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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four thirty four.
Speaker 1: Your dream doesn't have an expiration date, Take a deep
Speaker 1: breath and try again. KT Whitten broadcasting from a dark,
Speaker 1: windowless room in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: When we really should be working on that next draft.
Speaker 2: It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and
Speaker 2: business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your
Speaker 2: screenplay bulletproof.
Speaker 1: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
Speaker 1: episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.
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Speaker 1: Dave Bullis.
Speaker 4: My guest today actually teaches at at Conacademy and he's
Speaker 4: the producer for Pixar in a Box, an amazing course.
Speaker 4: It's one hundred percent free, by the way, Wink wink.
Speaker 4: And then my guest also teaches computer science. He teaches cryptography.
Speaker 4: I mean, brilliant, brilliant guy with guests cruise. Hey, Britt,
Speaker 4: thanks off for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: Hey Dave, happy to be speaking with you.
Speaker 4: So, you know, Britt, you have such a unique background.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, you're involved in so many great things.
Speaker 4: So I want to know when you were growing up,
Speaker 4: did you always have this sort of this love of
Speaker 4: not only teaching, but also of creative problem solving and
Speaker 4: sort of like computer science.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as a kid, like like most people involved in filmmaking.
Speaker 3: Very early on, I got obsessed with, you know, the
Speaker 3: home video cameras, and as soon as I got my
Speaker 3: hands on VCRs, I started trying to cut together videos,
Speaker 3: you know, starting with family vacations and whatnot. But very soon.
Speaker 3: What I realized early on is the kinds of videos
Speaker 3: I was making once I moved beyond the family videos
Speaker 3: were explanation style videos, kind of similar to what was
Speaker 3: on TV at the time. I grew up with Bill Nye,
Speaker 3: so I kind of bent that way, and very quickly
Speaker 3: I realized that, you know, I could hand in school
Speaker 3: projects in video form. I kind of forced my teachers
Speaker 3: to do that, and I I kind of found my
Speaker 3: way into explanation style videos really early, even though it
Speaker 3: wasn't my one passion, but it's something that came up
Speaker 3: right away.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you mentioned the home video cameras. You know, a
Speaker 4: lot of guests also had that same childhood experience where
Speaker 4: they're picking up you know, the super eight cameras or
Speaker 4: maybe even a little later like a big VHS box
Speaker 4: cam quarders and start. You know, then that's all I
Speaker 4: got their start, and you know, in making their own
Speaker 4: films totally.
Speaker 3: I remember My setup now was I had two VCRs
Speaker 3: for editing and to mix sound in I ran I had.
Speaker 3: I had an early computer thanks to my mom, and
Speaker 3: I would run an audio cable with a mic jack
Speaker 3: going to RCA cables running diagonally across the room into
Speaker 3: the VCR, so I could next sound from the computer
Speaker 3: and video from the VCRs. And that was my first setup.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's actually brilliant. That was fun, I mean especially
Speaker 4: for I mean, because what were you seven or eight.
Speaker 3: At the time. Yeah, six seven.
Speaker 4: I mean that's a brilliant idea for a kid to
Speaker 4: come up with, which explains a lot about you, Britt. Mean,
Speaker 4: it's like, I think that's why you know you're you
Speaker 4: know you're in the position you are you have to
Speaker 4: there's there's moments of brilliance. And you know when I
Speaker 4: when we talk about computers, what kind of computer was it, Britt,
Speaker 4: Was it like one of those old Apple two's or
Speaker 4: was it something similar?
Speaker 3: No, my friend had an Apple. I had one of
Speaker 3: the early box computers. It was my Actually, my mom
Speaker 3: had an early Tandy laptop, one of the first laptops,
Speaker 3: so I grew up on dos. But then the computer
Speaker 3: I'm describing I remember it was a given from a
Speaker 3: friend of my dad's and it was a big, boxy one.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it was before like the compact
Speaker 3: Presario Wave.
Speaker 4: Oh gotcha, gotcha?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: I mean you ever take I mean, do you still
Speaker 4: have that computer laying around like somewhere in storage?
Speaker 3: No? No, that one's so gone.
Speaker 4: I actually, maybe a couple of months ago, I was
Speaker 4: going through stuff and I had my I still have
Speaker 4: my first computer that I got, and I was a
Speaker 4: little late to the party with it. But I you know,
Speaker 4: my first computer was in the nineties, uh, probably the
Speaker 4: late nineties, and I remember pulling this thing out and
Speaker 4: my god, I look at it and go, how the
Speaker 4: hell did I use this thing? It's it seems so
Speaker 4: archaic and it's huge, and I'm like, you know, it's
Speaker 4: it only uses a fifty six K modem.
Speaker 3: When you're passionate, though, yeah, nothing else anything will get
Speaker 3: you to anything will work, any tool will work if
Speaker 3: you're motivated.
Speaker 4: That's a great saying, Brett. I'm gonna I'm gonna keep that, uh,
Speaker 4: because I'm gonna that is a a great piece of advice,
Speaker 4: you know, because mainly I use it, you know, for
Speaker 4: for writing too. And I mean I even had word
Speaker 4: processors that I remember using, and I looked at some
Speaker 4: of them, you know, the other day I was looking
Speaker 4: through I'm not not in personal online some of the
Speaker 4: old word processors, and I'm like, man, the size of
Speaker 4: these things so like a piece of luggage.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We had a typewriter too. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I know some people who you know, who are younger
Speaker 4: listening to this have no clue what a typewriter is.
Speaker 4: But but I've used the typewriter brand. I remember the
Speaker 4: Remember when you had to change the uh, if you
Speaker 4: made a mistake, you had to put that like a
Speaker 4: little card in to sort of backspace it out, wait
Speaker 4: it out. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wish I still had a typer. Actually, it's
Speaker 3: a nice way to folk stay focused.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I was saying that somebody else the
Speaker 4: other day. You know, it's like laptops are great, you know,
Speaker 4: phones are great, but the problem is is that it's
Speaker 4: too easy to get distracted with them because of the Internet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the context switch is the real killer. It just
Speaker 3: that's the number one thing people waste time on. They
Speaker 3: probably if they count it in a day. When I
Speaker 3: say context switch, I mean an interruption of any kind.
Speaker 3: Doing one thing and then doing another. If you do
Speaker 3: that hundreds of times per day, it's a few minutes
Speaker 3: per switch you waste. And that's why people waste three
Speaker 3: to four hours a day. Early on, about six years
Speaker 3: ago or seven years ago, I noticed this and one
Speaker 3: day I just threw my phone out and I never
Speaker 3: looked back. I've never owned a smartphone, and that's again
Speaker 3: one of my great time savers.
Speaker 4: So do you just have a flip phone now or
Speaker 4: no phone at all?
Speaker 3: I don't. I have a landline.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, yeah. You know there was a program that
Speaker 4: I you know, I had a couple different people on
Speaker 4: the podcast, and we were always talking about this because
Speaker 4: some people have to use a laptop and for the work,
Speaker 4: and so we would need in there for the research.
Speaker 4: But you know, even when I'm trying to do it,
Speaker 4: sometimes the phone, the phone is the biggest distraction for me.
Speaker 4: The laptop not so much because the phone, you know,
Speaker 4: you're always being You're always at someone's beck and call,
Speaker 4: which I think you some days, I say to myself,
Speaker 4: but I go, you know what if I could take
Speaker 4: a vacation and not carry my peh with me, I
Speaker 4: don't think, you know what I mean, I think that
Speaker 4: would be a real vacation because if I went on
Speaker 4: a vacation somewhere and I had to carry my phone
Speaker 4: or my laptop around, it would it would there be
Speaker 4: no point to it. No, So you know, taking a
Speaker 4: break from the phone as is something that you know,
Speaker 4: I I have found is important, just leaving it in
Speaker 4: another room, turning it off completely. And for the laptop,
Speaker 4: there's a program I found called Antisocial and there's also
Speaker 4: another one called I forget what it's called, but it's
Speaker 4: it's about the same people who make anti social and
Speaker 4: basically it just blocks out certain websites so that way
Speaker 4: you can't access them.
Speaker 3: Yep. And I often just have days where I turned
Speaker 3: the Internet off and it's really it really helps.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it definitely does. And you know so, so, but
Speaker 4: what does a normal day for you look like?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: What? What?
Speaker 4: How is your day structured in terms of when you're
Speaker 4: creating and teaching and all and doing all the things
Speaker 4: that you do.
Speaker 3: I try to break up my day into two halves,
Speaker 3: So I really hate scheduling meetings and breaking up a
Speaker 3: day into hours and half hour chunks. I only work
Speaker 3: well in half thinking about a day in two runs
Speaker 3: of creation. So there's a morning creation phase and there's
Speaker 3: an afternoon creation phase, and then otherwise I try to
Speaker 3: bucket all my natual meetings on one day. That's what
Speaker 3: I really try to do. So I have a day
Speaker 3: where I'm just sitting around on meetings, and then the
Speaker 3: other two days the other four days of the week,
Speaker 3: if things are going well, I am just locked into
Speaker 3: one task and staying on that for two to three hours,
Speaker 3: then a break bike ride two to three hours. Now
Speaker 3: your day is done. Now I have two kids. Now
Speaker 3: I don't work past four o'clock. If you're working. I
Speaker 3: used to work late at night, and once I stopped
Speaker 3: doing that, it really helped because it helped focus me
Speaker 3: so that at the beginning of the week, if I
Speaker 3: know I'm done at four, I really have to write
Speaker 3: out the day before what I want to accomplish the
Speaker 3: next day, and that has kept me very organized.
Speaker 4: So it seems to be that you know, if you
Speaker 4: can if you start working at four, we'll be right back.
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Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 4: You're so focused on getting it done, meaning that there
Speaker 4: is it's like you have a window of opportunity, and
Speaker 4: in that window of opportunity you say, Okay, it begins here,
Speaker 4: it ends here, And in the middle is where I
Speaker 4: have to do all the where I have to do
Speaker 4: all my work because once four o'clock hits the windows
Speaker 4: closed exactly.
Speaker 3: So I really cherish those two to three hour chunks,
Speaker 3: and I'll and during those chunks all either depending on
Speaker 3: the type of work I'm doing. If I don't need
Speaker 3: a computer, I'm out on my bike, bike to the river,
Speaker 3: sit by the river, work on paper. That's where I
Speaker 3: get my best work done. Often I'm on the computer.
Speaker 3: If I can, I take my laptop somewhere, I go
Speaker 3: to the coffee shop and work. And otherwise, when I'm
Speaker 3: stuck in an editing hole, then I'm at home in
Speaker 3: my office editing. I will one caveat is yeah, when
Speaker 3: when you're anyone who is at an editor, it's very
Speaker 3: hard to stop working. So there are the days, there
Speaker 3: are the very scary weeks where you can't even count
Speaker 3: how many hours you spent editing. And that happens to me.
Speaker 3: So it was all night, So.
Speaker 4: Britt when you're using that pen and paper, so are
Speaker 4: you just grabbing a notebook and just a pen, you know,
Speaker 4: and you're just you know, you know, writing ideas as
Speaker 4: they come, and you're working on projects. Do you ever
Speaker 4: have a problem maybe transcribing that back to the laptop.
Speaker 3: No, actually I never, But I often do things in layers,
Speaker 3: So I'll write a bunch of scribbles that don't always
Speaker 3: make a lot of sense. What I find is just
Speaker 3: the process of writing is more important than what you
Speaker 3: even have on that page, because it's my form of
Speaker 3: building memory. So I'll go out write something down, and
Speaker 3: I'll have six pages of chicken scratch, look like a
Speaker 3: crazy person. But then I I'll just leave that in
Speaker 3: my bag. The next day, I'll go out and write
Speaker 3: again what I was working on. I'll try to simplify
Speaker 3: it into some sort of bullet point thing, and then
Speaker 3: by the time I get back to the laptop, I
Speaker 3: usually have, you know, a readable piece of paper. But
Speaker 3: even if those papers blew away, it would be fine
Speaker 3: because the process of writing on a paper for me
Speaker 3: helped me build and clarify my thinking. And then I
Speaker 3: can just sit down on that laptop and bang out,
Speaker 3: you know, a script of whatever I'm doing in a
Speaker 3: very focused flow. Thinking Now just out loud. If I
Speaker 3: was trying to do that on a laptop from the beginning,
Speaker 3: I would never get anything done because again I would
Speaker 3: be switching context. I wouldn't be on the page.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, the only because I mean, I love
Speaker 4: notebooks and writing using an actual pen. The biggest challenge
Speaker 4: that I mean, I've I face is trying to get
Speaker 4: that writing back onto a laptop, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: because now you're transcribing, you know what I mean, And
Speaker 4: now I always find it it's a little it feels
Speaker 4: a little redundant sometimes to me because you feel like
Speaker 4: you're doing the same work you just did, if you
Speaker 4: know what.
Speaker 3: I mean, totally. I guess I should clarify. When I'm writing,
Speaker 3: I'm often just drawing pictures and doodling. I'm not actually
Speaker 3: writing down sentence for sentence and then transcribing. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: wouldn't work. Once I'm at that level of I can
Speaker 3: actually write down the words of for example, the narration,
Speaker 3: I'm on the computer, So it's really that brainstorm phase,
Speaker 3: structure phase. I stay on the page.
Speaker 4: So what are some of the bigger projects that you
Speaker 4: can talk about that you're working on right now?
Speaker 3: So in the in one world. I am working on
Speaker 3: year three of Pixar in a Box, which is a
Speaker 3: really big, very exciting project. The goal here of this
Speaker 3: project is to show how the movie making process that
Speaker 3: Pixar works, but more specifically, how things that kids are
Speaker 3: learning in school are used at Pixar in the making
Speaker 3: of their films. So Pixar in a Box has been
Speaker 3: structured over three years. Year one we focused on the
Speaker 3: math connections, So what do you learn in math class
Speaker 3: that they actually use at Pixar. For example, in particle
Speaker 3: simulations to make water, they're using Newton's equations from physics.
Speaker 3: So you know that boring stuff you're learning in school
Speaker 3: that seems boring when it's presented to you, is used
Speaker 3: in this very exciting domain. Year two of Pixar in
Speaker 3: a Box focused more on science, the connections, the connections
Speaker 3: to science. Right now, I'm working on the last lesson,
Speaker 3: which is a hair simulation lesson. How they simulate hair
Speaker 3: at Pixar. Well, it uses a mass spring system, which
Speaker 3: is Hook's law. Another thing you hit in school. But
Speaker 3: most exciting and we're writing right now is year three.
Speaker 3: I Picks are in a Box is really the whole
Speaker 3: point of it is going to be called the art
Speaker 3: of storytelling, so that will be a storytelling curriculum. We
Speaker 3: purposely push that one last because I always knew it
Speaker 3: would be the hardest one to make work online.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what that's actually, you know, from from
Speaker 4: just my standpoint, that's the one I would really like
Speaker 4: to be to see, not because I'm not interested in
Speaker 4: an animation or how Pixar does everything, but just from
Speaker 4: you know, a writing, storytelling perspective. You know, everybody is
Speaker 4: always interested to see how Pixar does what they do.
Speaker 3: Yes, and we're all so excited about the pressures on
Speaker 3: to make sure this is really strong. And the one
Speaker 3: hard part is with year one and two. With the
Speaker 3: cool thing about Pixar in a Box is it's a
Speaker 3: fully interactive, very engaging experience. You're not just watching a
Speaker 3: video and doing a test. You are watching a short clip,
Speaker 3: then playing with a piece of interactive software you saw
Speaker 3: on that clip, and then you follow along video exercize
Speaker 3: video exercise. You're participating throughout and creating throughout. So, for example,
Speaker 3: with that water simulation lesson, not only are you learning
Speaker 3: how they do it, you are making your own particle
Speaker 3: simulator along the way. That's easy to kind of conceptualize
Speaker 3: in math and science, but in the storytelling world again,
Speaker 3: it's very hard to think about online activities you're going
Speaker 3: to do in between learning about their storytelling process. So
Speaker 3: that's really the challenge is really figuring out, Okay, it
Speaker 3: won't be too hard to make really great videos that
Speaker 3: communicate how storytelling works at picks are and how the
Speaker 3: individual storytellers, what their process is. What will be hard
Speaker 3: is the handoff to the user to say, okay, now
Speaker 3: it's your turn. Now it's your turn. Because the goal
Speaker 3: of our storytelling curriculum is pretty ambitious. It is you
Speaker 3: start with nothing, you go through six lessons, and at
Speaker 3: the end you have storyboarded your own short. So that's
Speaker 3: that's the scope. Is people leave this lesson with a
Speaker 3: storyboarded short on paper, and so that's the goal and
Speaker 3: that's where we are still working on the steps to
Speaker 3: get you there.
Speaker 4: That's absolutely amazing, brit Is that is see you know,
Speaker 4: I see a less screenwriting courses online from all different
Speaker 4: people and all different places. And the crux of it is,
Speaker 4: at the end, you don't really do you know what
Speaker 4: I mean? You should be in my opinion, creating something
Speaker 4: as you're going you know, even if if it's a treatment,
Speaker 4: if it's an outline. That's why when you said it's
Speaker 4: going to be a storyboard for your own short, that
Speaker 4: is killer. That is key because you should be creating
Speaker 4: as you're learning, so you you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: Like you learn and create, create and you learn right exactly.
Speaker 3: It's it's exciting to hear your excitement and it's got
Speaker 3: some goosebumps because I'm like, yes, we got to push
Speaker 3: forward on this.
Speaker 4: You could go back to Pixar and be like Dave
Speaker 4: Bullis really likes and we'll say who is that? But
Speaker 4: uh but uh, you know, I mean it's amazing, what
Speaker 4: what what what Pixar is doing? And I wanted to
Speaker 4: ask you, but you know, as we talk of Pixar
Speaker 4: on a box, you know, how did you become a
Speaker 4: producer of Pixar in a Box?
Speaker 3: Backing up, I was, well, immediately I was working at
Speaker 3: con Academy and and what I was doing there at
Speaker 3: the time is thinking of how we could co produce
Speaker 3: content with partners. And I dip my feet a little
Speaker 3: bit in with NASA the year before where we kind
Speaker 3: of looked at all of NASA's content and thought, okay,
Speaker 3: what can we do to kind of curate this and
Speaker 3: make it work on con Academy so it will just
Speaker 3: you know, aligned to standards. And it was, you know,
Speaker 3: an interesting linear flow. But the NASA project was really
Speaker 3: a curation one looking at what they had and then
Speaker 3: and NASA is such a big organization. There's just all
Speaker 3: these different departments that make educational content, so it's like
Speaker 3: grabbing from a thousand things trying to find the twenty
Speaker 3: that work and putting that into a lesson format. That
Speaker 3: was like a baby first step in experimenting how we
Speaker 3: could work with partners. And then right around that the
Speaker 3: time that ended, someone at con Academy kit Heraski used
Speaker 3: to work at Pixar, and said, you know, there's someone
Speaker 3: at Pixar who's you know, interested in maybe doing something
Speaker 3: with us. And at the time, Tony DeRose is the
Speaker 3: chief scientist at Pixar, was doing a TED talk and
Speaker 3: he has a talk called Math in the Movies, which
Speaker 3: is like a one hour talk talking about you know,
Speaker 3: what you learn at school is relevant at Pixar, and
Speaker 3: he they were working on a physical exhibit the Science
Speaker 3: behind Pixar, which is now traveling around the US. I
Speaker 3: saw it in Boston last so he had this he
Speaker 3: had this one hour talk, which was successful. Then it
Speaker 3: became a museum exhibit with a bunch of interactive things
Speaker 3: you could do. But then his next vision was, we
Speaker 3: wanted to reach more people by creating some sort of
Speaker 3: online version of what I'm trying to do in the museum.
Speaker 3: And what was really exciting is in that first meeting
Speaker 3: when they came in, I was like, yes, I have
Speaker 3: to be in that meeting. They didn't have any idea
Speaker 3: what they're going to do yet. It was just like,
Speaker 3: we know we want to do something online. We know
Speaker 3: our guiding principle, but we don't know what the thing
Speaker 3: we're putting online is. So it was this opportunity to
Speaker 3: work on an exciting project that was a blank slate
Speaker 3: from the beginning. And that's and I was like, no
Speaker 3: one could stop me at that point, jumping in and
Speaker 3: grabbing the reins. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, because you know, you look at Pixar in
Speaker 4: a box.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
Speaker 4: And it just looks, you know, so well put together.
Speaker 4: There's so many talented people working on that. You know,
Speaker 4: has there ever been a challenge we're working on Pixar
Speaker 4: in a box that that it's almost beyond sort of
Speaker 4: a resources standpoint, or if you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Britt Wait, can you repeat the question just so I'm clear.
Speaker 3: When you say resources, what do you mean, like.
Speaker 4: Maybe there's not enough people, maybe there's enough time, you know,
Speaker 4: just something that maybe like there was an element to
Speaker 4: pick her on a box that maybe somebody wanted to
Speaker 4: implement but they just couldn't, you know, either through time
Speaker 4: or just didn't have enough you know, time or people
Speaker 4: to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's hard. I mean everything about the project has
Speaker 3: been a challenge, but they're all great challenges because the
Speaker 3: project is fun. So it started right with a Getting
Speaker 3: funding for this project was difficult, but once Disney eventually
Speaker 3: funded it, that gave the freedom to actually spend some
Speaker 3: time conceptualizing what the lessons would be. And that's that
Speaker 3: is where we wasted. I don't want to say wasted,
Speaker 3: because it was development. That's where the majority of our
Speaker 3: time went. Initially what does this lesson look like? And
Speaker 3: we actually just a small group of us rebuilt the
Speaker 3: same lesson, which is our environment modeling lesson like four
Speaker 3: or five times over and over and over until we
Speaker 3: could find a model that worked. So the and the
Speaker 3: challenge there is, i Icon Academy, We're about, you know,
Speaker 3: producing stuff fast, low quality. It's not about production value.
Speaker 3: It's about you know, being clear and being engaging and
Speaker 3: being personalized content. Pixar came in needing a very specific
Speaker 3: bar to be hit in terms of production values, and
Speaker 3: the hard part was finding that middle ground between something
Speaker 3: that Pixar thought was visually appealing enough, but con Academy
Speaker 3: thought was, you know, fast enough to produce that we
Speaker 3: could actually scale this out and not waste all year
Speaker 3: one on video And finding that middle ground blending live
Speaker 3: action and blending graphics was really hard. But once we
Speaker 3: found that middle ground in terms of production, we were
Speaker 3: able to crank out the other lessons fairly quickly in
Speaker 3: terms of uh lessons I've worked on before, Like, we
Speaker 3: really managed to find a system that we could crank
Speaker 3: these out.
Speaker 4: And you also, Picture on a Box has a podcasting element,
Speaker 4: which I think is a phenomenal idea as well. Mm hmm,
Speaker 4: because I think podcasting, you know that it's sure they
Speaker 4: can get the you know, there's a video element through
Speaker 4: the you know video and audio through the con Academy.
Speaker 4: There's there's lessons and then also I mean having that
Speaker 4: that audio element so that way, you know, if someone's
Speaker 4: out for a walk at the gym, they still put
Speaker 4: that on and hear a whole other aspect, you know,
Speaker 4: because it's just you know, they're busy doing whatever, but
Speaker 4: they're either they can have time to listen.
Speaker 3: Totally, and that reminds me that one of the again,
Speaker 3: it's just all challenges. Another challenge was who would be
Speaker 3: in these videos and would it be one person through
Speaker 3: out would it be multiple people? Having multiple people it's
Speaker 3: a very tough scheduling problem. Ultimately we went for someone
Speaker 3: different in each lesson and ultimately two or three people
Speaker 3: and that was very difficult to schedule, but it was
Speaker 3: so worth it because it's so nice now to look
Speaker 3: at that content and anywhere you dive in, you're going
Speaker 3: to meet somebody new and it's very authentic.
Speaker 4: So, you know, as we talk about challenges with Picture
Speaker 4: on a Box, you know, what was the biggest challenge
Speaker 4: that you've faced and how did you overcome that?
Speaker 3: I think for a moment.
Speaker 4: So well, you know, while you're thinking I'll just you know,
Speaker 4: just add you know, I a creative problem solving. You know,
Speaker 4: somebody once told me that anybody can write a check,
Speaker 4: you know, but the real sort of mark of a
Speaker 4: good producer or a good anybody is the creative problem solving.
Speaker 4: And it sounds like to me, Britain, that you're full
Speaker 4: of creative ideas and full of just genius ways to
Speaker 4: sort of figure out problems that don't require you know,
Speaker 4: just okay, you know, we'll just you know, here's money.
Speaker 4: We'll use it that way. If I think you're a
Speaker 4: guy that sort of puts his you know, thinks not
Speaker 4: only analytically, but also thinks on different planes about how
Speaker 4: we can actually creatively solve problems.
Speaker 3: That helped me think of what it was.
Speaker 4: Thank you, rob My ramblings help somebody. I'm glad bright No,
Speaker 4: I'm just kidding.
Speaker 3: In terms. So, one thing was at the time, kon
Speaker 3: Academy's exercise platform only allowed certain kinds of questions, right
Speaker 3: like from multiple choice to dragging a point around a
Speaker 3: grid ordering boxes, the type of questions you do when
Speaker 3: you do a math test. But we clearly wanted the
Speaker 3: exercises to be very different. We wanted you to actually
Speaker 3: be doing things and working on simulated pieces of software
Speaker 3: that people that Pixar used. That was my goal, like,
Speaker 3: let's look at the software you guys are using and
Speaker 3: let's build a stripped down version of that. And we've
Speaker 3: done that for things like we have a color correction suite,
Speaker 3: we have an animation suite. We have all this stuff,
Speaker 3: but it was stripping them down to the very core elements.
Speaker 3: So you know, any animation suite has a billion buttons,
Speaker 3: takes forever to learn. We had to build an animation
Speaker 3: suite that would work within like a minute. So we
Speaker 3: stripped everything away except you know, there's keyframes and a
Speaker 3: play button and you can do linear interpolation or Bezier interpolation.
Speaker 3: What are the functions the essential functions needed to simulate
Speaker 3: that software. Then figure out a way to actually make
Speaker 3: those simulated environments work on Kon Academy, which is a
Speaker 3: whole issue in building that out on the back end.
Speaker 3: But coupled to that, the opportunity I saw in that
Speaker 3: in working on these very complex interactive exercises is there
Speaker 3: was a free thing that came out of it, which
Speaker 3: is the graphics we needed in the video which is
Speaker 3: I was always worried about, how are we going to
Speaker 3: do graphics for two hundred videos. It's so much work,
Speaker 3: is and with iteration, it's just a nightmare. Real. I
Speaker 3: put a stake in the ground and said, all the
Speaker 3: graphics in all our videos will be screen captures of
Speaker 3: the exercises. So the pieces of software we build that
Speaker 3: you get to play with going through the exercises, that's
Speaker 3: the visuals you see in the video about ninety five percent.
Speaker 3: There's some other ones you have to make on top
Speaker 3: of it. But it was really great because it meant
Speaker 3: there was a ton of legwork to build the software
Speaker 3: for the interactive exercises that are really fun and visually appealing.
Speaker 3: But then when it came to video production, it was
Speaker 3: really just a matter of cutting together a live action
Speaker 3: shoot with screen grabs from an exercise and then boom,
Speaker 3: it just eliminated a whole job of having a full
Speaker 3: time graphics person.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that see, that's that amazing creative problem solving.
Speaker 4: I was talking about you seem like a guy, Britt, Well, actually,
Speaker 4: I know you're a guy who can just think on
Speaker 4: the fly like that and just sort of you know,
Speaker 4: even when you're in brainstorming sessions, you know, because I
Speaker 4: think with projects like Pixel in a Box, I could
Speaker 4: see a lot of sort of you know, obstacles and
Speaker 4: just that you're just both creatively financially like you said,
Speaker 4: you know, you know Disney had to finance it, and
Speaker 4: you know, and just just I think, you know, having
Speaker 4: those that creative ability at so much that it's almost
Speaker 4: you know, it's unquantifiable, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I think, I like my definition of creativity is ability
Speaker 3: to deal with unknowns. That's my working definition of what
Speaker 3: a creative person is. It's it's not even like are
Speaker 3: you a great writer? It's can you deal with unknowns?
Speaker 3: And do you do you embrace unknowns? So this project
Speaker 3: was great. It was all unknowns, but the driving force
Speaker 3: was that vision of what it will be at the
Speaker 3: end was so strong that it was like this this
Speaker 3: project was me saying, I'm sending back to my twelve
Speaker 3: year old self because I remember, like anyone, when the
Speaker 3: first time you see toy story, everyone has a story
Speaker 3: about that. I was in grade eight toy Story came out.
Speaker 3: I told my teacher we got to do animation, and
Speaker 3: he's like, we don't even know where to start, and
Speaker 3: I remember going to buy three D movie Maker, which
Speaker 3: is a really old three dmodeling program, great, great software,
Speaker 3: and like convince my teacher to buy it, and you
Speaker 3: put it on all the computers. But then there's a
Speaker 3: question of like, now what do we do, and that
Speaker 3: whole headache of a year with toy story and trying
Speaker 3: to integrate it into the classroom, like regurgitated. When I
Speaker 3: had this Pixar meeting, and I'm like, here's the chance
Speaker 3: to actually do something that is fully aligned to those
Speaker 3: films that inspire kids. So that having that end goal
Speaker 3: allows you to just blow through all the challenges because
Speaker 3: you're just like you know where you're headed.
Speaker 4: You know, I really like that definition of creativity. So
Speaker 4: so your definition of creativity is how you deal with unknowns, I.
Speaker 3: Would say, a billet, sorry to cut you off. The
Speaker 3: definition would be the ability to deal with unknowns, the
Speaker 3: ability to deal with unknowns.
Speaker 4: So let's just say we're you know, we're writing, you know, Britt,
Speaker 4: and you know, as we were writing, so we're sort
Speaker 4: of putting pieces of a puzzle together, you know, you know,
Speaker 4: both both consciously and subconsciously. You know, we're trying you know,
Speaker 4: we're trying to fit all this together. Do you think that,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe creativity is sort of as we're going
Speaker 4: actually writing in that moment and just things are coming
Speaker 4: up naturally, you know, do you think that would probably
Speaker 4: be like the purest form of creativity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because at every step it's like there's a branching effect.
Speaker 3: At every step there's a multiple options, which is a
Speaker 3: branch of things, and then each option leads to other options,
Speaker 3: and it just branches out so quickly. There's so many
Speaker 3: avenues you can go down, and you can't be intimidated
Speaker 3: by that. So like one thing some people might do,
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to make this up. Let's just imagine
Speaker 3: a hypothetical person who isn't quote unquote creative, which is silly.
Speaker 3: They might have an idea and then stick to that
Speaker 3: just because they had a new idea that was connected
Speaker 3: to that. And if you change the new idea, then
Speaker 3: I'd have to go back to the old idea. And
Speaker 3: if your seven ideas deep, it's so scary to go
Speaker 3: back and rip it up and rebuild and rebuild and rebuild.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: But if you're not afraid of those unknowns and how
Speaker 3: those unknowns connect to each other, I would say if
Speaker 3: there was this other quote unquote creative person, they would
Speaker 3: be more than willing. And they even enjoy that process
Speaker 3: of breaking it down and starting again and again and again.
Speaker 3: And like you say, I like that puzzle analogy, I
Speaker 3: guess yeah, they would enjoy rearranging the pieces again and
Speaker 3: again and again to see how they fit together.
Speaker 4: You know, when you're talking about branching out, you know,
Speaker 4: that's something that I've seen too. You know, when you're writing,
Speaker 4: you have a lot of you know, options, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, and you sort of go, well, okay,
Speaker 4: I can go option A, but if I or I
Speaker 4: can go option B, and then they sort of have
Speaker 4: their own sub branches, you know, and then sort of
Speaker 4: there's a there's a phrase that I hope I remember correctly.
Speaker 4: I think it's called decision fatigue, where eventually you get
Speaker 4: so tired becau you're like, okay, well if I choose
Speaker 4: a you know, let's just say a two like branching,
Speaker 4: and and you know, and this is this is I mean,
Speaker 4: whether we're coding or whether's screenwriting. You know, I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, we're we're always sort of whether either way.
Speaker 4: You know, there's I think there's a lot of overlay.
Speaker 4: But if you choose like option A, for instance, and
Speaker 4: you say, okay, we have two branches, I can go
Speaker 4: A one or a two. If I choose A two,
Speaker 4: well that makes that changes everything else I already did.
Speaker 4: But if I choose B two, you know, and I
Speaker 4: think eventually I think as we're writing, I think a
Speaker 4: lot of times decision fatigue causes us to stop more
Speaker 4: than you know what I mean. I think it causes
Speaker 4: us to go, oh geez. But if I did this,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, where you're sort of sitting
Speaker 4: there going, oh, man, what should I do next? I
Speaker 4: don't know, man. And I think that's when people sort
Speaker 4: of go online just sort of trying to figure it out,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. I think they have to
Speaker 4: go all right, let me just check Twitter real quick
Speaker 4: and i'll see if I'll see if you know, the
Speaker 4: decision comes to me.
Speaker 3: One that's interesting. I like decision fatigue, and that's where
Speaker 3: those distractions are nice because you can having to make
Speaker 3: decisions for a second and just zone out completely. But
Speaker 3: telling me about decision fatigue reminds me of the So
Speaker 3: another project I'm working on is my YouTube channel Art
Speaker 3: of the Problem, and that's an hour long video series
Speaker 3: which explores the origin of modern fields of study and
Speaker 3: the way to do that. But my approach to doing
Speaker 3: that is looking for an ancient question that humans have
Speaker 3: always been solving and follow that question through time because
Speaker 3: the question never goes away, just our way of solving
Speaker 3: it does. And in writing those episodes, they're definitely the
Speaker 3: most difficult thing I've ever done. It's really a process
Speaker 3: of trying to rewrite history, and that is something that
Speaker 3: I find most draining in the writing process.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the old logic questions. I like that a lot
Speaker 4: because there's one question that is you know, I always
Speaker 4: go back to whenever I'm writing, and that question is
Speaker 4: why just literally w h y question mark? You know,
Speaker 4: And it's sort of I think that, you know, that
Speaker 4: question has plagued philosophers throughout time and every and every
Speaker 4: culture and all of the planet. And I think that
Speaker 4: you know, why why question mark? If you could sort
Speaker 4: of figure out or maybe I shouldn't be use term
Speaker 4: figured it out, if you can sort of create an
Speaker 4: answer to that question, it will be your answer. But
Speaker 4: it's like you just said, it's sort of like the
Speaker 4: you know what, everyone's going to have a different answer
Speaker 4: to that, and how people have answered it throughout time totally.
Speaker 3: That's really fascinating when you think about things through the
Speaker 3: lens of what is the driving question? And again that's
Speaker 3: exactly what I do with the problem. It's a great
Speaker 3: way to look at the world. And what you do
Speaker 3: find is it's amazing how the same question will have
Speaker 3: the most like opposing decisions are almost orthogonal to each other.
Speaker 3: And then but the answers or the when I say decisions,
Speaker 3: I guess I mean solutions. The solutions to problems through
Speaker 3: different eras also reflect the era that you're living in,
Speaker 3: which is just I find very interesting.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, and you know what, what does a culture
Speaker 4: say at that point? You know what, what is the
Speaker 4: country going through at that point?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 4: Because personally, Brett, I think right now in America it's
Speaker 4: like a reflash of the seventies, just just culturally economically.
Speaker 4: It just feels that way to me. Probably completely wrong,
Speaker 4: but uh, I think that's why why cinema is getting
Speaker 4: back to that gritty, grind house. You feel, at least
Speaker 4: in the independence of the independent side of things. Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, and I also you know, just just in general,
Speaker 4: I think, you know, I see a lot of parallels.
Speaker 4: But but but you know, yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: problem solving and our perspective how we solve those problems,
Speaker 4: especially when we're writing a perspective as we go into
Speaker 4: the to write. You know, it's it's so important because
Speaker 4: I think, you know, when our perspectives we go in,
Speaker 4: that affects every decision we make. M hm, yes, So
Speaker 4: you know, Brett, So you know, as we're talking about
Speaker 4: you know, storytelling, you know, and we're talking about Pixar
Speaker 4: in a Box. You know what if somebody was going
Speaker 4: to take the course which is on con Academy, if
Speaker 4: someone was going to take the course, what's what's one
Speaker 4: thing you know you want them to take away from
Speaker 4: from the course.
Speaker 3: I would say one is. One interesting thing is that
Speaker 3: every topic on Pixar in a Box is featured, is
Speaker 3: taught by a different host, and the people we got
Speaker 3: to teach each lesson are actually the people who work
Speaker 3: in that department. So it's a rare case to really
Speaker 3: dive in. And if whatever your department you're interested in,
Speaker 3: whether it's rendering or whether it's storytelling, you can zoom
Speaker 3: in and actually get to meet that person. And we've included,
Speaker 3: aside from the lesson itself, which we've tried to make
Speaker 3: as gaging as possible, there's getting to know videos, which
Speaker 3: I find really valuable. There for a minute video how
Speaker 3: what did you do as a kid? How did you
Speaker 3: get here? And watching all of those getting to know
Speaker 3: videos are I find really fascinating because you see a
Speaker 3: lot of parallels. But it also can help you build
Speaker 3: a mental model for you know, your own path.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I I started taking I actually watched
Speaker 4: the intro video and I was looking around to with
Speaker 4: the different lectures. I like, how I think it's I
Speaker 4: think it's labeled Class two or level two. It's much
Speaker 4: more detailed and algorithms and computer science and you know
Speaker 4: sort of you know, the real real like atom level,
Speaker 4: uh of how things are actually created Pixar, And the
Speaker 4: first level was actually getting you know, getting an intro class.
Speaker 4: You know, you're seeing how, you know, all these things happen,
Speaker 4: and you're you're sort of you know, seeing how on
Speaker 4: the on the on the surface, you know how things
Speaker 4: are created too.
Speaker 3: Oh, you just reminded me of the the The challenge
Speaker 3: with Pixar in a Box we faced was just that
Speaker 3: what level of difficulty would these lessons be? And we
Speaker 3: batted that around a lot, like if we're getting into math,
Speaker 3: when do you get into the math? And we finally
Speaker 3: landed on a model where we would break every topic
Speaker 3: into two pieces, and lesson one would be all about
Speaker 3: getting you comfortable with a process or a tool that
Speaker 3: they use. So with animation, you get you actually use
Speaker 3: a keyframe editor and you learn how to make an animated,
Speaker 3: realistic bouncing ball. And then it's the second lesson where
Speaker 3: we peel back the layer of the onion one layer
Speaker 3: and we show you how those tools work. And that
Speaker 3: division was really important because there's a lot of people
Speaker 3: who actually don't maybe care how the tools work, They
Speaker 3: just want to see what the tools are. So with
Speaker 3: this model we were able to appease both crowds, and
Speaker 3: I'm really happy we did that because every lesson one
Speaker 3: on Pixar in a Box and every topic you don't
Speaker 3: have to be worried about, Like rendering might sound really scary,
Speaker 3: but guess what. Our rendering lesson doesn't require any mathematics,
Speaker 3: but the second part does, so you don't have to
Speaker 3: worry about dipping your feet in anywhere.
Speaker 4: So and that's great. I'm glad I can remind you,
Speaker 4: by the way, brand I'm glad again my my ramblings
Speaker 4: help somebody out. But but you know, you know, when
Speaker 4: I saw Pixar on a Box, I mean, it's just phenomenal.
Speaker 4: And you know, do you have an anticipation date an
Speaker 4: anticipated date of when you know the whole storytelling part
Speaker 4: of Pixar a Box will be.
Speaker 3: Up in twenty seventeen. We'll start rolling it out. We'll
Speaker 3: do it sequentially, so there'll be six lessons in that
Speaker 3: storytelling unit and by the end of February we will
Speaker 3: be rolling out our first one and then that'll roll
Speaker 3: into the summer. So by September next year, that whole
Speaker 3: storytelling curriculum will be finished.
Speaker 4: That is That is amazing, Brett. You know, and I'm
Speaker 4: going to link to Pixar on a Box in the
Speaker 4: show notes again. It's on con Academy. And you know
Speaker 4: con Academy is an is an open source worst online
Speaker 4: Uh what is is Is it classified as an moc
Speaker 4: brit No.
Speaker 3: It's not classified as a mook because you know, mooks
Speaker 3: are all about creating packaged courses you can take, where
Speaker 3: kon Academy is really trying to be there to help
Speaker 3: you with the concept you need so you can fill
Speaker 3: in the gap you need on whatever journey you're on.
Speaker 3: So it you know, it's a resource, a free resource
Speaker 3: that spans many many concepts, and it's designed so that
Speaker 3: you can you know, jump in and out to get
Speaker 3: the thing you need that you need help with, versus
Speaker 3: you know, a collection of packaged courses like like you
Speaker 3: see on the mooks. So it's different in that way.
Speaker 4: So, Britt, you know, just out of curiosity, do you
Speaker 4: ever think that these online classes are basically going to
Speaker 4: replace colleges.
Speaker 3: I don't think they'll replace colleges. I just think colleges
Speaker 3: will evolve, you.
Speaker 4: Know, I I've you know, I actually used to work
Speaker 4: at a college and a lot of some of the
Speaker 4: profet as we're actually talking about the mocs and basically
Speaker 4: you know, what they thought of them.
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Speaker 4: I think the bigger colleges, like you know, the IVY
Speaker 4: leagues will never have to worry about anything, you know,
Speaker 4: no matter what I think, if if they're not actually
Speaker 4: teaching education, they'll be a there'll be a glorified summer camp,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. I don't think if college,
Speaker 4: if those colleges like Harvard, Yale, Prison, if they adapt correctly,
Speaker 4: which they will because they usually have incredibly smart people,
Speaker 4: you know, running them, I think they'll that's what will happen.
Speaker 4: They'll if they're not teaching education, they'll be you know,
Speaker 4: sort of like almost like a hedge fund, or or
Speaker 4: they'll they'll be like a you know, a glorified summer camp.
Speaker 4: You'll go there for a summer, have fun or whatever.
Speaker 4: I don't know, because I mean, I'm always interested about
Speaker 4: the future of education and the place of college. You know,
Speaker 4: It's always interesting to I mean to me, honestly, I
Speaker 4: think the some people flourish at college, and there's others
Speaker 4: like myself, who struggled a lot in college, and I
Speaker 4: kind of looked back, Britt and I kind of don't
Speaker 4: really think my college education was really worth the cost,
Speaker 4: if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I feel the same way. And I think that basically
Speaker 3: with free online education, what you can do is really
Speaker 3: raise the bar of what's expected of students when you
Speaker 3: enter school, and then you can focus less on making
Speaker 3: sure you know X, Y and Z and more on
Speaker 3: the collaborative nature of school and the project based learning
Speaker 3: that goes on in school, which when I look back, yeah,
Speaker 3: a lot of the information I sat through I just
Speaker 3: could have learned online. But there were a few very
Speaker 3: specific things I do remember, and everything I remember that
Speaker 3: was valuable going back to high school were the collaborative things.
Speaker 3: So drama in high school biggest learning experience putting on
Speaker 3: place for me. And then in school I studied engineering.
Speaker 3: You know, it was working with a group of people
Speaker 3: to make a robot that could play the drums. And
Speaker 3: it's it's in those collaborative environments that real learning happens.
Speaker 3: So I don't think that's going to go away, and
Speaker 3: and I think the colleges will learn that and they'll
Speaker 3: just go more in that direction and less in you know,
Speaker 3: lectures maybe could be replaced with something else. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I also think micro master is going to become big.
Speaker 4: I see a lot of it, like on Edax and Corsia,
Speaker 4: you know, just about creating a micro master's course, and
Speaker 4: you know, I'm seeing that more and more but you know,
Speaker 4: it's just but I'm glad you feel that way too, Bretta,
Speaker 4: because you're an incredibly intelligent guy. So you know, there's
Speaker 4: a there's a guy. There's a book that I read.
Speaker 4: It was called one hundred or fifty or one hundred
Speaker 4: Alternatives to College, written by a guy named James Altacher.
Speaker 4: And I got to talk to James probably about a
Speaker 4: year ago and not a lot for the podcasting. He
Speaker 4: actually said the same thing. He actually got out of
Speaker 4: college with a degree and they had to send him
Speaker 4: somewhere else at how to code, even though his degree
Speaker 4: was in computer science, and they said, you know, hey,
Speaker 4: you know we're going to send you this boot camp.
Speaker 4: We're going to do all this and that, and finally
Speaker 4: he said, you know, what the hell was it worth?
Speaker 4: He said, I spent all this money going to college
Speaker 4: and I get bumped out and all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: you know, we can't I can't even code. I mean,
Speaker 4: what was the point of all that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can relate. That was kind of the same way.
Speaker 3: It's sad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and my former college I actually used
Speaker 4: to teach multimedia classes because they the teachers that got
Speaker 4: hired to teach them didn't know how to do anything.
Speaker 4: And I mean that with all sincerity, but they literally
Speaker 4: one guy actually came to me and said, hey, Dave,
Speaker 4: I haven't picked up a camera in fifteen years, and
Speaker 4: they want me to teach the video the Introduction to
Speaker 4: Video Production class. So I had to sit down with
Speaker 4: him and I said, okay, so we're going to be
Speaker 4: shooting for an SD card. We were using the Panasonic
Speaker 4: HMC one F and I hit record on the camera
Speaker 4: and I said, now when I hit it again, it's
Speaker 4: going to create. It's going to start and stop that
Speaker 4: file and that's its own digital file. And he says, whoa.
Speaker 4: He was Dave, wait a minute, you're going way too fast. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and I said, what I said, you're going to be
Speaker 4: teaching the course and and this is too fast.
Speaker 3: He had.
Speaker 4: His idea was he could stay one step ahead of
Speaker 4: the students by training with me. That was his secret plan.
Speaker 3: And it's only going to the speed only increases with
Speaker 3: time on it, with technology, So it's a losing race.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really is. I mean, the thing I mean
Speaker 4: that was his I mean because I think if he
Speaker 4: was trying to get, you know, his head wrap around
Speaker 4: the cameras and it's just you know, I, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm so glad I don't teach them anymore or do
Speaker 4: anything there anymore. But but that that.
Speaker 3: Was the sign.
Speaker 4: I think colleges like that are going to go under
Speaker 4: I think all of these small private colleges that are
Speaker 4: that live and breathe through having one hundred percent enrollment
Speaker 4: are just going to all go under that.
Speaker 3: Again. When I graduated, I did a computer science degree
Speaker 3: at McGill. I again struggled through the whole thing, and
Speaker 3: then I said, it was so painful that I started
Speaker 3: a YouTube channel to just try to recommunicate what I
Speaker 3: had learned and I had. I'm still doing that to
Speaker 3: this day, and it's been very cathartic to you know,
Speaker 3: spend months struggling on a video that was connected to
Speaker 3: months prior that struggling in school, and then recommunicated in
Speaker 3: an eight minute video that then people say, ah, you
Speaker 3: open my eyes. You made that clear for me. And
Speaker 3: I'll hear from people who either finish school and are
Speaker 3: still watching those videos because they it feels good to
Speaker 3: have something clarified. But I'll also hear from people who
Speaker 3: haven't yet gone to university and we'll watch one of
Speaker 3: the Art of the Problem series and say like that
Speaker 3: has changed my worldview. Now I'm going to school knowing
Speaker 3: what I want to learn, and that makes me very
Speaker 3: happy because when I went to school, I didn't know anything.
Speaker 3: I didn't know where I was going, I didn't have
Speaker 3: a firm grounding, and it's very sad that it wasn't
Speaker 3: ntil after school and communicating it back on YouTube that
Speaker 3: I fully absorb the lessons I was supposed to learn
Speaker 3: in school.
Speaker 4: See, and that that's invaluable. I think that's why a
Speaker 4: lot of the times those online classes are are You know,
Speaker 4: if I was if I was a high school senior
Speaker 4: right now, that's all I would be doing. Would was
Speaker 4: would be doing online classes right now?
Speaker 3: Oh man, It's just a different world now, and the
Speaker 3: quality is increasing so quickly. Just five or six years
Speaker 3: ago on YouTube, if you were trying to learn, there
Speaker 3: was not a lot out there. Now if you search anything,
Speaker 3: not only is it there, but there's probably six or
Speaker 3: seven versions of it, and the top version is probably
Speaker 3: really well produced. So things are trending in the right
Speaker 3: direction when it comes to finding online resources big time.
Speaker 4: And also you can get the I just downloaded Unreal
Speaker 4: Engine four and it actually is the whole engine you
Speaker 4: can use to actually build video games, and it's one
Speaker 4: hundred percent free.
Speaker 3: And legit, that's so cool. That's a rabbit hole. I'd
Speaker 3: be scared to go down, but sounds very interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wanted to make my own little first person shooter,
Speaker 4: just something very small and fun and just have a laugh.
Speaker 4: And then that is something. I mean, I have so
Speaker 4: many film projects I want to get done, but I
Speaker 4: was like, you know, let me just try this real quick,
Speaker 4: and you know, just trying it out. But that but
Speaker 4: that is something too. I agree brit that I would
Speaker 4: be like a rabbit hole, you know, it would be
Speaker 4: hard to get back from, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been want I actually think that's great though,
Speaker 3: when you're stuck on something to go work on a
Speaker 3: totally different project. I have to have three things on
Speaker 3: the go. It's the only way I work. But making
Speaker 3: a video game has always been in the back of
Speaker 3: my mind. But again, I just I know the hours involved,
Speaker 3: so I haven't even touched it yet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's uh, and from what I've heard, it's just
Speaker 4: very time consuming. It's like it's just one of those things.
Speaker 4: But there's so many scripts that I want to write
Speaker 4: and this and that, and you know, doing this podcast
Speaker 4: that sort of keeps up, you know, keeps me busy enough.
Speaker 4: But uh, but you know, Britt, you know we've been
Speaker 4: talking for just about forty five minutes now, you know,
Speaker 4: is there anything sort of inclosing that we hadn't haven't
Speaker 4: discussed said that maybe that you wanted to bring up,
Speaker 4: or is there anything you wanted to do maybe mentioned
Speaker 4: Just to sort of put a period at the end
Speaker 4: of the sentence.
Speaker 3: I would just kind of amplify something I've been hearing lately,
Speaker 3: which is this is a dawn of a new era
Speaker 3: where it is a world Sorry, it's a dont let
Speaker 3: me start again. I'm going to amplify something I've already
Speaker 3: heard a few times, which is that this is a
Speaker 3: new era that will be very friendly for creatives and
Speaker 3: people who create online where it's just starting to happen.
Speaker 3: Where we were in a world recently where you're either
Speaker 3: at the very top of your industry and you're making
Speaker 3: a ton of money or you were a nobody and
Speaker 3: you made no money. But now people who can have generate,
Speaker 3: you know, small audience, whether it's ten thousand, whether it's
Speaker 3: one hundred or one thousand, or ten thousand or one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand. We're getting into a world where you will
Speaker 3: be able to sustain yourself, and with things like the
Speaker 3: Internet Creators Guild, which I recommend anyone joining, which just
Speaker 3: launched the year. Creatives online are starting to reorganize and
Speaker 3: the business models are changing. YouTube's evolving if you're in
Speaker 3: the video medium, and I do think if anyone is
Speaker 3: either starting now or they started a little while ago,
Speaker 3: and you know they're not making any revenue from their art,
Speaker 3: I think just stick with it because in about five years,
Speaker 3: I think an internet eyeball will be worth the same
Speaker 3: as a TV eyeball, and right now they're off by
Speaker 3: like two orders of magnitude. So I think we're getting
Speaker 3: into a new year where it's very creator friendly and
Speaker 3: you can kind of build your own audience from the
Speaker 3: bottom up and not have to attach yourself to some
Speaker 3: sort of machine to make a living.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I fall into the former. So the ladder camp
Speaker 4: nobody who makes no money. That's me. So hopefully, I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, hopefully I can I can do something.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
Speaker 4: But I mean I would call you that, Britt, because
Speaker 4: I mean, you know you're a part of pixel on
Speaker 4: a Box. You know, you did out of the Problem,
Speaker 4: you know, all all this great stuff, Britt. So I
Speaker 4: don't I don't think you're a nobody.
Speaker 3: I think your podcast great and it's it's it's just
Speaker 3: amazing to see people who just like plow away at
Speaker 3: something and just build it. I think the people building
Speaker 3: stuff online now in ten years are going to be
Speaker 3: very happy they did it.
Speaker 4: Well. Thank you, Brit.
Speaker 3: Awesome. I love it so Brit.
Speaker 4: Where can you find you right online?
Speaker 3: So you know, my website is brick Cruise dot com
Speaker 3: and I'm on Twitter and part of the problem. You
Speaker 3: can find me on YouTube. That's where I kind of
Speaker 3: publish the majority of my videos.
Speaker 4: And I'll link to that in the show notes as well,
Speaker 4: everybody I'll look to also Pixar on a Box And
Speaker 4: also Brett, I gave you a follow on Twitter, by
Speaker 4: the way, and I actually found your Twitter account before
Speaker 4: you a couple days ago. I was like, oh, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna make sure to follow him, and uh, you see
Speaker 4: what we see what he's tweeting, and uh, you tweet.
Speaker 4: You tweet a lot of interesting stuff, by the way,
Speaker 4: and uh, and I like people like that who tweet,
Speaker 4: you know, really cool stuff.
Speaker 3: Right on, I follow you too.
Speaker 4: Okay, cool, thank you, but uh, Britt, I want to
Speaker 4: say thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to everything,
Speaker 4: uh that you that you come up with. And again
Speaker 4: I'm looking very interesting picture on a box season. Uh
Speaker 4: was it what we call season three? I guess we're
Speaker 4: gonna call it ours?
Speaker 3: Yeah, season three, Well that's internal name, but it's the
Speaker 3: storytelling unit.
Speaker 4: I'm really looking forward to that as well. Britt Cruz,
Speaker 4: I want to say thank you so much for coming
Speaker 4: on and I really do want to wish you the
Speaker 4: best for everything.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Dave. Let's catch up again.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, anytime you want to come back on, Britt,
Speaker 4: please let me know. I'd be more than happy to
Speaker 4: have you on. Thank you so much anytime, buddy, Take care, cheers.
Speaker 1: I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
Speaker 1: a great job on this episode. If you want to
Speaker 1: get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
Speaker 1: head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot
Speaker 1: tv for it slash for four. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: for listening to guys as always, keep on writing no
Speaker 1: matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof
Speaker 2: Screenwriting dot tv.