StageRunner Podcast Ep3- Jonas Barnes

[music] Mason Fisher, we are live. And good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the State Runner Podcast. This is now Episode 3. I am particularly excited about this episode. I will quickly set the table for people who are not familiar with our format. I am here with Gannon Murphy, my good friend and colleague. We are going to do a quick 20, 25 minute jag on everything that is happening. Headlines in the entertainment, media space specifically focused on what is happening in production around the globe. And everything else, everything from AI. But specifically today, we got one word that I think we are going to be repeating over and over again. And that is micro dramas. Everybody, I think it's been hearing this word a lot. But at the end of this hour in whatever interview that you did with our incredible guests, Jonas Barnes. I think people are going to really dig this interview as an amazing conversation that you had. And just real quickly on Jonas Barnes, if you haven't heard that name, Jonas is a traditional media guy comes out of original films and has successfully transitioned over to the micro drama space, founding a company called Pixel USA. It's like Pixie Dust, not Pixel. Oh, sir. So yeah, a word that I think you're going to hear a lot today. But we've been also hearing a lot and reading a lot about is micro dramas. God, this is a funny format and it's strange. It's almost like AI. People have really strong feelings about this format, right? For whatever reason. And I guess we can get into maybe a couple of those reasons. But people feel strongly about this format. But I'm excited. Maybe we can pull back the curtain on a lot of both the creative and the business side of it with the conversation that you had with Jonas Barnes. Jonas is a guy who comes out of traditional media working at original films, kind of a traditional development guy. And he left there to start a company called Pixie USA, which is a prod co studio soon to be also distributor of micro dramas. And so you guys you guys stick around here this conversation. And Ganon does an incredible job of really breaking down the business with Jonas, understanding how it works. Is there money there are people watching these things in the US. We hear so much about them around the world and specifically in China and everyone's getting rich. And this is the new thing of things. But you know, my own sort of anecdotal evidence is minimal to none. And so for me, I can't understand who is watching these things. Every now and then I do a post on it for stage runner. And we get incredible engagement. Half the people three quarters of the people are saying, I don't understand this is anyone watching these things. And then every now and then you get people from all demos, ages, locations here in the US who say, I love these things. These are my stories when I'm on the subway. I plough through them young older. There are people who I don't want to say they're fanatical about them, but they feel like they're their stories. So you know, it does feel like you know, these things might be catching on. I don't know if to the extent that you know, certainly the headlines warrant. But a very interesting topic long winded way of saying you have stick around because when our little Jack here is over, Ganon and Jonas jump into a great conversation. But now let's let's jump into the headlines, Ganon. So why don't you take it away. All right, well, everyone will get to hear all about my conversation with Jonas in a little while, but in terms of what's happening today or in the recent past. Yeah, a couple of things that I wanted to talk about. I guess I went out and saw Devil Wars, Prada 2. I'm not going to, you know, have any problems admitting that I'm a fanboy sometimes when it comes to that kind of content. And it is a smash hit right 77 million domestic 234 million worldwide opening. I want to talk about the fact that it's clear to anyone who's tracking this industry that milking IP is the business of the legacy studios, whether it's fast and furious for TV spin offs or one. It's arguably one too many. But the majors are going are going to continue to milk every last penny out of established IP and it makes perfect sense. There is no reason for them to deviate from that because it works and that's the part I want to talk about. I'm curious what you're taking is because as much as we complain and I'm using the broad editorial we on this as consumers complain about the same piece of IP, the same tried and true being trotted out again and again. Why are they going back to see it? Why are the numbers now not every project obviously corners that kind of opening box of a weekend. But it's it's a business and the business is working. So what motivation of the studios really have Jason to stop doing that such a juicy question right there. You're right. It's like heroin. They cannot keep themselves away from it. And you know in an industry where these box offices are so unpredictable. Having a title and a cast who's coming back for you know rolling it back one more time. It's just too hard to ignore and you know getting those somewhat predictable returns. But you know in the case you say with devil wears Prada, you know they I'm sure looked at the numbers in every way and every different department at the studio and said, you know no brainer let's let's do it if we can get the cast deals done. We can get the distribution we can figure out the windowing. You know it's just a no brainer but all of that said I was listening to Josh Demaro our new CEO at Disney, you know talking about he had his first earnings call a few weeks ago. He's got these these you know the sort of typical you know first earnings call presentation where he's got these sort of three pillars of excellence for the company going forward. And one of you know I think it was the first main pillar that he talked about was creating terrific IP that can generate and grow our flywheel. And so the devil wears Prada that is not the kind of thing that is going to continue to grow a flywheel and so when you look at a company like Disney or you know even Warner Brothers universal where these guys and gals are not going to be able to simply rely on you know box office windowing. You know to ultimately get to streaming and then have it disappear forever these guys are under more and more pressure to build original franchises so something that I wanted to ask you about is your take on the labor contracts all getting buttoned up you know fairly quickly early and and seemingly not a lot of blood in the streets certainly wasn't a repeat of 2023 certainly wasn't the sort of threat that we had in 24. We got through this but how and why curious we thoughts are how and why I think can both be summed up with one really pretty short answer one is nobody wants to go through this again when the industry as a whole did this whatever exactly three years ago right I think across the board the entire industry felt like they lost I think we all lost. But directors what we saw was maybe the studios playing this very shrewdly it makes me sad to say in that my quick summary is they said this is what you guys want we understand that we hear you and we're happily sign that and then we will pack our bags and head to somewhere else that doesn't have unions and because now we're in a global economy where tax incentives outside the US are more favorable and oftentimes currency exchanges are more favorable infrastructure is abundant talented crews are now global and abundant and so if you are in a union right now you know you really have to ask yourself what is our competitive advantage and how do we make sure that we're not not only not pricing our selves out of the market but now God how do we get everybody back for me this is an example of labor being fully aware that AI is about to eat their lunch and the phrase that I would use is just kick the can that's this entire contract is built around ambiguous language intentionally meant to allow litigation and case law to solve a problem and here is my take on that who's going to win this litigation the multinational conglomerate or labor who's just trying to sort of patch together pension and welfare it's going to be the language is intentionally left ambiguous it's going to be very hard for them to battle based on the phrases that I read where essentially the companies the studio is just have to have a proof of significant added value this is like a most ambiguous term of ever Those three words strum together mean nothing, very, very intentionally, an articulatable business reason to show significant additional value. Okay, great. So show me how I'm wrong. That's what Disney's going to say. If you think about, if you rewind the tape just slightly, Duncan Crabschie Eierland, the lead rep for Screen Actors Guild for SAG, he went into this initially, maybe a year ago, talking about the Tilly Tax. They wanted to tax AI usage. Explain what the Tilly Tax is. Sure. So I can't recall what Tilly's other name is because she's not a real human, by the way. Tilly Norwood, thank you. She's synthetic, so I just know her is Tilly. But she's a, I believe it's Dutch model created a synthetic actress named Tilly Norwood. And the actual efficacy and the broad use and scope of her work is pretty limited. It's not like, I mean, I couldn't even remember her name. So it's not like I've seen a ton of Tilly's work, but she was a lightning rod. As it was sort of one of the first times everyone could point to an example of this technology has advanced enough to where this could reasonably replace human beings. And so Duncan Crabschie Eierland went into the negotiations initially saying, I need to see attacks every time synthetic actors are used. And Tilly was just sort of the, the nomadic air. It was sort of the reference. But not only was there no Tilly Tax achieved, they backed into this kind of super ambiguous language that we were just talking about. So yeah, I mean, I think the reality is that they traded the future of human performance for a pinching top up. That's what this came down to. And I wouldn't call that a real deal. I would say that's a timeline and it's a handcuff. Yeah, I'm very curious to see. Well, obviously, AI is moving evolving so rapidly. And I think both sides, I've kind of admitted to each other that no one has any idea what the world is going to look like six months, three years, four years down the road. And so I'm not sure that they had much choice in this specific area. There was just nothing else to do if one to get a deal done. Yeah, I think you have to move that to the side. I couldn't agree more and I'm not beating up. Let me be real clear. I'm not beating up any of the negotiators on labor side or any of my friends that work in labor or the necessity. I just think it's very telling. And I think that we're sort of at that point where everyone was rejoicing the contracts for sign and we're just going to move on. But it's one of those cases where the repercussions will be very evident in months years to come. And everyone will point back at 2026 and this last round of labor negotiations as insert phrase here. I don't want to say they're getting at the end because it's not necessary that but a seismic change. So I think it's just worth pointing out. And something else worth pointing out, I think in terms of AI usage, you take the sort of high paid above the line talent, like actors, writers, etc. And let's look at some of the, you know, rank and file. Let's look at the non-union rank and file. I saw this interesting article about PAs, that's production assistance, office PAs in particular, running around studio backed productions, utilizing AI models, various LLMs at their, you know, sort of women fancy to get the job done. And I think that the premise here is these are day hires. This is the sort of most easily replaced position on any film or television set. And I'm not speaking to their lack of talent or their lack of ability or even future because most every producer I know started his PAs. So I'm just speaking to the fact that the reality is that's the sort of churn in that job where you're just told not to come back tomorrow or you're dismissed outright based on any number of kind of silly mistakes or whatever the case may be. A bad mood, some bad coffee. My point being those members of that working class are most incentivized to do whatever it takes, right? Just to get the job done and to get ahead and have an edge. And so of course, I would use every tool available to me. I think what's super interesting about that is on the other end, all the major studios are continuing to develop LL restrictions guidelines. But what is actually happening on the ground is always in my experience. And I've got a few years of experience always quite divergent from what the corporate mandates are. So it's just interesting because I think with AI, that's going to even widen the gap. It's such an interesting point you bring up because when I have a lot of conversations at the studio level and then independent producers, independent prodcos. And we're at this really interesting moment right now where indie producers and indie prodcos, I think, are much more diving in headfirst into the AI space. And the studios are doing the exact opposite. They seem terrified across the board of AI for a number of reasons. I think first and foremost, you know, the studios are aware that these models have been trained on their own material and their own libraries. And those AI, video, voice, copy, you know, trained on scripts from all of the great artists that these studios work with. And so we've seen incredible backlash from, you know, the high end talent. And so the studios don't want to do anything to disrupt those relationships, which obviously are their bread and butter going back to the very beginning part of this conversation and writing, producing, directing those big franchise films. And so it is worth it for them to stay as far away from AI right now until there is really a much more called protectable, safe, provably clean model. And so what that has done is it means that you've got lots of guys and gals, producers who are going out there and taking advantage of these current models, pushing them to the extreme, experimenting with them, you know, filming with with real actors, filming with AI actors, you know, building real sets, using digital sets, using virtual production, but testing the limits of these models in every possible way, which I think in this current moment, I think somebody's going to break out with a piece of material, you know, whether it's a show or an animated show or a movie that looks like a giant blockbuster that was done for $14. And I don't think it's going to be from a studio. I think it's going to be, you know, it could be from a YouTuber or it could also be from, you know, an independent prod co in some other country, you know, in the UK or India, wherever. I think we're going to see something really special soon from the people that are pushing the boundaries with the technology. And so if I were the studios, I would be really trying to figure out how to navigate the space, trying to partner with people that they feel comfortable with or hiring people to build models that they believe are protectable from, you know, code one and a really interesting moment because I think we are probably months away from seeing somebody do something really special. And I think it's going to come from someplace other than the big five media companies. Totally agree. And I think that's actually a great segue to bring the state runner podcast listeners into Jonas Barnes, because I think this is a perfect example of someone who is an, you know, was an insider is an outsider, call it a Trojan horse situation, but Jonas has identified a niche market identified a business opportunity. And as you'll hear in the interview, it's no holds barred. He's not worried about hurting feelings or doing it the old way. Jonas is very interested in monetizing product. And I think it's going to be really interesting to listen to. So thanks for the the back and forth as usual and I'm looking forward to everybody sticking around. Yeah, you guys please stick around. It's a fascinating conversation. You guys, if you're very curious about how the creative works on a micro drama, how you can get your own micro drama going distribution, financial model, really interesting stuff. So stick around. And on top of that, we've got some big announcements coming up in the next two weeks for our next round of guests. I think you guys are going to be really excited to see conversations that we're going to be having this summer. So hopefully you guys are following all things stage runner podcasts. Absolutely. All right. Thanks Jason. Thanks. Yeah. The entertainment business is fragmenting not just at the top at every level. The mid budget is gone. The development pipeline is clogged and the audience that Hollywood spent a century training is quietly picked up their phone and started watching something else entirely. If you work in this business, you already know something is shifted and how content gets made and how it gets seen and who it gets made for. I'm getting Murphy and this is the stage runner podcast Jason Fisher and I are here to help you see around the corner to unpack the contraction, the new formats, the technology and the opportunities hiding inside of all of it. Go ahead and subscribe and follow wherever you're watching or listening so you don't miss out on what's coming next. Today's guest spent over two decades inside major studio filmmaking, fast and furious Spider-Man working alongside producer Neil Moritz at the highest levels of the business and then he pivoted completely. Jonas Barnes is now building micro dramas mobile first, minute and a half episodic content brand funded, pay well monetized and quietly attracting serious attention from the studios that he used to work for. In this conversation we talk about what micro dramas actually are, who's watching them, why, what the economics look like and what it means when a guy with Jonas's credits decides this is where the real opportunity is. This is the stage runner podcast. All right, welcome to stage runner podcast. podcast is again, and worthy from State Runner podcast. And I am here today with Jonas Barnes from Pixie USA. Super excited to have you, Jonas. Thanks so much for taking the time. We're gonna talk about one of my favorite new subjects, which is the micro drama market. I know you're an expert. You've also got a ton of practical experience in the traditional production world, which I'm really wanna dig into. So let's get started, Jonas. - All right, thanks for having me. This is super exciting. I've always loved your guys show. So I'm the big fan. I appreciate it. So Jason Fisher over at State Runner and I, one of the mantras our streaming was supposed to save Hollywood, but instead it broke the pipeline. I'm not really sure where it's all headed. That's what you're gonna tell us today. But I definitely know we are at a shift for all of us in the production industry, whether our listeners are in the space, in legacy media, whether they're in the space as owners and operators of assets, whether they're interested creators that are just trying to figure out what the space is and how it's being defined. I think the one thing that's common amongst all of us is that what you're doing and all of what the new media is doing to our industry is probably where the opportunity is. So I'd love you to start off by telling us a little bit about the past, Jonas. Tell us what got us into traditional media in your background. - I was lucky enough to work for a very big producer for a number of years. His name is Neil Moritz. I worked for him for over two decades. It was a great house to work in. We made, you know, fast and furious and Sonic the Hedgehog and a bunch of very commercial feature films. Neil's still one of the guys today that is turning out hits for the studios. So a testament to his commercial acumen, but also like to, you know, the fact that like, that's what's selling at the moment and what people are, you know, the studios are focused on. - Yeah, we're sorry I didn't wrap it up, but I was gonna say from that experience with Neil and in that environment, how much of that traditional production experience is a part of your workload today? How much of that are you bringing with you? - The original film is really, you know, a development first, right? We were a poster first company, trailer second, kind of what's the film third? The film itself is obviously, the product itself is integral and then we spent a tremendous amount of time trying to make fantastic product. But, you know, the focus was always like, do we have something to sell? Do we have something to size in later to what I'm looking at with Michael dramas or what I'm doing with Michael dramas? The focus was always, can we make a poster out of it? Right? And can we make a poster without a movie star on it? If you go and look at a lot of these films from this era, they don't have big movie stars on them. They have a high concept idea that has a kind of built in audience that was, you know, excited about it and so on and so forth. As far as physical production, you know, those movies are $100 million. So it's a very different style of filmmaking. I've always been, I've made really low budget films, I made a horror movie for $650,000 back in the day that did, you know, $12 million in box office, things like that. You know, I've always been under the belief that it's not really about money a lot of times, that it's really about having a vision and being able to execute on it. And I find, you know, the reliance on money tends to get in the way quite a bit when you're making big features and such 'cause it's just like you throw money at the problem as opposed to like sitting down and trying to figure it out. So, you know, I think great films are not necessarily budget based, but more like was there a good plan in place and was there like a good execution of that plan to make it good. And then also like this is everybody on the same page, right? Like does everybody know the movie that they're making? I think those are all huge things in whatever level production you're gonna do. So the microjamas that we work on right now are much smaller crews, much much smaller crews and people are doing kind of what you would think of in the big feature business as multiple jobs, right? But they also have ownership over something. And they also, because of the time, that's it. Like there's no time to kind of bigger and fight about things. You just have to make decisions and move forward. Once again, that comes with everybody be on the same page and having the big plan and understanding what that is. - Yeah, it sounds like I'm hearing a ninja-like ability to adapt, right? So this high pressure, high stakes environment where everyone has to bite, learn how to, as you put it, get on the same page, stand the same team. And that sounds very adaptable to the environment you're in now where the stakes maybe economically aren't the same budget wise, right? But this just drops off to get done and you've learned a lot of tools over time that you can apply from that world into this world. That's what I just heard. - What's great about micro dramas is that, yes, there's this lower level of needing to hand in like super high quality, you know, there's a lot of forgiveness within the business. And then partially, part of that feeds into why people are so excited about it. The high end stuff is not people, stuff people want to watch on their cell phone. They will watch it and I'm not saying they won't, but you know, for the most part, when people want to go watch Fastifurious, they're not jonesing to watch it on their cell phone. They're jonesing to watch it and a big, on a theater, on a big screen, with a full sound, so on and so forth. You know, and then there's TV like I worked on Ozark, Ozark, you want to sit down and you're living room with Watch Ozark. You know what's also a, you're gonna sit down for an hour and watch Ozark. You're gonna watch Fastifurious for two hours. Microdromas are really designed for the cell phone. They're designed for mobile and they're designed in smaller bits because people are walking around doing other things and the commitment level of watching a minute and a half is not a big commitment. Right? Knowing that there's gonna be an act break in a minute and a half, you're like, oh, I could just check out an act or two or three, grab the most people into watching the whole thing and one sitting, but they're designed so that, you know, the consumer is really thinking, oh, I'm only gonna have to commit a minute and a half to this. I'm not gonna have to commit it while I'm at a period of time. Is that because we have no attention span left? No, no, it's really about where you're watching it and what format you're watching it in. You know, look, we've all, I mean, Microdromas in a way are replacing Doom's scrolling. So, you know, we've all gone on the cell phone and gone on YouTube or gone on TikTok, you know, to look up, you know, I mean, what recently just happened to me, I was changing like the faucet to my kitchen and I needed to look up like something on YouTube. I wanna have later, I'm watching like, you know, dogs catching frisbees videos, right? And I still haven't changed anything on the sink. So, you know, these algorithms are designed to kind of suck you in and feed you things, but also when it ends up happening is now after that hour and a half, I feel like I've burned an hour and a half my life and I don't know where it went. Microdromas are replacing that in terms of, you're getting an actual story and you feel like there's some sort of value that you got out of that. You actually watch the little movie and, you know, I mean, these things are 90 minutes long so it's not like a little movie, but you feel like you got some real value out of it after the viewing process. And from a number of the consumers I've talked to, women mostly, you know, that's what it's exciting about them is that you can watch a little movie here and there, you know, during their lunch break, you know, while they're waiting to pick up the kids, it's sitting in the doctor's office. They can do all these things. They can watch a microdroma there and not feel like, oh, I have to watch a whole hour of a big hit show, you know, JFK's Jr show or whatever it is that, you know, it's hot at the moment for them. - I was curious and I want to talk about the New York experience more in a bit, but since you brought it up, where are you getting the demos? But it's the same thing I hear as well in terms of the gender breakdown, but who's providing those studies? What are you seeing or are you doing your own studies or hiring that out or reading the trades? How do we know kind of where it lands? - Well, the microdromal market basically came out of a lot of these apps that are microdroma apps originally had basically romance novels, apps. So they took, they were started taking their romance novels and romance novels had been around forever. I mean, Fabio in the '80s was famous for them, right? Like, it's a business that's been around forever, makes a ton of money, but it's really not that talked about. I mean, we see movies like Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight, those are the bigger end versions of them, but there's an entire marketplace of romance novels geared towards women that, you know, you pick up a CVS, you buy at the airport, like there's a huge market of it. Microdroma stem out of that market. So they're basically live action romance novels. That, and so those are, the romance novels were always geared towards women. They have a 10% men focus, but for the most part, the female focused. So you went into this understanding kind of the market and those in the microdroma space were already aware of that legacy, right? That legacy market and adopting into, it's usually a new technology to tap it at the same time. They were literally taking their romance novels and transitioning into live action, right? Yeah, shoots. And you know, what's, it's also, you know, like, I mean, a lot of these things are, you know, considered like guilty pleasures, right? It's these things that people are reading, women are reading. And there's kind of, I don't want to say secretly reading, but it's not something that's shared a lot within communities. I think the romance novel business, it's shared a little bit more. Microdromas themselves aren't really a crazy shared thing. I think, you know, when I was first pitching investors on our company, one of the things I said to them, because most of them were men and they had never heard of Microdromas, much less seen one. And I said, go home and ask your wife. If she has it, get out your checkbook. You know, and about half of them came back and said, yeah, my wife watches them. Not only that, I had no idea. You know, so it's a market that really feeds to a very specific consumer, but it's a consumer base that I don't think a lot of people are aware how big it is. You know, I'm not sure. So let me look, a whole mark is similar to it, and whole mark does extremely well, right? Like it's the same because it's super based. I did a little research before we started and just for, you know, state runner podcasts listeners that aren't aware of how large the market is. Obdia, which is a global research firm, put out of studies saying it was an $11 billion market last year alone. We're talking about a market that could grow to 14, 15 billion this year and double that size by 2030 and the same, the study that the times of India put out. So this is not an insignificant market whatsoever. I think it's something like a billion, a billion, five in domestic US consumption alone between the different. And I want to hear a little bit before. And the US is the fastest growing market. I mean, it's, you know, the reason I jumped in. Yeah, that's great. I saw a little just happening. I want to talk about why you pivoted and what you saw. But before we move on, if we just roll back two seconds to your previous career, I mean, just because you have, for me, I think that the podcast listeners are super interested in sort of those that have made the choice to actively transition, right? From from one cell immediately to the next. And so I think it's super relevant and you've got this great experience. I was curious. Did Neil original films, that group, are they involved? Have you seen them take a look at a differentiation in this new media space? Or is that something you're doing outside of that? Who in your old camp also has transitioned into the world with you as it were? What are you seeing out there amongst your colleagues? I would say about half a Hollywood is working on these right now in Los Angeles, at least. There's a fair amount of them being shot here in Georgia, which is where I live and produce most of my movies. But they're doing it quietly. I think most of them are waiting, you know, and we're talking about high-end showrunners, big-time writers, directors. People who just hadn't worked in a long time and they needed to put bread on the table. So a lot of times they'll put a fake name on these movies. They'll, you know what I mean. So once again, I have to be careful. And really what everybody's trying to do is not, they don't want to be, I think a lot of them don't want to be associated with it. I think a lot of people were surprised when I announced that I was pushing into this because of where I came from. Still himself is, I don't think he's involved in the micro-drama market. I haven't heard anything. I haven't been with the company for almost a year and a half now. But, you know, Neil pushed into the Creator economy with the whaler business, working with, I think anybody who wants to make money this day and age with content needs to look at the Creator business needs to look at how social plays into what we're doing, you know. And what we'll get into the dynamics of how a micro-drama works later. But, you know, for the most part, the content creator business is a huge business. You know, you look at somebody like Darman who I just had the pleasure of meeting at this the last thing I did with Denso. You know, he owns sound stages in Los Angeles. Everybody else in Los Angeles is struggling to rent out their sound stages. He owns them. He's bought them. And he's expanding, probably buying more right now. Right? A format that's making a ton of money. And I think because traditional Hollywood is always kind of snubbed its nose at it, it's unwilling to kind of walk across the line. Right? I think that's changing. I think that's going to change. I am now consulting with three different studios. I don't want to mention their names, but they're big studios. You know, some of the biggest in the world. And they're all looking at the model themselves. They don't understand it. Most of what I'm doing are informationals with them. So they just get a grasp of why the business model is crazy and why they're making so much money. I mean, these micro dramas are making incredible amount of money. And I think that's what really people are missing is that like there's an opportunity here to really, and there's no cap on it. Like we're looking at like one market right now, right? The rate of its market. There's multiple other markets to push into on this. I think that's, I mean, you've clearly got your finger on the pulse of where creative and commerce intersect. And I think that's super interesting that there are both creatives that are quiet about the production. And there are consumers that maybe aren't as vocal. It's this untapped kind of quiet sort of river of commerce occurring sort of right below our noses, right? And you so let's talk about that. You made the pivot. That's all happening. What was the light bulb moment or what were the series of items, the flags that indicated you should pivot? You should make this pivot into the space. Well, I was trying to solve a problem. So I feel like any really good business is trying to solve a, trying to offer a solution to a problem. I was trying to sell branded entertainment for Neil and my latter parts of working with him. So basically we had made, you know, fast, furious, sonic the hedgehog, you know, a number of films. And all these films sell a tremendous amount of products. And so I would go out and like me with big companies, Ford, MasterCard, a lot of these big companies. And they were very interested in making a feature film or making a television show. And you know, I have the backing of Neil, who's one of the top producers, also one of the top guys in terms of like turning out content that makes money. Right? You know, most producers are like 25% win rate, kneels like an 80s. It's absolutely like wild. But you know, one of the big problems that I ran into was film and TV just takes so long within our certain, our current structure of it. Right? TV. I mean, there's a million gatekeepers to get through before you actually get to a yes. And with feature films, I mean, the soonest you're going to be able to get a movie usually into a theater is three years. So those two factors, you know, it just made it really difficult for a CMO who is looking at a three to six month window basically, you know, that he has to perform in or she has to perform in, right? That, you know, they have to do something now. They can't wait that long time, that amount of time. Now, Sega is a Japanese company and I think they look at a more long term vision of a company as opposed to an American company who looks at a shorter term. What, you know, we got to get the stock price up today, right? Anyway, so I kept running into that issue. And then I was looking for a solution. I'm looking for a faster way to turn out movies and TV shows and so on and so forth. And then I started seeing, you know, I track a lot of things that are happening overseas, a lot of TV and movies and things that are happening in elsewhere. And I saw this microtronum starting to pop up and I started seeing them pop up the United States of America. And then I looked at them and I was, and I fell upon an article that basically said like these companies go from zero to $300 million overnight. And I was like, what, and then you know, look at the product and you're like, with these products, like, who's paying for this? So I did a really deep dive and then what it also real realizes, these things are made in three to six months. So the turnaround time, and that's like you're getting your money back in your pocket within three to six months. So the turnaround time of this was like perfect for brands. It was like, oh, this fits into that brand model where they need to have advertising that goes out in a three to six month window. You know, they are planning in the future too. But like the most part when they're going to pull the trigger on something, they're going to spend money on something that's going to happen now. So I just kind of had a light bulb moment of like, oh wow, this could be a perfect market for brands. This little system right here could be a perfect market for brands. It took me about nine months to actually get a brand to sign on and to do it because no one knew what they were. So I was doing a ton of information. I was just trying to get people to understand the market. I think the real light bulb moment for the brand was Procter & Gamble, who's the first ton, the first big feature version of this. It's just kind of what I'm famous for at the moment. You know, I basically said to them, these are Procter & Gamble invented the soap opera. And I said to them, these are the modern day soap operas. And they went, oh, we know what these are. Right? So you know, Procter & Gamble makes great soap operas to this day. The On the Gades, Fantastic soap opera, you know, hits a certain demo. So they grasp that idea real fast. And I think brands that understand that, you know, you know, are certain to come up more. I mean, I'm talking to 20 brands at the moment about these things, you know, after the Procter & Gamble thing and then after the Wall Street Journal, you know, article, like brands are really starting to like take a look at these as like a way to advertise to the consumer without, without hitting them over the head when they had it. Right. So that, you know, that I'm glad you brought up the Wall Street Journal article. It was a great read if the podcast listeners haven't had a chance. Take a look at explains. I come off. Okay. That is a come off. You came across incredibly, thoroughly engaged and, and formed. And that's that in these days, that's the best thing you can ask for. So what I would say is that you mentioned some brands that, you know, all of us know maybe well, a lot of the C-Drunner podcast listeners aren't as aware of are the brands in your space. So maybe you could touch on sort of where pixie falls, you know, it's, whether it's a production company, an aggregator, a distributor, and then who some of the other, the names of all can get banded around real short. or drama box, maybe you could name some of the other players in the space and sort of wear pixie fits in in that ecosystem. - So we're mostly a development and production company at the moment. We are looking at, we also build a technology a platform for brands that allows them to have the micro drama on basically a website. The website's designed to look like a micro drama app, but it also has shopping connected to it for the brand. So it drives the consumer from internet, from social media to a website where they watch the micro drama, come back for more and more episodes, and then when they're ready to purchase, the brand is top of mind, which is this basic simple idea. I am working with it a couple of the different bigger micro drama apps and bringing brands to them. I'm also working with, you know, a lot of times I'll work with the brand and kind of take the thing to them afterwards. So all this is relatively happening in the last like five months. So there's not a lot of examples I can point to at the moment with this, and also I have to sign like a crazy amount of ideas and other stuff with these brands. They don't want, you know, I'm, when I'm building into these micro dramas are brand themes. I'm building, building in brand stories. It's not just regular product placement. I'm really taking the brand and I'm making it part of the story. It was something that Neil did very successfully with the Fast Furious franchise and a number of other things. And it's always, I feel it's a better approach to get the brand involved early and have them be part of this story that's moving forward. 'Cause they're more comfortable and then they're more excited about it also and they want to push it further with their socials and everything else. So, you know, we work from brands from the very beginning of Inception, we pitched them out a few different ideas. We work with them on the script, on casting, making sure that all the people involved are all vetted so on and so forth. And then we handle physical production for them. And what's really important about the physical production is that how the brand is foreseen in the show. They're very particular about, oh, did the label get seen? Did the, you know, like, what's it next to? All these things are super important to the brand. Micro-drama companies in general don't work on a timeline that allows brands to be that involved with the production. And one of the things I think, you know, that a lot of these companies-- Sorry, I didn't know that, but just to add a curiosity. So, you mean they're super precious with how the brand is portrayed, right? That's their stewards of their brand, but you mentioned they're not, the timeline doesn't allow them as much involvement. They dig into that, what do you mean? Well, so a micro-drama, let me just go through a lot. Micro-dramas are made extremely fast. And when I say made extremely fast, like, I would say from inception to handing to delivering the film and putting it on, putting it on the app, I would say you have sometimes 12 to 16 weeks, you know, turnaround, meaning you're writing scripts in two weeks. Pre-production is one to two weeks at the max. Production is two weeks, and then, you know, production is-- I don't know any, you have gone past 10 days. And then you're editing them, you actually start editing on set, by the way. Like, we have it, our editor, there's also our DIT person. They literally go, grab the card, downloading it, start editing it right then and there. It has two different functions, and make sure that we have what we need for the day and that it looks okay. But at the same time, it also helps us with our first assembly. So that by the time we're done shooting, now we almost have our first assembly done. And then we get into the editing process and then we get into the trailers and all the other pieces of it that are deliverables. In that three month window or 16 week window, that is for an entire-- maybe tell the podcast listeners, that's for an entire show, and it's broken down into how many, you know, by size episodes. What did that look like for the consumer? Oh, yes, I guess so. Sorry, I probably should have walked. So a microdrama is really a feature film. And it's a feature film, though, that's been written in such a way that it can be every minute and a half, there's kind of an act break to it. And these act breaks generally have a cliffhanger out the end of it. So there's a hook that hooks you into the beginning of the episode and an act in a cliffhanger at the end of the episode. That all happens within a minute and a half, generally. So you now have a feature film that's been cut into basically on average 60 pieces. The Golden Paraphaire was 55 pieces, right? You have these 60 pieces. And then what you do is you take the first five of them and you put them on social media. And so the consumers physically is watching the actual show. But they're watching it in pieces, you know, one episode at a time. And they click through and they watch the next episode. And if you want to watch episode number six, they go to the app. And within the app, they get to watch another five episodes for free. And then when they get to episode number 11, they hit a paywall. And it's at this paywall where they make a decision of where they want to keep watching or, you know, or they want to, you know, they maybe look at a different story or something like that, right? So I'm really delivering feature films within that period of time. And the only way you're doing that is you're just doing with speed and focus and, you know, having understanding of those moments within the film that you're selling and with, you know, having teams of people that understand the focus. What one of the big issues I had early on was I tried to bring in traditional screenwriters. And traditional screenwriters have learned a craft over a long period of time of how to set up, you know, characters and structure. You know, micro dramas a lot of times start in the second act. So there's not a lot of character setup. It's like you're thrown into that second act upside down this. And we have to establish the characters though, still in that timeline. So you have a minute, two minutes maybe, sometimes up to three minutes for, you know, a writer to establish a character, establish something crazy is happening that the viewer needs to be hooked in by and get us into a place where we're following the story. So it's a lot to do. And traditional screenwriters, I originally struggled with it. Now there's classes, now there's things that they can go do, you know, I work with a lot of writers on how structure works and things like that. Mostly because I'm always looking for talented people that, you know, there's a lot of demand. I mean, the bigger companies that you had mentioned earlier, they're making 200 of these things a year. That's a lot of work for a screenwriter. That's a lot of work for directors. That's a lot of work for actors, right? And they don't pay incredibly well, but the work is consistent. So a lot of people are doing them and taking the work and getting a weekly paycheck. That's definitely keeping the lights on, which, you know, in Los Angeles is a tough thing right now. No, in a time, this is, you know, for listeners that aren't aware of what the industry is facing in general, the headwinds, you know, took up any other issue of the Wall Street Journal or any other, I mean, the WSA ran an article just yesterday, right, about the headwinds industry is facing. So anyone who listens, who's already in the business knows, it's a tough time as an operator, as a crew member, as an owner. So you're definitely filling a gap in a time when people need the work. I'd love to hear a little bit more. That's interesting that the script writers had to learn a new craft or a way to express the same craft differently. Who else in that ecosystem of production be it crew above the line below the line? Does it just curious who else adapted well? Who else adapted poorly? Who was quick to jump on? I need to learn something. What's tough about this business? We dealt with it a little bit about like, with original film. You know, a lot of people, you know, who like like, especially in Los Angeles, the coastal cities, they're really big into like, oh, I watched a Nora or I watched, you know, some Academy Award, Enemy Winning Thing, right? And we were making commercial stuff for the flyover states, right, which is where the real market's at. Like that's where the real money is at if you're trying to make money in the film a TV business. You know, so I was used to people kind of snuffing their nose at what we did to begin with. I think crew kind of falls into two buckets. There's people who have worked in the industry for a long time that are fantastic at their craft, right? Fantastic customers and grips and electricians and everything. And you know, I think they're frustrated that the big business is not around anymore. And so they kind of work on these things begrudgingly. But then you have this new generation that doesn't know that era, right? They weren't around when there was sick residuals on, you know, Charlie's Angels, right? They weren't around when, you know, they're coming up and they're seeing, you know, a lot of the writers I work with are very young writers, right? They just don't know. They haven't taught something. They don't know anything else. They came up in an era where YouTube is the big thing, right? They come up in an era where TikTok and Instagram are those are their stars, by the way, too. You know, we work with a lot of content creators right now. They have huge following, millions of people following them, right? Those are the stars that these kids recognize. They don't know people from our era that like, you know, we would consider like traditional movie stars. I have conversations with them and I'm kind of a centiphyl. So I'll mention Miller's Crossing or something like that and they'll just stare at me blankly. Like, you know, who are you talking about? Like, you know, so there's two basic things. two different actors themselves are really the ones that are benefiting the most out of this era. Because these actors, you know, a lot of these actors, directors, writers, you used to spend your whole time trying to get the job. 90% of your life was pitching yourself and auditioning and stuff. You know, these actors, once they get into the system with these micro dramas, they work almost non-stop. They're doing, right? They're, you know, they're stars. I mean, Nick Rottaka, who is absolutely one of the top stars in the business who I got lucky enough to work with on the, uh, the Proctor Gamble one, you know, he's done over 50 micro dramas. That means he's done 50 movies, right? Think about that for half a second. He's an actor who's done 50 plus movies. By the way, that's an astronomical amount of work. Number one, number two, just think about the reps he's got in with that. Think about the number, you know what I mean? Like he's been able to hone a craft while doing the craft. You know, that's an exciting thing. It's an exciting thing for a writer to really work on scripts and get paid for it. You know, one of the kids I used to, I used to mentor a lot of young people coming out of USC, one be writers and directors and stuff. And, you know, I used to say them, like, you got to write 20 scripts in order to get one sold. You know, now these guys are writing one script. Getting a sold and writing 20 more on, you know, and getting paid for it. Now, granted, they're not getting giant WGA checks and health insurance and all that with it. But they're basically being able to learn a craft, which is about speed and time or precision. And then one day when they do sell that big script, that WGA script, you know, the turnaround time and so on. They're able to learn how to burn off stuff and, you know, get, be an effective writer in a very short amount of time. The traditional Hollywood production system is based on, is, you know, unionized crews that are very departmentalized, that are very specific, right? Right. You learn a craft. You mentioned them earlier departments, whether you're a griff or a camera person. You don't touch each other's equipment. It's a very specialized, and it's depending on jurisdiction, some of those may be blended, but what you described was a jack of all trades environment. People wear a lot of hats, move very quickly, stay, stay versus. How much of it is, I'm assuming you unionized versus unionized is an issue in the microdrama space. Can you walk me through whether it's a delicate issue or you're just in the head on and then before you answer that question, if anyone doesn't know that the Coen Brothers best film is Miller Crossy, you should go watch it tonight because it's my favorite one by far. But please proceed. I only brought that up today, by the way, because one of my LLCs is up is down entertainment, which is Miller's Crossy. You give me the high hat over here. You're giving me the high hat. Of his down black is white. You can quote the movie all day long. So good. These things are made for $200,000 on average. So there's nothing really for a lot of these unions to get out of it. I am working with a couple of the bigger studios, as I mentioned earlier. We are doing stuff based on pre-existing properties. So we're doing like the microdrama version of a lot of these properties and that requires us to do sag and requires us to do that. Quick question there up. It's just for clarity sake and then please rewind a second. But you're talking about established IP, established studio IP. We recognize all that we might know. So if you don't mind then you're rewinding. I mean, look, I'll talk about Warner Brothers for a second. Well, the Brothers is $60 billion in debt or something. I don't even know. It's something crazy like that. So why is Paramount looking at buying them? They're buying them because of the IP. They're buying them because they own Superman. And Harry Potter and all these other fantastic things. But beyond those big studios are sitting on insane amounts of shows that are super recognizable, feature films that are super recognizable. And they're now not making hardly anything anymore compared to what they used to make. So there's an opportunity right now for them to basically start making IP that's based on famous things. Now, the shows I'm talking about right now are existing shows that they want to do spin off someone. So right is currently working on these shows, actors currently working on these shows. And the discussion is how do we do a version of what the studios are looking at these things are now is because when they do make a TV show or a feature film, right, it's a lot of money. And it's a big gamble at the moment. But micro dramas are a way to basically have a farm team. So that makes sense. Like that's a baseball tournament. I don't know. All your people are going to use it. But it's a basically a way to start establishing characters. Start establishing, you know, storylines, things like that and test things out in a much lower interest. Right. Yeah. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work and we move on. I mean, the micro drama business itself is based on numbers. So I mentioned like that 200 number earlier, right? I would say it's a lot, it's very much similar to the Blohmhaus model and multiple other models. There, the model basically is we make 200 of these things. 100 of them don't work and we walk away and we don't put marketing behind them. The next 40% are break even or make it a little bit of money and then about 10, 20% of them are breakout hits. And these hits make a tremendous amount of money, cover the budgets of everything else and you know, so and so forth. So you know, because of the entry level, it's basically a way to get build new actors, build new directors, build new writers and have them be really seasoned by the time that they have to make the big product. One production could take 12 to 16 weeks. It costs how much per production and employees, how many people roughly. I'm just going to give averages right now of all this because it varies wildly, right? I've seen micro dramas made for $75,000. I've seen micro dramas made for $500,000. Some of this other stuff, I mean, I've also seen stuff that goes well up in the, but that's I'm just going to use regular numbers. No, I would say the average micro drama company is making you for roughly $200,000. Saying that some of them are 150, some of them are 450, you know, that I think it all averages out to about $200,000. And if I'll just pause for only to put that in context for a stage runner podcast listener that doesn't know that, you know, an episodic, maybe a super high end one on a premium could be, you know, 10 or 20 million in episode. I mean, these numbers have also changed depending on what it is. You know, back in the day for C.J. it might be a $2 million for an episodic. So it's a fraction of cost. Oh, yeah. A wedding. I worked on linear television. I worked on chief of war. I think that was like 15 million in episode, right? You know, I just, yeah. So these are made for a fraction of what other content is made for. The real money goes into the marketing of them. The marketing, they spend about 90% of the, what they spend on the show is spent in marketing. Well, I'm just curious about the, about the crew size only because one or two. Oh, yeah. The crew size. I would say roughly, I mean, you're spending roughly 12,000 a day on a crew. So, you know, for one or two, these are averages, so on and so forth. I do something very different with the brands and stuff like that. I have a lot of different deliverables and things I have to keep an eye on. I'm just sitting this for consumers from people who are looking maybe to go get into this business right now with so on and so forth. You're spending about 12 to 15 a day on a crew, you know, that average is out to 10 days. So 120,000 just for just for the, you know, for crew, right? And then you put out tack on top of that actors, writers, producers, things like that. You know, you're getting up, that's how you get up to the 200,000 dollar number. All right. So, let's spin it back to previously because this is really interesting and I understand you, a lot of this is blanketed by NDA, whether it's, you know, literal or just metaphorical, you can't speak of it yet. So, you'll hold back what you need to, but I would love you to say what you can in terms of those numbers represent the milieu, the environment you're in now. But now, if I'm going to see Harry Potter, micro dramas or the pit, micro drama, it's going to change the numbers dramatically. So, talk to me about how that's going. I mean, those conversations and where it's headed. I see this as the beginning of a market and not for what they are right now. Meaning, to me, the delivery system is what is important that the system I talked about of delivering them on social and driving them to an app. Now, this is the first of many markets with this, the romance novel market. There's going to be a tremendous amount of other horror market, comedy market. There's a bunch of big markets out there that this could work for. That's number one. Number two, they're made for 200 now, but they're getting competitive. And when you get competitive, you need to start spending in a different way, right? You need to focus more. And then also, within this market, they're starting to become celebrities. They're not necessarily celebrities you and I would know. Like, as just a normal person walking around, they're not like Brad Pitt celebrities, but there's celebrities within the micro drama world. And I for see a $5 million micro drama being made one day, a $20 million micro drama being one day. I don't think that the current budgets stay where they're at forever. I think that once the business models figured out, we're working with a number of American companies right now that are really pushing into this. And I think once these companies figure out how to, the sales and the model and all of that of it, I think the spending goes up. I do think maybe it goes into a union place. day, I don't know, it's really hard to make Union stuff right now. I live in Georgia, it's a very quiet place at the moment, unfortunately, used to be brimming with just production non-stop. I'm actually at Trillest studios at the moment, hanging out, and that's why I work at. These don't rely upon film incentives, which is pretty wild. These don't rely upon like, they're shot non-union, they're shot all-location a lot of times in Los Angeles. Whereas other productions have to move out of the country in order to be affordable. So I foresee these things going when, as they get more and more valuable and as people start to understand the system and the model and that's what I'll part, big part of what I'm doing is educating players in Hollywood on what these things are and how they could be a good business for them. I don't see them as a, I think a lot of people are looking at them as like, taking away from the film business or taking away from the TV business. Those businesses have already taken a hit. It wasn't because of microtronomers. It was because consumers are looking, they look at content in a different way than the traditional model. And I see this as a new business, a new entertainment business. And I see that as like the infancy of it. You know, I mean, if I were to told you 12 years ago that there's a kid on YouTube that spends like $5 million on 20 minutes of footage, you would have thought I was crazy. But that's what Mr. B spends today to make a video. You know, blow up trains or whatever he's doing on it. There's a model for it now where it works. The monetization works. And I think as artists in Hollywood and, and, you know, I follow a lot into this category myself sometimes is that we forget that like if no one's buying it, you know, there's no business there. Right? So like, what are people buying? What are they excited about? You know, we have, we've evolved. I mean, back when I was in the film business, when I started in the film business, I cut my first movie on a guillotine. If I said that to a 20-year-old today, they'd be like, you try to cut off your finger. What are you talking about? Right? They might know like the reference to like, you know, cutting off heads in French, whatever because of the French revolution. They might be thinking about it, but they wouldn't know. They wouldn't know. That's how you used to cut a movie. That's how you cut a movie. To be clear, he was not cladding a movie with the same guillotine they have in France. Yeah. Huts of heads. Just for anybody who's still confused on that different guillotine altogether. Different guillotine. It's like smaller one. You cut a finger maybe with it. I don't know. But I can't remember. It's still so long ago. But, you know, they had used the guillotine for 80 years or 100 years of filmmaking right up into that point. And then then at that point, by the way, I'm slow to market. Like, my school was slow to market at least. You know, James Cameron was already doing special effects and all kinds of other stuff with computers at that point. Right? Like, you know, when I was coming to a school, like, you know, I came up in an era where you physically had a print a script, put grads in it, do a whole page count because God forbid the machine to print out all the pages and then run it to a director. And then there's golden rod changes and there's salmon changes. Oh yeah. Yeah. Look, we're both dating our cell phone. I was at UCLA and my college job got me through UCLA University. It was a projectionist. So I remember cutting film real to real and setting up on the platters on Wilshire, the new Wilshire. And that's long, it's a long gone art. In fact, it's a long gone theater. I'm all in on the shift of technology and the tools and actually definitely before we leave want to talk about the AI and tech stack in general because how right? But back to the if I were to say, I wholeheartedly dream the cool aid. I see this heart this this aspect of the business growing and it's show business not show friends so groundbreaking money off this. Then, you know, I don't know what you're doing. But if I bought wholeheartedly into that, I would also point to some asked experiences and say, well, what happened to Quibi since years ago? Oh, I mean, I could tell you exactly what happened to Quibi. Quibi was a trying to make really high-end stuff, right? You know, it's a cat's and work. I mean, that's, you know, that's his frame of reference is paying Antoine Fuqua $100,000 a minute and trying to put it on an app. You know, as I mentioned earlier, the consumer actually doesn't want to watch Antoine Fuqua on an app. The consumer wants to watch Antoine Fuqua on a movie theater, right? I don't know why I keep saying Antoine Fuqua. But you can't want to be saying, he's a famous filmmaker that you want to watch on a big screen, maybe on a television, but you're real joy. I'll use James Cameron because he won't care. James Cameron, you want to watch on a big screen. You want to watch Avatar on a big screen. Watching it on your iPhone almost feels like dirty in a way, right? Because it's meant for the big screen. It's big. It's sound. It's music. It's fantastic. Microdromas are designed for your cell phone. And they're designed that the low budgets, the low budget feel of them. The, I don't want to say trashy feel of them or like the salacious lines or that those are really designed to capture an audience that sits around watching YouTube videos and Instagram videos all day where you, I mean, you have to like really hook people in with attention as a content creator in this era to get people to stay on your thing. That's what it's designed for. It's not designed for like slow beat out Miller's Crossing, right? Like if you know a consumer's watching Miller's Crossing on an iPhone, like that defeats the purpose of Miller's Crossing, you know? And I think Quibi was trying to really do that high-end stuff on their app. Also, the delivery system, it didn't start with social. It started with making trailers traditional marketing for the consumer audience. So in a way, it was effectively competing with Netflix, right? Whereas these are not competing with Netflix. These are not competing with, they're competing with YouTube. They're competing with Instagram. They're competing with, which is why TikTok has now launched their own. Because they're like, oh, they're taking our consumers and they're putting them somewhere else on another app. Let's just launch it out. We can keep the consumers on our app. It is a good idea, but the execution of it, people want to say this before their time. I just think it was not understanding the audience that it was trying to connect with at the time. Yeah, you're kind of portraying it as almost sort of top-heavy versus a grassroots movement, right? Both in terms of marketing and spend. Well, it's just, if you really think about what you watch on an iPhone, right? Like think about what you're really watching on an iPhone. You know? A lot of it is very short for them. A lot of it is very catchy. A lot of it is like, you know, these big content careers I've mentioned misdebes because once again, these like the top of the food chain. But they've entire departments that just think of like what the thumbnail is. That's it. That's the whole job. It's what is the thumbnail to get the people to click on this thing, right? It's a very different thing than a feature film or television show that is a lot slower. I mean, like, can you imagine a show like Madman, right? Like, how slow that pacing is, especially in that first episode or two? Like you lose the current audience in like half a second. They're just, they're not going to sit around. They'll sit around in a TV room. I think that's what Quibi ran into. Once again, I don't know. I wasn't there. You know, I didn't see it. But they burned through a billion and a half dollars in six months, right? Like, they were obviously working hard to try and get the consumer to, you know, connect with it. And for some reason, it just, it didn't work out. I would make those two assumptions that that's what knowing what I understand about the current vertical market and how it works, you know, those are the things I would make the assumptions on. I always say I'm not afraid of big Hollywood getting to these things because big Hollywood wants to transform them into big Hollywood. You know, they want to do the Cazenburg version. You know, the people who are dangerous in this world, the people who understand the creator economy. What are the, in the current environment, then what are the business economics? How do you define success? What metrics are you using to define success? And what are the unit economics in terms of how it's monetized? Where's the revenue drawn from? We know what expenses are like. So how you make them on it? Oh, well, once you hit a paywall, the, which I mentioned earlier, you know, you get from the traditional social media to the app to hitting a paywall. Once they hit a paywall, they're asked to buy coins or a subscription. Subscriptions are like 20 bucks a week. Coins are, I don't know, coins are, but they're, it's more like a, a gamification. And the consumer ends up spending between 20 and 80 dollars to watch the rest of the film. Is it better for the provider if they go to some ships around or the, or the Alicara route? Or is there a preference from the provider? Obviously. What's funny? Understanding the consumer. So, you know, we all have like too many apps. We all have too many things, we know, Hulu and Paramount Plus and all this sort of stuff, right? And as it, and I said before, like, this is kind of short. This is non-committal. So, the majority of the purchases are through the tokens, the gamification. Because they can buy the thing, they don't have a subscription, they have to worry about. They can watch one or two episodes and move on. Right? They're not committed to like, you know, along the bottom process. But what it also does is because it's, you know, it's like, you know, you can make a ton of money selling something small repetitively. Right? You know, I mean, I see a line down the block every day of Starbucks and I'm like, that's a six, seven dollar copy that somebody's buying it's at this time, but they're just buying insane amount of them. And then, you know, it's something that people buy once, twice, three times a day. So yeah, the economics are fantastic. The margins are really great. They don't all make money. As I mentioned before, like half of them, I would say lose a lot of money. And then the next half of them are break even or just make an insane amount of money. But like you said before, I mean, look, if you're bad, you 500 and entertainment business in general, you're doing better than most. So that's that's successful. How else do you gauge economics success for your company anyway, Pixie? And is it a, is it always meant to be a standalone company? Are you seeking solidation coming down the road? How does that work? I mean, we're growing pretty fast. I would, you know, I think that's what you're asking. Like, you know, we're looking at a bunch of different things. We're talking to multiple different investors at the moment that are interested in the market and growing it. You know, we, we really worked towards building the product into the into the storyline. And having it be part of, you know, a character in the storyline. So for us that the approach is a bit different. It's, it's not like a normal, you know, like a drama. But that means those first, we really try to get the brand in at least three of the first five episodes, but those are the episodes that are living on social. So if those episodes get viewed a crazy amount, that's great for the brand. Even though I'm not, we're not technically bringing in revenue off of it. It's driving people to see the brand and to have it be top of mind when there's a, they're going to purchase whatever that product is. You know, in this case, it was skin care and and shampoos, right? Body scrub was the was the big hero item because I could fit, you know, the treasure in it. But so yeah, it's a little bit different for me with with the consumer. And what I, you know, what, what's a win for me? Because I went on, if the brand wins, I win. And if they go to the, if they make a lot of money in this thing, the brand and us win. So, you know, it's, I'm approaching it if way. And by the way, I, I foresee an era where there's no one charging for these things. They're completely brand financed, right? I see a bunch of different arrows coming within this, this model. There's, there's a bunch of different ways this could go. But you think the brand equity drive is strong enough for it to be a loss leader for a brand, you know, they're willing to produce just to know that brand is out there. I know it. I have two clients right now who want these completely live on their social channels to drive traffic to their social channels. So instead of trying to put up an ad every other day or like, you know, hey, we did this thing or that thing, this would just be a consistent storyline that we could keep the consumer coming back to their social channels and keep them top of mind. Right? If you're approaching things from a brand's perspective, a brand is really what they're really dealing with advertising is keeping themselves top of mind. You know, we all know where McDonald's isn't home, right? But McDonald's makes a point of like keeping themselves top of mind with you so that when you are ready to have a hamburger, that's what you think of immediately when you think of hamburger, you think of McDonald's, right? The same thing for all these other brands. It's it's soaps, cars, everything is how do we be top of mind when the consumer's ready to purchase? Social media is a great area because people are constantly on their all day. You know, I forget what the numbers are now, but like, it's like something like two hours a day, the average person spends on social media. It's something wild like that. So, you know, if you're capturing audience and once again, these women are looking for, and I think men are looking for this as well. I'm just, we haven't talked into that market yet. They're looking for something that has a little bit more substance to it. And they're looking for something that they feel has a little bit more value than doom scrolling and seeing like, you know, some sort of crazy viral thing. By the way, I do viral content. So I'm kind of attacking my own stuff, but they're really looking for things that keep an audience coming back for more and more and more. And Michael, John, it does that. It's like, what's the storyline next week? So our simple model for them right now is we release five a week. Yeah. Then the consumer knows there's another five coming next week. When they come back, they then they view them and it doesn't interrupt. They don't have to throw an ad at them to interrupt the, they're, they're viewing process of their entertainment, which is another big thing for consumers these days. They just, they get, especially the younger generation, they get really frustrated by ads. They grew up without them for the most part. A lot of them have ad blockers. I think something like 70% of them have ad blockers, 99% of almost skipped the ad if possible. And not only that on top of it. If, and this is for that generation that I would say under 20s under 2526, if an ad interrupts their entertainment, they will go out of their way to not buy the product. So not only is your ad like getting skipped and all this other stuff, if it interrupts, it might not get purchased because you interrupted their entertainment. At a pierced by I'm going to show them. Yeah. So, you know, because they have multiple choices today too. Every product has multiple choices, you know, to it. So this is a way to keep the consumer coming back to your webpage, to your, you know, and keep viewing it and viewing it and viewing it again. And then when they're ready to purchase the shampoo or the toothbrush or the car or whatever else you're selling, right? Your top of mind because like, oh, you have an association of something good with that brand. So a lot of the state runner listeners come to the platform because they're curious how AIs affecting either the workload of filmmaking or even completely shifting. The distribution production, the motive of filmmaking debate, believe me as an industry or the industry that used to exist in the mytheir drama space. How much AI is currently used in your workflows or you see using competitors workflows. Where do you see AI? I look, I think the big conversation always is AI going to replace writers, directors and actors. Right. I've used AI technology now in ways to fix things, set design, crops. That is absolutely like a lifesaver. I think it's going to really affect a lot of the business moving forward. In terms of, you know, there's no AI sound stages that I forget you and I talked about. But like, there's sound stages that are completely AI. And it's not a green screen and it's not a volume stage. It's literally an environment where the actor can walk around and you can, you know, you can go around them 360 and you're still in the same environment. It's pretty amazing. And also, if you want to get rid of a couch in a room, you push button. You want the lighting to change, you push button. It's all it's all preset. So I think that's going to really disrupt the market. But I don't think it's going to disrupt traditional feature film and television for a long time. I think for companies like mine that are making stuff at a really low price point, but a trying to increase quality genuinely. It's an absolute lifesaver because I do want the consumer to have the best quality product for what we're doing. And I want the actors to have freedom and I want everybody to get paid that is on set. And I don't want to have to spend that on locations and other things that I don't want to have to like go out of my way to pay up for things. Be, you know, that would traditionally be expensive are now becoming much cheaper. One of the examples in the golden pair is the diamond in the golden pair. The diamond arrived on set the day of shooting like we had ordered a special diamond and arrived. It was this day to tell everybody with a golden parents real quick. Oh, the golden parents, the show I did for Parker and Gable. We were able to fix the diamond with AI. So, you know, I would have to reshoot things. I would have had like I was looking at CGI. I was looking at a couple different like things and I came across like a top AI guy and he's like, just let me take a hit at it. And it doesn't affect the actors performance. It doesn't affect anything else around there. It just fixes the diamond. Right. And I think that's a kind of cool thing is that when there is a real problem like try to do it. I think you should always try to do everything practically if you can. Right. But if there is an issue with it, you don't have to throw away the scene now. You don't have to go back and spend another three days shooting it. You can you can make adjustments now. And I think that's where I really plays into the skirt marketplace. What would your advice be for those that are in traditional media that have owned a craft of rears and seeing all the change? Yeah. I mean, look, there's always been changes in this business, right? You know, I remember when we changed over from actual shooting on actual film to digital. There was a whole bunch of uproar about it. I'll never do this and I'll never do that. If you shot on film today, you're you're you're being like a centipile or something. You know, like it's just not done because it's harder to fix everything in the in the computer. Personally, I think, you know, it'd be good to learn a craft is more based on the future, right? Like I think those. pieces of it, but they've already gone away in a lot of ways. There's just a lot less content made. A lot less than this era is getting made. And I think all those traditional film and TV jobs, every one of the big studios is, I mean, Netflix just bought the $600 million AI company that's an editing company, right? Like, that's basically to replace editors. You know, it probably helps enhance whoever the one editor is. You don't have a team of editors. You can have one editor. And that one person can guide the thing because it's not a bunch of legwork involved in it. I would push into these new technologies. The new technologies help people become more efficient. And I'm looking for people constantly that are looking at new technologies and able to show me new technologies, right? I'm not looking for people to replace. I'm looking for people that can handle that piece. And it will just be cut. It's just done in a different way. It's just from like learning how to shoot it, like learning how to cut a film on a guillotine, and learning how to cut a film on a computer, right? I'm sure at one point there was a guy, and he was the best guy at cutting a film on a guillotine. Yeah, and I agree. And then there's a ton of opportunity out there. People have to add adaptation is always gonna be a struggle for some and an opportunity for others, right? Yeah, and there's the bottom line. It's, I was considered myself somebody who'd like tried to look at what the future is. Sometimes way too out and far in the future. You know, so, but yeah, it's, there's always gonna be some sort of new technology that's disruptive. Then we're gonna go through an error of it, and then things will settle down again. And we'll move back into a new process. That was a really good hour plus for me. I really appreciate it. I learned a ton about something that I'm just aware of, but you definitely took me deep into the weeds on it. And I think it's fascinating. I think the business opportunities in microdramas are fascinating. I think some of the things you told us about in terms of where it could go, versus where it is today, were really interesting. So yeah, I appreciate your time. Congratulations on your success. Of course, thanks for having me. Absolutely. (upbeat music)