. Um yeah, it's yeah, so it's it's grown a lot bigger than it had, but it's basically just people in the community asking me to do things, and I just get excited and try do it.

SPEAKER_02

How does it feel when you look at those statistics?

SPEAKER_01

Honestly, I don't really care about this that side of it, but it sort of is like I'm a YouTuber, and the feedback is sort of like YouTube comments. So, like it's really like rather than me doing a video each week, I was releasing a feature, and people go, Oh, thank God, this one-niche feature that only one person in the world will ever use is really making my life easier and better. So thank you. And that was sort of my motivation to keep doing it. And at the time, it was probably around the time that we were doing underwater music videos and things. I had two guys in the office, Daniel and Jared De Paris.

SPEAKER_02

Let's just say that. It was probably around the time that we were doing underwater.

SPEAKER_01

Um, and Dan and Jared were brothers directors, they co-directed the underwater music video, but and they were like super pedantic. There's like, whereas I only care about the making, they only care about the story edit. They would spend weeks editing corporate videos that I would just want to bash out in a couple of hours. Like they cared about every minute detail. Um, and they also didn't trust each other to work, so they'd work at the same time and then fight over which one was better. So we made a bunch of collaboration tools so they could work at the same time. I could merge the changes, and so a lot of it was just building features for Dan and Jared um to make my life easier in the office. And then I don't know how long, maybe three years ago, there's a um uh Blackmagic, who's a Melbourne company, they make Blackmagic cameras, which are now very popular because they're relatively cheap. And um, but they changed from shooting on ProRes to Blackmagic RAW, which doesn't work in Final Cut Pro. Um and one day I got delivered like a hard drive with I think three terabytes of Brawl files, and the only real way to the my options were basically edit in DaVinci Resolve, which I didn't want to do, convert it all to um ProRes files or something else, which would take ages and use up another, like if it was three terabytes of rushes, I'd need a six terabyte hard drive, or I could write a bit of software to make Brawl work in Final Cut Pro. And everyone sort of told me it was impossible to do because it didn't really, there was no API or SDK or to do this, and it was sort of untested, and that sort of motivated me more to well, screw you, I'll just do it. So I worked at how to do it, and that was sort of my first ever paid ad. And it went really well because there was no other solution to do it. So yeah, Brawl was the first thing, and it could because it was so successful at the start, because I sort of released it, I think I released it with 50% off and can't remember the exact numbers, but it got like a quite like thousands of downloads. I thought, wow, I can make money off software, so I'll do an app a month. And I started doing app a month, and then after a few months, I was like, I'm dying. Like I'm so stressed because at the same time that I started doing all this software stuff, the world had changed and corporate advertising stuff died. So basically, it worked out perfect timing-wise because late night was earning the same amount of money because all the corporate advertising stuff disappeared, but software stuff filled that gap. So it was perfect lucky for late night. But for me personally, I'd gone from like software being my fun hobby side project to now being an actual really important thing that needed to work because there was no corporate advertising work to do that. Um, so I sort of got really depressed because I was just I'd become a software developer, but not earning the money I could earn if I worked at a bank or at Lassian. So yeah, that was sort of really hard. And then a I don't know, maybe a year later, LLMs came into the fold and AI and stuff. And for a lot of people, they like I imagine for yourself, you're probably really excited and this is amazing, this is great. But for me, it was like, oh, this is terrible because the one thing I enjoy is the creative problem solving, and that's what I'm giving to the AI. Like, I'm not getting it to do all the shit work, it's doing all the fun stuff that I enjoy. So I got even more depressed because I was like, well, AI is just taking all that my hobby.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, and now have you learned about how to integrate and which parts of AI are useful to you and have helped.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, like I feel like yeah, I feel like it's only literally been this year, so maybe like let's say January. Like I feel like everything is sort of corporate advertising work slowly coming back. Um, our creative projects are getting momentum. Software stuff is I basically one of the big things was they decided this year to change command post's funding model. So it's gone from being it's always been free and open source. Now you have to own one of my apps to be able to use command posts. So you have to own at least one paid app, and then you get command posts for free.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. So how many apps have you got to be able to do this package deal?

SPEAKER_01

A lot. But I mean, the cheapest, I think one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. There's twelve apps so far.

SPEAKER_02

Glory of success. You are amazing. So you have the ripple effects that you've created, and also you're so understated about it. Oh, yeah, just fix these hundred things for this person and just fix these hundred things for this other person. And wow, like I said at the start of the call, it is a delight to know your family because you have all contributed so much. Where do you think the drive to contribute comes from?

SPEAKER_01

I guess it is sort of not like I like we we definitely didn't have rich parents, and so it's not like generational wealth, but it is that safety, the privileged safety net of having like our grandparents were so supportive, like they were they definitely weren't rich at all. They were um immigrants from the UK, and I don't think they worked the whole time that I knew them. They were basically just full-time grandparents looking after us for the whole my whole memory of them. I don't think I was alive when they were working, but I guess it's that support knowing that your grandparents and your parents always have your back, so you can take risks without worrying too much about it all exploding in your face.

SPEAKER_02

And that trust to it might explode in your face in your situation, but you can move on after the explosion.

unknown

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And Jackie definitely, as a kid, has lots of broken bones and cracked her head open, cracked her arm open.

SPEAKER_02

Um, before she got on boats and backed motorbikes with a camera.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. And now she doesn't tell us all the things she does, so we don't have to worry as much because, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, but I think it's having that human you are having that support. Or having that, yeah, back. And I guess it even extends now. Like I've got a really good business partner that I know that he's always got my back. Like we've had lots of, I mean, we've been going for 19 years. We've had lots of ups and downs and fights and yeah, lots of fam like life dramas of I don't know, miscarriages and deaths in families and all that kind of stuff, but we've always had that supporting each other's back. I think that's the key to it, is that's why we keep doing the crazy shit that we do because it's fun and exciting, and we know that if we fall off, someone will pick us back up.

SPEAKER_02

Chris, if you were to pass on to somebody else wanting to start up a creative agency.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, sadly, uh, one of the reasons where they're not a successful business is we don't have any business people. Nick and I are both uh filmmakers, not business people.

SPEAKER_02

And also you have been in business for nine to week. But there's something that's we've learned something along the way, yes.

SPEAKER_01

But um I guess the interesting thing is like looking in 2026, I honestly think like you could look at all the software stuff and go, wow, that's where you're gonna make money. But I honestly think anyone can make an app now. For example, the last going back to the LLM story, the thing that made me happy this year is that now, like five years ago, people would send me like for the command post um project, there are as I'm loading the page, 496 issues on GitHub of feature requests or bug requests or stuff that people want. People don't send me bug requests anymore, they send me like fully working apps, like people will build it in chat or claw code or codex and go, Chris, I've got that working like 90%. Could you help me finish it? So I think my superpower now has become I don't really have to do that much coding anymore because people with LLMs can like I'm quite happy for other people to wait. I hate chatting to an LLM, but other people, because they're new to this world, this is like me when I first started doing command posts. I just loved coding and making things do stuff. Those people are now all doing the same thing, but they're chatting to a chatbot, which is someone who is a I'm like it's the opposite personality for me. I don't like chatting, I don't like talking, I like just nerding out. But if you're like a product manager or you're a designer or someone that's like doesn't understand the tech stuff at all, but has really good product ideas, this new world is perfect for you because you can make it like we had one of my wife's friends come in the other day who wanted to make a fashion website, a fashion iPhone app. And within three prompts, I built her an app that has like machine learning built into it. Like I didn't code anything, I just did three prompts, but I know enough. And I never built an iPhone app before. This was my first ever iPhone app. But within three hours, we had it on test flight. And that's only because I have all this background knowledge and I know how to write the right prompt, but I'd much rather have other people write the prompts and do that work. And then I come in and go, when they tell me, oh, this isn't possible, the LLM told me you can't do that. I can go, well, it is possible. You need this API, tell them to do this, and then the LLM will work it out. So I my new job is basically to become a bullshit detector for LLMs. Because a lot of the time they'll tell you it's not possible, you can't do this, or they'll do it in a roundabout way, and then I they can ask me, and then I can say, well, no, just do it this way, and then the LLM will go, Oh, of course, yeah, we could easily do it that way, and then it's all fine.

SPEAKER_02

LLMs, AI still need a director, don't they? And I loved what you described about different people coming to you with uh with 90% built apps as well, because in the vibe coding experience that I had last year, I'm one of those people that would come to you, and what you've just described is that they're helping to uncover problems that you can solve. So you constantly you're still keeping on going with this problem-solving delight. When I was in the vibe coding loops that I'd be in, because sometimes it reminded me of when I first started in management consulting and I would brief junior consultants, and I'd be a little embarrassed along the way because I'd be like, oh, sorry, that brief wasn't good enough because what you've given me isn't what I'm after. And what I first enjoyed about AI agents or LLMs was that I could go in and I could refine my brief. So my prompts would get like I'd go back and edit my prompts, and then eventually I'd work out exactly what it was that would give me what I'm after. And when I was doing vibe coding, I appreciated knowing that there would be people through Replit or through Cursor or other vibe coding platforms that I could contact and say, hey, 80%, 90%, this is almost there. This is the design I need. Can you just finish it off? So, Chris, what an important role you play and man, your industry, you've got such a breadth breadth of experience and that attitude towards being able to get things to completion to be successful is just so helpful to so many.

SPEAKER_01

I think that's also going back, I don't think we actually answered your question, but I think going back to the app stuff, I think that's also a lot of these people, like if you're a product designer, maybe you're you fall into this category. Like a lot of people just want to, they have this idea in their head of what the product will be, and it's all really focused for the end user and that sort of thing. But they're such perfectionists that they'll just they'll never finish because they want it to be perfect, they want it to be exactly right. Whereas I don't really give a shit about it being perfect, right? I might care about shipping it. So that works really well because I'll I'll work team up with other people. I'm working with um a guy in Queensland called Ian Anderson, who's a genius, really good product designer, but he's not a coder at all. Like he's dabbled in coding and stuff, but he doesn't have the same brain that I have. He's got a really good product and really good customer brain. But if the LLM tells him that something won't work, he sort of doesn't know who to trust. And it's sort of that fight between me and the LM. I'm I'm going, you can definitely do it. Go push this way, and he's saying, No, the LM said you can't do this, and it's that sort of thing. And I'm always pushing, we just ship it, we'll get it to the users, and we'll see what works, and we can fix it later. Like it doesn't matter if you ship something that's broken, Apple will ship things that is broken all the time. Microsoft, Windows has never been working properly, so who cares? Let's just ship it out and fix it later. Which is a probably a dangerous attitude to have, but well, Chris, I would keep going.

SPEAKER_02

Just keep having that attitude, my friend, because it's totally totally working. And I'm so looking forward to uh either remotely or in real life attending your 20-year uh company late night party because I think that you're gonna be a success in the next short while with success as well on the profit side of things. This conversation has been so enjoyable. You were talking about um mentors uh or yeah, that you were surrounded by mentors. I haven't heard anyone say that before, which is just so delightful to hear that that's been the case in your working life or in your life actually, because you started in primary school. In all of those mentors, in your grandpa and your Jabba the Hutt grandma, who do you most admire these days that you aspire to be like or that you're impressed by?

SPEAKER_01

I honestly don't think I can single out a single individual because there's literally so many, but I think the best part about this industry is that, like, for example, yesterday, like we're doing we're working with a big Hollywood studio, and the like the security requirements when working with big Hollywood studios is immense. Like you need to be across VPNs and complete lockdown system and antivirus, that sort of thing. And the great thing about the world that I'm in is that I can I've got I'm a member of so many slacks and discords and Facebook groups, that sort of thing. I can go to all these different communities and go, all right, I need help, guys, help me out. And then you have people from Pixar going to do it, people from Disney, people from Apple, like all these absolute geniuses that are just happy to just give you advice for nothing. I think that's the most amazing part about building these communities is that I now have like a Rolodex of geniuses that I can call on at any time. Like if I need an internet security guru, I know that Mad X on Discord is the guy that I will go to about that. If I need a um help with the Synology NAS, I know that Philippe in another complete other country, I can just message Philippe and go, hey, we need this. Help! And he will just help me make it work. And these are like industry legends that from the outside looking in, you think, oh, these people would never help this stupid little Melbourne company that have three people in the office or whatever. But because I feel like the people at the top of the industry are the reason they got there is because they're the nicest human beings alive. Like as long as you can talk to them, they'll happily tell you anything. They're the most open and honest people of all because they've already they've done everything they need to do. Like, if you're working, if you're a senior person at Apple, you have no ego anymore because you've probably got hundred million dollars in stock options. Like it's not about money anymore. They can, yeah, it's just time, I guess. But if you can get in and have those conversations direct with these geniuses on specific things, then they're more than happy to help you with whatever because they for them, it's easy for them to answer a question because I've been doing this for 40 years, use this product. That's and then I just trust their judgment because they've been doing it for 40 years.

SPEAKER_02

You and I are similar in that we do have we can call on lots of different people, and I still am amazed by that. I think the caliber of people that I know uh is I mean, no wonder I called this natural genius because I'm just in awe of most people that I meet.

SPEAKER_01

But it also flips back on you. Like when I'm depressed and like business is shit, I will call Sam Bell, not because we're like close friends, just because in that community of my in my Rolodex, I'm like, who would Jackie call if the world is falling apart? Sam, all right, quick, call Sam. Sam will help us out. And that's that's what it sort of is. It's just having those people that if I yeah, if I'm depressed over business stuff, there's no one better than to call Sam Bell.

SPEAKER_02

You are defined, and you know that I love getting the the one call you've ever done for me around that. But well, what I was gonna say, and thank you for the compliment because that'll keep me going all day, warm-hearted. I love hearing that you have that amazing network that and also what I found is as I get more experience and more years, the everyone I know gets more senior. What you just described at Apple is really relevant. The sort of people that I've met through the years, and then suddenly there's someone senior, and we just like going to a favorite hiking place together. And um but yeah, Chris, you've completely delighted me. I I really love, I love that I asked you about who were the people that inspire you or that you aspire to be like, and then it's like I've just got so many. I'm just gonna keep being me because I've got so many.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I'll give you a great example of what exactly what you just said. Like, um, when I was doing stuff for I was at Las Vegas for the NAB conference meeting with people at the Apple team, and one of the she now is the head of Vision Pro or like very senior in the Vision Pro team, but she was the assistant editor for my university lecturer. So I could like when I met her, she was like, Oh, you know Jill Tinga. And so, like, even across the other side of the world, in the like the most senior of Apple positions, we still had some connection through random film node sort of things. And that's what I always find is that like the film and film TV industry is so small that even when you're in Cupertino, you can still find a connection of like, oh yeah, I know Jill. And that just makes it so much easier to ask those things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, Chris, I better end it there because otherwise I just want to keep you chatting for the rest of the day. You've got stuff to get done. Thank you so much for your time. I so very much appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01

My absolute pleasure.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks for listening to the Natural Genius Podcast. Please share this with anyone who came to mind and visit us at naturalgenus.com.au. Thanks so much.