Building the Biggest VFX Asset Library in The World! ActionVFX Founder and CEO, Rodolphe Pierre-Louis | TVAP EP46

I Sold Gum. Now I Blow Things Up! With Action VFX Founder and CEO Rodolphe Pierre-Louis | TVAP EP46

I am pretty sure you've heard of Action VFX, I've used them in my own shots! So we managed to get the Founder and CEO on the show to talk about his career. It's a success story that very nearly wasn't!

This is a great one for any artists or filmmakers who are thinking of starting a business because Rodolphe has a lot of insight into how to turn FX talent into a business model, as shown by the widespread use of Action VFX elements in the industry.

Join us and follow Rodolphe's journey from filmmaker to entrepreneur.

After the interview I cheekily asked if I could get our subscribers a discount code and they very kindly agreed! Details at the end of the video.

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Chapters
00:00:00 : Preview
00:00:45 : A Special Offer for Subscribers
00:03:05 : starting in Filmmaking
00:04:24 : College Years, Freelancing
00:05:05 : My First Business
00:07:24 : The Idea for Action VVFX
00:08:36 : Things to bear in mind when shooting for Compositors
00:16:34 : The first shoot
00:19:33 : Launching on Kickstarter
00:52:15 : Advice for Starting a Business
00:56:56 : Firing Employees
01:05:00 : Plans for the future

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Transcript

0:00

it's not as simple as oh just make it go boom because there's different you know chemicals to be mixed to give different looks I think I spent basically my entire business savings on that shoot because it was going to be the shoe that would make everything happen and when that ended up happening I was faced with the choice okay well I can either sell what I have now and even if they're not very good but try to recoup some of that money that was spent or try to find a way to shoot some more and do it right this time it's funny I think I was 10 years old when my dad got us a camera and that was kind of when the fascination with film get started[Music] foreign podcast is just founded by me and Kofi and we run it as an independent thing but having spoken to action VFX for this interview they have offered all of our subscribers 15 off their products I'll be giving the code at the end of this video so stay tuned it's a great interview and if you're interested in that stay to the end welcome back to the VFX Service Podcast this week we have Rudolph Pierre Louis from action VFX it's really exciting to have you we had it took a while to get this one organized um obviously I know there's a lot going on and you're blowing [ __ ] up and so is that all we're doing but it's part of what we're doing tell us a bit about about um who you are and what you do yes so my name is Rudolph and I am the founder and CEO of action VFX and we are a visual effects stock footage company we provide different visual effects assets for movies TV shows basically anyone who needs to burn something down blow something up or not we have we also have a lot of non-action related effects as well but that's that's the business that we're in I mean I've actually as a compositor used um some of your footage and the water footage as well as fire um I just used some fire footage recently and I've used water footage in the past um as well as weird stuff like blood and and and dirt and smoke is a big popular one oh yeah you never know how much you mean so I I'm really curious about well actually let's let's roll back let's just take it way back you uh hyphen you speak Creole and French so I'm guessing your passion family or did you move to America America as a kid or yeah I was born and raised in Haiti so I moved to the states when I was 12 and I've been here ever since but but yeah originally from Haiti so you came there and you went you studied in Miami did you always live in Miami when you from when you came to the states or did you yeah when we moved we moved to Tennessee which is a bit different place for someone from Haiti to move to most people would go to a bigger city but yeah so I lived there and that's where I'm back now that's where action VFX were based in Johnson City Tennessee and but yeah I ended up going to college in Miami and it was during my college Years down there that I guess I could say the journey to what is now action VFX kind of started because it's funny I think I was 10 years old when my dad got us a camera and that was kind of when the fascination with film get started it was like oh man even I can make movies myself so I remember I got a bunch of friends together and we made a 25 minute short film which I don't know how we made a 25 minute short film that's that sounds so long now but that's kind of how the love of that got started and when I moved to the states I think a year after living in the states I must have been around 13 was when I discovered that oh you can make visual effects on your home computer like doing things like green screening and you know muzzle flashes and lightsabers and all of those stuff weren't something that you only could do if you're in Hollywood so that's kind of when I started dabbling this is great company called FX home and they used to make some really good entry-level software they've done some better stuff now but that's kind of when I got my start and just messing around with visual effects and things like that fast forward to a few years during my college Years I freelance a lot I mainly directed music videos and I did some commercials but it was mainly music videos that that I did freelance on the side and at the same time that's when I started a YouTube channel and the YouTube channel was essentially teaching visual effects tutorials and that started going well started building an audience for a little bit and uh YouTube channel name was called Rory paulus and I ended up creating rudipolis.com as a website and it was like Hey we're building an audience and I've always been very entrepreneurial so I guess someone like me like I I love business in general when I was in Middle School for example I sold gum yeah to the other students so I'm always looking for something like that so it's so dumb like how did this work how did you make it like like how much gum are we talking about uh well it's like it was a 300 profit margin business because I remember I could get four four like packs for a dollar and then I'll sell each pack for a dollar because in Middle School gum is like currency right Whoever has gum is the most popular person so I figured hey why not actually make real currency from from gum but anyways all that to say is my brain is always sagging because I love the idea of having a product and and serving a need and making it better and you know so I'm naturally wired this way so so when I started actually creating an audience from my YouTube tutorials the natural Next Step was how to monetize this like is there a product that I could provide to to the users that would actually help them and you know during that time a lot of the time when I would be editing a music video I would make my own effects for that video so it was kind of felt natural hey you know why not make stock effects one because if I can make it and use it in my projects and I couldn't make it someone could buy it they would have to spend the same time building everything from scratch so that's kind of how the thought got started so so yeah in 2011 I launched on rotipolis.com uh it was called the shootout stock pack if you go on YouTube you can still find the old promo video they weren't very good assets but my standards now but it was enough to get started I think I was selling it for like 15 bucks so so that's kind of how I got introduced to the journey of actually creating assets and selling them on the Internet and obviously back then it was very small scale what we're doing it was just me doing stuff but then fast forward four years later in 2015 was kind of when I had the idea to take things to the next level it was like okay like could could we actually make products that could be used at the highest level of production and that's kind of how work for Mac for Action VFX started and then we ended up launching in 2016. that's really interesting because I mean before that I think the only ones that you could buy that was specifically targeted at VFX artists were really like what the video co-pilot wants and they're the maximum 2K and then there was so overused that you could sort of anything of XR used to work for the world would start to recognize them they were quite good assets but you you start to go oh yeah I know that I don't know that yeah I know that blood's flat I've seen that you watch a movie and I know that uh for sure and of course you have these big companies like Shutterstock and pond5 but their target audience is not the effects artists they're selling stock footage that you use in an area as footage for your for your video so what particular um things did you have to think about when shooting four compositors so it definitely helped that I had enough visual effects experience by that time to know a little bit about how to essentially I'm the first Target customer it's like could I make something that I actually like so that that helped a little bit but the biggest thing honestly that helped make action V affects what it is now is so back in you know 2015 the very first thing I remember doing was I made the survey to essentially find out what do people actually want in VFX assets because I myself knew of the need for something like that because as you said you're seeing action essential stuff everywhere and that was the only thing and it was like okay so obviously we could use some more diversity but I really didn't want to make just just be another company doing stock assets you know from the get-go it was if this is not going to be significantly better than what is already out there if like if it's not bringing something new to the table then what's the point because it's just going to be just another another site that has some stuff but then people can't really trust it and stuff like that so so the first thing I did was uh launch the survey and I think we ended up getting about 300 uh filmmakers and professional visual effects artists uh fill it out and there was a big section on just because you couldn't make something like that multiple choice it was hey what do you need what do you want and I remember there were so many great things that some I did think of like the whole keeping things in frame because if you're shooting things too close then you know that makes it harder to composite but there are tons and tons of other great feedback that that I received then that really helped put it in perspective like okay this is what visual effects artists need and and that's been a a guiding force for us like I always say listening is our secret weapon we do try to incorporate users in every step of our process from here we think of creating a product okay cool that could make a great product it's kind of like well what does the users think about it is this something people have requested who can we talk to about this like sometimes we'll reach out to different artists and run some ideas by them because again the more we do that the more we can actually serve serve them better yeah um what sort of things um the filling in full frame uh for the anyone that's not in com but most like most of audience will probably know um it's just important if you've got a smoke element and it touches the edge of frame you know where you can't put that in the middle of the shot maybe there's just smoke on the left side of the frame but you can't put your smoke alarm on the left hand side without making a new mask so if you have the whole of the explosion or the Fire or the smoke small within frame than the advantage of course is that you can put it anywhere the disadvantage is of course you now need a bigger resolution to get the detail that you want um so when you think what other things did you get from from your artist surf I'm quite curious about that yeah it's so I I know yes staying in frame was a big one different variations was a big deal too because you know a lot of companies they focus on the pack model right like hey I just have this pack and if you just have a pack that contains everything then there's only so much variation that you can actually add to it you know our model is a bit different where we'll have specific collections centered around a specific topic so if it's ground fire for example like for that collection alone you'll get 30 different ground fires shot at different angles and different wind amounts different fire amounts so it's just all of those things that you think about because when you think of compositors in mind especially if you're trying to serve as many compositors as possible but obviously you can't just go out and you film the fire in one way because then hey that helps some people but what about the people that need a smaller fire here or windier fire there so so that definitely helped us get uh know a lot of the like what type of variations that users were actually wanting which ended up being super super useful um other feedback were the types of assets that they they really needed but weren't finding a lot out of uh back on the market like many people were investing in making a lot of smoke for example that ended up being a really something that was very popular among our users because everything could use you know some some smoke yeah you're right I mean it's it's a funny one because I think it's probably the most common thing that anyone Composites into any FX shot and yet it's overlooked as you say I mean it's kind of a bizarre one that has been it's not glamorous it's not exciting like the big explosions but good smoke is really worth a lot I mean it could just be you've got you know a a singer on stage and you've got a spotlight and you want to make it look like a real Spotlight and having a bit of smoke go through the volumetric lights is going to make them look nice it could be a it's a battlefield it could be whatever um yeah so there's definitely a lot of good use for that and and I would say one last thing from that survey specifically was in terms of how things were shot like the dynamic wrench for example like it's a lot of assets sometimes would just be super overblown and and the exposure is just not quite right so we try to retain a lot of those details so you can overexpose as needed for your shot but if let's say you're having fire in the daylight for example like realistically as you're filming that scene your your aperture would be pretty close down like the exposure wouldn't be very high at all so therefore you still out of the detail in the fire you'd see the more orange fire as opposed to the overblown white fire but then if as a company we only provide the Overexposed fire then you bring that to a daylight scene and all of a sudden it's kind of like okay this doesn't match it's super bright outside and then this fire is exposed super bright and it doesn't make sense so that was something we had to keep in mind too and again at the end of the day the goal is to just provide more flexibility and more options to users because if you're doing stock and you want to do stock well you have to just keep in mind that this cannot just help one person it needs to like how do we make something that can help multiple people so in in expanding from your view stock elements that you put on your own website to obviously running surveys having your web a big professional website filming professional libraries um I presume you had to sort of find a lot of talent and hire a few people to kind of get that going how did that how did you approach that I'm interested in your business mind of how you go about getting the right team on your project yeah no that's a great question so okay again going back to 2015 so it's still just me the Roadie paulus guy who wants to make bigger effects now and so action VFX at first it was definitely just the thought wasn't to make a completely new website and a completely new platform the thought was just hey could I make some explosions for Rudy polis that was the that was actually the plan at first and the how I was going going to do that I remembered I got in touch with some power technicians they were living in Chicago and they've worked on movies like Transformers 3 TV shows like Chicago Fire so it was like okay so these guys know how to blow things up I know how to shoot stuff so let's go and make it happen and so it was gonna be a pretty small crew it was just going to be me and then a couple friends of mine one of them was a filmmaker photographers and he was going to handle the behind the scenes of the shoot because I was like hey if we're gonna be blowing things up gotta get some good BTS footage from that hit it up dropping at the very last minute and then I went on Facebook and was like Hey I need someone to come to Chicago with me to to blow things up I don't know how people responded when they when they saw that message but Luke Thompson we who is our CEO now and he's a part owner of of action VFX as well so I didn't really know him that much but we were Facebook friends and he responded was like oh hey I'll do it so that was the first time we ended up working on a project together and of course at this stage of things he wasn't joining as CEO you know he really was just the behind the scenes guy but we work very very well together and it was like Hey you know like I could see I could see us doing more stuff in the future fast forward you know that Chicago shoot that we did was a total failure because it was the first time I was doing something at that scale and if you would have asked me I would have said that I over planned but when you're in when I'm in the shirt I realize oh no I actually didn't plan well at all there's so many unanswered questions like so many unexpected things long story short it was bad we're going to be selling any of those assets I mean I could sell them but then the mission of making something that actually was at its substantial value to the market would be missed right because it would have just been like some very average mediocre assets and I think I spent basically my entire business savings on that shoot because it was going to be the shoe that would make everything happen and when that ended up happening I was faced with the choice okay well I can either sell what I have now and even if they're not very good but try to recoup some of that money that was spent or try to find a way to shoot some more and do it right this time and it's like I'm actually glad the first shoot ended up being a failure because honestly I was thinking too small at the beginning because as I said I just wanted a cool explosion pack or whatever but that failure and having no money was like okay well I'm gonna need to find money somewhere and that's when the idea of doing a Kickstarter campaign that's when I had that idea because the thought was well okay I think what we're doing here is going to really have a lot of people so the thought was well if it is going to have a lot of people maybe this same artist would help fund this project and actually help make it happen so so yeah I ended up doing the kickstarter campaign the goal was to raise 20 000 that was our goal on Kickstarter ended up raising 59 000 which was basically three times that which was great because we did spend all of it to lunch so so I'm glad we did only raise 20 that would have been that would have been good but so yeah so it was really during the kickstarter process that's when I felt okay to do a Kickstarter you need a bigger mission to get people behind you know it's not just oh we're gonna make this product so that's when I started thinking a bit bigger and realizing action VFX really could be the place that solves this lack of diversity we have in the you know VFX stock footage market right because we could really not just be making a pack but making a new platform in our goal or ultimate Mission would be to be the best you know VFX Assets in the world but also the largest library of VFX Assets in the world like the idea was action VFX would be competing against action VFX you know so like if we release an explosions collection we're gonna want to release an explosions volume two We're Gonna Wanna release oh let's do dust explosion so let's do this so it's like even if someone was only using action VFX you would have so many different options that it wouldn't be this case of everyone's just pointing and recognizing like oh I I know this blood splatter you know it's the only one out there and stuff so so that's kind of how the vision went from being something very small to something much bigger than myself and that's when it made sense to start bringing other people on board um like I remember the fact that we raised the money on Kickstarter that was what allowed me to bring Luke on board full time at the time to actually join this and then I had a brother well I have a brother he's uh uh very talented uh software engineer and he was a CTO for you know over six years until this series Valley retired because whenever you're doing something yeah I would say whenever you're doing something in life if you can do it by yourself you're probably thinking too small because I feel like the biggest things you do need a team you do need to surround yourself with like-minded people so I don't know if I'm answering your question as you wanted uh feel free to if I'm growing obstructive feel free to let me know but that's kind of how you know the action VFX theme started being built back in 2016 so no it's fascinating I mean um yeah I think I I remember sort of seeing I found Mr Kickstarter but I remember seeing this sort of first stuff coming out I was like oh this is kind of cool and they've actually thought about all these things that other people hadn't thought about what made the first shoot a failure if you don't mind me asking what way did you why did you consider it a failure yeah it's like the the first thing is you know how they say you don't know what you don't know until you face in the situation and you realize oh wow I don't know anything the communication wasn't as clear as I thought it was because if I'm saying oh I want this type of explosion and and it needs to look like this and it needs to do this it is very easy for you to think oh the power technicians they knew exactly what I'm talking about because I I provide them them video references and all of those things but then once you get on set you realize it's not as simple as oh just make it go boom because there's different uh you know chemicals to be mixed to give different looks and different stuff and you kind of have to be on the Fly so really one of the first things I realized was this first shoe should have been there should have been like a practice round right you can't just go straight into it like that's just not how how it works there's so many unknown variables uh to that so that was a a big issue with it I think our setup overall wasn't very good for example I had assumed that hey if we just film it at night then we won't really need a backdrop or anything like that because it'll be dark and you just use a Luma key and you can just remove that black background and it's going to be you know super easy but then once you actually do it and you see how bright an explosion actually is even if it is night everything else is going to be reflected near it which means to then remove that background you have to essentially key out so much and he are part of the exposure to so it was just a mess and and yeah also being from an from another city because we're coming from Tennessee going to Chicago like this is not the type of shoot where you want to be uh on you want to be on home turf for something like that because we're we're just staying at a at a hotel and in Chicago and just hoping to capture everything right so so it was really just a lack of experience but just uh having solo experience in actually filming those large-scale live-action assets that we didn't know that we didn't know we didn't know what we should have planned for so so that's kind of what what ended up being I mean honestly the assets that we got could have sold them like I'm sure some people would have bought them I just wouldn't have been happy with it you know like in the interaction VFX website only three clips made it from that first shoot so three clips from that version were the only clips that I thought hey you know what this is this is high quality enough to to belong on action viewfx everything else went went straight to the garbage but it's interesting that you know I mean as you say you spent all your business money on that and obviously you just finished college so you had your college debts and and so you made quite quite a busy decision to just go you know what I'm I'm not I'm actually going to throw this stuff in the bin because it's not good enough for what I want to do uh do you think that paid off oh yeah for sure it's like that's that's that's what I said earlier is like I'm glad that first shoot didn't work out because assuming that first shoot worked out to my satisfaction all that would have happened is rudypolis.com would have released an explosion pack and a fire pack and then no one would care but the fact that we hid those roadblocks kind of forced us to go back to the drawing board and as I said think bigger and now we actually built a bigger brand around it and a brand that stood for something better than just oh yeah we make some stuff like other people make some stuff it's like no like our mission statement for the longest time was to to build the best and largest library of VFX Assets in the world and that's been one of the main things driving us forward so that's really interesting one of the aspects of stock footage that I find is really important um in actual production is the demo files because very often we need to propose a slap comp to the director or even internally to our supervisor and then they'll propose it to the director and we once a client is like yeah I like that look then we buy the asset so those demo files are you know a really big part it's a surprisingly big part of the of the process yeah and that was one thing when we're building our website because not many people were really doing it at that time because again most companies were just doing the pack model like we wanted to like you'll be able to see exactly what you're getting like you'll never have a surprise like oh I thought this pack would have more no you're going to see every clip every angle that we provide you'll be able to go on our website you can see it and we even have the option to download like a watermark preview and a lot of people do that they just download the preview do like a test comp with it and see okay it's like that's the asset that I want and then you know you can have more security and confidence when you're actually buying the thing so so yeah like demo footages he's a huge thing for sure and yeah just the transparency of it because as a user I would want that I don't want to buy your pack just off of your promo video like oh this video looked cool so I'm gonna take a chance it's like no like do you actually have exactly what I need that's what would work for me as a user so that's why we try to do for because it can be very specific right it's not just the quality of the asset it seems like you have um you have fires in Windows and fires going up a tree trunk and fires on a branch um you have splashes uh from I mean from different angles slightly full course you don't have like directly above that's one thing I didn't see um and I guess you don't have like an actual camera dropping into the water but there are a lot of angles in a lot of different things I just think it was I didn't find but yeah there's loads of like different angles and different kinds of debris that's falling different kinds of smoke because you've got your black smoke you've got like thin and you've got like that mist that you can you know like a a medieval kind of like yeah knights riding across the the forest kind of like Excalibur type thing so you've got all those different Vibes within the effects so there's the quality but like you say it's the specifically specific I can't even say it but yeah you said it better than me but yeah that's really important right like that idea if you need to put a fire in a window you can't just take the bonfire element and put it in the window yeah a window frame that's burning and these are some of the funnest to film actually like every time we shoot Windows that's always super cool because and it's just something about building something I mean I don't build it personally since I my hands are only for typing and and doing via facts right but but yeah it's like just seeing the structure build and then to actually take the time to work with the power technicians again to ensure hey I want this fire wrapping around the window and to do this and and the guy that we work with his name is Robert and his super awesome because anything within enough time if we explain what we want then we can build exactly oh we want some you know some fire rolling of the ceiling and coming outside of the window it's like okay let's let's make sure that happens and so shooting fire is always always super fun that's cool that makes me think I wonder uh and you can answer in the comments if you're watching uh if you you'd like us to talk to you to the your product and technician um anyone that wants to hear that then just put a comment in and let us know because we'll you know we've got we've got with all here we can maybe maybe swing something maybe hey I mean I'm sure he'd be down to to talk about blowing things up with us it's uh yeah it's just it's been a great relationship and yeah with them specifically I believe we met in 2016 and his base like his in Tennessee so he's local and yeah so since 2016 so it's been yeah seven years now we've been well six years now we've been working with him and and yeah we're blowing a lot of things up together and as a politician is do you have other technicians for the water or the other kind of type of effects that you do or no it's like because honestly like the water stuff that we did are you referring to like the water blasts and things yeah we've got water blasts and splashes but then of course the other aspect I guess um that's a big one is the weather effects so this is interesting yeah because yeah the the weather stuff like the rain when I really need to all that was done by our team like we didn't really need to like get anyone to to do anything like that we simply got on like uh Zach van Hoy he's our head of product development uh back then when we're doing that he was heavily involved in building different rigs his he's one of those Geniuses that is a very technical person but then also can do stuff with his hands it's like I always say it's like those unicorns that you never you never meet it's like what you can you're both a nerd and you can build stuff like what a man but I remember he worked a lot on building the rig for the rain and and it's like the thing is for everything that we do we know how important skill is because some things you can't fake the scale but other things you can't right it's like rain if you really want actual large-scale a wide shot of rain like if you go and look at all assets on on our website like you're not going to get that by just taking a shower head and then you know throwing it in front of a camera and say hey that's rain so I remember we had to build this this massive rig that was maybe like 30 feet in length to be like sprinkling water and stuff like that to make that happen so so that was all handled by our team because usually the things that we need license people for are the you know more dangerous stuff when it comes to anything related to pyro fire and and things like that but for most of the simpler stuff like we're we're able to Simply go go to a studio and and hand out all ourselves so yeah that's cool and then so are there any categories that you feel you're missing that you're looking to film or that you're filling at the moment yeah it's uh we've had a lot of requests for plants and trees and things and it's kind of one of those types of assets where maybe it's not the most exciting thing like oh I want some trees but at the end of the day if you're a compositor and you're building a shot a lot of the time you do wanna you know put some trees or put some bushes somewhere and a lot of times you can use that to hide some imperfections in your shot right hey maybe there's a mask that's not really working as a shirt it's like hey let's just add a little shrub shrub there and so so that's a category we're actually working on it right now and we'll be launching launching that pretty soon hopefully so that's something I'm very excited about because again we want to be the largest library and if you want to be the largest Library you have to focus Beyond simply the exciting stuff it's like what are the boring stuff that is going to still help a lot of people trees trees are hard though I mean treason bushes one one there are a lot of different trees but when someone says I need some trees it's like you can't just put a pine tree in Vietnam or you know you you eat the right kind of tree and then time of year yeah and and then of course again again scale if we're trying to make a forest you need the whole tree just like you need the whole explosion so you can make put it on little cards and put them on particles and scatter them around but then trees also have um they have Parallax within them so when you move I can't if you if you Dolly across some trees you've got Parallax between the trees which is easy you can do that with the 3D system in new core probably even after effects but in um there's that Parallax within the tree that you which is why you get so many 3D trees you know from stuff like speed trees so there's a lot going on with plants and trees uh yeah I wouldn't it's a it's an interesting one because it's potentially it's a huge one maybe the biggest one that you've ever done every plant in the world yeah but yeah and that's one thing because with everything we do we always start a bit smaller and then based on user feedback and reception like product performance then we add more and and yeah I was actually talking with with the artists that we have working on on the trees and it was like this time next year we could still be working on trees because there's so many options so many different things you can do so many different types of trees you know tropical trees ever green trees you know North American trees small trees Big Trees you know like there's winds yeah the same tree that's a wind yeah and then you've got falling leaves and and batteries yeah so that's definitely going to be a yeah there's a lot we can do it there but I'm looking forward to it because again the fact that it's 2D assets you'll still have some limitations there but the great thing is is like we'll be delivering the exr in EXO like the render passes and things like that too like I've been playing around with that and like to be able to re-light the tree however you want to fit your environment and you know using the depth pass to to the different cool things is so it's kind of like pushing the limits on the flexibility we can provide to people while still being you know a 2d file so so I think they'll they'll enjoy it a lot how are you getting the death pass on on a tree are you just using standard tools or are you filming stereo or what what's happening yeah it's like the standard tools nothing super super crazy there like it's just kind of based on the the distance of the branches essentially okay but you're not match moving the tree you've a witness cam or anything like that oh no when you obviously get feedback from your artist how do you kind of make the decision because it's a business decision right you've got like how much is this going to cost and how how many units am I going to sell so how are you collecting that data and making those those final calls yeah it's uh you're right in the sense that it is a business ad at the end of the day businesses do have to make profits and so it's it's always about finding the right balance between[Music] doing the most that you can but also knowing that hey perhaps certain things it's not the the thing to be investing in right now for example let's say we launched a new category and that's it performance in that category is just not very good at all then it's kind of harder to justify oh let's spend more times here because if it's like well the audience is saying what they need is more blood so so it's like okay well obviously we'll we'll need to do more blood because then that allows us to have the profits to do the things that sell less and and it's like it's it's interesting because with our mission statement of you know being the best and the largest the law just does imply that you have everything right like Amazon you're like yeah yeah and it's like and we know that everything can't sell as well but we do still want to do everything you know for example we have uh cigarette smoke collection you know like no one had action VFX is retiring because we have cigarette smoke but we do want to have cigarette smoke because someone will need it and people do need it even if it's not you know the highest selling thing but the only way we're able to do that is if we do a lot of the highest selling things so that's kind of the balance we have to play where hey we do need to make the money because the money allows us to actually provide the things that you know we're not going to make a ton of profits of but it's going to still help people and it's going to help us fulfill our mission which at the end of the day if we're not fulfilling our mission why exist as a company right so so that's always like that but then user feedback is a big part of it like if you go on our products page for example like there'll be a sidebar and in there you'll see uh suggest a product section and basically that cell link that'll take you to a feature of vote page where you can request new features vote on you know other assets like other suggestions that people have made so that's always a great way because again if you're running a company and you're not talking to your users you're not finding out what they want it's kind of like the blind leading the blind you you don't know what to focus on so so that feature of vote page definitely helps us no like oh wow like this is for example we're like it's been taking us longer than it should but we're wanting to get some nuclear explosions assets and stuff just set up a nuke in Tennessee yeah it's like Terrace is great for blowing a lot of things up I don't think we could do a nuke Nook there so so that's one thing we'll most likely have to do at CG but I think like it's the highest requested asset right now so it's like okay we're going to to work on that and and and make it happen so so it's a balance and then we do user surveys like if you're a customer I think like after three months or so like you'll get like a a survey from us picking your brain and stuff so so yeah I would say a lot of it is listening to our users but also just keeping in touch with actual product performance data and just finding the right balance that lets us still make a profit while also serving all customers so and what's the weirdest request you've had from your customers for an asset oh I think I think there was a random one that was like could you make snake woman please and it was like it's like uh that's hardly specific I don't I don't think I don't think that's the one that we'll be making but so yeah we've gotten some stuff like that I'm sure if I looked at the at the feature of vote page I could see some some funny stuff but well I mean that one wasn't super weird but it was still different was someone requested food effects like they're like hey like if you make during a food fight in a cafeteria or something you know we'd want like tomatoes and different things flying which I was like huh again that seems very specific I don't know if we're going to to actually film Tomatoes Splash it against the wall but hey maybe we will if there's a if there's a need for it but and that's the fun thing too is you know with everything someone requests because we're doing stock if it's too specific then you know that's not good that probably won't sell so a lot of the times we have to expand on those ideas to think like okay well how would we do this actually include more and maybe that that still helps someone so yeah I know I mean I think the specific stuff you know there's a certain point where it's like the the Film Production need to shoot something for their film if yeah if you need to stay home and you need um well you need to cast this mistake and it took a while um and then you'll get the complaints um like The Little Mermaid where it's this it's not realistic you know yeah there's so much that would go into something like that I don't I don't see it working as as stock at all no um and do you get like flocks of birds is another classic sort of DMP classic it's blocks of birds I don't know if you have them or maybe something people have asked for blocks of birds lots of bats oh yeah yeah we actually do have some birds that we release earlier this year it was kind of testing out uh animals category actually so we realized the Birds collection and a bug's collection and and yeah performance with those has been surprising so we will be investing more in that but but yeah that's usually how we do it we'll we'll start a new category and launch like a couple Collections and then see and see what people's responses are and then we go and we figure out how to make it better we're big on putting ourselves out of business It's gotta like yeah let's treat our volume one like it's the worst thing ever and try to see what we can improve for volume two so so I already know Birds Volume 2 is going to be night and day compared to our first one so does that mean you have to sometimes leave your hometown I mean if you're filming specific trees or animals or nuclear bombs I mean yeah it's like so far we haven't yet we haven't had to leave because I would say yeah so far we haven't yet well some of the plans we have for the company which not really will go into that right now but I think more traveling maybe a thing that we do eventually have to do but it's it's funny like it's been very surprising how much of action VFX we can do in Tennessee because that was also a big concern especially riding to hiring team members and like Tennessee is not known for you know film and visual effects it's kind of like you're in the middle of of nowhere at least in the sense that you're secluded from the industry right but but yeah like it's been we've been able to bring bring people to us um we're we're not too far from Atlanta for example which you know definitely has a a much larger film film industry than Tennessee so is it is it good um I guess physically to be in Tennessee I mean there I know like sometimes if you try and if you want to film in like Los Angeles you're gonna spend a lot of money on just yeah permits and things like that is it is it is there another Advantage is to just being Tennessee from that point of view oh yeah for sure and especially as an entrepreneur too because that was a that was a big reason I'm from Miami after college and moved back to Tennessee was already knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur and Miami as a city is like super expensive to live in right and as an entrepreneur you have to take risks as I mentioned with blowing the entire business savings on one shoot that didn't work out but ended up working out so yay so I went there but so so yeah I mean the fact that world relief is a much cheaper cheaper class of living which is great um tennis is great for you know no state income tax for example so it's like it's so great to pay taxes but I'll pay less taxes when I can and especially as a business owner the less you pay in taxes the more you can invest into the business the more you can invest in you know growing the team and doing more of that so so yeah like there's definitely you know some good Financial advantages of being where we are and the fact that I mean what we do I mean we sell or assess online right it's like we don't necessarily need to be in LA or in New York to make action viewfx work in fact just like you said shooting pyro stuff in in California would be a lot harder a lot more expensive than doing it in Tennessee so it's kind of like hey this this works pretty perfect for for where we are at it's like the hardest thing is just like if you're wanting to hire people with more industry experience and you want them to move to Johnson City Tennessee then that's of course a bit harder because you're not in that Hub but I mean we've we've been making it work so is everyone in your company working in the office or do you have lots of remote I know I would say I'll say maybe two two-thirds all local like in the office and then one third would be uh remote from from all over the place so cool well um first of all anyone that wants to ask further questions post them in the comments and we'll try and you know find an answer but I would like to maybe we'll do a second I review I think it would be cool I think it would be good and um yeah and then of course we can we can use our own you know our listeners questions which would be great um I guess my first my last quite a good ending question is for anyone that wants to start their own business within this industry um what what would your advice be yes so my first advice would be you have to know what game you're playing and what I mean by that is if my goal is to be a very successful visual effects artist there's different steps I'm going to need to take right those different software I'll maybe need to learn different experience I'll need to learn ad but if my goal is to start a business like it's not necessarily oh I need to go learn a software you know because and that was a mistake I did at the at the start I I remember I would have like yearly goals and it'll be like oh learn this software and then eventually I realized that I was kind of being an idiot because it's like I'm not playing the VFX artist game I'm playing the entrepreneur game and I don't need to know every software maybe I need to hire someone that knows that software but I myself don't need to do it it's like where I need to be growing is in my leadership skills management skills just business Acumen in general understanding you know more about the market and you know how to actually make good Sound business decisions things I need to be focusing on is growing the team is are we having a company and an environment where people actually want to join so so that would be my first advice is you know don't do like I did and only figure out like two years in like oh wait like I'm still thinking like I'm an artist what am I doing is like automatically know that yeah you don't need to know everything that's not what's was going to make like the same things that made you very successful as an artist is not going to be the same things that make you successful as a business owner because it's a different skill set so so that would be a big piece of advice I would say second one would be it is possible it is possible you can do it you can in fact start a business and it doesn't have to be you know this very black and white oh I need to go raise x amount of money from you know some Venture capitalists and things like that because I think you can start small like you can really start something while you have a full-time job well that's not your full-time thing and just go little by little and grow it until the time is right where it makes sense okay I'm going to to quit my main thing and do that because that's kind of what I did you know for years I was still freelancing making music videos and commercials and things like that until around 2014 was when I was like okay I've grown Roti polis enough to be able to focus on just that to try to take it to the next level so so that would be a big piece of advice just believing that it is possible and that it doesn't have to be the zero to a hundred you know instantly of course if you if you do raise more money then sure that does help speed things up a little bit or hey instead of you know taking five years maybe something could take two years or one year but at the same time at least for me the process of building you know something is just so fulfilling to see the little steps being put in place and then you can look back and think like oh wow like we've made a lot of progress like that's that's always been a bit super cool to me add and I guess last thing I would say is don't assume you know everything when it comes to the legal side of stuff because I think that's when you're starting out that's one of the first things you maybe just don't think about and it's like oh we don't need contracts it's like the word is bad and all of those things and it's like I would not I would not recommend that because don't assume that your thing is too small to to not care about those details because hey it may be small now but that's not the goal so you know five years from now when you have a multi-million dollar company did you do those early steps at the beginning that you're not screwing yourself accidentally so so that's a big thing yeah think about the bands that split up because they do exactly that they they don't think of the business side and then they hate each other because that one's taking all the money yeah yeah and that makes me think of another Point too and I'll say that one because that's something I wish someone told me early on is when you're running a business firing is as natural as hiring that's just that's just part of it like if you have to let go of someone it doesn't mean that it's a failure on your part like oh like the goal is to never have to let go of anyone it's it's like no like it's just a natural part of running a business it's by far my least favorite part of running a business like I get no enjoyment No Satisfaction at all about having to to let a team member go because I do care a lot about the team but at the same time sometimes those decisions are what's needed to for the betterment of everyone else in the company like if there's an important role and it's it needs to be fulfilled well and it's not happening in you and you don't have the courage to let that person go then the business suffers and then hey maybe the business fails and now you have to let everyone go you know you didn't really win anything there so so yeah it's a and I'm just saying that because I know like letting go of someone like firing someone no one gets enjoyment out of that well maybe there's like one person of the population that I guess in German out of that but it's like I would hope no one gets enjoyment out of that and I know it's not talked about enough to you where especially at the beginning I remember my first the first time I had to you know let go of someone it was very hard and I was very emotionally taxing because it was almost like this field this is wrong like you can let go of someone you have to keep them forever and it's it just creates like a lot of unhealthy um balance that I see in a lot of entrepreneurs so I'm mainly saying this to kind of free someone into knowing that look do your best when you're hiring take your time to make sure you bring the right person on board but it's not always going to work out but that's part of running a business it is a natural process so yeah I mean I would say sometimes uh for me like I've been made redundant and I've been fired but I've been made redundant and it was actually a positive thing I actually did a lot better as a result of that I was sort of hanging on longer than I probably should have done in that particular Comfort anyway so it was a very good thing especially being redundant because then you get a bit of money when you do it a bit of money to look for something better but um my question to you is actually when you do have to hires when you when you do have to fire someone what is your advice as the the best way to do that ethically and uh professionally mm-hmm yeah I would say I said that first thing is like at action VFX we believe in in the moment feedback so it's like a lot of companies have like the annual reviews for example and you know one we have quarterly reviews that we do so it's like four times a year we look at those things but on top of that is the idea of in the moment feedback for stuff so it's not like oh I know there's a problem you know in January and then I'm thinking oh you know in March I'll meet with this person and I will address this issue with them it's like no if you notice the problem engineering talk about it in January because at the end of the day you want to have given the person a chance to make the necessary improvements and they can't do that if you either are too scared or too undisciplined to actually talk to them about those improvements so also like it kind of starts there on are you actually communicating things communicating things right and yeah you told they're great the whole time and then fired it's easier to do that right yeah right so it's like that's that's not that wouldn't be how I would want to be treated so I would we do this to to someone else and I would say like the other thing is especially if you are kind of close to making a decision then there needs to be conversations to happen there like whether it's putting that person on a performance Improvement plan to see if you can course correct something because what you want to do is then I guess that's just how I do things naturally again because like my first instinct is not oh you need to you know fire this person it's like no it's like can can this be Salvage because at the end of the day I love sleep I love sleeping at night peacefully and I would want to know that hey I did try I did want to make this thing work and it just wasn't the the best thing have have you been able to turn it around with someone that maybe wasn't working out and it's rare but it has happened and I would say like the one person I'm thinking specifically is weren't really sure about him but then we realized that it was mainly on his current role that he was in because he had a lot of strengths in some other areas but then the role that we had them and required something different that after trying we were like okay like she can do better but he's never going to be excelling at the level that we want and we're able to actually pivot him to a slightly different role and that actually worked great because he was able to grow and eventually get a promotion in that role which was super cool to see but but yeah like but that's the thing too it's the word balance because it's it is definitely rare to like if you start having problems with someone and you're communicating and then you're still having problems with someone it's it's like it's probably not going to not going to be be fixed um I think one thing we're getting better at action VFX is you know making that decision faster because you know when I spent six months trying to fix someone and then it's like well it didn't really work out well that's spent you know maybe one or two months trying to trying to do that and and I would say the last thing we try to do is in terms of like severance pay and things like that because I mean at the end of the day a job provides income for someone an income pays their bills and things like that so it's like I've always tried to go the actual mile with you know the the sirens pay because we have the contract and the contract says I think like two weeks right but it's like I've never actually given a two-week Severance based on the contract because it's usually hey if the company is doing well and we can't afford it I do generally want that person to to have a little bit of cushion as they make the transition to to like their next job the next position somewhere else so so these are kind of like some of the things uh we keep in mind at the company to try to you know both treat the person fairly but also make the decisions that need to be made for the business to continue being successful absolutely I mean I think it's a very important subject it's a taboo subject um so I'm glad that we were able to discuss it um however I would like to end on a high note just um no but uh so my question I guess the thing is what's uh what's next um what's happening uh in the next six months yeah yeah so we definitely have a lot of cool stuff coming up one one big request with we've gotten for a few years now and I'm big on Focus so I didn't really want to focus on that too early but it's the basically 3D assets it's like we've been mainly 2D assets so I've been only 2D assets and it's kind of like well there's different things you can do with 3D whether that's like the vdbs you know alembic files or even like 3D models and things like that so that's something we've been looking into a lot a lot closer and so pretty soon we'll be able to start moving towards that and actually having more types of assets that can are we talking about scanned assets are we talking you know assets that are built completely in 3D or what do we it would be mainly speech obviously yeah yeah so so whether it's like the smoke or explosions or debris or things like that so it's because you can provide as many angles as you want for 2D stock asset that's never going to cover everything and sometimes people will just say can I just get this and play around with it so so it'll be a little bit before we launch that to the public because there's still some things to figure out in terms of properly delivering like those large cache files to to users and stuff uh it's gonna be a very big download so so we still figure out some of those tanks to to make it happen um and then later but I would say in q1 of next year one of the big things I'm looking forward to is going to be relating to because we do have some tutorials that we create because part of it too is say what value can we provide to to users and one thing we've realized is a lot of people don't have demo shots that they can just practice on because hey if I want to be a compositor and I want to learn I'm not planning on going out and with my red camera to go shoot you know a plate so that I can practice on sound like well where would you find a place to practice on and so that's kind of one of those things where we filmed so many plates for our own demo shots that were feel like oh we can just make this available to the public and you know anyone from a student to you know high school student to anyone that wants to practice something they can just find footage you know for free and just use and practice on so so that's one of those give back projects that were we're going to be doing early next year I'm really looking forward to that because yeah I think that's a that's definitely a big need for people so that's so that's awesome that sounds really exciting and it's a whole new world uh to a certain extent I'm really excited to see more of that and definitely look to get you back and hear what other people want to ask you yeah for sure so everyone please post your questions and um yeah that's amazing thank you so much for your time thanks for having me and we'll speak to you soon have a good one[Music] okay so the code is quite simple it's tvap all caps TV AP and you go into the action VFX page and there you go into the code in case you can't remember it it's on our website so when this interview goes on our website it will be there