Episode 18: Storytelling Through Today’s Industry Lens with Producer Nicholas Weissman

Welcome to season 2 of The Entertainment Business Podcast. I'm your host, Tisha Morris. Join me as we go into the business of entertainment, publishing, music, and all things creative, where you'll get inspirational interviews, informative trends, and practical tips. And with that, let's get on with the show. Hello and welcome to the podcast. This is your host, Tisha Morris, and thank you so much for tuning in. As always, I am very excited about today's episode. I only bring in guests that I'm very excited about, so when I say that each episode, I truly mean it. That was the reason of me starting this podcast, is the opportunity to interview people doing awesome things. And if you follow me on any of my socials, particularly LinkedIn and TikTok, I talk— I've been talking a lot about independent filmmaking, and I just see a lot of wide open space for independent filmmakers, partly because of technology and a lot of distribution platforms that are coming online. And if you caught the episode, my last episode with Cristine Marchesi of Kinema, that is one great example. The Duplass brothers just launched or launching a crowdfunding series on Kinema, which I invested some money, so I get a sneak preview of the pilot episode. But yeah, there— YouTube, Vimeo, all kinds of new options for independent filmmakers of getting their work out into the world. I wanted to bring on as my guest someone who kind of, I would say, kind of on the front lines as an independent filmmaker and wanting to explore from his perspective where he sees things heading and where things are and heading. My guest today is Nicholas Wiseman. He's an executive producer and director at Vacationland, which is a documentary studio and commercial production company. With over 15 years of experience in film and video production, Nicholas has led projects ranging from feature documentaries to time-sensitive features for major print and network news outlets. Nick is passionate about telling stories that make the world make sense. Collaborating with a community of award-winning filmmakers across the globe. He's worked with commercial clients such as Amex, Land Rover, Cadillac, Volvo, British Airways— lots of moving vehicles, it seems like— Nike, Levi's, Microsoft, and Intel. He— his features have won several film festival awards, including his latest project, Row of Life, about ocean rower Angela Madsen, which I actually interviewed Soraya Simi, the director of Row of Life, as my second guest on the podcast. So check out that episode. So anyway, without further ado, let's welcome Nicholas Wiseman.

Thank you for having me.

Well, I wanted to have someone with their boots on the ground in today's filmmaking scene, and you're the perfect person. But I first want to kind of go back in the timeline and learn a little bit about how you got into production. When was that moment when you decided that you wanted to be a filmmaker?

Yeah, you know, I was— I grew up in a family of scripted filmmakers in LA. A lot of my family worked in the industry, and some were producers, editors. My mother was assistant editor. Her first job was as an assistant sound editor on Star Wars. It's incredible. And, uh, and so I always like loved that, but I was more interested in kind of the real world and documentary storytelling. I got a VHS tape when I was 12 years old from somebody that was Nat Geo, the photographers and behind the scenes. I realized really quickly that that was actually a job that you could do. These like, you can travel around the world and be an anthropologist and really explore the human condition through storytelling. And so my grandfather was an LA Times photographer. So I, I, he kind of taught me a lot. My Boy Scout scoutmaster was an LA Times photographer and he taught me a lot. I went to school for photojournalism actually in Ventura and they had a documentary filmmaking program, photography and documentary filmmaking. So Luckily, I majored in both, and so I was able to come out with a degree in both. And my wife, girlfriend at the time, basically hit the road to New York. We knew that we wanted to be there— her for fashion, me for, for filmmaking and documentaries. So I started in kind of a newsroom environment doing daily reporting, and then I moved pretty quickly to Time Inc. Studios, working for Time Magazine, People, Sports Illustrated. And you know, at basically 22 years old, I was, I was working in the center of the news universe in Rockefeller Center. And, and it was incredible.

That's amazing. That's such a great background to have doing what you do now. When did you make that pivot to start your own or be part of your own business?

Yeah, so we, I, I went from working at Time Inc. Studios directing and, and producing things. And then I started making my own short films, which got published, which worked for Nat Geo on some series that they were developing. And because of New York, you just kind of like build a— your kind of coalition of filmmakers and friends. And one of my colleagues worked for an agency, worked for Nike. I had a bunch of production companies and agencies I'd worked for independently, and I realized to be a company, you just needed 2 people on. Just one person. But you know, when you like show up for, you know, in front of 10 people asking for, you know, $100,000, it's good to have 2 people.

That's a good tip.

And so, yeah, so we very quickly, we took on clients mostly in publishers, Condé Nast and Time Inc. And we chose this name Vacationland, which was, came to my partner. And because of that name, we ended up becoming known for luxury tourism, luxury automotive. Shot for Land Rover, Volvo, Cadillac, Visit California, Visit Tokyo. And so that was at the beginning of brand storytelling or branded content. So we were able to take our love for documentary and combine that with these commercial ambitions to tell human stories.

That, that explains, like, that makes so much sense because I've obviously seen your— I've been to your website. I know your, your work pretty well, and I've always been very impressed by the name of your business, Vacationland, and the aesthetics of it. And so that makes a lot of sense, but it also makes sense that part of your business is about brand storytelling, and you, you really show that you are able to do that through your own business, like your own the own brand of your business. Talk about how, how important, even more important that's becoming, whether it is in commercial production or through documentaries or through scripted, of that, that, that brand storytelling.

Yeah, you know, it's, it's, there's a lot of changes happening in the industry and right now, and there's a lot of conversations about artificial intelligence and you know, how to market to people and influencers and things. And I think one thing that we're kind of keep coming back to is that people are behind everything. People are behind the people selling stuff, people are behind the people buying stuff. And advertising, commercial work, works through an emotion and a personal attachment. And so no matter how much, you know, you recreate a a car through visual effects. You can't recreate what it feels like to have the wind going through your hair or the rumble of the vehicle or the sound of the vehicle and, or the experience of going somewhere, whether it's travel or anything else. So I think that we, we are known as storytellers, not just as executors. And, and while that pigeonholes us in some ways where we're not just kind of like the big flashy director. We really want to get to the core of why somebody does something. And so for our clients like eBay, where we've done stuff about why people sell things on eBay or stories about Rivian, about the engineers behind who built the vehicle, that our skills as documentary filmmakers lend ourselves to storytelling for big brands. And so we hope that we can take the ethos of brands that we really like, working for Patagonia or working for Airbnb and things like that, and, and bring that to the human condition and share that through, through the documentary storytelling.

Nice. Yeah. What is that? What, what, what's your dream project with money not being like, not being a factor for this for a minute?

Commercial or documentary?

No. Yeah. What genre? Like what, what genre project? Maybe a documentary?

Yeah, I mean, they're all different. The great thing about commercial work is that you usually get a bigger budget to do something incredible and fun. And I mean, the dream project that we already had was like, big— we are— when I moved back from New York after 10 years to California, growing up in California, I had gotten kind of disconnected from it, and I didn't want to believe that that was someplace I really wanted to love. Be. And then we landed the Visit California project for a year. And then on the documentary side, I think I'm now, I'm just starting my kind of white whale project that I've been, I've been trying to get going for almost a decade now. So that's, you know, it's a dream to get it funded and make it.

Oh, that's awesome. So I want to talk about some of the trends that are going on. The kind of the gatekeepers in Hollywood are have changed. They're still very much there, but they've changed since streaming. And we've seen the industry go through massive changes from peak TV to post-peak TV to the strikes. And, and now on this side of things, I, I see a lot of potential for independent filmmakers, and a big part due to a lot of distribution options that are becoming more and more available I want to hear from your, from your vantage point what you see as the state of the industry for filmmakers, where things are and where you think things are headed.

Yeah, you know, it's, it's— when I started years ago, and I wish I understood what I know now then, that's always the case. But at that time, different windows, you had your theatrical window, you had your broadcast window, your streaming, then you had your educational. At the time, there wasn't really streaming. Then you had your DVDs and you had your Blu-rays or VHS, whatever version you want to talk about that. And then you had, you know, educational, where you would have universities buy a copy of the film for $300 each, you know, and, and that would go out to thousands of schools. And so that was like, you know, it could be very lucrative for a film. And, you know, you had these 6 different revenue streams that could provide royalties, that could sustain the film, fund other films. And what happened around basically 2018, 2017, the rise of these SVOD players, the Netflixes and the Apples and the Amazons, was that, you know, they wanted to grow their subscribership. So they basically wanted all rights deals and they wanted all rights, all territories. And they didn't want to pay royalties. So basically you were looking at one lump sum to buy a film. The number got bigger, it was $2 million, $4 million, or, you know, huge sums of money. And as soon as everybody realized that you could do that with a documentary or nonfiction project, it created this situation where the speculation, the investment got bigger. Let's make it one for one and a half. We'll sell it for five. We'll do that. You know, all this, all this in a very compressed timeline and like across 4 years, these, these big deals were happening. It sometimes worked for the streamers, sometimes it didn't. And they basically stopped taking those risks and they stopped buying independent projects at that scale. Probably the last one was maybe 2 years ago, 3 years ago. I think Amazon had bought something for like $15 million or something crazy, this Wildcat film. And so once they stopped doing that, you know, we still were left with kind of an industry that was, that had the conception that the idea that the Sundance and the independent doc or, or the independent feature track still netted these big buys. And you know, when you go to the festival, oh, they're, you know, I remember the time when it would be like, you know, on a cocktail napkin, people hammering out numbers and, and having bidding war on site.

Right.

And now, and now, especially post-pandemic with virtual screenings and all these things, that, that whole engine has just changed. And that All Rights deal doesn't exist in the same way. And because streamers don't want to spend as much money, because broadcasters don't want to spend as much money, we're going back now to this model of like a broadcast window, a streaming window, territories. Airlines. And you know, it's not self-distribution per se, but it's going back to an older model of smart windowing and presales and, you know, God willing, grant funding again. You know, that's, that's, and kind of one thing that I think I mentioned a little bit earlier before we started was that, was this idea that at least in the nonfiction space, We were always kind of the nerds in the corner, like 2012, you know, where we were like grateful to get $300,000 to $500,000 or $600,000. My first film, my first large feature was like, you know, $680,000 and it was entirely grant funded, which means we didn't have to sell it for anything. It was a PBS film and we were happy with that. Then everything went kind of crazy up to these million and a half. Plus budgets. And now we're going back to the $500,000, $700,000 range. And, and, and there are ways to do it because it's less money, you know, there's less risk, you know, you can't ask somebody for $1.5 million and tell them they're gonna get it back anymore. And so I think as a, one thing that's important to me is responsible producing and knowing that like, you know, if somebody's gonna invest in your, your film, you wanna make sure they get that money back and knowing to not try and take a large amount or have a huge budget, making sure that there's space for everybody to do well. And so on the distribution end, I think there's a great opportunity for presales in Europe. There's a great opportunity for presales in the US. And then you can license across different places as well. The new thing that's coming back, which is wonderful, is theatrical is having success again. And so if you are brave enough and smart enough to take a chance and have a good theatrical film, the opportunity is there. If you have a built-in audience, you can make money on theatrical. And what's another— just one last thing on the theatrical part. When everybody switched to digital in theaters, when it went from film to digital, they charged a fee for offsetting those costs. That was tough for the theatrical industry. That fee is gone now. So you can put a— digitally put a film in a theater at zero cost, and then you split the revenue.

Interesting.

In the theater. That's changed the landscape. That means that you can open in 30 theaters or 50 theaters on one weekend for a lot less of the cost than it was even 2 or 3 years ago.

Oh, that's great. So someone's just like uploading it to a, to, to a platform.

It is, it's, it's a DCP. It can go as wide as you're able to support it with marketing. Yeah.

I feel like with, with these options, filmmakers are becoming more business savvy around intellectual property ownership and, and thinking twice before giving it all away, so to speak. Do you see kind of a pendulum with, with what you do up front versus holding onto the IP? And seeing what your options are.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a huge responsibility and opportunity for filmmakers because they— many times they put 5 to 10 years into a project before it gets picked up and started. And they very much deserve to see the back end of those, you know, things. And one of the huge advocacy organizations, at least in the nonfiction world, is the Documentary Producers Alliance. They, they're a collection of, I believe, 1,000+ documentary producers that have a kind of coalition, and they developed the DPA Waterfall Guidelines to give an industry standard to nonfiction producers on how to build your waterfall, how to, how to split up creative equity and producer investment equity. I think a good, responsible producer too. Carve out the right amount of space for the director and carve out a right amount of space for the creatives, even if you can't necessarily give them full fees upfront or if there are deferrals, you're creating a space where with the success of a film, they, they do own it. They are very much a part of that ownership.

So many options. You know, as an attorney, I, I've had a lot of clients who kind of end up to me of, I signed away, you know, 20 years in a bad distribution deal. Part of that question is just bringing paying attention to filmmakers' options, that they don't sign away everything, you know, whether it's a license or your IP altogether. Like, know what your options are because your intellectual property is, is your baby. Like, literally, it will live with you for years and then after death as well. So it's just really important to, to— and I think, like I said, I think filmmakers are kind of really starting to come to see that. You have been grown up in the industry you know, have a lot of that business sense. And I'm gonna turn quickly to financing. This is obviously one of the biggest impediments for a filmmaker, I would say starting out, but really any, any time throughout your filmmaking career, finding the money to do, to do what you wanna do. Any, any advice for, for particularly those starting out, but really at any stage of, of one's career?

Yeah, I, I mean, I think the, the, I, I've always really appreciated Mark Duplass's perspective on, on, on independent filmmaking in that, you know, you make it for as little as possible, you own as much of it as possible, and you make sure that the people that went on the ride with you are accounted for. And so that goes with equity, but also I think in the sense of financing, kind of like as I was mentioning, that you don't want to take more investment than you think you could make on it, you know, because with the larger amount of financing, the more amount of oversight, the more amount of control. And so when it comes to like key business decisions, like you want to have more control over them because you never want to end up in a situation where it's going to a streamer or a buyer that you may not want it to because someone is trying to recoup money, you know, or you make decisions based on the project because of that. And so that's one part. On, on the rest of the financing side, I think that and this goes back to those DPA Waterfall guidelines is, you know, can you finance the film with soft money grants, presales, anything that you don't have to pay back that is part of, then, then it's just, it's part of the budget. It's part of your salary and it raises your equity in the project on the backend because then you're only recouping half the budget for the, for that investment. So I, I think that, that, is a huge part of that. And then making it for as small, as little as possible. You know, if they're, obviously you do have to pay yourself. And I think I made that mistake on some of my first few projects was just to keep it going. I wasn't paying myself. And so I think making sure that you can get it done on a lower budget. And then the other thing is financing is not as scary as I thought it was. You You know, getting investment is not as scary as I thought it was. And there are people and companies that exist that will care about what you're making. And you have to find them. It's not as easy as— it's not as easy as finding, oh gosh, you know, Imagine Documentaries are going to love this film just because it's a good film. It's all— it all does come back to people and the specific people that are going to care about this story. And that goes the same way for the streamers. You know, doesn't matter if it's CNN or it's Apple or whatever, that particular buyer is going to have some connection. Um, I, I think of a story that I had. I was working on a project, never got made, but it was about illegal logging and rare rosewoods, about, about specific woods. And I went to one of the buyers I was talking to and It turns out that she was a cellist and she knew exactly what I was talking about with the sound. And I find that with every project that it's like there is the people that you approach that are aligned to the specific project that you're doing. And then knowing what you're asking for because asking for $400,000 or $300,000 or whatever, or $1 million is like you have to know where their starting point is. So if they're not buying stuff for that much, don't ask them for that much. Same thing with financiers. If their means is $100,000, then don't go above that, you know, and find strategies to know what they can bear and then also what the market can bear, you know.

That's great, great advice. Yeah. And I would imagine, I mean, particularly in the doc space, you know, finding those people of interest, but that's also, plays into building an audience or having a built-in audience or building that audience for, and that's really, that's really the, probably the most important part of the distribution marketing.

Yeah. I mean, to your point about that too, I mean, the, the, there is, there's a whole other side of this where people are having huge success in crowd equity. It's not even crowdfunding, like crowd equity. So it's like, You know, if there is a band from the '80s that, you know, 300,000 people love, you know, then, then that fall— that, that want to see a film made about it, right? You know, yeah, they'll put in $250, $500. And then I've heard of stories of filmmakers that have, you know, raised $150,000, $250,000 from crowdsourcing or this, this kind of new concept of crowd equity, which apparently is a bit of a nightmare of paperwork to deal with.

That's what I'm for.

Yeah, exactly. But it's, you know, it's a way to get it made. And I think, you know, investment is about ownership. It's not about somebody just, you know, throwing money at something. They want to be a part of this journey with you. Right. So I think that's, I think that's exciting. I think it builds on the belief in the project itself.

Now you've been to some film festivals recently with your latest project, Row of Life. I, I'd love to hear as much as you want to talk about Row of Life, but I, I'm also interested in film festivals, what you see as their kind of new role, or maybe it may not be new, maybe it's an old role, but they're not, you know, as you mentioned earlier, it's not like where big deals are being made, but if you could touch on kind of the importance of them now.

Yeah, I, I think that the, the, with the increase in interest in theatrical and the increase in people wanting to be in a room together to experience something, I think there's a huge— I think it's part of why we make this in the first place is to, to feel it in a theater with people. And whether or not you get to do the actual theatrical of the project, the, the festival was an opportunity to really have the excitement and have people collectively have an emotion for a film. And at least in the doc space, I strongly believe that a long, like, healthy theatrical festival run is an important thing. I think it drives towards awards, it drives towards industry awareness, and it builds an audience for the film because, you know, thousands of people will see the film. So currently, like, this particular film, We premiered at Santa Barbara, then we went to Big Sky, which is a, which is a big documentary film festival. It just played Cleveland. There's Milwaukee. We have, I can't announce some of them, but there's some coming up soon. And then we've got 6 other festivals. And what's really interesting about that is that we've partnered with The Film Collaborative, which is an amazing organization that uses festival run as a revenue source. So they actually they actually get a screening fee for each film. So you split it with them 50/50, and they book your film across the year. You know, we may play 40 or 50 regional festivals, in our case specifically the queer festival circuit, which is quite extensive. And now it's not just an exploitation of your film, which some people feel like, it's a, it's, it's a part of the business. You know, and, and so it's, it's audience building, it's awareness, it's award stuff, and it's a source of revenue. Yeah, you know, the— what a lot of people have been doing on, on the traditional route or in the past is, oh, you kind of have to like put all your energy into that one Sundance premiere and then it sells and you keep it under wraps and nobody gets to see it. Uh, I— it's such a small rarity now of how that actually works out. I mean, you're talking about 2 or 3 films selling from Sundances here. So you can't put all your eggs in that basket. So our, our festival strategy starts almost 7 months before our first festival. And that's like, you know, marketing rollout. Where's it gonna go? What are our targets? Where's our big jumping off point? Where are our touchpoints across the, the festival circuit? While they're, they're less important, I think, on the sales route. I think that they are important on the awareness route and certainly on the awards route.

Yeah, I would agree with that. And, you know, just honestly, just like following you on Instagram, like I'm, you know, also Soraya, the director, I happen to know her as well. So I follow both of y'all, but the awareness through social media, just you guys being at the festival has been very prominent. Do you see social media continuing to play as important role as it ever has, or do you see more things going to many more email lists, or what do you see as a, as far as the marketing?

Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's, I think it's important across all of it. And, and just kind of going back to like the, you know, for the director that spent 5 years working on something, and in this case it's Raya, it's their first feature, that festival is, you know, if it does a theatrical run, it's still not the same as being up on stage and talking about this thing with a bunch of people.

Yeah.

Been affected by it. You know, our experience in Hamburg, you know, 6 weeks ago in Germany, we were at, we were in a, you know, a 1,200-seat opera house that they showed our film and we had a 2-minute standing ovation. It was just like an unbelievable response from a culture that's pretty far away from California rowing. So it's, it's, it's that kind of thing. Just knows that, you know, you know, okay, I've, I've made an effect with this project. But you know, about the social media and the marketing stuff, you know, I am—

I—

we've had a— the news and the publicity world, the press world, doesn't have the budgets that it used to. So the reviewers, the press coverage, the people that go to Sundance or go to these festivals, that doesn't exist like it used to. You'd go to a festival and you'd have 10 reviews and you'd have all this stuff that you'd use as sales material, right? And you'd spend this money on this publicist and do all the things. But because there's no— there's not as much staff in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or all these places, you might get 1 or 2 reviews. Using, utilizing social media and newsletters, LinkedIn, one of them as well, is that all those buyers I'm connected to on Instagram or on LinkedIn or on, you know, these different social media channels. So through osmosis, they get to see the success of a film.

Yeah.

And, and, and in the way that you want to present, you know, it doesn't just have to be an IndieWire article now. So like, right, you know, I get on a call with another publicist last week and she's like, oh my God, the film's doing amazing. And it's like, and it is doing really well, but it's like It was through that. It wasn't through the Hollywood Reporter write-up or the other stuff. So I think it's a great tool for filmmakers to show the behind the scenes on the red carpet, Barbara, and share in that and amplify. For example, I want to say once or twice a day I get like some ping on social media Somebody saw it in France and was like, "Mm-hmm." Moved by it, you know? And you're just like, it's, you know, whether or not it all nets out financially, and I hope it will, the conversation is almost better than if it just went up on a streaming platform or anything else. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, filmmakers are passionate people. And I imagine being in that, like you described in that theater, like that makes you like want to do the next project and the next project and the next project. Like, that's the— it's kind of like the, the golfer who gets that hole in one or like gets a good shot. It's like, okay, after all the misses.

It does. Well, it doesn't. And the thing is, is that time and time again, you never know who is in the audience. Yeah. And afterwards somebody walks up and says, hey, I'm the— I just happened recently, they were like somebody involved with the Secretary of State's office that wants to do a thing about Paralympians, like, I don't know where it came from. You know, there was a WME agent saw my Havana Libre film at like a Topanga Canyon screening. They did Topanga Canyon small screening and called us up and, you know, so these, you know, somebody in Mexico wanted to option that project for something else. So it's, it's just, you don't know where these things are gonna go, but having, you know, if people don't see them, then how do they know it exists?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of social media, I want to put your social media handle, Vacationland. It's just Vacationland, right? For your Instagram. And so follow Nicholas there and also check out the production company's— you call yourself a documentary studio and production company. Am I saying that right? Vacationland.film. And yeah, anything else that— well, I guess Road of Life isn't available yet for the public to view yet. So we'll have to wait on that.

Yeah, that'll be later this year. And, and we have, you know, 3 other films that are, that are going to be coming out in the next couple of years. So very exciting.

Well, thank you so much, Nicholas, for, for sharing your wisdom and your experiences that are just so helpful for, for folks. And I really appreciate you sharing that.

Yeah. Thank you, Tisha.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you like the podcast, please like, subscribe, maybe even share to your friends. And for more information about my services, visit my website at tishamorris.com. That's T-I-S-H-A M-O-R-R-I-S. Well, that concludes today's episode, and I wish you all the best. Until next time, keep creating, and please take care.