Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more
Speaker 1: amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork dot com.
Speaker 2: You're cutting out? Can you repeat that? Go for production?
Speaker 2: Go for production? I said, go for production production. That's right.
Speaker 2: You're listening to a podcast about TV and film production.
Speaker 2: Join us as we converse with industry leaders and gain
Speaker 2: insight into their strategies, their systems, and best practices in
Speaker 2: bringing a script to life. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
Speaker 2: your host, Brendan Riley.
Speaker 3: Welcome to another episode to Go for Production. Today's guest
Speaker 3: is Jen's Jacob, film producer and entrepreneur. Many of Jen's
Speaker 3: projects include high end documentaries such as the Heart of Man,
Speaker 3: I'm Not Crazy, I'm Sick, and After Death. In addition
Speaker 3: to producing projects, Jens is the founder of Saturation io,
Speaker 3: a platform that empowers filmmakers with tools and resources when
Speaker 3: it comes to the world of production. Welcome to the show, Jens.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me, Brandon, It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, I mean this program that you founded many years ago, Saturation,
Speaker 3: I'm just really curious because I've used it a little bit.
Speaker 3: But I'm really excited to use it on my next project.
Speaker 3: And where did you get this idea of when you
Speaker 3: were in the middle of all these different projects, like
Speaker 3: what's the genesis of this program?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I've been producing for the last thirteen fourteen years,
Speaker 5: and through that I've had a lot of production experience
Speaker 5: and different types of productions, everything from music videos, commercials,
Speaker 5: features now and I think, like most producers, I just
Speaker 5: hated what I used. I wish I could take credit
Speaker 5: for how bad you know, what existed out there was.
Speaker 5: And I think I feel like any producer that I've
Speaker 5: talked to has had some gripe with their current systems,
Speaker 5: their current software, or their current tool sets, and you know,
Speaker 5: just going along the process, I think you get into
Speaker 5: these like sidebar conversations with people of how you know
Speaker 5: it could be better or what it could be and
Speaker 5: one day.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: It was interesting because when we were working on commercials,
Speaker 5: everything was like high paced, like you're working on a
Speaker 5: commercial every two to three weeks and you're just constantly
Speaker 5: doing two or three commercials at a time. When we
Speaker 5: started doing Heart of mand things slowed down a little
Speaker 5: bit because doc took longer, and you know, it was
Speaker 5: it was two three years, not just like two three
Speaker 5: weeks of time. And that's where I felt like I
Speaker 5: was able to slow down a little bit to where
Speaker 5: I was able to take my idea of trying to
Speaker 5: I really just when I started, I wanted to make
Speaker 5: a collaborative version of movie Magic. I just hated this idea,
Speaker 5: and at the time, I was using another software called
Speaker 5: a hot Budget, and it was just really clunky how
Speaker 5: we would have to take files and then upload it
Speaker 5: to Dropbox and then sink it to another computer and
Speaker 5: that's how we would kind of collaborate. So I just
Speaker 5: wanted to try to find a Google sheet version of that.
Speaker 5: That That was my initial V one of the of
Speaker 5: the product, and I took a design I had a
Speaker 5: little bit of a design background. That's what I did
Speaker 5: before I was a filmmaker, and even while I was
Speaker 5: making films, I was really how I was paying bills
Speaker 5: early on, was still graphic design jobs that I would
Speaker 5: do to then like make certain short films and stuff
Speaker 5: like that early in my career. So I when I
Speaker 5: had designed kind of like a low level version of
Speaker 5: the of the software, I sent that out to one
Speaker 5: hundred different producers and I created a Google form survey,
Speaker 5: and I just wanted to see if it was like
Speaker 5: something worth even pursuing or not. I didn't know if
Speaker 5: it was just a dumb idea in my head or
Speaker 5: if this actually could solve in industries problems. And that
Speaker 5: survey that I did, about one hundred people filled it
Speaker 5: out and eighty percent of what I had designed was
Speaker 5: validated in that survey, And it is really what gave
Speaker 5: me the courage to take that to the next level,
Speaker 5: start putting money behind it, start putting time behind it,
Speaker 5: energy to now build what it is today.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. So maybe for the person out there that
Speaker 3: hasn't heard of the program Saturation, can you kind of
Speaker 3: just give the nuts and bolts of what can I do?
Speaker 3: We are the main features.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So Saturation DI I always a collaborative based budgeting application.
Speaker 5: It helps unify all of your projects. It doesn't matter
Speaker 5: if you're working on a five thousand dollars music video
Speaker 5: or a fifty million dollar feature. You're able to now
Speaker 5: do this in one place and give selective access control
Speaker 5: to the various collaborators that you might have along the way.
Speaker 5: And really we want to get into all things financial management.
Speaker 5: So past budgeting. You can also get into cost tracking
Speaker 5: and actualization into the app, and this has traditionally been
Speaker 5: a fairly manual process in the industry, and we take
Speaker 5: certain modern practices like integrations and connecting to bank feeds
Speaker 5: and credit cards to help automate your actualization process. So
Speaker 5: it's trying to become like an all encopassing financial management
Speaker 5: system for projects and productions.
Speaker 3: And what's the main type of project that you find
Speaker 3: is using saturation right now? In terms of is there
Speaker 3: a certain specific budgets or.
Speaker 5: In all over the place, I would say a lot
Speaker 5: of people that are doing commercials, branding content and then
Speaker 5: indie level features is our current customer segment. We have
Speaker 5: a wide rate, variety and range of types of users.
Speaker 5: We've seen brands come into Saturation and use it.
Speaker 4: That was a.
Speaker 5: Surprise that I didn't realize or understand until we started
Speaker 5: marketing Saturation was that some of these brands now have
Speaker 5: production entities inside of the company where they'll have a
Speaker 5: head of production and a production team. So one of
Speaker 5: our customers is Snapchat. Snapchat has been able to unify
Speaker 5: a lot of their budgeting and production practices through Saturation.
Speaker 5: On the other end of the spectrum I've seen, Yeah,
Speaker 5: commercial companies use it. One that uses us a lot
Speaker 5: is Maximum Effort, which is Ryan Reynolds Production company. So
Speaker 5: we have a wide variety of types of companies and
Speaker 5: users using the platform currently.
Speaker 3: I mean, one of the things I really like about it,
Speaker 3: and I've only used parts of it, was the cost
Speaker 3: report function because I was able to jump into the
Speaker 3: software really quickly, upload my movie Magic files and just
Speaker 3: kind of do it quick.
Speaker 5: You know, that's a really good point because you know,
Speaker 5: as much as we are a budgeting tool, you can
Speaker 5: actually just import your budgets from other places, like if
Speaker 5: you're using movie Magic or Showbiz, and if you've already
Speaker 5: created the budget there, you could essentially do budget management
Speaker 5: and cost tracking inside of saturation as well. So it's
Speaker 5: a really good point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you mentioned these like these brands and like
Speaker 3: independent features, you know a lot of times they don't
Speaker 3: have the tools or the resources that let's just say
Speaker 3: it a ten million dollar movie or thirty million dollar movie,
Speaker 3: because the ten million dollar movie, they're going to have
Speaker 3: an accounting team of five six people, right, And so
Speaker 3: you know as a producer that sometimes I work on
Speaker 3: smaller projects sometimes are bigger, but the smaller ones I
Speaker 3: need to rely on technology and software because I can't
Speaker 3: afford that second assistant accountant.
Speaker 5: Right now, That's right, Yeah, I mean it's so true.
Speaker 5: I mean, like you said, we're not studios. We don't
Speaker 5: have full on finance teams and full on accounting teams.
Speaker 5: Most of us are probably you know, it's the producing
Speaker 5: team that ends up handling a lot of the cost tracking,
Speaker 5: whether it's the producer or the production manager and the coordinators.
Speaker 5: And I tell people all the time, I became a
Speaker 5: filmmaker to be creative, and I ended.
Speaker 4: Up becoming an accountant.
Speaker 5: It's just because of all of this that you have
Speaker 5: to manually track. And one of the things that always
Speaker 5: got to me was a lot of this has to
Speaker 5: be manual because productions are almost like a business inside
Speaker 5: of a business, where you are pulling together a team
Speaker 5: that could be a bunch of different contractors, and you
Speaker 5: have selective access to finances. You may never fully have
Speaker 5: company level access to finances, and so you're kind of
Speaker 5: creating this entity inside of it. And even on feature
Speaker 5: films that's actually true, where you're having to create multiple
Speaker 5: LLCs for each film project and you're having to run
Speaker 5: these mini businesses essentially, and to your point, because of
Speaker 5: certain budget sizes and how you know, maybe a lot
Speaker 5: of indie teams and small businesses work, we just don't
Speaker 5: have the proper call it workforce and labor to do that.
Speaker 5: And so that's where technology really can help step into
Speaker 5: the gap. And even more recently with you know AI,
Speaker 5: in the last year or two, that's starting to come out.
Speaker 5: You know, it's the biggest question and of like how
Speaker 5: some of this might automate certain parts of our jobs,
Speaker 5: and we are looking into how that's going to play
Speaker 5: within financial management as well. So it's something that we're
Speaker 5: actively trying to seek how technology can help aid and
Speaker 5: make you a you know, a super user producer in
Speaker 5: terms of being really focused on what your unique skill
Speaker 5: sets is mine or your unique skill set shouldn't be
Speaker 5: that we know how to cost track. You know, that's
Speaker 5: that's not where the value proposition comes as a producer.
Speaker 5: It's this like weighted baggage that you're having to carry
Speaker 5: along the way along with the other extreme incredible skill
Speaker 5: sets that you provide and the maybe the real things
Speaker 5: that you actually want to do on set.
Speaker 4: My hope with.
Speaker 5: AI and you just never know where it's going to go.
Speaker 5: Is that it helps get rid of things you don't
Speaker 5: want to do and helps you really do what you
Speaker 5: do on it, you know, do on a production.
Speaker 3: So you know some one of the things I'm excited
Speaker 3: to play around with your software and use it on
Speaker 3: the next project is how it integrates with other software
Speaker 3: like QuickBooks or wrap book. Can you explain how how
Speaker 3: the integration works.
Speaker 5: Yeah, We've got a couple of different integrations so far,
Speaker 5: and our kind of thrust in saturation is to help
Speaker 5: automate the tedious tasks or you know, with integrations, provide
Speaker 5: the data flow instead of you having to manually enter
Speaker 5: the data into a spreadsheet. So whether that's incoming or outgoing,
Speaker 5: we just want you to get the data where you
Speaker 5: need it to go. So the examples of incoming are
Speaker 5: the integrations with movie Magic Import, Showbiz Import, and then
Speaker 5: we have other types of integrations like with bank feeds
Speaker 5: where you can connect bank accounts and credit cards and
Speaker 5: it'll actually just import all of your transactions over on
Speaker 5: the quick book side. You know what was really crappy
Speaker 5: for our company was we were doing sometimes double, if
Speaker 5: not triple the work in terms of what it looked
Speaker 5: like for cost tracking. We were doing it one time
Speaker 5: on the project side, which was you know, the immediate
Speaker 5: crew or whatever, and then we were doing it again
Speaker 5: at the company level, where they were either having to
Speaker 5: reference what the projects did and if not, you would
Speaker 5: have to then find ways to like manually just you know,
Speaker 5: code those transactions inside of QuickBooks. So our quick Books
Speaker 5: integration helps automate some of that. If you're starting to
Speaker 5: code and track some of those costs inside of your
Speaker 5: Saturation budget, it could actually automate that and category map
Speaker 5: that to the various account codes that you have in QuickBooks.
Speaker 5: And with wrap Book similar we are looking to integrate
Speaker 5: the payroll log and we actually have a way through
Speaker 5: CSV right now where you can just export a CSV
Speaker 5: from wrap book and import that into Saturation.
Speaker 3: Now, when I mentioned QuickBooks in film, in the film world,
Speaker 3: some people aren't familiar with that, but I've actually done
Speaker 3: several movies where QuickBooks is how I did a lot
Speaker 3: of the accounting, and I was able to take the
Speaker 3: entire movie Magic account code and import it. So I
Speaker 3: have all those codes, so you know, each time that
Speaker 3: I'm logging and transaction, maybe it's like a set purchase
Speaker 3: or a lighting rental, I can go ahead and connect
Speaker 3: that code to that purchase that item. Same thing with employees.
Speaker 3: And it's not ideal I think for larger projects, but
Speaker 3: you know, I think for movies under a million, maybe
Speaker 3: two million, you know, it can work, you know, and
Speaker 3: with with projects with programs like saturation and wrap book
Speaker 3: and they can all connect together. It makes a really
Speaker 3: unique finance solution that it's pretty easy to learn.
Speaker 4: You know. Yeah, it's a really good point.
Speaker 5: I mean most companies and most productions that like you're saying, like,
Speaker 5: if it's within a certain amount of transactions or under
Speaker 5: a certain budget, it's actually just easier to do it
Speaker 5: in something like QuickBooks, something that you may already know,
Speaker 5: something that you're already using for your company's accounting, and
Speaker 5: then when you need to you could you know, when
Speaker 5: you're tracking you know, tens of thousands of you know,
Speaker 5: different invoices and receipts and stuff like that, that's where
Speaker 5: you probably need something more production related, because the truth
Speaker 5: is in something like for most call it tax accounting
Speaker 5: and stuff like that, you don't need to track at
Speaker 5: that level of detail, but you do on a project
Speaker 5: because you are trying to track to make sure that
Speaker 5: like you are on budget and on time, and that
Speaker 5: you are beholden to whatever the investment is because you
Speaker 5: probably have call it a certain amount of time in
Speaker 5: mine that you have to be able to spend something.
Speaker 5: So that's where certain maybe more enterprise level production accounting
Speaker 5: tools are beneficial, but again you're gonna if you're at
Speaker 5: that level, you're probably having an accounting team do that.
Speaker 5: You're not going to go do that yourself in a
Speaker 5: enterprise level software.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess, like one example is let's
Speaker 3: say I'm doing a half million dollar movie or million
Speaker 3: dollar movie, and you have and I'm going to help
Speaker 3: the main producer execute the project, and then I might
Speaker 3: help a little bit during post but at the end
Speaker 3: of the day, that producer has to keep the LLC
Speaker 3: going for another year, another two years, and they need
Speaker 3: to be able to do basic accounting stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: file their taxes, get a P and L statement. And
Speaker 3: what's what's great about is if they already are familiar
Speaker 3: with quick books, they can go ahead and run those reports,
Speaker 3: you know, hand it off to their you know, their
Speaker 3: existing accountant. Whereas you know, the payroll companies that have
Speaker 3: these complicated accounting systems. Gets expensive to keep an accountant
Speaker 3: on forever and ever and ever to keep running these
Speaker 3: reports and things.
Speaker 4: It's so true.
Speaker 5: Yeah, again, it might be useful for a certain level
Speaker 5: of production, but you're right, like anything that's you know,
Speaker 5: under a certain budget amount or you know, even in
Speaker 5: my own production company, we've gotten it down to where
Speaker 5: our chart of accounts in quick books and what we
Speaker 5: do on a budget in a film are pretty much
Speaker 5: identical because we've been able to mirror it in a
Speaker 5: way that it just makes sense for our cost to
Speaker 5: be structured this way. And then it already is great
Speaker 5: for tax accounting and everything. Also, it's all kind of
Speaker 5: just streamlined.
Speaker 3: So Saturation, you know, you have the budgeting feature, you
Speaker 3: have the cost reporting feature, you're also doing these virtual
Speaker 3: cards and spending cards.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: So a new feature release that we just had was
Speaker 5: expense management, where if you are already doing the budget
Speaker 5: inside of Saturation, you can use our expense management to
Speaker 5: automate your actualization process. So the cool thing is you
Speaker 5: can create these expense cards. You could do bill pay,
Speaker 5: and the beauty of it is if you create these
Speaker 5: expense cards, you can create them per project, and you
Speaker 5: can give them out to as many people as you want,
Speaker 5: and it gives a unique card number to each person,
Speaker 5: and then it automatically associates with that project every single time.
Speaker 5: So once you have it where you know you have
Speaker 5: you know, X, Y and Z project and you know Molly,
Speaker 5: Sam and Joe have their own cards. As soon as
Speaker 5: they're starting to spend, it's actually actualizing against the budget
Speaker 5: and you're seeing a real time report of how your
Speaker 5: your your budget it is doing instead of having to
Speaker 5: wait sometimes days, if not weeks for it to go
Speaker 5: through the accounting process and reconcile and and and come
Speaker 5: up with the cost report. It's a real time way
Speaker 5: of actualizing and and and and and getting reports to
Speaker 5: how you're spending.
Speaker 3: That's very cool.
Speaker 5: The other cool thing about that too is, uh it
Speaker 5: also automates some of the tedious things.
Speaker 4: UH.
Speaker 5: So we have a mobile app where you're able to
Speaker 5: see your cards, see your transactions, and then it automates
Speaker 5: everything from receipt management.
Speaker 4: Uh you know what you're spending, what your what your.
Speaker 5: How much you have left on the card and uh
Speaker 5: it gives you a push notification so as soon as
Speaker 5: you swipe the card you get, you get a push notification,
Speaker 5: you can scan the receipt in and it automatically will
Speaker 5: then associate with the right transaction. Uh So, a lot
Speaker 5: of things that we were chasing, you know, I'm sure
Speaker 5: you've the longer a receipt doesn't get submitted, the chances
Speaker 5: of you getting it is like next to nothing in
Speaker 5: terms of so a lot of this that shouldn't be
Speaker 5: a part of our job, but we are doing. Where
Speaker 5: we're trying to chase reimbursement requests, or chase the petty
Speaker 5: cash logs, or chase receipts and invoices. It's just a
Speaker 5: lot of this should be automated. You shouldn't have to
Speaker 5: have to like be so in the weeds of some
Speaker 5: of these things.
Speaker 3: I'm just curious of some of your users that you've
Speaker 3: had some of the different companies. What are some of
Speaker 3: the feedback you've had or success stories from using the product.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a great question. We've had some really cool ones.
Speaker 5: One I remember a guy who was very skeptical about it.
Speaker 4: He's like, oh, I.
Speaker 5: Could do all this in Google sheets, Like why do
Speaker 5: I need something like saturation for And I just said, hey,
Speaker 5: just try the free trial, you know, if you hate it,
Speaker 5: it was no cost you anyway. And so he just
Speaker 5: decided that he was going to copy and paste that
Speaker 5: all he did. He didn't even have to like fully
Speaker 5: budget something into it. He copied and paste his information
Speaker 5: over from his Google sheets into Saturation, only to find
Speaker 5: out that his formula was incorrect or something like that.
Speaker 5: In Google sheet that actually showed that he actually had
Speaker 5: more money you know, in his in his budget than
Speaker 5: than he had thought. So it's funny because when you
Speaker 5: relying on some of these like manual type of systems,
Speaker 5: you you were just maybe blindly trusting that it is correct,
Speaker 5: and it actually saved him a ton of money, you know,
Speaker 5: like just by transferring over an existing project inside of Saturation.
Speaker 5: I had another friend also that was he was telling
Speaker 5: me about this crazy story about how he had a
Speaker 5: Netflix production that he was doing, and it was it
Speaker 5: was a smaller budgeted project, but apparently two hundred fift
Speaker 5: thousand dollars went missing or something like that or just
Speaker 5: unaccounted for.
Speaker 4: They just didn't know where it went, and.
Speaker 5: They had to hold production until they kind of figured
Speaker 5: all that out and whatever time it took to reconcile
Speaker 5: that over and that was a pre saturation story that
Speaker 5: that he gave me that he was saying that a
Speaker 5: lot of this has been solved now using saturation. So
Speaker 5: it's cool to hear that it is doing what I
Speaker 5: was hoping for, that it's going to save you time
Speaker 5: and money, you know, at the end of the day.
Speaker 5: And if it could help automate, if it could help,
Speaker 5: you know, give you back time to do more projects
Speaker 5: or to be more creative, that's always the hope.
Speaker 4: So that that's two that come to mind.
Speaker 5: I mean, we had one even in my own production company,
Speaker 5: if I could be so transparent that we had some
Speaker 5: really unsafe money management practices in terms of like how
Speaker 5: we distribute money. And it's just the way that production works.
Speaker 5: It's this blind trust that you give until you can't
Speaker 5: trust them anymore and then you're hoping that they'll get
Speaker 5: blacklisted or something like that from the industry. That's just
Speaker 5: kind of how there's a circle of trust that production
Speaker 5: lives in. And in that circle of trust, a lot
Speaker 5: of companies like ours, and it was modeled after big
Speaker 5: companies that were doing this. Some of the main ways
Speaker 5: that they do expense management is they'll deal with petty cash, right,
Speaker 5: is the ability to give out cash and then get
Speaker 5: back the invoices and receipts, or you're dealing with reimbursements,
Speaker 5: or the third way commonly is you have a picture
Speaker 5: of your credit card and a picture of your ID
Speaker 5: on a PDF document that you then give out to contractors.
Speaker 5: It's the most insane thing if you tell this to
Speaker 5: anybody else outside of production, right, it's the most insane
Speaker 5: thing to say out loud. And it's always so funny
Speaker 5: to me because it's like, yeah, like there must be
Speaker 5: so many producers identity stolen or in identity fraud just
Speaker 5: from just this information being I have no short of
Speaker 5: one hundred people that have that PDF on their computers,
Speaker 5: you know, out in the ether, and I probably should,
Speaker 5: you know, like change my ID and all that. So
Speaker 5: it's just insane. And through that process, we did have
Speaker 5: a crew member steal money from us that we didn't know,
Speaker 5: and a lot of why we've built some of the
Speaker 5: feature set around the safety features of expense management came
Speaker 5: from our own experiences. It doesn't happen a lot, but
Speaker 5: when it does, it's unfortunate and it's meaningful enough that
Speaker 5: it sucks. But not meaningful enough that you're going to
Speaker 5: go through legal and sue somebody and all that. Right, Like,
Speaker 5: it was kind of a weird place to be. And
Speaker 5: I'm sure you know, different companies have various levels of
Speaker 5: experience with mishandling the money, but I think often what
Speaker 5: ends up happening in our industry is you're trading certain
Speaker 5: things for time because you needed to do things quickly,
Speaker 5: and you're throwing money at things to do things quickly
Speaker 5: because sometimes you have to do this within a couple
Speaker 5: of days, weeks, months, whatever it might be. And in
Speaker 5: that there could be some unsafe practices that are happening
Speaker 5: to do that quickly. And we didn't want the trade
Speaker 5: off to be speed and safety. We wanted to find
Speaker 5: ways for technology to help you do both. That you
Speaker 5: can be fast and you could be safe about how
Speaker 5: fast you are.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting that you talk about when you're starting
Speaker 3: a project, you know, you have to think about how
Speaker 3: you're going to approach that specific project. So, like, you know,
Speaker 3: one example is, you know, if I'm going to start
Speaker 3: a new movie or new commercial, maybe with people that
Speaker 3: are familiar with production, or maybe they're kind of new
Speaker 3: to the game, but I've got We've got to set
Speaker 3: up kind of rules of like, Okay, how are we
Speaker 3: going to pay people? Which pay well?
Speaker 4: Company? Were gonna use?
Speaker 3: When do people get paid? Is it Friday? Is it Thursday?
Speaker 4: Is it? You know?
Speaker 3: Do are we even going to use cash? You know,
Speaker 3: I try not to use cash if we don't have to,
Speaker 3: because it's a point, right, It's like, Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 3: we're gonna sell everybody that needs.
Speaker 4: Cash right right right, because then.
Speaker 3: I can track it. So So one thing I find
Speaker 3: myself constantly doing is when I'm starting a new project,
Speaker 3: you know, I have to sell the team that I'm
Speaker 3: working with on what programs are we to use? Are
Speaker 3: we going to use saturation? Are we're going to use
Speaker 3: this program over here? What is some pushback that you
Speaker 3: get from people that want to use it? Maybe the
Speaker 3: rest of the team isn't on board, Like how do
Speaker 3: you not convince them? But what what's your big sell that?
Speaker 3: Yeah it's a save time and money.
Speaker 4: But yeah it's a good point. Uh it's not easy.
Speaker 5: I you know, it's something that uh has taken some
Speaker 5: some time to fully understand. I think the biggest challenge
Speaker 5: that we have is most people are comfortable with the system,
Speaker 5: even if the system is inefficient. Comfortability will outweigh time
Speaker 5: and money sometimes. And you wouldn't think that at face value,
Speaker 5: because if I told you, Brandon, you could save you know,
Speaker 5: five thousand dollars this year, and you could actually save
Speaker 5: call it, five hours a week, you know, on financial
Speaker 5: management tasks, it would sound like a no brainer to you.
Speaker 5: It's like, oh, yeah, I'd be willing to take you know,
Speaker 5: a couple hours to learn this new system or whatever
Speaker 5: it might be. But I think just the nature of
Speaker 5: how and it gets even worse if you're busy. If
Speaker 5: you're constantly busy and you're constantly you don't want to
Speaker 5: mess something up, especially when it comes to like finances,
Speaker 5: and so you're going to go with what you're most
Speaker 5: comfortable with, right And that's why I believe movie magic
Speaker 5: still exists. It's not because it's the greatest tool to
Speaker 5: do everything that you need to do. It's because it
Speaker 5: works and it's a comfortable enough system that has worked
Speaker 5: for the industry. And you know, it's this if it's
Speaker 5: not broke, don't don't fix it kind of mentality. I think, uh,
Speaker 5: and I think that's going to phase out with a
Speaker 5: certain generation. To be honest, I think our generation that
Speaker 5: grew up with with technology, you're probably uh using newer
Speaker 5: technology in all other areas of your life, whether that's
Speaker 5: Google Calendar for calendar calendar, you're not using a physical
Speaker 5: calendar anymore, you know, uh, maybe something that's that that's
Speaker 5: not online, or to drop box or Google Drive, and
Speaker 5: how you think about file management versus like how it
Speaker 5: used to be just on your on your hard drive.
Speaker 5: And so I think this is a place that needs
Speaker 5: deep innovation and he needs a lot more to be
Speaker 5: done just because I think you can uh do a
Speaker 5: lot more in terms of.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 5: If you could, if you could see how much time
Speaker 5: you could gain back, what more could you put that
Speaker 5: towards it? Could it be more projects, Could it be
Speaker 5: more time spent on the creative with you know, your
Speaker 5: creative collaborators. And so I would say the biggest challenge
Speaker 5: is comfortability. I think we tried to make it as
Speaker 5: much of a no brainer as possible. And one of
Speaker 5: the no brainers is we have a completely free version
Speaker 5: of the app. So there's a version of it that
Speaker 5: if you don't really care to collaborate, you can do
Speaker 5: one project at a time and you could do a
Speaker 5: full project inside of it. So a lot of people
Speaker 5: do take advantage of that to do short films, to
Speaker 5: do you know, little commercials or one feature. You know,
Speaker 5: it's it's really easy to get started, and then for
Speaker 5: the full version it's there's a thirty day free trial.
Speaker 4: So between that, I think there's a.
Speaker 5: Call it low to no risk kind of way of
Speaker 5: adopting and learning saturation And if you already know stuff
Speaker 5: a Google sheet or you know, if you know basic spreadsheets,
Speaker 5: it's not that hard to transfer over to something like Saturation.
Speaker 5: And I think you can ask, you know, our users
Speaker 5: how much they love it, because they actively are telling
Speaker 5: us weekly, you know, how it's done this or that,
Speaker 5: or how it'd saved them, you know, this much time,
Speaker 5: and they do feel like it has drastically improved their
Speaker 5: financial management system, which you know, can drive a lot
Speaker 5: of people crazy.
Speaker 4: I know it did for me.
Speaker 5: I became a unqualified CFO of my company and I
Speaker 5: never wanted to be. I just was forced into it
Speaker 5: because I had somebody had to do it, and the
Speaker 5: producer was touching most of the finances, so it just
Speaker 5: was unfortunate, you know.
Speaker 3: I find myself when I'm building budgets now to really
Speaker 3: make an effort to see how much money I can
Speaker 3: put towards software that, you know, because I'm going to
Speaker 3: be hit with you know, five or six different programs
Speaker 3: that I want to be able to afford. And I
Speaker 3: find that it's really important to think of about that
Speaker 3: when you're building out these budgets that do you have,
Speaker 3: you know, because even a quick book subscription over the
Speaker 3: course of a year is expensive, right, right, And so
Speaker 3: it's like these things really do add up. And making
Speaker 3: sure that producers and line producers really think about all
Speaker 3: the different things that can help them, you know.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 3: What's that software that helps costumes sync on set, you know,
Speaker 3: and and props.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I'm always, you know, every time I do a project,
Speaker 3: you know, I get the ask we can we can
Speaker 3: we do this? And I've already budgeted because I've I'm
Speaker 3: used to the question. But you know, I think it's
Speaker 3: something to really think about.
Speaker 4: It's a really good point.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, in other types of places in
Speaker 5: your budget, you are trying to make sure every cost
Speaker 5: is detailed down to fringes and every you know, like
Speaker 5: meticulous costs that you can think of and software just
Speaker 5: should be one of those things that you should just
Speaker 5: already budget in and then it becomes a no brainer
Speaker 5: for you because it's not this added cost that you
Speaker 5: are taking on personally as a you know, as a
Speaker 5: producer that might be freelance, or as a company owner
Speaker 5: out of your company, you know, profits if you can
Speaker 5: build it into the budget, it really does. And I
Speaker 5: hope that any software that you use that the value
Speaker 5: of the software ten x is the price that it
Speaker 5: costs to pay for for it, right otherwise it doesn't
Speaker 5: really make sense. So whether it's something like Saturation or
Speaker 5: frame Io or whatever it might be, these are things
Speaker 5: that just you're going to probably have to like adapt
Speaker 5: to and utilize. Like I remember with frame Io when
Speaker 5: that was starting to come up. You know, we were
Speaker 5: as much as we were tech forward and we wanted
Speaker 5: to use all the latest software, we weren't thinking about
Speaker 5: it from a cost structure in how like it could
Speaker 5: just add up over the quotes of multiple projects. And
Speaker 5: to your point, we've had to now make these line
Speaker 5: items inside of a budget to make sure that we
Speaker 5: fully could utilize all of this in our in our workflow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I always find myself trying to champion the software,
Speaker 3: not because I just love software. I mean, I do
Speaker 3: love software, but it's it's because you can have a
Speaker 3: better project and you can stay more organized, and you
Speaker 3: know there's things that software can help you, you know,
Speaker 3: stay on top of it. So like even going back
Speaker 3: to the sync on set, it's it's a program that
Speaker 3: allows for continuity, right, So if you don't have a
Speaker 3: program helping you, you could really mess up one scene
Speaker 3: and then that's an expensive one hundred thousand dollars reshoot,
Speaker 3: you know, right, so it's like, can you afford that
Speaker 3: fifty dollars whatever it is like to avoid this catastrophe?
Speaker 3: You know, same thing with finance and what you're offering
Speaker 3: is it's dialing in that that process of not waiting
Speaker 3: a week to get actuals, because that's that's what bogs
Speaker 3: me down, is trying to Okay, we got to take
Speaker 3: these different cards and we've got to reconcile them, and
Speaker 3: then we got to see what's the latest.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, it's so true. I mean, like you know,
Speaker 5: it can it can be just debilitating in terms of
Speaker 5: what you know you can or can't spend if you
Speaker 5: if you don't have all that up to date, and
Speaker 5: even I've seen people in the past where if you
Speaker 5: don't do it right the first time, you're paying ten
Speaker 5: times more in accountants cleaning it up and so like
Speaker 5: setting up the project right, using software to automate all
Speaker 5: of that, Creating the systems that that are financial practices
Speaker 5: and controls and managing actuals right is such an important
Speaker 5: part of the job. By the ways, you are going
Speaker 5: to spend a lot of wasted time and money trying
Speaker 5: to fix it later or communicate it later. The best
Speaker 5: time is in real time because you know what's happening
Speaker 5: right there, and then you may not remember what happened
Speaker 5: a month ago.
Speaker 4: Or two months ago. It's like, oh, what was this
Speaker 4: Amazon charge for? I mean, I don't know. You're gonna
Speaker 4: have to like.
Speaker 5: Dig deep and you're spending like two three hours trying
Speaker 5: to figure out what this random Amazon trailing charge was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny. Today I'm actually doing an audit for
Speaker 3: a movie I shot two years ago, and seople dealing
Speaker 3: with looking at receives.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, it's gonna be over Oh that is insane.
Speaker 3: Oh, so, let's just say I'm curious about saturation from
Speaker 3: my next project. What are kind of the steps to
Speaker 3: learn about it, you know, tin train and figure it out?
Speaker 3: Like how long is the process to get up and going?
Speaker 5: Most people, if you if you come from something existing,
Speaker 5: whether it's a Google sheet or a hot budget or
Speaker 5: movie magic, it's pretty intuitive. I would say we prioritize
Speaker 5: our user experience in the UX to make it as
Speaker 5: easy as possible to jump right in. We do have
Speaker 5: video tutorial support articles. We also do demos to help
Speaker 5: you onboard your team, and we've done that with people
Speaker 5: like right before a production starts, will hop on a
Speaker 5: call with their team and run them through how to
Speaker 5: get their project ready for for saturation and so that
Speaker 5: that's common as well. So I would say it's it's
Speaker 5: a pretty low bar. Like I mentioned, we do have
Speaker 5: the you could sign up for a free trial, or
Speaker 5: you could you could sign up for the free account,
Speaker 5: and that allows you to just go right in and play.
Speaker 4: All you need is an email address and you can
Speaker 4: go right in and start playing around with it.
Speaker 5: So in that sense, you know, I've seen people, you know,
Speaker 5: when I'm about to give them the demo, give me
Speaker 5: the demo just because they already understood Oh yeah, it
Speaker 5: does all this Like, I've played around with it. I
Speaker 5: was just yesterday night and I you know, was able
Speaker 5: to make a mock budget. But we're definitely receptive to
Speaker 5: feedback where were A lot of our ethos is for
Speaker 5: producer by producer, and so you'll see constant updates on
Speaker 5: what we believe is useful to you because you're telling
Speaker 5: us what to build next. So yeah, we're constantly open
Speaker 5: to to any kind of feedback that that that that
Speaker 5: people have. I'd be curious, Brandon if, regardless of saturation,
Speaker 5: is there something in budgeting that you wish like software solved,
Speaker 5: or in what you do as a as a as
Speaker 5: a producer, or maybe something that saturation could add. We
Speaker 5: asked this a lot to different producers of like what
Speaker 5: sucks about what you're currently doing that could be automated
Speaker 5: or you know, could.
Speaker 3: Could be well, I mean it's like, I know how
Speaker 3: to actualize, you know, an entire budget, but when you're
Speaker 3: working on a bigger budget and let's say you have
Speaker 3: an art department and you've got to entrust them with
Speaker 3: a certain section of their budget or locations that sometimes
Speaker 3: be millions of dollars, it's the it's almost like you
Speaker 3: have to train people how to be how to do
Speaker 3: what you do. So it's like it's like there may
Speaker 3: not be a line producer in the location department, department
Speaker 3: or the art department, right because there's so but you
Speaker 3: have a maybe you have an art department coordinator or
Speaker 3: or a location coordinator or an ALM. So you want
Speaker 3: to try to find the best person right that that
Speaker 3: can be that conduit for the the actuals, I guess.
Speaker 3: And so it's it's always trying to for me, it's
Speaker 3: always not a pain point, but it's like I guess,
Speaker 3: it's trying to figure out how to we want to
Speaker 3: actualize the entire budget, not just not just the payroll,
Speaker 3: not just you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I don't know. It's a really good point.
Speaker 5: And I love what you said there because we actually
Speaker 5: do have a feature in Saturation that allowed you to
Speaker 5: I had mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that
Speaker 5: a lot of Saturation is collaboration with access control. So
Speaker 5: you could invite let's say, art department to our department's
Speaker 5: part of the budget and have them help with the
Speaker 5: actuals with this feature that we have called share View.
Speaker 5: So you can invite them into that just and they
Speaker 5: can all, you know, manage their costs and input all
Speaker 5: of that in there, and then you get to see
Speaker 5: it as kind of the overall producer in what they
Speaker 5: are inputting and instead of them doing it in a
Speaker 5: separate we've seen it commonly that you know, art department
Speaker 5: will do it in an Excel sheet or another like
Speaker 5: you know, spreadsheets, separate from whatever budget or cost track
Speaker 5: or that you're doing. And so this provides a unified
Speaker 5: approach to potentially be able to solve some part of
Speaker 5: that problem. I don't know if it fully solves what
Speaker 5: you're saying, And obviously there's a, like you're saying, a
Speaker 5: level of just understanding that you need to communicate constantly,
Speaker 5: I'm sure with new people. But hopefully that's a step
Speaker 5: in the right direction of solving that problem.
Speaker 3: I mean, to me, that sounds amazing because I do
Speaker 3: feel like it is like, Okay, our department, they're just
Speaker 3: going to create their own system, maybe make a news template.
Speaker 3: Maybe their actual system works, maybe it doesn't, But then
Speaker 3: I have to try to get that information from them
Speaker 3: when they're very busy, right yeah, And you know it's like, okay, well,
Speaker 3: how do I delicately ask them again? And again, where
Speaker 3: do you guys think you are on the budget?
Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, And.
Speaker 5: The beauty of our expense management too is if they
Speaker 5: just use our payment rails, then you already have kind
Speaker 5: of access to all of that. With them, they're having
Speaker 5: to really do much in terms of manual processes there too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think it's it's really important at the
Speaker 3: beginning of the project that you find those key people
Speaker 3: with with with the main departments that are going to
Speaker 3: be the people helping you actualize this and sit down
Speaker 3: and train them on a saturation yeah, and get them say, Okay,
Speaker 3: you're using this system and we're going to love it
Speaker 3: together and we're going to train and it's going to
Speaker 3: be amazing.
Speaker 5: The other part of what is useful about saturation is
Speaker 5: the integrations to the accounting tools, like we were talking
Speaker 5: about earlier. So that's kind of the last part that
Speaker 5: I can think of where it does a bit of
Speaker 5: an A to Z like you can you can budget,
Speaker 5: you can then do your expense management through here and
Speaker 5: then actualize and then connect it to accounting tools, and
Speaker 5: so it streamlines the entire process where it allows you know,
Speaker 5: what used to be kind of very tedious two three.
Speaker 5: You know times the data entry, you're doing the data
Speaker 5: entry once and then you're able to streamline that and
Speaker 5: put that all into here. So it's something that I
Speaker 5: would encourage people to just hop in and try and
Speaker 5: you know, create that system if you haven't already for
Speaker 5: your projects or your production and unify that because I
Speaker 5: think I've seen people they'll go from project to project
Speaker 5: kind of like slightly doing it a little different if
Speaker 5: they're you know, a company. But the more you can
Speaker 5: kind of systemize your approach to financial management, the better
Speaker 5: off you'll be in the long term.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. If somebody wants to find you online or saturation,
Speaker 3: what's the best way to do that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, pretty easy if you google me gents Jacob. I
Speaker 5: think most of my handles are gents Jacob twenty four. Otherwise,
Speaker 5: website is saturation do io. You can sign up for
Speaker 5: free and yeah, our handles are also Saturation dio.
Speaker 3: Jens. It was a lot of fun learning about Saturation.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to use it on the next project
Speaker 3: and hope that it goes through the roof.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you, Brandon, my pleasure. Thanks for sharing with
Speaker 5: your audience.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to another episode of Go for production.
Speaker 3: Please be sure to visit us online at Assistantdirecting dot
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