Working as a Director at a Boutique Video Production Agency with Eden Martinez

Kevin: (00:02)

Hello there. This is Kevin Barber and I am the host of the visual impact podcast. Today we have Eden Martinez on the show. Eden is a branded content specialist, and she’s worked with numerous campaigns like the nine 11 Memorial and museum, Cornell, veraison, Zeiss, the legendary optics manufacturer and many others. She’s also worked with tons of A-list clients like Rosie Perez, John Cleese, Susan Sarandon, Robert de Niro, and the list goes on. She’s also a fictional film maker and her films have played at film festivals around the country. She brings a ton of value to the show, because we’re able to discuss her experience working with agencies as a director and the producer on branded content and then also the carryover of working as a fictional filmmaker and how that informs her work in commercial and corporate world. And I think in particular she has a unique way of approaching how you can quantify the qualitative elements of video production process and communicate that to your clients to help prioritize the team building, and what parts of the process are invested in. And then also how you go through the development process, how you emphasize strategy and story crafting. And she brings all of that together in a really, really clear and an exciting way for, for anyone who’s involved in the process. So I encourage you to check out the show notes, if you want to see more of the specifics of what we talk about and jump to a certain point. But more so I encourage you to listen to the whole conversation and get the full shebang. So without further ado, here is our exciting, thorough conversation with Eden Martinez.

Kevin: (01:44)

All right, so today we are here with Eden Martinez. Eden and I worked together, uh, going back a little bit on a, a brand, would you call it a branded film project?

Eden

Branded content

Kevin

We did the color together, but that’s only a small, small range of what Eden does. She bridges the gap between the fictional filmmaker world and the corporate directing producing. Would you call yourself more director? Producer?

Eden

Director. A director with the know how to get things done. 

Kevin

So, why we have Eden on today is mostly–what intrigued me is knowing how to split that difference between the worlds. Knowing what is really powerful from fictional filmmaking world that we were just talking about before we started recording. How you can take some of those practices and things that are more standard in that realm and then bring them into more of a corporate setting and corporate video marketing or commercial video marketing or branded content. To really make that branded content or that commercial content stand out a lot more. So we’ll be talking about the process of that. We’ll be talking about your experiences with past clients about communication–how you can facilitate communication between production teams and, clients or management or however you wanna look at it. And just going through that and seeing where efficiencies can be found. So. Eden.

Eden: (03:36)

Yes

Kevin: (03:40)

Starting off just for people listening, just talk about how you got into the directing world, both from the commercial fictional standpoint and where you are now. Just tell us a bird’s eye view of that journey so we have some context.

Speaker 3: (04:00)

Sure. So I’ll go way, way back and then I’ll, I’ll come to the present real quick. I was very fortunate, when I was about 12 years old that was in an afterschool program that had a specialized film program and they brought in a production company that was actively working mostly in the LA, in mostly in the like commercial content world. But tthey came in and they really cared about what they were doing. They wanted us to learn. They brought in a DVX 100 , which was like the best camera at the time. And they did a few a production projects with us. They let us write. I sort of took to it immediately.I had always been pretty obsessive about films. Like my mom would always say like, I would just, and it was this thing of like, I need to watch something and understand why I like it. 

So I would see the same film over and over and over and over and over again. Like Jurassic Park, which is my favorite film I’ve seen hundreds of times. I think I saw it three weeks ago. Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory. I think the spice girls at some point, again, I want to be clear, this isn’t, a reflection of my creative quality. These are just as a kid. I would see if I want to be like, Oh, I want to understand why I enjoy this and why I do. That program really gave me the insight to realize that I could make a career out of this. I grew up in the Lower East side. I came from single parent home and I went to Catholic school and I was fortunate in certain ways, but some things are just beyond your scope.

So if that wouldn’t have happened, I would have never seen that as a possibility. Eventually I ended up getting connected with an NYU editor, who kind of took me under his wing, Christian Robertson, who I believe is still on staff at NYU, who, through that program taught me how to edit and then gave me final cut. I was like, Oh, cool. Like now I can do this. 

I did not understand the power of that until I went the workforce, because I, at that time, I was about 14, 15 years old. And I knew that program, like I knew it. And it became the base on a technical level, obviously for every other program because it was a, it’s always been easy for me to jump into editing software. But the storytelling skills and the understanding of pacing and understanding of like how things move and watching it in a timeline, having that in my brain from a young age just completely transformed my ability to write and to certainly put together stories and to preconceive things like I can really, I really see things in my head like fully. That was a gift. 

And then skip ahead. I decided to go into the agency world, and went on on staff with a company called Spark Creative. The problem with wanting to be a director is you gotta find a path that makes sense for you. People want to direct, but you kind of need the experience of doing it. So I started as a production coordinator and I was like, well, we’ll see, I’ll see how this goes, but I know one way or another I’ll be able to work my way up cause I’m a very hard worker. So like within a year I started producing projects for them. I think the main client that I ended up taking over during my time there was the 9-11 Memorial and Museum. Which was huge. And I was able to work on some of the finishing work on the videos that still play in the 9-11 Memorial, the, excuse me, the 9-11 museum. Then I did a ton of digital content for them, including a very large commercial campaign called “Our city, Our story.” 

I was there for six years and I’m trying to condense it, but I cannot explain what a gift it was. Like that was my–that was the best film school I could ever ask for. Being inside of a company and understanding what it really takes to have a business, because it was small enough that I could literally try everything. I learned how to run budgets. I learned how to produce big projects. I learned how to produce small projects. I learned how to direct big projects. I learned how to pitch projects. I did know in the back of my head in my heart that I wanted to make narrative films, but there was this, there was a little bit of a fear and it wasn’t until I kind of had worked through that agency and really sort of done everything that that fear went away because then I then I started putting myself in a different—I don’t know how far, how much further you want me to go storing up questions as we go along. Oh gosh.

Kevin: (08:42)

Of course! Keep going– no worries. 

Eden

I always knew I wanted to go back into narrative but lacked a lot of the confidence to do it. So what the company did allow me to do too is they would just like let me use their equipment. I made two short films–I guess technically three short films while I was there. The first two were very much like, you know, film school that I’m very proud of and I stand by. But they were definitely learning experiences. And then the third one, which Kevin was kind enough to color, was all like, I was like, this is my voice. This is it. I found it. I found this thing that I’ve been trying to find and now that I trusted I’m– it’s called Masterpiece that’s on the festival circuit right now.

It was just such an incredible journey to be there and I didn’t understand how that experience translated until I started plugging into narrative networks. Uh, the first one being Filmshop, which is a film collective that I’m a co-leader of now, but at the time I was just an incoming member. It’s a workshop-based collective. I knew that I wanted to do what became a feature script. So I submitted and was accepted. And that started to change things, because they saw me in a way that I didn’t see myself when I started interacting with the members. And that happens a lot of times, like you’re in an environment for a long time and you don’t realize who you are and what you’ve learned. You have no perspective on yourself. And then when people would see what I’d done or like just what I knew, like the amount of information I had just stored in my brain. And I’m, I really love to help people. Like if people, if you need help on a project or, you know, I’m so excited to get coffee with someone and be like, yeah, this is how you can do it. These are the 30 steps. I think so many directors are afraid of the process cause they just don’t know it. And it’s–I think that’s probably pretty true at every level. I think once you, part of being a business professional is, is clarifying that process and demystifying it for yourself. And then having confidence and understanding that the reality, it doesn’t matter if it’s a $15,000 project or a $250,000 project, the process is the same. Obviously the resources might make that process a little bit easier. It might make it a little bit better, but in terms of pre production, in terms of how you’re visualizing things and the production process, I feel like they really should always be treated the same. I work that way in my business work now. I think that was the lesson that the agency world taught me and I’ve been able to translate to my narrative films.

Kevin: (11:37)

This is perfect because you’re, you’re touching on a lot of different things that are all very resonant to each, each party here; the companies, the, the creative personnel,and these are things I want to jump into and find out a little more about. First off, if we could just clarify something that I didn’t know for a long time and still, even when I was forming my company and trying to name it, it was like, “okay, this is a production company and agency, a studio.” So when you talk about working with Spark Creative, is it… okay, how would you define agency production company? A boutique. A hybrid. Just because I know a lot of companies are looking to get help with a video. What do they even Google for? Or like maybe you have a network that you can ask, but for people who don’t, they’re like, “okay, I’m going to go to Google and I need to know how do I find a company that can help me.” What are the differences between those nomenclaturs?

Eden: (12:45)

Yeah, yeah. I’ll give you my opinion on it. I mean the– they’re all production companies. I mean, the place that I was at considered themselves like a boutique agency. By the time I had left. They started very much as a kind of strict post house and that did production work but had a lot of facets to it. And then, as the business evolved like boutique agencies, especially in New York, that’s sort of what you become and how you market yourself and there are a lot of big, big, big companies. I’m trying to think of like a big, what’s like a big agency. Um,

Kevin: (13:24)

Something like Vayner?

Speaker 3: (13:28)

No, yeah, I was thinking of Vayner, but I’m thinking of like a very specific one that does all the pharma stuff. My friend–I have friends that work those is so bad. Um, well anyway, uh, it’s like when going back to like the mad men era, like agencies were like that they’d have floors and floors of divisions that focus on different things. And some would be pharma and some would be, uh, cars and some would be, uh, excuse me, automotive and like all these, all these different brands. And that’s usually the Mark of like a big agency. When you talk about these boutique agencies, they usually have like a specialty. Um, so if that’s sometimes that’s a docu style branded content, which is a lot of what I was doing. Pieces that are highlighting one, one or two individuals and then in some way correlating them specifically to the brand. Or boutique agencies can also strictly focus on fashion. You have some that run the gamut and some have a bit more diverse portfolio. Like I think Mustache is like that. They’re a fantastic company. Um, but you know, it kind of depends. Like every company kind of has that thing that they sell because of the way the industry has evolved, companies have really have had to evolve too. You kind of have to be good at a few different things to be successful. And most companies have that bread and butter work like, like pharma, you can do some of those internal videos for pharmaceuticals and they, they do pay very well. And they help offset the costs for some of the projects that maybe you’re trying to evolve into. I don’t know if that answers your question.

Kevin: (15:11)

Sure. And even off of there, we have 50 questions, right? So, where you worked at Spo tCreative. did you have, like if it was a boutique agency, did you have a specific niche within there that you served? And if so, what are the benefits of finding a boutique agency that focuses in one of these things? First, you know, another, a larger agency that you’re like, well they have the resources and experience so maybe they’re a better option. Is it strictly resource wise? Is it, process driven? Is that the question? 

Eden

Can you ask it again? 

Kevin

The benefits of working or hiring a boutique agency in your specific niche, if that streamlined the process or if there really wasn’t much of a difference in that sense. A boutique agency versus a larger agency. A company’s like, I need to make a video. Well I’ll hire a videographer and editor and they’ll, they’ll make it for me. So like one end of the spectrum, you have that on the other end, you have the huge agency and then you have the boutique agency in the middle. So if you could just speak to what you think the pros and cons may be of

Eden: (16:45)

Yeah, no problem. I think if you’re a company, you have a product or you have a service you offer and you’re looking to hire, you should, you should hire the same way you hire your employees, which is like, “can I deal with this person for X amount of hours?” Here’s the reality. Most boutique agencies in this city are all fan pretty fantastic. Like in terms of, in terms of talent, like they know how to get it done. But I think what the hard part is is like–larger agencies. And, first I want to be clear, I haven’t worked at a larger agency, but I’ve done a lot of research and I have a lot of friends that have been in that world. Companies get lost in that mix and there is a, there are a lot of layers of getting things done. So a lot of the times the things you’re paying for you’re not always seeing on the screen. It’s not to question the quality of the final product, but the reality is if you’re like a smaller company, it’s probably going to be really hard to hire a large agency to do your work. 

Then looking at the boutique, this is an agency you’re going to walk in and you’re probably going to meet the owner and that’s your, that might be a point of contact for you. Or even if you’re not, you’re meeting one of three senior producers. They really have to care because you’re, you’re their bottom line. They have to care about the quality of your product. And a lot of times I find with boutique agencies, you end up– particularly with Spot (Creative), they were always very, they wanted to get the most onscreen in terms of dollars to screen. Like they wanted you to see the production onscreen to their ability within reason.

When you talk about just kind of like hiring freelancers, they’re coming in and just want to get it done. And that might be great if you have an event, and you want to just capture the event. But if you have a gala that’s going to raise 200, you know, $200 million for you potentially, and you need a video to play at that gala, it might not be the wisest idea to just have, hire a guy who can pick up a camera and point. You might need someone to really visualize and anticipate a story. That’s what larger agencies do, as well as boutique agencies, is they help you find your story, they help you develop that story and then they help you achieve that end goal, whatever that is.

It’s more of a strategic process when you’re working in these larger groups. ‘m a freelance contractor. Uh, and you know, so much of what I do is like the strategy part. So, and I, I’ll direct, but I’ll take projects and I have to do them for two to three months because I do development on them and I’m like, “all right, I want to understand and help you succeed.” So it’s, it’s, it’s kind of finding the right partners. I think that’s it with every, with any, kind of venture, any investment and you should look at video production as an investment. Like that is a huge investment. It’s the way that this generation is definitely and the next generations to come are communicating and thinking about things. So if you’re going to spend the money, my thing is always like, I want to spend it once and I want to know what’s going to work. 

Kevin: (20:01)

Oh man. So just some personal experience as well. You don’t want to demonize large agencies cause they, they’re, they’re really good solutions in many ways. But it totally depends on what you need. I work with an agency that is now coming up on $1 billion a year annual revenue like monster, monster company. Like their accounts are all like $30 million or so. And what’s very interesting is looking at that process and seeing, okay the company’s paying say 10, 20, $30 million, how much of that is coming out in that end result? And as a freelancer, I always used to look at that and just be like, “how are they paying that much? And I can make something that looks better. Like this is madness.” But then you look at it, it’s like you’re paying for the bureaucracy, the big team to take care of your big team.

Eden: (20:53)

Exactly. Which is, which is a very difficult job. I cannot downplay when I was at Spot some of the, I won’t name them, but some of the bigger companies that we worked at, there were realities to how the brand could be treated, what color, you know, color, things that you don’t think would matter so much really do matter in a company that spent a hundred years building their legacy. Sometimes you need that. 

Kevin: (21:31)

Where I was going with that and what you were inferring earlier, I think is that it’s more about match finding the partner that matches to your, your size and your needs. Right? So if you’re a big company, you need a bigger agency, most likely to deal with your larger team.

Eden: (21:46)

Exactly. Trickle down. There’s the management effect. Yeah. 

Kevin

And that’s important. You’re just dealing with a much larger bureaucracy. They won’t have the account managers. They won’t have the people on staff to really communicate enough in a way that’s needed. A similar way with freelancers. Obviously if you’re, you know, depends on your needs. If you’re looking at an event where it was a great example, it’s like, okay, I need someone to document this and then maybe we’ll farm it off to someone else to put it together. Okay, great. But that’s why I love how you described that because the boutique agency has that, that unique fit there and the care.

While we’re on the topic of communication, using an agency requires a lot more communication. A boutique agency. You get a lot more contact probably when you were working at spot or now, um, and you’re trying to communicate with the other team you’re talking about.

Eden: (22:41)

That’s it. You’re talking about strategy, you’re talking about story, what, what came across, what you’re saying is that how important the story aspect is verse the technical component. But I think that a lot of people look at video as a very technical thing. I need someone to make me a video. And then they undervalue that and then they get a video that is just a video and it doesn’t convert or doesn’t do anything. So speaking to the strategy side of things, how important that is, that is a story and it’s about finding what the company’s story is that’s going to resonate with the larger group. So when you’re talking about working on a project for two or three months, how do you start going about that strategy process? Obviously it depends on what the project is, what they’re trying to do, but do you have any central framework of, okay, starting the project, working with this new client, where do we begin to, to hone in what is essential or what is important in the story?

Eden: (23:36)

Sure. Yeah. I mean, we can, I can sort of speak specifically to the project that you colored, which is a, it’s a video for Zeiss, which is a fantastic lens and optical company. Um, and it was a branded content piece following one of their brand ambassadors. His name is Mario Bosner. Uh, and he is a photographer. He does like a number of different types of projects. But, uh, this one was highlighting a project that he had featured that was going to be featured in Venice where he was photographing the Morgan museum as well as the New York public library. Um, so we only highlighted them for again, cause we couldn’t film in the near public library. So when I started on that project, that was like a new relationship, like everything happens in life, run into somebody somewhere and just like completely hit it off.