We talk with Vita about the Filmustage service. Breakdown your film script 100x faster. Designed to save you time on routine tasks. Streamline your production process by using Scheduling feature.

Panelists

Transcript from Talk

Sarah Marince:

Hello, everyone. Happy Wednesday. Welcome to crew talk brought to you by Shoots.Video. I’m your host for this evening, Sarah Marince and today I have me Vita and Howie. Hi guys. Thank you for being here.

Howie Zales:

Hi, how are you?

Sarah Marince:

Good, good. Before we dive into everything and introductions, I just wanted to let everyone who’s tuning in. Know if you have a question during the panel, just shoot your question in the Q and a box and we absolutely will get to it.

Sarah Marince:

But yeah, Vita, you’re first on my screen here. So I’ll start with you. Just kind of tell everyone who you are and where you are, and just a little bit about what you

Vita Karalkova:

Hi, Sarah. Hi guys. Hi everyone. Great to see you and thank you for inviting me to the webcast today. My name is Vita Karalkova I’m director of marketing at Filmustage originally I’m from Belarus, but at the moment I’m located in Ukraine now our company is based in the United States and it’s our, it’s our obviously focus market and we are planning to grow, grow our office there. What I do is at the film new stage, I help them grow the business, using all the marketing tools that I know, and I have very interesting background and experience my background delays in affiliate marketing. I was working for many years with different kind of partnership and project management. I was working as a mentor and I have like a linguistic background as well. I’m passionate about the filming industry and that’s why I’m a part of film stage team at the moment.

Sarah Marince:

Well, wonderful. We are very glad to have you with us today. Thanks for being here. 

Vita Karalkova:

Thank you.

Sarah Marince:

And Howie. I will move on to you.

Howie Zales:

Sure. Hi Vita. Hi, Sarah. Nice to be here. Thank you for having me and hello to everyone out there. My name’s Howie Zales. I’m a retired camera operator. I spent 25 years traveling with NBC sports and the world wrestling entertainment, shooting sports and entertainment around the world. And simultaneously to that, I have a company H JZ productions where we provide television crew for sports and entertainment events. And then we also have another company vs Verity entertainment services, where we do livestream events hybrid events in person meetings, corporate, all, all types of corporate live streams. And I also have a course and a book on how to get into the television sports industry.

Sarah Marince:

Oh, cool. We’ll definitely dive into the book a little bit later. So I have my list of questions here as always and Vita. I’m going to start with you for people who just don’t know, can you just really dive into film you stage and what it is and what it can offer people? Okay.

Vita Karalkova:

Okay. Actually filmustage is a startup that offers an innovative platform for filmmakers, with an intention to help them produce masterpiece with less efforts they focus so that all the filmmakers can focus on art component within all the like boring routine. With our two, we offer a social intelligence supported spread breakdown and scheduling and breakdown summaries that can be exported in multi magic PDF and spreadsheets natural language processing we use is our own technology developed by film use stage team. And we are really proud to be like an innovative company. If you have ever done script mail breakdown, you know, how much time this process may consume, because you have to go through everything and check which of the elements like you need for the production process and which of the tax, for example, props, locations, every what departments are involved in all the production process, you would then make like breakdown sheet, at least all, all the different elements for each thing. So that every department can keep track of those things as most probably you will be shooting like out of order. So it’s basically what we are doing at the a moment.

Sarah Marince:

Very cool. It sounds very high tech, how it all works.

Vita Karalkova:

Yeah. It’s very high tech.

Sarah Marince:

And you said it’s a startup and so how old is the company and are you guys a big team?

Vita Karalkova:

Not actually. We’re not very big team. We have around 10 employees at the moment and yes, it start off. We are around two years old.

Sarah Marince:

Okay. And how did it start? Like who had the idea and what kind of sparked that?

Vita Karalkova:

Okay. how we actually answering this question, I would like to tell to everyone just a bit more about our cofounders and the company was founded, as I said, like two years ago. And it was founded by three enthusiastic and very talented individuals. They knew each other since university time and all them have technical background. That is why our company is so innovative. And we have like enough knowledge to create something absolutely new in the industry. The idea of the product itself was offered by Yuda broski. He had been working in the film industry for nine years before he started to work on film use stage web application. And he was working with such companies before a Uber TikTok or gaming, and the United nations, how they did south came to his mind is an extremely interesting story because it began with an unlucky accident in the United States of America.

Vita Karalkova:

That led to like a cool start top that helps a huge number of filmmakers around the globe. And everything started with the journey in 2017. At that time, he was like excited about everything that disconnected with film industry and he was full of energy to like learn and open new horizons and learn more from the filmmakers. Also with his friends, he were founded his own production studio not kitchen as a part of the production process. He went to Los Angeles to show the film backstage gain experience and connections and the industry to understand it better. It was expected my made a lot of friends and that helped a lot us to move forward and like to develop our top in the future visiting his friend in San Francisco they decided to go to JBA, just have rest after all this.

Vita Karalkova:

So the experience, but they left all the value equipment and like documents, everything money in the boot of the car. And when the evening came to announce, the unexpectedly found that the car has been broken into and everything was stalling, all the like precious equipment, all the backpack with all the documents, money, everything he had at the moment. And this was like this was a story of how he lost everything in the United States, but as you know, when wonder closes another one opens to you, right? So he missed his flight home and call to the Belarusian consulate. It took a couple of dates just to restore all the documents, but the problem was that it was a hurricane season in the United States and they couldn’t deliver his documents on time. So you gotta got stuck in the United States for three months and to find the way to survive.

Vita Karalkova:

So he had a few options, but at the time he had a few friends working in the film industry. So he was able to find chop in the filmmaking industry. And he was shooting pilots for Netflix and Amazon at the time. It was exactly what he was good at. And there, he started to ask how actually he make his do a film script breakdown and it turned out that everyone was everything just connected with script was done. Analogously with paper and pan. And it was something absolutely incredible because didn’t understand why in an era of like modern technologies, smart solutions, when we use iphones talk all these social media filmmakers are still working with paper and pan in their hands. And spending a lot of time with film. He returned back home and decided that he need to use, and I implement artificial intelligence technology in the filmmakers day to day routine.

Vita Karalkova:

That’s he would like to simplify their lives and to let them focus on like more creative part of their work. So he shared his ideas with to to France and other took a founders and, and RO are both very experienced software developers with relevant experience actually he was working on products for the film industry as well, that he, they were working on a product that combined like virtual reality with real shooting. So they found this idea very exciting, and they decided to join Yugo in his startup. And that’s actually how our company started few years ago. And they started to work on the product.

Sarah Marince:

Wow. I mean, it’s like an unfortunate start, you know, to yeah. Everything that you, that you have stolen and then be stuck in another country for three months. But I guess it kind of worked out in the end because now he has his company.

Vita Karalkova:

Yes, exactly. All the unexpected situations in our life can lead to like unexpected and absolutely

Sarah Marince:

Turning everything is, yeah. Wow. That’s crazy. I’m gonna flip it now over to Howie and Howie. Obviously the pandemic has affected pretty much every industry and I’m sure yours as well. And I was wondering kind of how has broadcasting and just livestream events? How have they changed over the past year? Almost two years.

Howie Zales:

Yeah. they changed significantly two years ago. The TV industry was barely even using livestream as a way to get content out. The March 11th, 2020 is when our business and most of the sports and entertainment business shut down. And you know, we, everyone needed to still get their content out there. And, and you know, this technology, the livestream technology was, was about five years down the road. It was very, it wasn’t really being used and overnight it, it was just adopted and, and born. And all these companies started using different methods as a way to get their content out there. And our company developed a workflow to help our clients get, you know, distribute and get their content out.

Sarah Marince:

Wow. So how, I mean, I know you said it was kinda like overnight, but how quickly did you have to move to kind of get used to up to the new normal? That was COVID. That is COVID

Howie Zales:

Yeah. Good question. It was, I think it was June of 2020 being Jewish. I talked to the rabbi at the temple and I said, you know, you’re not gonna be able to do the, the holiday services the way we’ve done. ’em In the past with people in the temple we’re gonna need to. And I had a already started researching live streaming and the internet and networking and things like that. I said, you know, I, I, I came up with a plan. I said, this is what we need to do. This is what we need to buy. And I’ll put it all together. And as we’re in, in the temple in like late August, you know putting all the cameras, install on all the cameras and the equipment that we purchased together, thinking there’s gotta be a way to monetize this. How can I do this? And no sooner did my phone ring. And then our client said, listen, we have a huge problem. We need to interview nine major league baseball players in nine separate cities, but the interviewer can, cannot leave her house. Can you do that? I said, absolutely. I hung up the phone. I said to my wife, this is what he just asked. I said, yes. And I don’t have a freaking clue how we’re gonna do it,

Sarah Marince:

But you said yes. And like how to figure it out. And so I’m guessing like how long did it take you to figure that out? I mean, were you just like, so sleepless nights?

Howie Zales:

So I, I called my my good friend and we, we chatted for a while. We came up with these we call ’em our remote remote capture kits, and it’s a high, a high end gaming laptop with a, with a camera and a USB professional microphone. And we send that with ethernet cables to ring lights. And the beauty of it is it’s our equip. So when it arrives at the location, the person just sets up the, the laptop and puts the camera on top of the screen. And because it’s ours, we can dial into the computer, focus, the camera change, the white balance, the color temperature manipulate the audio settings. And then we have an Intercom built into the computer where we can talk to the person in their ear without disturbing their microphone. So it’s a, a way to get our contributors into our productions.

Sarah Marince:

That’s crazy. So you didn’t have to go anywhere and to any of these players homes, you could just send your kit that you created. Yeah. And is that something you already had set or is that something you kind of put together for? Yeah,

Howie Zales:

This, no, we, we we, we kind of dreamt it up and put it together and researched the, the best camera to buy the best microphone to buy and the best laptop. And then we, we would send it with in, in like a big Porter brace case with two ring lights. So they’d have sufficient lighting, a hundred foot ethernet cable, so they can reach their router because you, you never real wanna be connected on wifi when you’re doing something like this. And we just kind of went from there and 1 kit became 5 kits, became 25 kits. And so on.

Sarah Marince:

That was my next question is how many kits do you have now?

Howie Zales:

25 kits. And we have the ability to log into each one of these, wherever they are in the world. And we send a QR code. So the person just needs to, you know, hit the camera on their phone and it gives them the setup instructions. And it’s so super easy. The camera, the computer comes labeled you know, the microphone gets plugged in here. The camera gets plugged in here. And as soon as it hits the internet, we, I get a notification in my system that that computer is online. And then I can dial into the computer and take full.

Sarah Marince:

Were you so nervous the first time you were doing this? Like with this where you’re like, oh my God, this has gotta work.

Howie Zales:

And we’re, we’re still nervous because especially when we do when we tech check someone for the first time, if their internet, our biggest battle is the internet internet speeds.

Sarah Marince:

Wow. So I’m hoping that the answer is yes. But did everything go super well the first time you did it?

Howie Zales:

Yes.

Sarah Marince:

Okay. That’s good. And so from that, then do you reach out to companies and say, Hey, I have this, like, we can do this or was, I mean, did it just come to you?

Howie Zales:

Yeah, no. We we reached out and started selling that this is what we could have the ability to do, and we have the ability to record within the computer locally, too. So we’ve done onsite interviews where we record in, in, in our cloud. And then we record locally on the computer as well.

Sarah Marince:

And you can do all of that from your house.

Howie Zales:

Yeah. That’s

Sarah Marince:

The dream. That’s the best. My next question for you is how relevant are quality live streams to corporate interviews and meetings?

Howie Zales:

I mean, it’s super relevant because the days of big corporate meetings where people are coming, you know, globally to one spot are completely over. You may have a team of people gathering in one location, but it’s gonna be streamed all over the world. So people do not need to leave their homes or their home offices. And they’re, they’re more productive because they don’t have to travel. They can get work done in between sessions. They can get the, they have the same experience because of all the breakout rooms and the networking that goes on. And these companies are still getting their message across for a third of the price, cuz there’s no travel involved.

Sarah Marince:

Wow. That’s brilliant. Well, that’s, that’s a cool story too. You guys both have great stories about how it all started. Vita. So can you talk to me a little bit about like the software, like the actual software, you said it’s AI, I guess that kind of does the script break down and everything.

Vita Karalkova:

Okay. Can you please repeat your question one more time?

Sarah Marince:

Sure. Yeah. Would you be able to kind of talk a little bit more about the the program, like the software? I don’t even know if I’m using the right terminology about how this film script breakdown works from the site. OK.

Vita Karalkova:

Okay. I can actually share my screen and show you how it works. Perfect. And after that, I can tell a bit more about how our clients benefit from film usage stage and what profession. So mainly using our software at the moment. Perfect. Okay. I start sharing my screen at the moment. Okay. See, share. Do you see my screen at the moment right now? Okay. Okay. So it’s how like film usage looks like when you register it’s where you actually may create your real project how to create it. I will show you here, but I will use the one already about it is the system to create a project. You need to pull the file of your script and add any description you need for your project. It takes around one minutes to make automatics be break down.

Vita Karalkova:

So it’s pretty quickly, you can just take a cup of coffee while you are waiting, but it takes really in significant amount of time. So here I opened the project that I already have here. You may see how it looks like. We have here, like speed break down already tagged by our artificial intelligence, several network. And you may see all the tags that we’re already added by this system, obviously, as we’re not intended to like substitute any profession in the film industry this pre breakdown may be not perfect. And obviously that we cannot meet all the needs of production. So at times you may need to add something, for example, extra for these purposes, we added custom text so that our customers can add some things that sell. For example, here, we see one of the kids, obviously that it will be something like a cast, but as we are talking about kids, so we will need to have something on the set who will take care of these like young actors.

Vita Karalkova:

So we will add something like new category name, let’s name it like set teacher and create category. So we have it already tagged. You can check it out here, set teacher. And we as well have like default text in the list. So you may also choose from this list as well. If you can find something and you need something specific, you can add custom text as you already have all this film script breaking down, you may find here like a breakdown summary with all the cast information with cast itself, with props, costumes, sounds, locations, everything. The was like you may find it by each and everything, and you will have like a full list of everything you need for production. You can expert this summary in like a PDF file, movie magic or spreadsheet. If we are talking about script itself, it may like about 200 pages.

Vita Karalkova:

For example, you can download it in video file as well. Okay. When we finish with our spirit breakdown here, you have as well. One of the features that we added its notes. So when you have your script, you may leave here any notes per scene, if you, it like add some useful information for any of the like departments, you can also add it here. One of the features that we are planning to implement in the near risk future is to add notes for tax as it’s required by many specialists in the filmmaking industry. Another features that we have at the moment is scheduling here, you may see all the strips all the scenes that were like like recognized by our system. So interior, exterior, the all the colors, they have like a logical explanation. You can add the estimation in hours.

Vita Karalkova:

You can add any locations you need. Like, for example, I don’t know, like Los Angeles create something like that. Everything you need, you can adhere manually as well. You can sort all the strips by send number by send setting pages, estimation, location, interior, and exterior, as you wish, for example, we can now like sort by estimation after that we can, for example, add automatically breaks. It depends on how often you would like to add them for add them like that. And they will just appear on my screen. You can export all this information to move a magic spreadsheet or PDF as well. If for example, you decided that some scene you do not need and you decided not to shoot it. You can just add it to the Bonard.

Vita Karalkova:

And at the same time you can, for example, I will remove setting at the moment. Like for example, I will that all. Okay. So I for example, maybe change the order, how I prefer to shoot my film in the case. I can just move the strip. For example, I decided to shoot first, like 13. And after that, the second one, so I can change the order. Oh, we have, for example, another options I can move it like that. So just add in the same number here and move in some where, for example like that. So it’s basically how it’s working. So it’s very simple at the moment it’s easy to use. And I think that everyone can use it because it’s, it do not require any special, like knowledge at the same time we are available to help anyone. If they have questions, for example, this expert, or they have questions, how to add something. So our help center is always available at the moment if probably you have some questions, you know?

Sarah Marince:

So I don’t know what is movie magic or where you can export it? What is that? Program called?

Vita Karalkova:

Oh, okay. We have like a movie magic format it’s one of the most used formats in the industry. And it’s used a lot by like filmmakers. That is why it was added. So that’s, they have no need to, to like convert it in the other formats. They can simply expert like the script and after that continue working in mobile magic

Sarah Marince:

It’s. Oh, okay. And so there are, are there tags that are, that come standard on it, like cast props, location, or do you add all of them yourself? Like, is it a custom thing? You can just do it from start to finish.

Vita Karalkova:

When you apply the script itself, all the cast props locations, you can see it already tagged by our artificial intelligence system. So it was already tagged all the script. It uploaded it’s already tagged. Okay. Okay. Of course. For example, our system can make a mistake or for example, in some cases let’s imagine clone can be a prop or it could be like a costume or something like that. So it depends on the needs of your like shooting. So in this case, you may change. For example, if you like review all, everything that we provided by our, our software, and you find some kind of mistake, for example, or some kind of tag that do not feed the requirements of your shooting, you may change it. For example, here, close on art face home face. Obviously here is not a prop, so you can simply can change it to like, for example, costume. So makeup,

Vita Karalkova:

Okay. That’s always how it’s working. So we have no intention to substitute anyone and our software was created to simplify the work of filmmakers. And what we do is we help not spend too much time on screen breakdown because when you have, like, for example, a huge script for future field, you need to spend hours and days to make like a breakdown summary for each and every department. You need to like scripts to make a film script breakdown, manually creating all the text and text, like line by line, all the text according to your needs. So it’s been ju it just saved you a lot of time. It’s how it’s basically working.

Sarah Marince:

That’s really cool. And so is it a membership, like, would you buy a me pay monthly for a membership or is it like a one time use? How does that work?

Vita Karalkova:

As a role we are working with subscriptions, so you’re monthly depending on your needs, because we have like a bigger packages for someone who’s working a lot with text and need to break down a huge amount of scripts. All the time we have like smaller packages for someone who need to use our software from time to time, we well have like packages for huge studios that may require like special integrations and some special conditions. For example some studios do not like to see here, our log, they would like to see their own. And in this case we can communicate with them and create special conditions for like bigger partners. Anyway all the time we have like some kind of discounts and probably black Fridays for clients so that they can save some money on subscriptions and we are happy to offer them like a better conditions. And that’s basically how we are working.

Sarah Marince:

That’s pretty cool. I, I enjoyed seeing how it all works there. That’s, that’s really neat. So you kind of showed us how it works and everything. Are there any features that are coming up or, you know, that’ll be released this year for the site?

Vita Karalkova:

Okay. Let me tell first a bit more about how different specialists are using our software. And after that, I will just probably tell a bit more about how, what we are planning to implement in the near risk future. Okay. For example as you may see, basically what we do, we speed up all the prep production process. You spend less time at times, for example, especially for studios, they save money as well, and they can make a job like faster and more effectively. That’s we have our client with automatic breakdown. We save a few days. For example, as I previously said for first ad, our software is frequently used to make temporary schedules for an upcoming movies and directors need a guide for actors timing and where to film sense right now. They can’t wait for example, for days to create like a more sophisticated and more complete schedule, and we can do it quickly for them.

Vita Karalkova:

At times, our clients need to prove a budget for investors and need like a schedule to do that. It could be rough timing for days for actors cost, for example, as well. Oof is used by script proprietors, for example, to evaluate this script as a, and to see a full as a full, to see the full picture so that they’re able to evaluate, maybe they need to remove something. So add something extra. Our software is used by producers and studios. They use it to like evaluate the full budget quickly. Obviously for studios, it may be used by different like specialists. So it’s like to save a lot of money for them as well. BFP specialists can evaluate the amount of work needed by scene and as well for a whole upcoming project. So actually the main value we create is we provide, like we can make their work more effective, save time, save money, and help to make like different kind of evaluation on, on the different steps of prep, production process.

Vita Karalkova:

It’s what we are actually doing, what we are planning for the near risk future for the upcoming year. We have three main product clients. We are constantly working to improve our artificial intelligence, pre breakdown technology, as it’s, as we developed it ourselves, we’re responsible for our technology and responsible for the quality we provide to our customers. So we are like info it constantly. Recently we have added custom text that I already showed you. Now, our clients can create the custom categories. They use them. If the breakdown provided by a natural network does not need their requirements. A next step is of course, to add custom categories editing. So that, for example, if they created the categories, they do not need anymore on the, or they want to correct something. They can just remove it. As well as I already mentioned, one more features that we are, are planning to add very soon.

Vita Karalkova:

It’ll be custom notes for text it’s one of the critical features and we are working on it now speaking about more global projects that we are planning it’s inspiration board page so that our customers can visualize ideas. We are planning to make an integration with 3d to D asset libraries and audio libraries so that they may find solutions for their shooting on this, on the prep production step already. And when first ID thinking about where to shoot better, some kind, what location to choose what props to choose. They may find solution already on their steps. In plans we have as well integration with locations, props, and cast libraries. It may help our users to find everything in one place and inspires them to create like their masterpiece more effectively,

Sarah Marince:

Kinda like it’s.

Vita Karalkova:

Yeah, it’s what we’re focused on at the moment, but we are always welcome you feedback. We are always welcome like a ideas from the filmmakers because we understand the for making the industry as well, like evaluate a lot of new directions, like appeal, like the effects, for example, that is like very developed at the moment. We see a lot of films like in production and we, the standards it’s like a huge industry at the moment. That’s it?

Sarah Marince:

Well, thank you for showing us the demo of how it works. That’s that’s really, really cool. How we, I’m

Vita Karalkova:

Happy to show

Sarah Marince:

Thanks how I’m gonna throw it back to you. And my next question is about how previous generations grew up watching TV and just, how has that, that changed today?

Howie Zales:

It’s changed tremendously. I, I mean, my kids don’t even watch TV. They watch their iPads and iPhones and they, you know, when we were kids, you’d have to wait till the summer to watch a rerun of your favorite show. Now it’s just DVR or YouTubed or whatever. Our kids don’t even watch. Regular TV shows. They, they just watch YouTube all day. So it’s changed completely.

Sarah Marince:

It’s crazy. You can watch an entire season or multiple seasons of a show in a weekend, whereas you’d have to wait like years for it to come out every week. It’s so

Howie Zales:

My son watched Cobra Kai in like five hours.

Sarah Marince:

That’s that’s wild. I mean, it’s, it’s cool when you wanna like, just over the weekend binge an entire series. But yeah, it is, I guess, very different from years to go. I guess it’s relatively new, the whole streaming and, you know, hasn’t been around for that long, but yeah, that is crazy, you know, I see the kids attached to their phones and watching something. Yeah. so this question kind of ties back to what we talked about earlier, how with the pandemic you kinda had like getting gear quickly and, you know, create your kits you were sending out. And why do you think you should always trust your gut instinct in business? Like, you know, you have this idea and you’re like, okay, I’m gonna go for it. Why do you think that’s important?

Howie Zales:

Because for me, every time I, you know, ask myself, should I do this or not? And I listen to what, you know, my, my gut, it says it never, never steers me wrong. And it always leads to success. And in this case with this business my first business HJS productions was asked to crew hire all the production people for the graduation at west point during the pandemic and June of 2020. And we hired the director and the producer and the director said, I need to have my technical director on the show. I gotta have my person. And the technical director’s the one that said, you know, pushes the buttons. When the director says, take camera one, take camera two. And so on. And the phone number he gave me for this guy was 8 1 18. And to me, that meant CA but for my company, I had, you know, 40 to a hundred people sitting at home for the last three months, not working. I wanted to use my people. And so something in my gut said, you know, just go with what Patrick wants, call his guy. And Jamie turned out to be one of my closest friends now and business associate. And I owe a lot of my law, extreme knowledge to him. And it helped take my business to, to the next level.

Sarah Marince:

So you’re kinda running two business. So, so you had your business pre pandemic, and now you have the streaming is it like competition or is it just like, you’re just running, both

Howie Zales:

Run running both. I have someone that runs each of the business side of each business and they, sometimes they work together or sometimes they work completely apart, depending on, on the event.

Sarah Marince:

Pretty cool. Vita, did you kind of trust your gut to go with a startup? I mean, or were, what exactly were you doing before you were at film you stage that made you, you were like, okay, I’m gonna leave and work with this company now.

Vita Karalkova:

Okay. as I previously said I have around like five years in marketing and previously I was working like I was working at the university. I was a professor of Portuguese language for a few years after that, I was working a few years in affiliate marketing and partnerships and different companies. I started in gambling after that. I switched to financial institutions and I continued working there. So actually I was working with affiliate marketing, different kind of partnerships at times. It was as well project management. And I came to film the stage like a few months ago. So I continue here.

Sarah Marince:

So you have some experience in a lot of different areas? Hmm.

Vita Karalkova:

Yes, actually previously I was working as well as a translator of Portuguese languages. I worked a few months in Africa as a translator, so it was very interesting experience as well. And I usually working with different people and probably that is why I’m so open minded and happy to meet different people and to find like new industries, new information, absolutely like different ideas. And it’s something that inspires me a lot. And I was absolute, and I was always passionate about film industry. I like a film library. I like to watch movies and it’s something I’m absolutely passionate about. And I like to find interesting angles and some kind of solutions. And I like to see how my favorite actors like evaluate through, through their career and how they look law, different fields. It’s something amazing. And I’m happy to be a part of it at the moment.

Sarah Marince:

It is nice to be doing something that you love and what many different passions can come together. It does makes it feel less like work every day, I guess.

Vita Karalkova:

Yeah. It feels like that.

Sarah Marince:

How are you doing what you all dreamed you would do and that what you kind of set out to do in the beginning?

Howie Zales:

Absolutely. I thought I was gonna play professional baseball, but in 11th grade I knew I needed to fall back and I saw an elective that said, you know, a trip to 30 rock, which is NBC studios, a tour, and to see a TV show being TA. And I’m like, how bad could that course be? You know? And I fell in love with TV and my love with sports. I knew right away, that’s what I was gonna do.

Sarah Marince:

So baseball fan, was it MLB, you said was the interviews you had to quickly set up, so that had to be for you, right?

Howie Zales:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And not too long ago, I was at Yankee stadium with WWE, but we were interviewing one of our wrestlers was interviewing Reggie Jackson and I was behind the camera and, you know, I grew up, I went to the world series when Reggie Jackson hit three home runs and growing up as a Yankee fan, I’m like sitting with the camera, I’m standing with the camera on my shoulder, but I’m like peeking out the view. Fine. I’m just like, oh my God, that’s Reggie Jackson.

Sarah Marince:

You’re having like a fan girl moment. Yeah. Well, did you at least get like a picture or an autograph or something?

Howie Zales:

I should have

Sarah Marince:

Stayed professional

Howie Zales:

To stay professional.

Sarah Marince:

That’s so cool though. That’s a really cool experience and it kind of all ties them together, baseball, and then what you’re doing now. Wow. Well, I think we’ve kind of covered a lot and you know, we saw the demo and we learned about streaming. Is there anything else you guys want to mention before we wrap up? Yes. No.

Vita Karalkova:

Oh, I guess.

Sarah Marince:

Okay. Well, at the end of each show, we always just take a, you guys can say again, like who you are, where people can find you, and if you’re have anything to promote or want people to know you, now’s your time and Vita will start with you.

Vita Karalkova:

Okay. Thanks. Okay. It was nice to meet you today. All of you, if you want to find us, you can just Google filmustage.com, try our software, right. As feedback we will be happy to hear from all the people involved in the film industry. If you’re an Indy studio or a huge one, if you are like an independent filmmaker producer, or you’re just interested in the technology, just give us a feedback, right? To our, our email, [email protected]. You may find it at the website at the same time. You may find my profile on shoots.video and write to me directly. If you have any questions, I will be happy to answer. If you want to be our partner or you would like to integrate with us, we well we’ll be glad to, to see you and to have a talk.

Sarah Marince:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to talk to us.

Vita Karalkova:

Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah Marince:

Howie, you wanna drop the Instagram or the website, anything like that?

Howie Zales:

Sure. You, you can reach me @ howiezales.com. All of our websites, my podcast about the television industry are all all there. And at @Howiezales on Instagram and at @HowardZales on LinkedIn.

Sarah Marince:

And we totally forgot to get to it. You said you wrote a book about the industry.

Howie Zales:

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a course and a book about how to get into the television sports industry. There’s really no training ground for, you know, what we do. And so I decided to start a course and wrote a book on, on how to do it and that, yeah, we just trained new people on how to get into the business and to help them accelerate their careers.

Sarah Marince:

And you can find all of that on your website,

Howie Zales:

Howiezales.com. Yep.

Sarah Marince:

Awesome. Well thank you for being here. Thank you both. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and for everybody else, thank you for joining I’m Sarah Moritz. You can find me @ sarahmarince.com or Sarahmarince on Instagram, and I will see you all next time. Thanks guys.