Today we spoke with video marketing pro Mark Neace and cinematographer/gaffer Jacob Alvarado. Mark Neace is co-founder and CEO of Sync Lab Media near Dallas, Texas. Jacob Alvarado is based in North Hollywood and is the creator of Electric Sky Visuals. Mark shared about his experience working with video marketing for various companies. Jacob told us about his use of networking when bringing his career to LA. We had a fantastic conversation about various aspects of video production.
Participants
Transcript from Talk
Blake Barnett:
Hello everyone, and welcome to our shoots video webcast. I have Justin co-hosting with me and joining us we have Mark Neace of Sync Lab Media and, and Jacob, a multi hat wearing cinematographer <laugh>. As usual, we’ll start with intros. Mark, can you go ahead and lead us off and tell us a little about yourself and your company?
Mark Neace:
Absolutely. I really appreciate you guys having me on today. My name’s Mark Neace. I’m the co-founder and CEO of Sync Lab Media. We’re here in Addison, Texas, right. You know, basically Dallas, Texas. What’s soon to be a Megaplex, they tell me. But we we’re a video marketing and consulting company. I’ve been in the business media production for over 30 years. Doing basically every type of production you can think of, about 10 years ago. Well, I started my own business, my own production company about 15, 16 years ago. And then I joined a business partner and we rebranded to Sync Lab Media a little over 10 years ago. So our main focus really is creating video marketing strategies and content so that business and personal brands can increase awareness, engagement, and revenue.
So we are really hyperfocused on, basically, results driven video marketing. So my business partner has a long career in operations and business strategy. So we really coupled that with what we’ve learned over the years that we’ve been doing this as far as what type of video content works for particular types of businesses with certain objectives that are going after a certain type of audience. So we really do a lot of consulting and strategy work upfront, and then we start producing content based on you know, what we discover in that strategy. So our focus is really on helping businesses of all sizes figure out how to capitalize on high quality video content and really, really strategize around that. So it actually has an impact on their business at the end of the day.
Blake Barnett:
Cool deal. Thanks, Mark. Jacob, same thing. Tell us about yourself and what you’ve been up to.
Jacob Alvarado:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. I am originally from Fresno, California, and I’m now in Los Angeles, based in North Hollywood. I’m a cinematographer and gaffer – another word for gaffer is a chief lighting technician – on set for music videos, commercials, narrative. I pretty much run the gamut of the type of content and sets I work on. My main goal moving out to here to LA was to be a full-time cinematographer. And now I’ve been here in LA for four years, and that’s kind of where I’m pivoting back to. When I originally moved out to la I did a lot of work on student film sets and kind of cutting my teeth, learning how to gaff and just be on the electric team, not even as a gaffer, but working as an electric and seeing how other people move and learn these things on how to light projects.
So I did that for about a year. And now, I’ve been out here five years and this past year I’m really been refocusing on DP’ing and being a cinematographer. So that’s my main focus doing that type of work. This past year as well, I launched my own video production company to take more of control of that. Long story short, I guess out here in LA you get a lot of work as word of mouth recommendations just to get on jobs, but I wanted to take more of a control and, and I think having a video production business on my own kind of legitimizes myself a little bit more than just some guy on Instagram with a camera. So launching the video production company of mine, my goal is to reach out to clients, music artists, commercial brands – anyone I’m interested in working with, reaching out and showing them we’re a full stop shop. I have a catalog of freelancers I work with I would love to create a concept with you or just talk and see where your thoughts are with video in general. So that, that’s been a, a new endeavor for me this past year.
Blake Barnett:
Cool Deal. It’s pretty open right now, so Mark, Justin, if you have questions, I have a quick question for Jacob. I was just curious for one, do you have a name for your production company? What’s, what’s the name of the, the, your production company?
Jacob Alvarado:
Yeah, it’s Electric Sky Visuals.
Blake Barnett:
Electric Sky Visuals.
Jacob Alvarado:
Yeah, it’s in Instagram. I don’t even have a website for it, to be honest. I’ve been kind of slacking on it. But I feel like Instagram is where my target demo’s at. So I have the profile up and looking at work more with that full stop shop kind of production.
Blake Barnett:
And my, my second question was: Do you see that you’re doing more narrative stuff or more commercial stuff, or is it like a good mix?
Jacob Alvarado:
Right now? It’s a good mix. I would say at least out here in LA there’s a lot of people who are looking to do narrative short films. I’m meeting more of those types, I guess you could say, directors and writer types. So I’m just starting to get into that space a little bit more. Since I’ve been out here, it has been more in the music video and commercial space, to be honest. But yeah, I’m getting more of a mixture of those, both types of work.
Justin McAleece:
Cool. And Mark, it seems like you’re in a very different sector, right? You’re doing mainly marketing, not so much narrative, not so much music.
Mark Neace:
Yeah, mostly but working with our clients, the variety of content that we produce for them, sonar narrative, not narrative in the sense of a sitcom type narrative or something like that. But our studio here in Addison, we actually built and designed specifically for high quality video podcasting. So we do a lot of long form content, but we do it in a way particularly for our business clients. We do it in a way where we can then take that long form content and create a lot of short form and micro content that both markets their business and also markets their show that we’re producing for them. And then we also have a distribution opportunity for episodic shows like that, that we produce. We have our own network channel that can be downloaded on smart TVs and, and that kind of thing. So it gives our clients that type of distribution outlet outside of YouTube or Vimeo or their website.
Justin McAleece:
That’s pretty neat. Yeah. What’s the name of that?
Mark Neace:
It’s Sync Lab Media Network and it’s hosted by Binge Networks TV. But if somebody’s using Roku, Amazon Fire, apple tv, Google Play they can save our Sync Lab Media Network app. They can save that on their tv, and then they can go to it when they turn their TV on. It’s down there on the bottom and they can click on it, and then they can see all of the shows that we produce for our clients that we’ve put up there for distribution. Totally.
Blake Barnett:
Would I just, if I did it on my Roku, would I just do a search for the Sync Lab Media TV?
Mark Neace:
Yeah. Sync Lab. Sync Lab Media Network.
Blake Barnett:
Network. And I just do that, and then I’ll download the app and then I just play stuff. Yep. That’s interesting. Yeah, that’s pretty cool that you guys got that set up.
Justin McAleece:
I mean, obviously you can make apps and you can have different ways to stream on there. I never thought about like, individual companies sort of making a, their own little broadcast station there. That’s kind of good.
Mark Neace:
Yeah, so basically we piggyback off of networks, right? And they’re up to like, I think like 400 different platforms now. Even going into like a hotel room, you know, like hotels that broadcast their own channel airlines, airports, different retail things. So they’re making deals with all these types of distribution points. So by having our network channel on their platform, then that gives our content access to all those points that they’re going out and making distribution deals with.
Justin McAleece:
I think it’s interesting you, in 2023, and even going forward, it’ll be even more, it’s like technology kind of converges in a lot of ways to mean that, you know, you can make something with an iPhone and you can make something with Alexa if. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that one thing is better than the other. And in the same similar way, it’s like if you’re in a theater or you’re on a phone, or if you’re distributing through some sort of old media, or you’re watching it, like you’re saying through an app, it’s like, all of that stuff sort of merges. So like, what is narrative? Well, you’re telling a story. Okay, well, isn’t a commercial just telling a story? Like, how is that any different than anything else? And just because you’re streaming, is that any different than if you’re in a theater? Not really, because some major distribution companies just go streaming anyway, so it’s, it’s quite interesting, how we try to give names to things, but those Venn diagrams break down a lot because there’s so much convergence on that. We’ll have to go up some new names.
Mark Neace:
Right. <laugh> I like what you said, Justin, but, it comes back to when we’re working with a client that’s a business or a brand where we start with them on the strategy is identifying who their audience is. Right? And because it doesn’t matter what, what you shoot on, where you put it, you know, how you promote it or whatever. If you’re not targeting the actual audience that you wanna reach, then you might as well not be doing it at all. So, sure. A lot of those distribution and production techniques you know, it really comes down to who are you wanting to see this and what are you wanting them to do when they see it?
Justin McAleece:
Do you find that the companies that are coming to where their audience is or sometimes there may be wrong about it? <Laugh>?
Mark Neace:
No honestly, most of the time not. This is kind of a new frontier. There were some early adopters that are doing really well, particularly larger brands. But most of the small to mid-size companies that we’re working with, they have been around the block a few times with people that unfortunately have not served them well. And so they kind of got slapped in the face a couple of times when they first tried to start. But most of them have tried to figure it out on their own and just without the proper strategy or support or resources to do it and have kind of just given up, you know? So that’s a lot of people that we work with.
And so it’s up to us to really take ’em back to square one and work through that whole process. And once we start doing that, then the kind of the light bulbs go off and they’re like, oh, this is what somebody should have done with me when I paid them $50,000 five years ago. You know? So unfortunately, it’s still a little bit of the wild West, but things are kind of solidifying on that side, and people, at least business owners now are realizing that they have to invest in quality content if they’re really gonna stay alive.
Justin McAleece:
Yeah. It’s interesting. And, and Jacob, you’re doing branded content, that sort of thing?
Jacob Alvarado:
Yeah.
Justin McAleece:
Yeah. And just describe to me, like, how does that work in your world? What does that mean?
Jacob Alvarado:
Yeah, for me, my experience has been, most recently working with cinematographers, I would be the, the lighting tech onset. And say he has a producer friend that has a production company, and they have a working contract with Shea Moisture. So we did a shoot two or three weeks ago where Shea Moisture did a complete rebrand for their photo and video assets. So this was a whole model shoot, it was a three day shoot in Santa Monica. So we had product, we had talent wardrobe, things like that. And this was all for social media, you know, all for vertical nine by 16 very short snippets, but that was the target. That was what the whole shoot was for. Yeah. So a lot of that, a lot of that kind of work, social media work.
Justin McAleece:
Mark, how, how are you dealing with vertical video? Is that a lot of what you guys do now?
Mark Neace:
You know, we get some request for native vertical, but a lot of what we’re doing is still we, so we do shoot some native again, it kind of depends on what the purpose of the content is. But sometimes we shoot both simultaneously. But then we started experimenting with a lot of the new AI tools to take regular 16 by nine content and be able to frame it in different ways and actually convert it to the nine by 16. But obviously some of the, like what Jacob was talking about, some of that content, you have to shoot it natively just because of the framing and the intended use of that particular shot, whether it’s still or motion. So some of those things, I mean, you just have to do it that way natively, but we’re experimenting with even repurposing a lot of content for ourselves and for our clients with some of the new AI tools and things like that, though. And it’s pretty interesting, you know, so I’ve been playing around with two or three different apps to see what I like to work with, what works best with our production workflow and that kind of thing.
Justin McAleece:
Totally.
Blake Barnett:
Hey, Justin, some cameras do that, and some cameras don’t. Right. Shoot vertically or, like the RED Raptor, can it, or do it in-house like the settings, so it can automatically just adjust the screen to be vertical.
Justin McAleece:
I mean, I can set up any,
Blake Barnett:
Or just the adjust the frame, I should say. But you shoot regularly. You’re not turning the camera like this, you don’t have to anymore for a lot of cameras. Like, I remember we were doing that before.
Justin McAleece:
Yes. If you’re gonna retain all of your image information, the full eight K RAs or that sort of thing, then you would have to switch it. It can’t magically make more pixels above when they don’t exist there, obviously. But you can also take it, instead of having your 16 by nine, it’s only shooting the center portion. So, for instance, when we shoot green screen, a lot of times you have a person on a green screen, and so they’re only using like a third of the screen or something. All the rest of the pixels are just green. They’re nonsense. You’re gonna cut ’em right out anyway. So to save data, we’ll shoot square or something like that. So basically on like a Raptor, for example, you can pick whatever frame. You could do one pixel wide by 4,000 pixels tall if you wanted to type it in and make it work.
I believe I haven’t tried in a while. I certainly could on the older cameras, so you can choose whatever you want, but in terms of our drone, for example, you hit a button and it goes from 16 by nine and switches to nine by 16 in the air. And then you can do aerial stuff like that, just literally the touch of a button. So there are a lot of options. And then sometimes, like Mark was saying, we shoot protecting from multiple sizes and sort of shoot wider than we would want, or making sure we can sort of punch in one and then punch out the other. And they both work and we can get multiple things. Or occasionally you build it and you know that you’re gonna have something at the top and the bottom of a nine by 16 frame. Maybe you always have texts at the top and the bottom. That’s just built into the plan of what you wanna do, and you use a square, a one-to-one video in the middle of that or something. So, there is creative options. But Mark, you were talking about AI.
Blake Barnett:
Hot topic.
Justin McAleece:
Hot topic, right? <Laugh> Jacob, have you had any opportunity to do any AI stuff? Had any of that work its way into your workflow at all?
Jacob Alvarado:
I’ve actually talked to a colleague about it. He’s a photographer and he’s creating a lot of work with AI funny enough. And I love his work. But in terms of video and, and video production, I think the tech is still far off. And to be honest, I’m not looking to outsource, like, replace my job anytime soon. That’s just my, my feeling on it.
Blake Barnett:
I think you’re safe as a gaffer. I don’t think robots are gonna take over for you gaffing anytime soon.
Jacob Alvarado:
Right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, I haven’t really played with it much, but to be quite honest, I don’t have a big interest in it right now.
Justin McAleece:
Yeah. Yeah.
Blake Barnett:
It seems mostly helpful for post-production, right?
Justin McAleece:
Yeah, it’s working its way in, you know, it’s like anything, the more seamless it is, and it’s just sort of there, and you don’t even have to call it ai, if you can call it AI just for like marketing terms, but it just sort of does stuff and it fixes things and then takes the noise out of your audio or it up res your video or whatever it happens to be. It just sort of happens. I think people are more happy with that in general than being like, oh, this is something that is going to overrule what I’m doing and do it its own way, or create something from scratch, or whatever it happens to be. Like, that exists, obviously, but AI is already there in a lot of ways.
Blake Barnett:
I was gonna say, we should have them weigh in on my dark argument of AI is gonna take over our industry, and then you say no, because they’re not, you know, the creativity of humans for telling stories.
Justin McAleece:
No, I, all I’m saying, is AI can’t create a better poem than humans can, because humans define a good poem as what they’ve already written and what they’ve already created. Like, it doesn’t have the capacity to make something that is better than we were already created capable of, because it’s iterative.
Blake Barnett:
It’s the benchmark that you’re saying.
Justin McAleece:
What we’ve created as a society, as a humanity over thousands of years is the benchmark.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah.
Justin McAleece:
Like, you can make something different. Not, not yet anyway, you know.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. <laugh>.
Justin McAleece:
Yeah. But that’s what I’m saying. It’s like, what is a better version of that, right. I don’t understand what that would be anyway.
Blake Barnett:
Like the robots will say it’s better. Humans might not agree with, like, you guys are just silly humans, you don’t know. This is better. Fine.
Justin McAleece:
Rebelling against <laugh>?
Mark Neace:
How do you know that I’m human?
Blake Barnett:
True. It’s true. It’ll get to that point pretty quick. Yeah.
Justin McAleece:
Any thought on where we’re at in 10 years in terms of iterative AI and creating things from scratch? I mean, like testimonial type spokespeople for instance, I’m an AI spokesperson. It’s not that far off, right?
Mark Neace:
Already Synthesia. I mean, the programs, I mean, so for chatbots, and we actually have a client who’s creating his own internal training content on Synthesia for his own internal staff. Okay. So there’s people that are already implementing that, you know we we’re trying, what we’re doing is we are exploring ways to use different AI tools to make us more efficient and to save time so that we can spend more time with clients around business development, you know, those types of things. So market research for initial positioning statements, like brand positioning statements as far as the marketplace, you know certain things like maybe initial drafts of type initial drafts of scripts in, you know, in different voices.
And then on the flip side, once, for our own social marketing, or sometimes we do social marketing for clients, coming up with social media text and content and things like that. We always refine it and make sure that it’s in the preferred or the required voice that it needs to be in before it’s posted, but just that initial creation based on the certain topics. And the real benefit of it is that you can automatically create content that is very similar to what is already being engaged with, right? So it has a much higher probability of also being engaging content. So it’s that kind of like insight that it can provide that otherwise would take you hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of going out and looking at like four other competing brands, like social media posts over three months, and tracking how much that was engaged with, right? So, I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of there. So we’re trying to integrate those types of tools into our business to actually improve not only results for us by through efficiency, but also the results that the clients get from, from the work that we do for them.
Justin McAleece:
That’s really neat. It’s those sorts of things where you fit ’em in, in very specific ways to let you get back to the thing you’re really good at. Or making like more human version of the idea of the decision. That I think is very useful. I, I sort of look at it as how I look at Fiverr, a lot of times it’s like if I’m making a graphic from scratch a chart or something, whatever it happens to be, I might put 40 bucks on Fiverr to give it to a few different people and see what they come up with. And I’m not gonna use their version, but I’ll use it as a template to make my own version of it. It’s similar to what I want, and it’s not worth like going back and mess and like, no, tweak this, no tweak this, no tweak this. I’m just like, I’ll take the Photoshop file, I’ll fix it now, but you gave me a good start.
Blake Barnett:
Use it for inspiration type thing. Is that, what, is that what you’re kind of getting at?
Justin McAleece:
Well, it’s sort of how iterative AI is too. It’s like, yeah, yeah. There’s already templates. So obviously if you’re talking about a social media post, I mean, there’s only so many ways you can do that and engage with people that is gonna be popular and is gonna work and all that. So it’s like, those are in the world of templatey type things. And so when I’m getting a graphic designer, say, for example, to work on something like that, they have their own little special sauce. They have their own way of doing the stuff. They rely on their own templates that they probably sort of burn through and like give to most of their clients and all that, which is fine, because their clients are never gonna interact in real life and never gonna cannibalize themselves. It doesn’t matter.
But they have their own little way of doing something. So I can look at that and be like, oh, I’ve never seen that stuff before specifically, but now I can use that. And now I’ve like expanded my ability to create from scratch. So I mean, yeah, that’s, that’s how I like it. And just the same way of hiring like a d a different cinematographer, different gaffer, whatever. You might want a different gaffer on set because he just does things a different way, and you wanna see what that process is and why he’s using a different light than you do. Why he’s bouncing differently, why he is is different, whatever it happens to be. I think that’s really important. Jacob, do you, are you, do you get in positions where you get brought on for a specific look that you have? Or like, how is the interaction with you and say a DP or the director when they’re, they’re looking for something specific?
Jacob Alvarado:
Yeah, great question. I, I think it really depends on the DP and the contact for me. It’s, I like to be very in the moment and try to do as much pre-pro as I can. So if the DP knows, you know, like a narrative, for example I’m thinking, Hey, is this a moody narrative? I know it’s a horror film. Like what’s the vibe? What’s the look for the shot? And so I’m always trying to ask questions, trying to get in their head about what kind of lighting we have, how much light ratio is there, is there, is it high key? Is there, is it very dark and moody? What’s our look, what’s our goal for the day? Yeah. So I’ve worked with a few DP friends and I kind of know their style. And so now after time, after working enough projects together, I’ve kind of learned what they like and what they don’t like, and I could try to get ahead of the game, but I’m always asking them, you know, what do you want to do for this scene?
Because just because they light it this way or this way a certain day, you know? Yeah. Their discussion with the director, I may not be privy to. Sure. So they may want to do something else totally different. So yeah, I’m, I try to stay flexible. I try to pretend like even if I’ve worked with my people I worked with before or new clients, I’m always trying to get more information out of them. What are they’re going for, what’s their goal? And just try to stay ahead of what we need tool-wise, lighting wise. Yeah. For the day, staying flexible. Mark,
Justin McAleece:
What’s your process? Because I know that we get a lot of this is and, and sometimes Jacob probably does too. It’s like we want it real bright, but we also want it moody.
Blake Barnett:
Text <laugh>. What?
Justin McAleece:
Okay. And so Mark, I’m assuming like clients sometimes come to you and they’re like, well, we want it funny, but we also want it serious. And then we also we’re like a really fun company, but you know, it’s important that they know, you know exactly what we’re talking about at all times…
Blake Barnett:
And then, and then when you give ’em a funny script, they take out every single funny part of it.
Justin McAleece:
Part we care about, we’re talking about widgets. We only really care about widgets. Mark, how do you steer people in like more of a finite direction rather than just wanting everything all the time?
Mark Neace:
Well, I mean, the good thing about the way that we that we work with clients is that we do do a lot of that consulting upfront. Like once, you know, once we’re engaged with them that’s really where we get down to those really detailed discussions and we’re able to figure out more Exactly. You know, exactly what they’re looking for. And then part of our process as well is that we don’t shoot anything until we have an approved storyboard and script. So however long that takes you know, we’re not, we’re not gonna shoot a frame until we have a storyboard and script that they’ve signed off on, you know? And then it’s just a matter of, you know, executing technically at that point. So, you know, a lot of times we have projects a lot of times that over 50% is pre-production, you know, and then once we get, once we get to that point, we’re delivering in a few weeks, the finished product.
But, you know, some people obviously it’s like anything else. There’s some people, it’s a little more difficult to get to that benchmark, you have to go back and forth a few times, but I’d rather go back and forth a few times at that stage than get to the end and then have to go back and forth a few times with revisions, you know? So by doing it the way we do it, a lot of times I don’t even have to do a single revision. And so, and we never do more than one round of revisions.
Justin McAleece:
That’s a good position to be in. It can be very disheartening to get it, you know, they look at the first cut and they’re like, no, all this is wrong, or What, this isn’t what we talked about, or whatever. It’s like, so that doesn’t happen very often with us at all, but you are always trying to to ask the questions to make sure that they don’t cause themselves problems, that they had no idea that they would be causing, you know, to keep options open to to hone them on, in, on very specific concepts that they think are not specific or that they see it all as sort of the same thing. But to, to us from the technical end, certainly, it’s like, no, that’s, that’s way different than that thing.
Mark Neace:
Depending on budgets, we might actually even go and do test shots, particularly if it’s a local shoot, you know? Okay. So we potentially could go out and do just some simple test shots or things like that for them to approve ahead of time if it gets to that point, if it seems like there’s a communication gap or something, you know, between what their expectations are. So, you know, we’ve offered that before as well. It just depends on what the budget, you know, of the project is, honestly. So, you know, and I, I like your questioning of Jacob because we actually have, you know, we’re the Dallas area, we’re very fortunate. There’s a lot of talent here in, in the Dallas area across the board for product production. And you know, so I have two or three dps that I really like working with.
We get along great and work great together. So anytime we’re doing location shooting, I’m typically depending on the client and, and what I know we wanna shoot and where we’re shooting, you know, I can call one of those three people that I know is gonna work best for that situation. And then they’re typically the people, you know, like two of them, they have their own grip and audio and other and lighting director that they like to work with a lot too. That’s kind of their, a crew, you know? So it’s really convenient for me as a, as a director and producer, it’s really beneficial to be able to just hire a DP and all of that comes with it, you know, <laugh>. So it, it makes it a lot easier for me. And then I know that, and that at that point that DP is almost like an assistant director on set too, because he’s managing those people.
And it really frees me up to be creative and to communicate with him that on a, on a creative level, but also frees me up to deal with my senior producer who’s making sure we have all the shots and checking the list and then dealing with the client as well. I love having the client on set, when we’re shooting those things, because then bwe get immediate approval and if there is something that isn’t going like they want it, then we have an opportunity to stop and, and change it and, and fix it there instead of, you know, instead of waiting till later. So, you know, yeah. That’s just the, that’s just kind of the way we operate.
Justin McAleece:
Yeah. We had a discussion this morning and for something we’re shooting on Monday, and I was trying to be very clear about, and they were respective of this is like it, people have to be wearing PPE or out on a construction site sort of thing. And I, I just, I don’t ever wanna be the situation where like, we have a bunch of good footage, but someone wasn’t wearing the proper helmet, or they didn’t have goggles eye production on, or they didn’t have the vest on, whatever it is. Those sorts of things that I’m not paying attention to at all. ’cause That’s like, not my job to worry about that stuff, right? Like, and I don’t know what the rules are. I don’t even know what you’re supposed to be wearing. And so those types of things that the client has very specific knowledge of how a product might work, what’s, what colors like, those things that we can’t pay attention to. It’s super important to me to have the client on set. ’cause That’s their world, right? So we know how to make a thing look good and tell a story, but if it’s a slightly different way that it’s being used in the commercial than what it’s supposed to be used at and you can’t use any of it, it’s such a mess.
Blake Barnett:
It has happened. Like, oh, that person’s not wearing a hair net. Like, we’re not paying attention to that stuff, guys.
Justin McAleece:
So it sounds like, well, on the flip, all your pre-production helps establish some of those rules.
Mark Neace:
Yeah. And, and the flip side of that, I mean, we actually, you know, perfect example is we, we we did a shoot about six months ago, and it’s a, a new startup that has a product for bars and restaurants, right? So we were shooting on location in a couple of different places. And you know we have to remember sometimes that people that we’re dealing with, they have no clue what we do, right? Sure. They have no clue how all this stuff is put together, particularly if they’ve never gone down this road before. Right? It’s all like brand new to them going through this whole process. But what’s interesting is on this particular shoot, like the light bulb went off while we were on set with the client, and they’re like, oh, wow. This is how it’s done. You know, <laugh>, it’s like, and they started getting ideas, right?
And so as we’re shooting, we had our shot list, you know, and, and we’re knocking out our shot list, but as we’re knocking out our shot list, like they were giving us ideas to like, maybe do something, you know, like a second or third take, do it a little bit differently. And we ended up using several of those like shots that we didn’t even intend to begin with. We ended up using that in the final product, and it was great. And that was because of the input of the client that was there.
Justin McAleece:
Explain a little bit of that to me, Jacob. It’s like the magic on set. Because for me, that’s a lot of the most fun that we have is like when maybe you can’t do something exactly how you had envisioned it, or maybe you realize that you’re in a busy spot, you know, you’re in a city street or something, and something else happens in the background. There’s a famous movie scene that I’m forgetting the name of right now. But anyway, there was like a big, there happened to be a big parade coming through, and so they incorporated it into the movie. And like those types of things every once in a while happen. How do you, as either a d p or a gaffer, whatever it happens to be, how do you allow for those things to be utilized in the final project? What what approach do you have? Or does it, does that ever happen with you?
Jacob Alvarado:
Yeah, it has it one time. I would say a few months ago I was DPing a music video. It’s the most recent example I have. And, you know, I thought, Hey, it’s single location all in a studio. We’re gonna shoot here, here, here, here, here. That’s gonna be the flow. Me and the director talked about it, and we were very limited on crew. It was me, a first AC and a gaffer. And that was it. That was our whole team, small three person team. And so we ran into the issue where the downtime for having the talent change, wardrobe change costumes, was gonna be too much. It was gonna push our day back way too much from what we could afford, and we wouldn’t be able to make our day. ’cause We had planned, you know, six to eight different looks for the whole day.
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So, you know, some people may take that as a director of photography and be like, Hey, this is the schedule. This is the, this is what me and the director discuss. You have to work around me. And I’m, I’m not that type of person. I’m, I, I try to quiet my ego. I try to stay flexible and hear what my crew needs, what my people need. If my director says, Hey, can we do this instead? Yeah, let’s do it. I’ll try to make it happen. And if that means I’m having my lighting team scramble to reposition lights and make things work for a time of day, then it is what it is. You know, I understand that things on set change all the time. And that’s, that’s one thing I’ve learned is just being flexible, being humble enough to be like, all right, this is the situation.
Lemme take a step back and just pivot. And usually that’s what happens on set. There’s, there’s there can’t control everything. So I think for me, that that’s been the biggest thing to learn. Just having those qualities and my personality and changing those things when they do come up. ’cause They will come up. Just being able to be in that same mindset and say, okay, all right, let me pivot to this. I’m gonna shoot this way. Instead, we’re gonna, lighting’s not, we’re gonna tear that setup down. We’re not gonna go there and we’re gonna go here instead mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and just move stuff. And just staying flexible. I think it’s helped me a lot. It, it, it could maybe damage a lot of people on set, just take them outta the mode mentally. But I yeah, I, I think I’ve gotten a lot better with that. So that’s just, you know, my example dealing with stuff like that. Totally.
Justin McAleece:
Yeah. I mean, we’re in the business of making up things, of being creative, of coming up with problem solving solutions. Right. And that’s a lot of what we do in pre-production. You’re solving things. You’re like, we have this amount of money, we have these locations, we have these actors or spokespeople or, or testimonial people, or whatever it happens to be. And you’re just like, you’re constantly trying to be like, here’s what we get to make. Here’s our ingredients for this recipe. How do we make the best meal basically? Right. And then on set, you’re like, oh, we ran out of half of these ingredients. How do we make this, how do we salvage <laugh>? Right.
Jacob Alvarado:
Right. Yeah. Or someone who was supposed to bring this thing to make the shop work didn’t, how can we move the schedule around, you know?
Justin McAleece:
Yeah. Mark, how important is it for you know, your GP or your director, whoever it is to like have the confidence and sort of the the tenor, not to let things like that ruin the day if something comes up or a piece of ex gear breaks or something didn’t show up or whatever it is. Walk me through that a little bit. I’m sure if you’ve been doing this 30 years, some things have happened occasionally that sort of are outside of your control.
Mark Neace:
I’ve I’ve witnessed some meltdowns on, on set. <Laugh>, I won’t lie, as a director or, or, or a dp, but I, I’ve seen, I’ve seen a few things <laugh>. Yeah. but yeah, I mean, you know, I think I really haven’t had to deal with that in, in a number of years, like from a crew member. You know, and mainly, I think mainly it’s just because I’ve done a better job at vetting, like people that I work with, you know, people that I bring into that environment, I think really is you know, is the answer to that. And, you know, the people that are on my shortlist now I know that they can, you know, for instance, like the couple of the dps that I talked about, you know, I, I’ve worked with them enough and I know we had, there’s a lot of people that work in the industry here, but it’s also a really small circle, if you know what I mean, you know?
Sure. Yeah. It’s like word gets around really fast. Like if somebody has a, you know, has a bad experience and, and conversely word gets around really fast when people are like doing a really badass job, you know? So and I, and I know that the, I know that the dps that are on my shortlist, I know that they’re only gonna ac crewe quality people to bring with them. And Sure. I mean, it’s, there’s always gonna be some type of stressful situation, you know, you just can’t get around it. I mean, you know, like Jacob was saying, I mean, you know, a hundred percent, it’s never gonna go a hundred percent right. And you just have to have the right type of culture, the right type of you have to create the right type of environment on set.
And that starts with the director, you know? And so, you know, that’s just my responsibility when, you know, when we’re on set, is just to set the tone at the beginning of the day. And a lot of that, the, the way I do a lot of that is I just take really good care of people. You know, it’s like, I, I make sure that everybody is fed. I make sure that, you know, we’re, that we’re starting when we’re supposed to start, so they’re not pressured to have to try to, you know, to catch up throughout the day. I’m a real big stickler on maintaining a schedule. So whatever that schedule is that’s set out, I mean, you know, we’re going to come hell or high water, we’re gonna meet that schedule because I don’t want to put that extra stress on them thinking that they have to rush a shot or something like that.
Right. So a lot of that is just kind of management, you know, leadership and management skills that I’ve been fortunate enough to be exposed to from a lot of really great mentors and just, you know, from, from experience in the industry and, you know, so I think a lot of it is just that if you’re working with a lot of really great people, it’s pretty easy If you just treat ’em, treat ’em the way that you should treat ’em, you know, it’s like, you know, they’re there working their butt off to try to, you know, produce a product for us to deliver to a client. So, you know, it’s like they’re, they’re, in my opinion, they’re the superheroes on, you know, on jobs because they’re actually making it happen,
Justin McAleece:
You know? Yeah. It’s a weird thing, you know, one, one of my one of the things I always tell new directors or producers working on a, a narrative, something like that, on a actual feature, I’m like, make sure you schedule it to where you’re not behind an hour or two into the day. Because morale wise, the whole rest of the day you feel like you’re already behind. And I think a lot of people do that, and they, they don’t have enough load in time or they don’t have enough time to just like, get everything set. Especially the first few days in a feature, that sort of thing. You’re gonna be shooting for two, three weeks, whatever it is. It’s like, don’t front load everything to where you feel like you’re already behind the eight ball. And, and it’s, it’s constantly a problem that you’re fighting against.
It’s like ease into it a bit. When you’re a decent director, a producer, it’s like, you’re gonna be able to fill in, you’re not gonna adjust waste time because there’s too much time on the schedule, because you’re gonna know what you can get ahead on. But making sure that the morale is there because there’s nothing worse than like, just sort of spinning your wheels. ’cause You feel like, oh, shoot, we just have to get this shot. We just have to move on to the next scene, blah, blah. And everyone feels like, has that Well,
Mark Neace:
That’s when mistakes start to happen too.
Justin McAleece:
Yeah. That too. And so you’re causing even more problems, right?
Jacob Alvarado:
Yeah.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. Just be realistic in general about the schedule. I feel like it’s lot time’s either too slow or too fast, just kind of like, Hey guys, it’s, you know, good. It just, right. Yeah.
Justin McAleece:
And I’m an optimist, so I go in, I think, yeah, Like, we could do, we could, we could do it. You have to be an optimist, but you also need to look at the schedule and be like, what happens if we lose 10 minutes? Is this whole thing gonna be messed up? Are we gonna have to, it’s Like, come on, we have a hundred shots to get in today.
Blake Barnett:
We’re only at 15 and we’re already eating lunch.
Justin McAleece:
Not reasonable. Yeah. Jacob, do you have any situations in that? What, what do you look for in an ad or a producer, like for keeping you guys on schedule?
Jacob Alvarado:
Yeah, I was just gonna chime in and add onto that. I think Mark’s great and knowing that as a director and producer, I think it says a lot to who, who your team is and the type of team you want to be on. I think it, like what Mark was saying, I think it comes from the top and a lot of that conversations to be had by the DP and the director because you just never know as a DP who you’re working with and their experience, right? So the, the director and producer and ad, they’re like, all right, we’re gonna knock out 10 pages today and we’re gonna get all these shots, and this is our goal for today. We’re gonna hit this amount. And the DP could say, Hey, you know, how much time do we have for setup? And the ad or producer could be like, W what do you mean set up? Why do you need set up time?
You know, it could just be one of those simple things where having the right people involved, the DP to bring it up and say, Hey, we need time to light for this. We need time to move from this location to this location. I need an hour and a half to load in, maybe an hour out. So your 12 hour day becomes 10, and then you gotta factor in lunch a half hour. You know, and, and just having the right people involved to bring those questions up, because everyone’s gonna come from a different perspective in terms of experience. So I think if you have the right people involved, they, they’ll kind of iron that out. But I try not to assume those things anymore. I, I try to, even in LA you would think, oh, these people should know this or should know that, and it’s not the case at all.
I mean, people work differently, like you said, Justin all the time. They have their own process. And so even if I’ve worked with friends, I, I, who’s the director, do I know him? No. Okay. So are we doing this? Are we doing that? I just overstate and over ask everything. I treat everyone like a new client or new person because I don’t know their experience. I don’t know where they’re coming from perspective wise storytelling wise. So I think having that, just being at the forefront, those communication skills that bring those things up, it saves you a lot of headache later on. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Mark Neace:
<Laugh>. I was just gonna chime in to your point, Jacob, also, I mean, there’s some times where we may alter our process or how we work based on who the client is as well. So even though I may be working with a DP that I’ve worked with before you know, we, it may be a different type of, you know, like environment or, or you know, a different type of atmosphere that we need to maintain on set. So to your point, it’s like I, I pro I’m proactively reaching out to those lead crew members and explaining that to them ahead of time. You know, that’s, we’re having, we’re having a pre-production meeting well before, you know, we ever, you know, like get to set and then have the pre-shift, you know, the pre-shoot meeting with everybody, you know, that kind of stuff. And so it’s just, it’s, it’s part of our process that we’ve developed.
And so once we made it a process, then we do it every time. And now it’s just, you know, that’s just the way that we, the way that we go into it. But if you’re not intentional that way, and so it’s great that you’re taking that initiative, you know, on your side because I, as a director, I would want you coming to me and asking those questions. ’cause Then it tells me, this guy’s really got his stuff together and he’s really interested in making sure that the client’s happy. And that’s what’s, you know, and that’s what my goal is.
Jacob Alvarado:
I get to the point where my DP or my director, they’re like sick of me. Like, what do you want now, you know, <laugh>, I’m just like, I need, I need to know this. I need to know that. You know, I just over the top. So I let that attention to detail is very important and highly desirable. So Good, good for you.
Jacob Alvarado:
Hundred percent. A hundred percent. And, and Mark, just to one last thing is people will remember good directors and producers, crews will I don’t know if I could cuss, but bust their butt over the top for people who will you know, they’ll, they’ll push themselves really hard. Because they know from the top they care. And when they’re on sets that they don’t get that you get what you get kind of deal.
Mark Neace:
Yeah. The other thing I do is I build in longer breaks too. So if we are running just a little bit behind and we need like 10 or 15 minutes, you know, to, to, to get finished with a certain, like location or whatever, you know, to mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and then have a break, I, you know, as we’re moving, then I have that extra time, you know, in the schedule where it’s okay if we run 10 or 15 minutes over because I’ve scheduled an hour for lunch instead of 30 minutes for lunch. Right. That’s awesome. So that kind of thing. Totally.
Blake Barnett:
It’s good to have flexibility. Yeah. I was gonna ask like switching gears a little bit just before, ’cause we’re getting we’re probably gonna finish up here pretty soon. I was just curious, mark, what do you like for marketing? Where do you draw the line? Like with your customers? Do you, like, do you produce the video and like, do you hand it off to them as like, Hey, here’s your marketing piece, or do you actually do some of the marketing like by, you know, putting it up on very social media or streaming channels or, or what have you? Like, do you, where do you, what’s your guys’ process?
Mark Neace:
We can do it all. It just depends on what’s, what works best for the clients. So we do have clients that want us to manage all their content. There’s clients, you know, we, we’ve built out their social media, we’ve built out their YouTube, and we actually manage all the content that we’re producing for ’em. So we’re uploading it, we’re optimizing it, we’re maintaining, you know, their, their social channels or, and their, you know, and or their YouTube channel. Because there’s some people who just don’t want to, don’t want have anything to do with that. They just want it handled, you know. And so our, our three pillars are strategy, production, support, you know, so we do the consulting, develop the strategy, then we produce really kick ass content. And then, you know, we, we can, we can offer that support on the backend as well.
We prefer to do that because then it’s a relational you know, thing instead of transactional. And so we actually have clients that are on monthly retainers with us and, you know, because they’ve seen the value and bought into that long-term strategy. So if we develop a six or 12 month strategy for them, then, you know, based on whatever their monthly budget, you know, whatever they can spend monthly, you know, on that portion of their marketing, then we’re doing stuff on a monthly basis. And before long that actually starts, you know, really driving up results.
Justin McAleece:
You need to know a lot to be able to do all three of those pillars. I think,
Blake Barnett:
Well, marketing’s changing all the time. Sure. And so like, just to, I mean, and so for the customers too, maybe, you know, our clients, they, they’re gonna get lost as well just because things technology’s changing so quickly, things are moving around and just different ways to do things. And so it started, it’s hard to keep your thumb on it, you know, of the pulse of what’s happening.
Justin McAleece:
I think you can chase all the trends too, and not really get anywhere either. That’s probably difficult.
Mark Neace:
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of people doing that that are trying to do it on their own, you know? So, yeah. So we, we have a lot of those conversations, and I, I do a lot of speaking and training also for like, solopreneur, entrepreneur, you know, really small businesses and, you know, and just try to help them, like frame their mind around, you know, what they should be, what they should be trying to do, what they should be committing to. ’cause A lot of times people try to go out there and do everything, and then they fell miserably, and then they’re like, oh, it just doesn’t work for me. You know? Yeah. Where they, they, they could be getting a lot better results if they just knew how to kind of organize it a little bit better. And so I trained people, you know, on how to do that too.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. Figure out what works, works for your industry, like what you’re, whatever you’re selling or product or service, you know, like there’s way, there’s so many different outlets and some things work way better for some industries and, and other things work way better for others. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So for, for customers to know that right off the bat, it’s, it’s hard. It’s hard. Even when you’re starting a business if you go, I’ve heard a lot of complaints from the, like, they’ll try something, spend a bunch of money, it doesn’t work. I’m like, yeah, that’s a, that was a bad idea.
Mark Neace:
Right.
Blake Barnett:
Spend a little less money on try, try it out because I, that wasn’t the right fit for you. Like, from my experience, that wasn’t even the right fit at all. Would’ve would told you not to do that?
Mark Neace:
Case in point, we just we just started working with a new client, one of our new clients this week that we just started working with. And, you know, he, he’s a solopreneur, right? He doesn’t have a ton of money, but he wants to do something and he knows that he needs to do it. He’s in a competitive industry. So what we suggested for him is just start out with one of our, our, our entry level consulting packages, right? So he just started out with a three hour consulting package, and we just had our first meeting with him yesterday. And then we’re gonna come back and have, you know, suggestions for him on what he should do over the next six months, you know, to kind of get, get his business up and running off the ground with marketing. And then, you know, we’re so it doesn’t really matter what the budget is.
I mean, that’s not a really, you know, big investment on his part, but what it’s gonna do is give him confidence then where now he can, you know, start getting his feet wet and then when he’s ready, he’s gonna come back to us and have us create some content for him. And, you know, and that’s fine with us because that’s really, you know, my mission is to help other small, you know, business owners, because that’s where I started, you know, and so mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, it’s important. So it is just, you know, I, I wish there were more people out there that would <laugh> that would allow people to come in at, you know, at that lower price point to really, you know, get something beneficial.
Justin McAleece:
Blake is, you know, really good at SS e o and he, he knows how to position things, what’s the most important thing to attack first? And so Blake has a, has a lady in his life who owns a place and he knew how to like, make her nail salon more work a lot better on Google. Like, and that was low hanging fruit, right? Blake?
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. Yeah. We just, I, I just, she didn’t really know anything about marketing and just in general, she just had no idea. And so I’m like, Hey, what are you doing this? No. Are you doing this? No. Are you doing this? No. I’m like, well, these are things you should be doing. And to be fair, I don’t know a lot about retail and so, or salons in general. So it was a little bit of a learning curve for me. But like, I just did small little things to see what was working. Internet marketing, obviously, I was just no brainer. But there are just other things so you market a retail place a little bit different than a B two B type business like we are. So it was a little bit learning curve, but there were some low hanging fruit, like Justin said, that she wasn’t doing at all. Now she is. And it’s like she’s way busier than she was.
Justin McAleece:
And I think Mark, that’s, you know, someone coming to get consulting even three hours, you might be able to identify those types of things. Like, are you doing this thing? No, not really. It’s too much work, whatever. And you’re like, well, there’s a way to do it where it’s not a whole lot of work and it’s gonna help you a lot to get noticed.
Blake Barnett:
And yeah, a lot of times they’ll, they’ll try to do the harder stuff first. I’m like, you guys haven’t done any of this stuff. Do this stuff first. It’s way easier, cost less. Get that done then talk about this.
Mark Neace:
Well, the first thing is, a guy has an amazing life story, but you go to his website and his story is all the way down on the bottom of the first page of the website. And I’m like, man, you need to be lead. You gotta lead with that.
Mark Neace:
Like, I mean, it was just like something right off the bat, within the first like 30 minutes of checking out his digital footprint, I’m like, man, why don’t you have this at the top of your website where people see it for? And by the way, that needs to be a video <laugh>.
Blake Barnett:
<Laugh>. Yeah. Get a video up there then with the description. Sure.
Mark Neace:
<Laugh>, right?
Justin McAleece:
Yeah. So I find it’s similar too, Jacob, you know, it’s like you put two lights up and the whole room changes or whatever it is. I mean, it can be as simple as yesterday we were doing something and it’s like, you go into the room and you turn the lights off and already it looks way more interesting on camera. You didn’t do anything that was difficult. You literally flipped a switch and already it’s practically night and day for the look on camera. But people wouldn’t necessarily think of that. They’re like, well, we’re doing a video, therefore lights have to be on, therefore we have to see it and have it look how it normally looks. And it’s like a lot of times it’s counterintuitive in terms of that. How do you, do you have any special or specific situations where you’ve had that happen?
Jacob Alvarado:
Well, just to carry on your point there, Justin, I feel like, you know, as a, as a DP yourself, you know, you have this need to shoot on maybe a red or an Alexa, right? Sure. So nowadays, clients, and even the younger generation, I’m, I’m learning to a lot of people, quality is subjective. So what me and you think is quality is a high-end camera. What, you know, Mark’s line of work, which it sounds like it’s numbers, traffic, what can get me there? Can it be a cell phone video? Can it be Alexa Mini? Those things don’t really matter as much in the marketing space, whereas narrative people kind of, you know, have an idea of what narrative should look like. And so if you’re doing narrative and you get to work with a director, you know, as a dp, you’re, you have your own thoughts and ideas about how we can light this scene.
I think when it comes to branding, social media commercial, there’s a, there’s a look to it. People think high key, a lot of lights, and sometimes maybe that’s not the right move for this shoot. And so educating the client with your experience, a lot of that just comes into play on the day and, and the project. So again, I always go back to who you’re working with and, and trying to get inside their head of what they like visually. Where are they coming from? What’s, what’s the language? Do they want a ton of lights? Do they want no lights? Do they like this camera look? Do they want a cell phone? Do they want this? Do you know, there’s so many options nowadays that I have my own cameras that I work with. I like to work. And as a cinematographer, I, I wanna be known for a look. I wanna maintain their look. But depending on who I’m working with, sometimes visuals take the backseat. It’s the message, the story, you know? So just learning who I’m working with, I think dictates how, how I work a lot.
Justin McAleece:
It’s it’s important to have consistency ’cause they’re probably coming to you for a certain thing too, right? And like, probably in Mark’s business, it’s like they expect something from you and that’s why they’re working with you in the first place. And that’s sort of what they want. And hopefully you can amp it up, make it a little bit better, give them something unique, but still, you know, meet, meet and exceed expectations.
Jacob Alvarado:
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>
Justin McAleece:
Hundred percent. Cool. Cool. Well that’s an hour, I think.
Blake Barnett:
Yeah. I mean, I was gonna say what you’re doing, close us down, let you guys get back to what you’re doing and but just we can close out with like letting us… Mark, if you wanna start, like where would they find you online? Maybe like your website someone wants to reach out to you. What’s the best way to do that?
Mark Neace:
I would say to synclabmedia.com. It’s our website. You can get to everything else from there. Our YouTube channel is Sync Lab Media Studio and then myself personally, LinkedIn is the best place to reach me. And that’s just Mark Neace actually. But if you just search my name, mark, you’ll pop up. I’m easily found. Easily found. <Laugh>
Blake Barnett:
Jacob, how do people find you?
Jacob Alvarado:
I’m at Instagram, F. Jacob Alvarado. Same on LinkedIn and Facebook. F Jacob Alvarado and my website. Same thing. Yeah.
Blake Barnett:
Justin, do you have anything you wanna promote?
Justin McAleece:
No, not specifically.
Blake Barnett:
You’re good. <Laugh>. Alright.
Justin McAleece:
Go watch Brick Madness. It’s on Prime. We made a picture film about the National Lego Tournament that took like nine years to make and it’s been on wow. Years now. Whoa. So you can go watch it on Prime.
Mark Neace:
What, what’s, what’s the name again?
Justin McAleece:
Brick Madness.
Mark Neace:
Brick Madness. Okay. Awesome.
Mark Neace:
That’s all right. I’m gonna turn my, I’m gonna turn my son onto that. He’s i’s 19 now, but he was like I, I cannot tell you how many Legos we still have in our house. Oh, geez. <Laugh>. And he, and he hasn’t touched one, he hasn’t touched one of them in three years.
Blake Barnett:
Now girls are more interesting.
Justin McAleece:
<Laugh>. Yeah. Good. Cool. Well, thank you guys for your time. Thanks for hanging out with us and getting into some of these interesting discussions. Appreciate it.
Blake Barnett:
But, but don’t go away, but we’re gonna close out. Thanks everybody. Cool. And until next time, bye.
