How Not To Suck: Hollywood Advice We Love

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?

Confused Woman: Biagio-WHO???

Announcer: This episode…

Biagio: It’s episode 14. We tell you about a Tumblr blog post we have fallen in love with. Explain how not to suck. Talk about the importance of paying your dues. And tell you the truth about getting drunk with your direct superiors.

Announcer: Music courtesy of Dave Pelman Music, davepelman.com

Biagio: Hey, everybody! She is Joke.

Joke: He’s Biagio.

Biagio: We’re married. We make unscripted film and television, and want to help you do the same hopefully, by teaming up with us. Well Joke, episode 14!

Joke: That’s awesome! And we’re on the 14th!

Biagio: Oh crazy. As we record this is the 14th. Well, all right. That was an interesting piece of trivia for you. I’m sure that you are just shaking at the knees with all the excitement we’re putting out.

Joke: By the time they hear this it will be at least the 15th.

Biagio: That’s true. So really it was all pointless.

Joke: Never mind.

Biagio: Anyway, we are in heavy post on our top secret show that we’re still not allowed to tell you about other than to say it’s 13 episodes for a really big cable channel and I can’t wait. Are we going to be able to tell them by the next time we record? I think we’re going to know this month, right?

Joke: Yes, I think the idea is to get the press release out in the next two weeks. We’re not looking to air though until the middle of January, at this point.

Biagio: At least, yes. So it will be a little while. There will be a lot of promotion around this one.

Joke: Fingers crossed.

Biagio: Yes, fingers crossed. So instead of you being sick and tired of us talking about this top secret show, you’ll be sick and tired of seeing the promos for it all over TV. Let’s hope. But anyways, we’ve had a pretty long road to get to where we’re at. We’ve been working at this a long time.

Actually the point of today’s podcast came up when we were turned on to just a terrific, terrific Tumblr post by a guy named Joe DeVito, an executive producer out in New York.

Now, we don’t personally know Joe. As a matter of fact, I don’t actually think that I knew who he was until today. But man, what a terrific post he wrote about something that’s near and dear to our hearts which is the idea of paying your dues.

Joke: And as he titled it How Not to Suck.

Biagio: How not to suck. None of us want to suck.

Joke: It got us thinking a lot and it’s something that we talk about. It’s this idea that in the freelance world that we live and work in, the concept of mentors and apprentices it’s just almost gone now.

You hear the old days even in movies where movies would take a while or you had the studio system where people would apprentice under composers, under editors, under directors for a while before they’d go off and do their own thing. In television these days, there are a lot of jobs which is great but because of the freelance world, people move around from company to company a lot.

There’s positive and benefits that come with that but we’re losing a little bit of the mentorship. In the hiring process, what we find a lot is a certain title at one company doesn’t necessarily equal the skill set we find necessary for that same title at our company.

And so that’s kind of what Joe was talking about in terms of the business is getting a little diluted because of this freelance world and what if anything can we do to kind of get it back on track

Biagio: Yes. Listen, Joe wrote a terrific post. He’s got many, many just fantastic tidbits of wisdom. His Tumblr site is over at capitalvblog.tumblr.com and I’ll put an actual link to his post in our show notes which will be at producingunscripted.com/014 014 because we are the 14th episode.

Joke: Episode 14. Yes, he had lots of good rules that if you’re going to break into the business or you’re just starting out. He says they’re good reminders even for us to kind of read up on. They’re just good rules to live by when you work in this business.

Biagio: We’re going to quote five of these. He’s got like 30. We’re going to quote five that we thought that were really good and point you over to his Tumblr post because I just think it’s terrific. It’s worth a read.

Joe also has a great way with words. He’s very passionate. We are a G-rated podcast so Joe, forgive us if we take out a few of the four-letter words when quoting you. But I’m sure people will want to swarm over to your posts to read it with the full passion it was intended to be delivered with.

So we picked out five. Take a look at number one here. Number one, Joe points out if you call yourself a producer or a director and can’t talk cameras, lenses, lighting, or audio you did it all wrong. Congrats! Now you’re less of an asset to your team. Well-said Joe DeVito, a man after my own heart.

Joke: Seriously, it kind of made everything go wee inside of our producer hearts because it’s true. There are lots of people who call themselves producers and who can’t talk the basics of what we do which is capturing stories on film, video, on a digital medium that then we can redistribute for people to enjoy.

So if you can’t talk even the basics of the equipment it takes to make that process happen, it’s kind of messed up you call yourself a producer or director, especially director.

Biagio: If you look over at our blog, jokeandbiagio.com which is more of our sort of our general filmmaking documentary, everything site. We’re really big at people being hands-on producers.

We came up writing, directing, shooting, editing, color grading, doing the audio, everything. We were a crew of two. We came up making television pilots, making our shows ourselves.

Joke: By the way, none of us and I mean I don’t know what Joe means but at least the way we took it. It doesn’t mean that you have to be the end-all-be-all of camera, lens, lighting, or audio information especially as a producer but you have to understand the basics.

You have to have taken a photography class. You have to understand what makes a good frame because if you’re sitting in video village and you’re saying I don’t like that framing you better know why it’s not working for you so that you can give pointers as to what will make it work for you.

And same thing with audio, I don’t know a whole lot about the details of audio but I’ve ran a fair share of a wireless mic. I’m not the big mixer person but I understand what’s important. I understand the time it takes to mic somebody up properly. I get it.

I think that’s what’s important and that’s I believe what Joe was going for is you really do have to understand the basics because if you don’t, you’re not only not an asset you’re a liability to the team.

Biagio: So true, so true, well-said Joe and Joke.

Joke: Whoa!

Biagio: Whoa! All right! Point number two, if you’re not finding a way to ask a million questions at the appropriate time of the person whose job you ultimately want, you are a fool.

Joke: Yehey! Hear! Hear! I started as an intern making zero money. Most of the time, it was just for school credit but that’s why I was there. I wanted to observe, absorb, absorb, absorb and find the right time to ask the right questions and to learn, learn, learn and every piece of paper they ask you to go copy, you learn something from.

Every run you have to go do, you meet people and you learn something. If something doesn’t make sense, you find the appropriate time to ask them, “Hey why did I have to do it this way?” People are more than happy to give you inside an explanation because they want you to do it right.

It’s just so important that if you walk away from the job the exact same level that you started the job, you lost out big time. Not only did you lose but chances are the production company might not hire you again because we want to hire people who asks questions and who want to be better.

Biagio: A key word in this sentence though and I think you pointed it out is appropriate times because you can’t be asking questions around the clock because you’re just going to drive people crazy and you’ll get fired.

Joke: True and again it also says the person whose job you ultimately want that usually means what’s the next job you want. So if you’re a PA, it might be the key PA or maybe the assistant coordinator. Then that’s the person you can ask these questions from. Then it goes up and it goes up.

If you’re the PA and you’re like I want to run my own production company. You come and bothered the EPs all day long with questions it’s not going to go over very well. So you have to know who to approach and at what time.

Biagio: Yes, not that I never want to get asked questions but usually I’m busy making the show. So you got to find that right moment to corner me. I’d be happy to answer your questions. Usually what I tell people is hey lucky for you I now have 14 podcasts breaking it down! All right, all right!

So let’s move on to point number three. Joe directs this one at Show runners but I believe this can be for the lead creative of any project whether it’s your short film or reality show, a documentary or a feature.

Joke: Show runner is the person who is responsible for the day to day running of the show. Usually they are mostly from a creative standpoint who will take the show preferably from the field all the way through post.

So they are the person working hand in hand with the EP to communicate and liaison between the EPs and the network and the crew, to make sure that everyone delivers the show that the network wants.

Biagio: And to show runners Joe says, “Know your stuff. Be nice to your crew. They are all that is separating this circus from being a TV show or a giant waste of money. Know tech, know story and know how to talk to people. You’re the captain of a ship of pirates. Command it.”

Joke: Yehey! I don’t understand why I keep being so excited but I am so excited. The keywords there is you’re the captain of a ship and there are too many times that we see show runners or we try to hire show runners and they just don’t turn out to be captains. It’s really important that as a captain on a ship, you don’t want mutiny.

That’s why he says be nice to your crew. You have to know how to talk to people. You have to know how to talk to them. You need to know what you want and what you need to get because they just want to make you happy. So the clearer you are about what it is you want, the easier it is for them to do their job.

But again you’re a captain and there’s a million questions that come up on set all day long. You need to be the person with the answers.

Biagio: And if you don’t know the answer you better think one up quick because that’s your job.

Point number four. That we’re stealing from Joe’s posts because we think it’s so great. Treat those above you in the hierarchy with respect on set. I don’t care how many beers you had with them the night before.

Joke: Okay, I’m not going to cheer again but I really want to. It’s one of those things that it’s just something that we’ve dealt with a lot. Here’s the thing. We work hard and we play hard. We like to treat everybody like we’re one big family. It’s a fun gig. We don’t want to treat it all like we’re curing cancer because we’re not. We’re making television.

But sometimes it’s hard for people to keep that boundary so that you’re still at work and you still need to get your job done. I know that no matter how much time I put my feet up, at the end of the day I’m still responsible for getting the job done. I make sure I get that job done and I expect other people to do the same.

But sometimes people get lax and they get very familial and then it’s a slippery slope. It’s very hard to come back from it.

Biagio: I will say in all honesty, I think you and I are probably among the most relaxed company owners in the business sometimes to our detriment, I think. We’re just friendly people. It’s who we are and we can’t really hide who we are.

But I think the people who do best at our company, the people who do best around us are those who know that yes we can have a friendly conversation; and yes you can probably talk to us a lot differently than you could talk to a lot of people that own companies. But then when that conversation is done they get back to work.

The ones who don’t last are the ones who suddenly make the mistake of thinking we are best friends at the office, which means they can get away with anything and worry more about their side projects than they can worry about their actual job. Then all of a sudden things get weird.

Joke: Yes and listen, I’m not going to say that there’s not companies out there that once you have a few drinks with the bosses now you’re in gold. You don’t even have to do anything anymore. We’re just not that company.

I’ll gladly have some drinks with you and we can karaoke all night long but if the next day you’re not performing the job you are hired to do, then yeah we’re not having drinks again. And you’re not getting hired again.

Biagio: That’s pretty much it. If you really mess up you’re getting fired. So another great point from Joe and finally point number five that we wanted to quote from this terrific post by Joe DeVito.

He says, “And lastly, the point of this whole piece: Pay your dues. Not for us, for you. You will be so much better and more successful if you busted your ass, barely slept, got dirty, felt like crap, and lived through it all while you learned everything about everything.”

Joke: It’s really the hard one. It’s true, it’s 100% true but it’s very hard for me to look at someone and say I want you to barely sleep. I want you to get dirty. I want you to feel like crap. I want you to barely get paid. I want you to pay your dues. You look at me and you’re like who are you? How dare you ask me that?

And it’s not easy for me to ask that of people but the truth is you’re not doing it for me. You are doing it for you. We paid our dues. We were living off of ramen noodles. We were learning everything about everything and it’s made us better.

It’s made us better storytellers and better producers and better company owners, better captains of the ship and all those things. It’s really, really, really important and if someone asks you to pay your dues, they’re not trying to take advantage of you.

Well, maybe some people are but the truth of the matter is if they’re taking advantage of you, you need to take advantage of that situation and learn like Joe says everything about everything because that’s where you learn it.

That’s how you get it done. That’s how you honestly move up in this business with the skills you need to take advantage of every opportunity that’s handed to you.

Biagio: It’s true. When you pay your dues, you get a lot for your money. Think about it when you pay your dues you’re going to gain experience. You’re going to gain skills. But I think most importantly, you’re going to gain confidence.

Joke: Just think of it as like what do people do in other businesses. You want to be a doctor? Med school is not very paradise-like. Then you have to pay your dues in the hospitals as residents and move your way up and you work 48 hours, 72 hour shifts and craziness like that.

You want to be a lawyer it’s the same thing; law school, not that pleasant. Then you have to work your way up in a firm as an associate staying late, looking at legal briefs and all these things.

And so it’s a little disheartening for us when we’ve come up that way in our business to find young people just wanting to skip ahead and not pay their dues, and not learn things and not really dig in and experience the jobs as opposed to just kind of going ahead.

There is not a single school, I don’t care if it’s USC, NYU, Full Sail, UCLA, there’s not a single school that gives you the experience than actually working in this business. Your schooling doesn’t start until you take your first PA job.

Biagio: It’s true. It’s true and ultimately at the end of the day, what are you trying to do? You’re trying to make yourself valuable. How many times have we said it? Go back and listen to episode three of this podcast. There’s nothing better you can do to ensure your success in this business than to make yourself valuable.

Joke: One of the ways to make yourself valuable is to go read Joe’s blog post, How Not to Suck.

Biagio: By Joe DeVito.

Joke: How Not to Suck is a good step in making yourself valuable.

Biagio: So hey Joe Devito, you had a couple of fans over here. Hopefully, we get to work together someday on something but even if we don’t, fans for life my friend.

So thanks for writing such a great post. I’m glad we got to share it with our listeners. For all you, we’ll see you again in two weeks when we do our next episode. I think we’ll finally be able to tell you what our top secret show is.

Joke: What happens when it gets announced before two weeks from now?

Biagio: Well, there’ll be a blog post. Look for it. You follow us on Twitter, right. If you don’t, we’re on Twitter at twitter/jokeandbiagio.

So that’s it everybody. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you Joe DeVito for writing one of the best blog posts we’ve read in forever. Make sure you check out Joe’s blog over at capitalvblog.tumblr.com. We’ll put a link to the post in the show notes at producingunscripted.com/014. Until next time.

Joke: Bye!

Biagio: And don’t suck!

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