How To Freelance in Hollywood with Joey Korenman

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?

Unidentified Voice: Biagio.

Biagio: Who did this episode? It’s episode 97 and we’re talking about freelancing in Hollywood. Joey Korenman, author of The Freelance Manifesto, gives you priceless tips on carving out your own career path in the entertainment industry, how to find both success and happiness, and knowing when to blow up your life if things aren’t working. Are you climbing the wrong mountain? Plus, where to find great free resources to improve your filmmaking with better design. And I get way too excited about working with text.

Joke: I’ve never seen him Kern so much.

Biagio: Hey, you hear that? You’re that muscle. I was hurting, I was creating music. Courtesy Dave Pelman. Music. Dave. Com. Hey, everybody. She’s Joke Keith.

Joke: Biagio.

Biagio: We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.

Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.

Biagio: All right, well, today is episode 97, and. And we have a special guest. And would you say I’m geeking out a little bit, Joe?

Joke: Just a little bit.

Biagio: Just a little bit. It’s funny. It’s funny because after making television for 20 some years, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t get starstruck or geeked out. But I do.

Joke: You geek out by the weirdest places. The weird things.

Biagio: Wouldn’t say weirdest, I’d say most exciting, but so. So let me tell you a little bit about today’s guest, okay? And this is why you have to listen today. Because, you know, his practical advice on freelancing, it can literally help you break into any area of the entertainment business I’m talking about. Real, straightforward, practical, put it to use now, advice.

Joke: And freelancing is a huge part of our business.

Biagio: Huge, huge. We’re gonna get into that today. But we all we all started as freelancers or we stay freelancers forever. So that’s why it’s so important. Also, you know he’s got an expertise and offers so much awesome free advice and classes on design that can literally help you improve your projects, like overnight. And I’m not overstating that. So many of us as filmmakers, we we don’t take the time to put a little extra design into our finished projects. This guy can help you do that. And finally.

Joke: I mean, his own life is a blueprint that you can follow when you’re trying to break into the entertainment industry.

Biagio: It is because this is a guy who, much like a young joke, and Biagio started out and and didn’t really know anybody and rocketed all the way to the top of his business, and now has has turned that into a very successful second business.

Joke: So who is our very special guest?

Biagio: Okay. Our very special guest. All you need to do is Google Joey Corn Man to learn that he’s a motion design expert who’s run a top notch studio. He’s the founder of the high end training site School of Motion, which also includes tons of free tutorials. Every single one of you should be watching. And he’s also the author of the new book, which is Why You’re Here Today The Free Lance manifesto. But here’s one thing you’re not going to get by googling him, and you’re only going to get once you really start listening to him. He’s like one of the nicest, friendliest guys on the entire internet. So Joey, welcome.

Joey Korenman: Wow. That was I’m just blushing.

Biagio: Well, well, listen, I gotta tell you, I it’s really funny because I actually first discovered you. You know, every time we do a new television series, like, we’re always prepping and I’m always looking into different places for inspiration. And we were prepping for our new CNN, HLN series, and I discovered School of Motion and what I, what was really great about finding it for me. And and we’ll get into this more later in the podcast. But it was so much actionable advice that I thought didn’t just apply to these owners. It was tips that any filmmaker, any documentarian, should be taking these tips and using them in their projects.

Joke: It’s literally changed your life in terms of dinner conversation. Driving through town, he’s pointing at signs. He’s like, that’s a horrible design. And here’s why. And and serif and sans serif discussions. I mean, it’s it’s not safe. Yeah.

Biagio: Yeah, yeah, it really is. I’m like, man, they really screwed up the, you know, the hierarchy on that sign. You know, or value structure. You’re, you did a free a free webinar that included a piece about value structure. I got to tell you, I’ve been at this for a long time, Joey. I’ve made television for pretty much every network out there. I’ve graded footage that’s played in movie theaters. And watching your piece on value structure, it changed the way that I think every single day about the frame I’m looking at on my computer. And so again, small stuff that we’ll get into later. But I’m just really, really glad that we discovered you because you can never stop learning in this business. It’s ultra competitive.

Joke: Yes. You very much inspired him.

Joey Korenman: Well, that makes me so happy to hear that and thank you. And I want to say that that that’s good to hear because it kind of validates what our mission is and has been pretty much from the beginning, which is to be, you know, a source of practical knowledge. You know, you can get on YouTube and you can find out how to make a million cool looking but relatively useless, useless things. My thing was always, I want people to know how to do the things you’re going to use every single day, over and over again, because you know that’s how you pay your bills.

Biagio: So listen, you are just so incredibly awesome that there’s going to be so much good stuff that we need. The unpack in today’s podcast, I kind of want to break it down so our listeners know where we’re going. It can keep up because there’s just there’s so much goodness here. I don’t want him to miss any of it. So so today’s podcast, we’re going to kind of break down in three parts. The first up, I want to talk a little bit about Joey’s story, because in a lot of ways it parallels mine and jokes, you know, basically trying to break into an industry where you don’t know anybody and climbing all the way to, you know, to the point where you are the shot caller. After that, I want to talk about Joey’s new book. It’s called The Freelance Manifesto, and while it is aimed at motion graphics artists on a deeper level, every single piece of advice Joey offers in his book is the kind of thing we tell aspiring producers, aspiring editors, aspiring cinematographers every single day. And so we’re going to talk a little bit about the book. And one key, key piece of advice in the book that I think everybody needs to know. And then everyone should go read the book. And last but not least, I want to talk a little bit about School of Motion and Joey’s own journey that led him there, and also the various ways that it can help any filmmaker, even for free, because there’s so much I mean, there’s just so many great free resources there. It’s unbelievable. So, so, Joe, you think you can hang with that that down? Okay. Great. Great. All right.

Joke: All right. So step one.

Biagio: So so step one let’s let’s talk let’s talk Joey let’s talk.

Joke: About young Joey.

Biagio: That’s how young Joey because much like young Joke and Biagio, young Joey didn’t enter the business, you know, having all kinds of Hollywood connections.

Joke: Right. So you had big dreams, zero contacts. How did you know this was what you wanted to do? And how did you kind of get your footing in the door?

Joey Korenman: Sure. Well, first of all, I still feel like young Joey. I don’t know, like. Maybe judges were. You’re not Young Joey anymore, but. No, I’m 36. Just so everyone else.

Joke: It’s about baby Joey.

Joey Korenman: Yeah. So? So baby Joey. Well, I, you know, growing up, I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, in from a really young age. Really young age, I was always into visual effects and movies and, you know, sci fi and stuff like that. I thought that’s what I wanted to do. So really early, I think in high school I was already kind of pursuing it. I went to college at Boston University and I went I went in for the film and television program. I was going to be a filmmaker and direct and all that kind of stuff. And while I was there, I realized that a, I don’t like film school and and b, what I really like is the, the stuff that happens after you’ve already shot. I went on, I had a bunch of internships. Most of them were actually focused on production. I was mostly running around, you know, on these big shoots for commercials and for MTV and for TV shows and reality shows and hidden camera shows. And I realized that while that’s fun, it’s not a lifestyle that I want to do long term. And so I got into post-production. So my first gig out of college was actually as an assistant editor at this company in Boston, and I was the assistant editor for about nine months. And then the editor got laid off. And so they didn’t have an editor anymore. And so I sort of, by default, became the head editor at this, at this studio at the age of like, I don’t know, 22 or 23. And that’s kind of when I started to dabble in After Effects, and I got really, really into it very quickly, and I was still editing. I was, you know, editing mostly with ad agencies and doing spots and stuff like that. But whenever an opportunity came up to do some motion design or McGrath has used to be called, I jumped all over it and I realized that’s what I wanted to do. And so that led me to realizing that I had to leave that job and go freelance to pursue that.

Joke: And that’s when you get into freelance work.

Biagio: When we get to the freelance world.

Joke: This is the scary freelance world.

Biagio: Yes, I listen your your story is is so much like ours. You know because because because you come up and you realize, oh, I really want to do something and you feel like you’ve got it inside of you. You believe you can do it. And then there’s that moment where like, oh, wow, what’s next? I think a lot of our listeners feel that way. I think whether they want to try to pitch a show to us, or whether they’re just trying to break in the industry for the first time, like it is a scary, scary moment. It can be when you’re like, all right, I’m going for it.

Joey Korenman: It’s funny because I remember at the time when I was thinking of going freelance and by the way, the reason I was thinking of going freelance was because I had met a grand total of two freelancers and, and, and just, you know, I had this idea of what their lives must be like. And I kind of thought of them like, I don’t know, like post-production, MacGyver or actually, like, I think the example I use in the book is The Wolf from Pulp Fiction. Like the guy that you call in. Yeah. You know, when there’s a body you get rid of, like, you know, the specialists that would come in, do their thing, get all these like, pats on the back and respect and and get paid really well. And then they leave and then they’re off and they’re doing whatever they want.

Joke: Save the day.

Joey Korenman: So I decided to to do it. And at the time, you know, I had been working, I think for about two years. I had just met my girlfriend, who’s now my wife and mother of my children, and I told her I’m thinking of quitting this job and trying to freelance. And freelancing was such a foreign concept to everyone around me. I remember my I think my parents actually tried to talk me out of it, because that’s just not what you do. My my dad was a doctor for, you know, 35 years, you know, and sort of like showed up and went to work every day and did that thing. And so the thought that, like, you just leave that behind and you roll the dice and, and hopefully someone hires you, but maybe they won’t and then you’ll never have any money again. That’s kind of that was kind of how I felt going into it for the first time, but I was very lucky that I did it at a young enough age where, you know, my rent was like 500 bucks a month. And, you know, I could survive very well, like maybe a thousand bucks a month. And I knew all I have to do is get booked 2 or 3 days a month and I can do that. So yeah. So I jumped in. I had one freelancer that I’d kind of become buddies with who sort of recommended me. He he got offered a gig he couldn’t take. And so he sent out this email to me and like three other people, and he said, hey, I got a gig for converse and I can’t do it. And they’re a great client. Does anyone want to take it? And I was actually still at my job. And when I got that email and I quickly wrote back, yep, I’m in. I got my first freelance gig while I was still employed.

Joke: Yeah. I mean, I think the thing that your career shows and so you got to be ready when those opportunities strike right, and you got to be willing to just jump in the deep end and take it.

Biagio: You literally took that first freelance gig, and you and you, you stuck with it and follow it all the way to what was your dream at the time, which was eventually getting to the place where you were the studio owner hiring freelancers?

Joey Korenman: Correct. Now, it took a few years.

Biagio: What did happen? It didn’t happen overnight. Joey. Come on. I mean, I mean, we all want things right away.

Joke: Blow to dream.

Biagio: The instant. You don’t need the word for things.

Joey Korenman: Yeah, well, I mean, the story is even worse than that, you know, because then, obviously, once I got the studio, I realized I didn’t want the studio. But we’ll get there. We’ll get there in a little bit. But. Yeah, but I want to say something else to be about the jump to freelancing. Because when you’re on staff, one of the advantages of being on staff and there are many, is that you are not the one that has to go out and find work. Generally, that’s somebody else’s job. And so that’s nice. You don’t have to worry about that part. You can focus on your craft. Now the downside of that is if you don’t like the work that’s being brought in, you don’t have much choice in the matter. And while while the work that I was doing was cool, and I was editing and working with really talented directors and stuff like that, I was not getting as much After Effects work as I wanted, and I talked to my boss about this, and I was really, you know, 22, 23 really young and naive. And I thought, well, I’m just going to tell him this is what I want. And he’ll and he’ll think, well, this is clearly a very talented young man. I want to keep him around. I’m going to go wrangle a bunch of that work. And and to his credit, and I owe this guy my first boss. I owe him a lot. I owe him a lot of my career. I can trace back to, to some of the knowledge he gave me. He was very honest. He said, listen, I understand that this is what you want to do, and this I want you to be doing this. You know, if you want to be an After Effects artist, I want you to be an After Effects artist. But you have to realize that I’ve built a business servicing clients that aren’t asking for that. And so, you know, for me to bring that work to you, I have to turn down work that we’re getting offered, which, you know, keeps the lights on. And, and and, Joey, you’re not the only employee here, right? I mean, I think there was like 12 or 15 people there at the time. And so it made me realize that even though my boss was a great guy who wanted me to achieve all my goals, his hands were kind of tight. And so that’s the situation you’re in. If you’re in a company that’s not doing the work that you really want to be doing, it’s sometimes wishful thinking to hold out hope that one day, because you really want that work, it’ll somehow magically appear. Or you’ll tell your boss that you want that work and they’ll, you know, change their business plan to, like, make that happen. It doesn’t work that way.

Biagio: It’s so interesting because again, in the entertainment industry, you get into it because somewhere deep down in your heart, you consider yourself an artist or a craftsperson. Either way, you get into it because you want to do stuff that you’re passionate about. And when you find that you have to maybe trade stability for that passion, it puts you in a position where it’s like, well, which ultimately which is more important to me and and how much risk am I willing to take on to be creative?

Joey Korenman: Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that I try to portray in the book is that that that stability versus passion is also a little bit of an illusion, because stability, when you’re when you’re somewhere full time, stability is really I don’t know, I think illusion is the right word because your job depends on other people getting enough work to justify paying you a salary. So that stability, I don’t think is really, really there. I think you can fool yourself into thinking it is. So when you go freelance, I think it frankly is more stable because now if one company is busy, they’ll book you, but the second they’re not, go find another company that is busy and you can be juggling and managing your career and overlapping gigs and things like this where you can build sort of a much bigger net, you know, to fall into when one gig falls through than if you’re on staff. And that’s your only source of income.

Joke: Yeah, you have more control, right? You’re a little more in control of your own destiny. Because I do agree that the the on staff stability is I feel like is this illusion like you say, but that our parents perpetuated, you know, from, from decades ago where you could have a job and it would just be there until you retired. And I just don’t think that’s the case in any industry anymore, you know? So absolutely, I agree, I think that’s part of, you know, one in this business, you know, as a producer, it’s automatically already more freelance. But but being able to choose your projects and being able to, you know, not do something because you really don’t have the passion for it and maybe wait for something better to come along and let that catapult you to the next level. Is is exciting. It’s a little scary for some people. It’s not everyone’s personality, but I do think that it’s it’s a little more real as opposed to what you call the illusion.

Biagio: What’s a little more real? But also and listen, this is something especially people that want to work in documentary television or unscripted television. The fact of the matter is, 98% of the work is not staff work. I mean, it is our industry. Some people call it permanence, some people call it, you know, just just yet permanent freelance. I mean, you are literally going from company company to job the job when you’re trying to work your way up and until the day you launch your own production company, in which case then you’re just basically building clients much the same way you’re building clients as a freelancer, you’re just doing it on a bigger, more risky level. But but that’s really the only way to come up in our business. And that’s why I was so excited to talk about your book today, because the people listening to our show, a lot of them want to work in unscripted television or even just straight up, you know, scripted film. And the fact of the matter is, almost all of that work is freelance. So to all of our listeners, you know, if you want to break in the business, it’s not like, you know, if you’re trying to get into maybe some other businesses and you have the choice between freelance or not. In our business, you really don’t. You really don’t have the option. I mean, it’s almost impossible to find that staff job. Did you embrace freelancing early on.

Joke: Especially on the creative end? I think, you know, thinking about our business and woods jobs or more staff jobs. You know, if you’re working for an agency or you’re working for a studio or a network, you know, those are more the quote unquote, stable jobs. But, you know, as Joey pointed out, you know, there’s a change in the guard and, you know, you get fired, your contract doesn’t get renewed, etc., etc.. So but but I think when people think about making television the creative jobs in terms of producer, directing, editing and production design and everything that comes in there. Those are, you know, as I said, 98% freelance.

Biagio: The good news, though, Joey has got an entire book of advice to help you out in getting the freelance world. So the book is called The Freelance Manifesto. Now, Joey, there’s obviously we can’t talk about the whole book because we’d be here for we’d be here for a day or longer. So, you know, I want to talk about just two little things. One, I would like to do sort of like a brief overview, like very, very brief from your point of view of really, you know, the five phases that you talk about. And we’ve talked about them in the abstract in past podcasts, but you talk in your book about how when you’re coming up through the freelance world, you’re going to get to a place with potential clients in your career where it’s like at first or like, I know you. Then they’re like, I like you, then they trust you, then they need you, then you got to navigate your career. So without again, without giving away all your secrets in the book, because that’s what reading the book is for. Can you talk a little bit about that journey and what people should keep in mind about it?

Joey Korenman: So you mentioned the five phases in the book. So I say this in the book, there’s not really five phases to freelancing. I made this up because I wanted when people start freelancing, typically the thing they’re afraid of is the making contact, the cold call slash cold email part. And that is just one of the humps you have to get over on the road to getting booked. And so what I tried to do was break getting booked. Like that’s the end goal of freelancing is getting booked. I tried to break that down into teeny little baby steps, each of which are fairly simple. I mean, you know, there’s nothing groundbreaking about that. That’s kind of the way you should do most things in life is break big tests into small ones. So if you want someone to book you, the first thing that needs to happen is they need to know you exist. Okay, it sounds pretty obvious, but it does need to happen. And so what I see a lot of people do is, you know, they’ll put together a website, a short, you know, a reel of their work, a show reel, you know, maybe have a few full pieces, a little portfolio, and then they’ll email like the three big studios in their area or the email like the four big companies in their area, you know, HR at company. Com and then they’ll sit back and wait and then they don’t get booked and they think, this, this isn’t going to work. Right. So the first the first phase is really about identifying who in your area or you know, you can do things remotely now too, but who’s out there that could conceivably book you that has is clearly doing work that your skills are a good fit for. So there’s this whole process. It’s really in depth actually. There’s a whole phase of doing research about the person you’re contacting. There’s another really important point. You don’t contact Hasbro. What you do is you use the tools available to you, Google. And really LinkedIn has become just a really powerful tool. And you find out who at Hasbro should you contact. Then you use a few other tools while I, Norbert or Rocket Reach or Hunter, and you get that person’s email address and you do a little bit of Google stalking and you find out like, okay. Are they do they seem really friendly? Do they seem more formal? Do they have a family? Are there things about them that are similar to me? And you write them in email in a very specific way, and as long as they open that email, they know about you. Okay, cool. So that’s that’s part one.

Biagio: That’s right. And one thing I want to say really quick, Joey, this is so because remember this, this works not just for motion designers. This is something that every single filmmaker, in any single aspect of their career that they’re trying to break in, can follow this advice about doing research and being a human being.

Joke: I’ve literally, in the last five months, hired two producers through this who were sending us cold call like emails and, you know, like a resume through the mail. It was very, you know, non-aggressive. It just was like, hey, here’s who I am. And I think this is where you’re going next. But the key thing that both of these producers did next is they found someone that they know that I know, and had that person put in a good word for them. And immediately they moved to the top of the, of the, of the resume list.

Joey Korenman: Exactly. So this is the thing that artists don’t like to hear is that is that it’s not a meritocracy. It’s not right. It’s not. It’s just it’s really not, you know, the best artist.

Joke: But I want to address that, though, because it isn’t to get in the door. But once you’re in the door, it is. And I think the reason like standing up for the company owners, why is because experience matters. But your resume doesn’t give me all of that. Like, every company works different, every boss requires different things. And I’ve even had people highly recommended by people that I trust come work for me. And it doesn’t work out. And it’s just it’s not a personality fit. It’s not something else. So if I’m going to take a chance on two people who may have similar looking resumes and similar experience, I’m going to go with the person who’s got a personal connection, because it gives it at least a better chance that it’s going to work out.

Joey Korenman: Yeah, I really like the way you put that. It’s, you know, it’s not a meritocracy when you’re trying to get your foot in the door, but once you’re in, it kind of becomes a meritocracy. Although I will say this, you know, there’s a there’s a base level of proficiency that you have to have. And frankly, you don’t have to have it to get your foot in the door. But once you’re in very quickly, whoever hired you will figure out if you suck.

Biagio: Yeah, yeah.

Joey Korenman: So so you so you have to be good enough. But then even once you’re in there and I’ve seen this in my own career because I’ve most of the time I’m not the most talented person in the room. Almost never. But I have always made it my job when I was freelancing to be the most dependable and the best communicator. And so even though my After Effects chops, my design chops, my animation chops weren’t as good as somebody else’s who was literally sitting right next to me when the project we were on finished and another one popped up, I would get booked. They wouldn’t.

Joke: Yeah, but Joey, I don’t want you to undercut yourself because.

Biagio: It’s it’s.

Joke: It’s not just the skills that matter. We work in a very collaborative medium. Like, you have to be able to work together as a team. You have to be, like you said, dependable. Dependability is huge. We’re dealing with deadlines. What are you’re doing? Motion graphics or, you know, bigger, like, you know, movies or television or, you know, there’s so many things that all, you know, kind of domino effect. If someone in the beginning of the chain doesn’t meet their deadline, like everything downhill gets messed up. So, you know, being able to to work with someone who can communicate like, hey, this is going well. Or by the way, I’m seeing Red flag in two weeks. We might hit, you know, some problems in our workflow here. You know who’s dependable, where it’s like, hey, this needs to get done. And they say, I can do that and it gets done. That is just as important. And the technical skills, and I think that’s where sometimes people get messed up where it’s like, well, I’m a good writer. I’m just as good a writer as the next person. It’s like, right? But you don’t necessarily get it done on the time you need to get done. Or if there’s a problem, you don’t let me know with enough time and advance so I can address it like that’s, you know, so I think that from an employer’s perspective, we don’t just judge our people on just one particular skill set. You kind of have to have everything.

Biagio: You were dependable, you were friendly, fun to be around. You know, you made an effort to communicate with people. That goes a long way. And I think it really ties into and now I’m just kind of summing up the other steps, you know, I like you, I trust you, I need you. I mean, you, Joey, were kind of the king at that because you were friendly, you were fun. You did the work, you knew how to do it fast and efficiently. And those are the kind of things that no matter what position you’re in, you know, the owner of a company is going to respond to and they’re going to think of you and they’re going to need you because they know that not only can you get the job done. You’re not a jerk. You’re you’re easy to be around your fun. You’re fun to have in the office.

Joey Korenman: Being super nice to everybody and being fairly responsible. I mean, that’s kind of the I think the barrier to entry, you know, and I’m guessing in your world, it’s probably even more important where a lot of times you are in rooms with lots of people or you’re staying up late and you’re on sets and.

Biagio: Stuff and the months and sometimes years together. Yeah. Years.

Joke: You’re always looking for someone you want to be in the trenches with.

Biagio: Now, now, listen, one thing. So one thing that I want to talk about, I think this is all amazing. Everybody should read the book because there’s so much good advice in here, especially if you’re trying to break into film and television. The freelance route, which is how most of us did it. And you’re looking to get in either through editing or story or whatever. You can take all of these tips and apply them. But, Joey, there’s one piece of advice in your book, and it’s early on and it’s so crucial. And this is something that we’ve talked about in the podcast before. It’s even more important in our field because it’s such a weird specialized field, like you want to be an unscripted television producer. Like, what does that even mean? You know, how do you how do you prove to someone that you’re the person that can go, you know, and take an idea and turn it into something that can air on television and you have a piece of advice that you pretty much bold and highlight and right up front and stick it in people’s faces. I wholeheartedly agree with it, and that’s that. You have to do the work you want to get paid for.

Joey Korenman: Do the work you want to get paid for before someone’s paying you to do it. If you want to be a TV, you know, sort of unscripted show producer, right? And you’ve never done that, who the hell is going to hire you to do that? It doesn’t make any sense. And so if you’re right out of school and you want to produce for TV the barrier to entry to produce something that is going to be high enough quality to show a potential client that you can do it, the barrier is is basically nothing at this point. If you have a cell phone in your pocket, you have an HD or possibly 4K camera. And, you know, I’m sure like there’s free editing software, there’s iMovie that comes with every Mac. You can edit something and tell a story and show joke and Bellagio that you know how to tell stories using video. And if you’re waiting for someone to pay you to do that, before you do that, you’re going to be waiting for a very long time.

Joke: Yeah. I mean, I think absolutely. You know, within our business, you know, I, I doubt I would just hire a producer who came in with a self-produced thing as a producer for the simple fact that as we learned the hard way. Listen, we were coming up and we had just made pilot in our in our kitchen, a full blown pilot, and, you know, big time Hollywood agents thought, you know, cost tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars, which we made for 200 bucks. And we’re like, yeah, so we’re ready. Obviously. Look, we made it. We did this like, go ahead, give me a TV show. You know, and the networks are like, oh no, I’m not signing over $1 million to you. I don’t know, you know what you can and can’t do. So so it’s it’s tough. You know, it’s tough that even though, you know, you have the skills or you’ve been working on them, like you said, in your spare time and, you know, trying to get that in is that you know, what works well. And what we’ve seen work well in the business is that when you’re in on the skills that you’ve already been getting paid at, you know what that says, a PA or an AP or producer or an assistant editor, whatever it is. And now you want to, you know, move from production to post, or you want to move from one level to the next. Level up is, as you say, you know, do the job you’re getting paid for, and then look for someone to apprentice under within the company, or let them know that, hey, I’m willing and able to stay a few hours extra at the end of my day not getting paid, but to start helping out so I can gain that experience. And I would much rather hire someone from internal that I’ve already seen do the job that I know was learning on the job under us, so that I know for sure they’re going to fit right in. Then someone brand new that maybe has more credits but is brand new to the company and I don’t know how they how well they will fit. So I think your advice is a great way of moving up, especially in our business, to do what you’re you’re getting paid for. Well, and all the things we talked about in terms of being liked and trusted and needed. And then if you know where you want to go, start doing a little bit of that on the side, even with that company, to show them that you’re ready, willing and able to to take on that next position on the next show.

Joey Korenman: Yeah. What you’re always fighting is perception. I think, you know, and so if you, you know, if you’re if you’re trying to break into the TV production business, typically you’re going to start, you know, as like a PA or something like that. But if what you really want to be is an editor, you can’t just wait for someone to say, well, you seem really smart. Why don’t we start paying you? I bet you could figure out how to edit. You know what? You’re going to have to learn it, and then you’re going to have to edit stuff. And what you’re talking about joke is, is exactly the way I’ve seen a lot of people make that transition. You know, they they put in their eight hours that day as the PA, but then they stay late with the editor and, you know, and they learn. And then, you know, one day the editor is like, hey, you know what? Why don’t you take a crack at cutting this this segment right here? Let’s see how you do. Oh, hey, that wasn’t bad. Here, let me show you a few things. And then, you know, eventually you’ve got a couple of things you’ve edited, you know, and so, you know, I think it’s even harder, for example, to to go from being PA and working your way up, the chance of becoming a director. I mean, you know, that’s really hard. And I’ve seen people do it, and the only way I’ve ever seen it happen is they go out and they direct something, you know? You know, no one’s ever going to be like, well, you seem like a pretty creative person. Why don’t we see how you can, you know, here’s $30,000. Go direct something. Right. Doesn’t work that way. Right? It’s like, no, no, no, you direct something and you submit it to a film festival and you win an award. And now you are a director, you know, and and it changes the perception that the industry and your clients will have of you, but you can’t wait for it.

Joke: Yeah, it’s funny, because when we were coming up, Biagio would, you know, always give me a hard time because I refused to call myself a producer, even though we produce a lot of things on our own. I said, I will not call myself a producer until someone pays me to produce their project, so.

Biagio: Well, you know, and it’s funny because, you know, you mention obviously, director. I mean, I think when any of us get into the industry, right, we have a lot of us, at least we have this end goal in mind, you know, and whether it’s to be a film director in our business, it’s being the executive producers on an unscripted television show. You know, in the motion design industry, it may be owning your own studio, but, you know, in general, there’s sort of like this end goal where it’s like, I want to be the shot caller. I want to be the one who’s in the driver’s seat. I want to be the one who’s who’s essentially saying, I’m the chief creative visionary, you know? And a lot of people, that’s sort of where they’re aiming to get to. And it’s it’s it’s really funny because I want to I want to move into the third part of this podcast now where we talk a little bit about School of Motion. And, you know, you like many motion designers, us like many aspiring producers, you made it to the point where you owned a studio. And our business, we own a production company, you know, but you you basically you did it, you made it. You got to the pinnacle. You got to the point so many motion designers dream of being at. You’re the shot collar. You’re you’re running the company. And yet for you, in the long run, you decided you wanted to go a different direction. Tell me a little bit about that.

Joey Korenman: Sure. So there’s this really tough to read letter that this ad exec wrote. His name is he’s dead now, but his name was Lins Redding, and I think he worked at BBDO and Saatchi and a bunch of other ones, and he got diagnosed with some type of inoperable cancer. And kind of in his final days, he wrote this letter to the ad industry called It’s Not Worth It. And it was basically just ripping apart all of the, the crazy culture that and I’m using the I’m using this example because the ad agency world, I think is a really extreme version of this, where people sacrifice so many other parts of their life for work, and it’s kind of an all consuming industry. So I recommend people Google that. And that’s kind of like the most extreme version of what I’m about to say. So I we know in my early 20s and even now, I think I’m just sort of like I’m cursed with with ambition. Like I just always have. You know, I wrote an article from oceanographer about this. Like I’ve always been chasing the next level. I always want to keep, you know, finding more. And I want more success. And I want, you know, I want to make more money, and I want to do cooler work for bigger clients and have bigger budgets. And so the logical way to get there for a motion designer is to open a studio. And, you know, and the reason for that is because when you’re freelancing, you can make great money. When I was freelancing, my best year, I think I made $160,000 as a freelancer. Now, there’s no reason in the world that shouldn’t be enough. I don’t, you know, like how is right and and so and it wasn’t like, I want more money. It wasn’t like greed about the money. It was. Yeah, but the work I’m doing isn’t like that. Cool. I’ve never been featured on motion for no one. You know, other artists aren’t telling me how great my work is because it wasn’t right. So I opened a studio to chase more. And so I had these two business partners, amazing guys. They had an editorial shop in Boston that was already doing really well. They were getting asked by all their clients for motion design, but that wasn’t what they did. So they brought me on and we spun off toil, which was kind of a sister company, and I was I was the creative director, I was the lead animator. And we hired and we built up a team and built up our capabilities. And over four years, we basically developed a pretty good reputation in Boston. And we were doing national work for ad agencies, doing a lot of stuff for subway and McDonald’s and Progressive Insurance and, you know, big brands, decent budgets and all those things. And so the way the analogy I use is that I was trying to climb to the top of a mountain, and the whole time I was literally just looking down at my feet, just trying to take as many steps as fast as I could. And once I got to the top, I finally looked up and looked around at my surroundings and I said, whoops. This is the wrong mountain and right. And so. So I got there. We got to the point where we had this business that was growing and we were our work was getting better, and we had this amazing team, and I was on antidepressants and I and I was just miserable. And, you know, some of it was because of the type of work we were doing and because of the realities of being in that business. You know, I try I try not to say too many mean things about ad agencies, but I’ve just had so many bad experiences dealing with. At least in Boston, the culture of ad agencies can be pretty sociopathic. I don’t know, it’s really it’s really it can get really ugly. It can be hard.

Biagio: It sounds like.

Joey Korenman: Yeah. I mean, you know, the most for article I wrote. And by the way, for anyone listening, motion is it’s like the industry website for motion design. And so they asked me to write an article and I wrote it about this. And the story I tell was one day it was it was like a Thursday or Friday before Easter Sunday. And one of our clients called up and said, hey, we need to get this video made really quickly. It’s for the CEO and he wants to see something Monday. And so we need you guys to work all weekend and it’s Easter Sunday. And so I, I basically immediately went to my partners and I said we are going to tell them, no, we’re not doing this. It just doesn’t make any sense. I don’t care how much money they want to pay us. And my business partners disagreed. They said, no, we have to do this. This is the nature of the business. If we say no, then that’s like it’s like slapping them in the face. And I don’t know if that was true, but that was the perception. And they had been bitten enough times to believe that. And so it made me realize I just, I was in the wrong business. There were other things too, which frankly, in hindsight, were even more important. I had just had my second kid, so I had two very young kids. Massachusetts is a very expensive place to live, so our house was not anywhere near my office. It was like an hour plus train ride each way, door to door, probably an hour and a half. And that’s, you know, when the train runs on time. So I was spending a lot of time away from my family doing work that was kind of, you know, some soul sucking like to, you know, some of the work we did was really cool. But typically the work we did that was cool was the work we weren’t getting paid for, or that we were getting paid very little for. The stuff that was paying our bills was not much fun to work on. And I realized, you know, I kind of did this exercise where I was like, you know, what would be an ideal day for me? Like ten years from now, you know, what’s the weather like outside? What kind of work am I doing? Am I am I commuting into work like. And I kind of visualized my perfect day, and I realized that if I kept doing what I was doing, then my reality in ten years would be nothing like that. And I would literally, you know, so, I mean, within a few short months, I had left toilet and we moved to Florida, and I basically left the company and we sold our house and we moved. We basically blew up our old life and came to Florida to start a new one, because I realized that I had been so focused on this goal that I had set when I was like 22 or 23, and I had never looked up walking up that mountain till it was too late. You know, and had I looked up and really thought about this earlier, I don’t think I would have started toil now. You know, in hindsight, maybe, you know, school motion never would have happened. Maybe all the other great things in my life would have been different without toil. But but going through that was really difficult at the time. And I know it’s kind of a first world problem. Like to complain about having your dream job not not really being that good, but I think it’s it’s really important that that anyone who has a vision in their head of what they want to do, just evaluate it, you know, every six months, every year. Because the reality of what it is to be, you know, a, a top TV producer or a director or the lead editor on a big show, it’s not what you think it is. And it may not be, you know, being that might work well when you’re 23 and you’re not married and you don’t have a mortgage, and you can live kind of lean and mean, but when you’re, you know, 32 and you have two kids and you have a mortgage and you know, you have this family that really you care about deeply and you want to spend time with, maybe you don’t want that anymore. Maybe you need to think of something else.

Joke: As a daughter of parents who did the same thing and packed up, sold everything in Belgium, and packed up and moved to America to start a whole new life on a whole new business. And I know, you know, those those are scary moments and you don’t know, but you just have to bet on yourself. And, you know, that’s that’s the only reason we are where we are today is because we keep betting on ourselves. And and I think that, you know, the reflective part is really important because it’s easy to, to just forget and just to be like, okay, this is what I’m supposed to do next. What if it’s because society tells you or your parents tell you, or your peers tell you or or that’s just what you read in a book someday, you know, but it’s just, you know, because it is a creative industry first and foremost. You cannot be at your best creative self unless all the other pieces are in place. And so I agree. I think that, you know, sometimes doing the hardest decision ends up being the best one. So congrats. Like, you know, it’s it took it took guts. And clearly it’s paying off in more ways than one.

Biagio: It’s paying off in a lot of ways, including in my personal design esthetic. So there we go. So so let me let me tell you, Joey, I know I mentioned this a little bit earlier. I discovered School of Motion and it was the first time I found a site. And I think this is what you’re going for, Joey, where it wasn’t just about here’s a cool tutorial, you know, that’ll teach you, you know, how to make a lightning bolt. It was like, no, like, these are things you should really think about, you know, principles that you should know that most of us who came up shooting video and editing video never really had the chance to understand. Right, Joey?

Joey Korenman: Yeah. So there’s this concept I want to bring up which which you kind of hit on. And I didn’t come up with this. I got this from Scott Adams. He’s the creator of Dilbert. He he talks about this idea of having a talent stack where, you know, you’re pretty darn good. You’re not, like, amazing, but you’re pretty darn good at many things that may seem to be unrelated. And that stack of talents adds up to be astronomically valuable to you. And as a motion designer, you have to have that mentality because there are so many things to learn. So the problem that I had with with most of the stuff, not all of it, but like most of the stuff I was finding on the internet before School of Motion, was it focused on like One Piece, and typically it was focusing focusing on the software After Effects piece. Let me teach you After Effects and here’s how to do this in After Effects. That’s ignoring the fact that you also need to understand animation, which you can do with a paper and pencil, or you can do with an iPad and a penny like stop motion, right? That’s a that’s a whole separate thing. And then there’s design, which, you know, traditionally people go to school for four years to learn how to do it, and you need to be at least decent at all three of those the software, the animation and the design to be an effective motion designer. And then you can start layering on other things, some 3D skills. If you understand how to shoot, that means you’re also going to understand the compositing end a little bit more. You’re going to understand cinematography and all of these things. Once you kind of are decent at all of them, they all kind of touch each other in these weird ways. That sounded really dirty. But but I mean it. And so, you know, it kind of adds up to make you this amazing motion designer where you’re not really amazing at any one piece of it. Right? And I can imagine, you know, as a unscripted TV producer, you know, if you’re working with the lower budgets, that’s even more important.

Biagio: Absolutely. And really, I wish that that every filmmaker and it’s hard because we all jump in at different places, and a lot of times it’s pick up a camera and go. And that’s where many of us started. But if you if you can step back and almost forget everything you know and come back to the very, very basics of design and design thinking and learn to apply that to your work, it will change everything that you do. Now I do want to say, listen, Joey’s classes are amazing and they are aimed at people who want to be motion design professionals. But for those of you who are filmmakers and you’re not, you’re not necessarily sure. The great thing that Joey’s done is he’s put together again these amazing free resources. You can go the school of Motion. You can already learn so much for free. Get to know what he’s about and decide whether or not the big course is for you. In the meantime, you’re going to learn so much amazing stuff and get to know what Joey and School of Motion are all about just by visiting it. That I just wish every filmmaker out there would spend at least a little bit of time at your site.

Joey Korenman: Well, thank you. And I want to say to, you know, we’re when we started the site, the site’s not really that old. I mean, we’ve only been running these classes, I think, for about three years now. And we started sort of targeting motion designers who are already in the game. So we kind of started with these intermediate classes. Design bootcamp is not targeted at someone who doesn’t know Photoshop, you know, and I’m sure you discover like it’s a pretty difficult class. But now we’re actually starting to try to help people get into the industry and sort of wade into it a little bit without being totally thrown in the deep end. We’re actually right now we’re running a beta of a brand new class called After Effects Kickstart, which is like an intro to After Effects. We’re building Design Kickstart, which is an intro to design which would probably help a lot of people who take Design Boot camp have, you know, a little bit of an easier time with it. And, and we’re actually building a free intro to motion graphics class at the moment so that, you know, people who are curious about the way the industry works, some of the software, some of the techniques that we use can kind of come in and, you know, with very little risk, just maybe like a few hours of your time can kind of get a sense of it. And, you know, our hope is that we can just sort of expose people to it and eventually have our parents stop asking us, what is it you do?

Biagio: That’s great. Well, listen, you have been so incredibly generous with your time today. I’m a huge fan of you, huge fan of your book. You know, for anyone listening, you’ll be able to find the show notes today at Producing Unscripted 97, because it’s episode 97 and we’re going to link to Joey’s Motion Agra for article. We’ll link to School of Motion. We’re going to link to all the stuff we talked about today. But Joey, where can I send people to buy your books so that you get the most money?

Joey Korenman: Thank you for asking. So let me let me stress the book. We didn’t write the book to make a ton of money. We wrote the book because I wanted this information out there. If we break even on the book, I’ll be happy. But if you go to freelance dot, how w it’ll take you to a landing page for the book where you can find out a little bit more about what’s in it. We’ve actually had a lot of people write in, so there’s some testimonials and stuff like that. And the book is available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback format, and I think it’s like ten bucks for the Kindle, maybe 15 for the paperback. But if you read it, I hope you get a lot out of it. I mean, really do think that freelance is kind of the future. I mean, we’re in we’re living in the early days of the gig economy. And I think just having, you know, having the tools to go out and find work are going to be invaluable in the next ten years.

Biagio: Absolutely. And for those of you in our business, I’m telling you, you know, if you’re if you want to earn some money while you’re off producing your own projects and you want to break in as an editor, you want to break in as a story producer, you want to break in as almost anything. You can take the tips in this book, and you have to use your brain. Because the book is written for motion design artists like, you know, I’ve been very clear about that, but the advice is so darn good, you can take that advice and just transfer it to whatever it is you’re trying to do. Joke. Any any parting words of wisdom?

Joke: Thank you for inspiring my husband. He’s been really enjoying all of it, and we joke that he’s geeking out about it, but it really, you know, we’re excited by good work. And so when he gets inspired to, you know, get better and push his own work, it’s always it’s always fun and nice.

Biagio: Hey, we just did a pilot that I delivered last week. I had to do all the motion graphics for it coming out of design bootcamp, I can tell you I was thinking about them in a totally, totally different direction than I normally would.

Joke: I’ve never seen him Kern so much.

Biagio: Yeah, you hear that? You’re that muscle. I was hurting, I was hurting. All right, well, listen. Hey, everybody, thanks for tuning in and hanging out with us. And, Joey, please go to School of Motion side. Make sure you stop by freelance. How? And check things out. Show notes at Producing Unscripted 097. We will be back probably in another four weeks. So thank you so much for hanging out with us. And until next time.

Unidentified Voice: Bye bye. Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.