Mastering Video Production in the Age of AI, With Jonathan Hayes

What are the keys to mastering video production in the "Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)"?

Thanks to Riversidefm for sponsoring this episode. Try it out via this link with a 15% discount using the code MyTogBlog. (Note: This is an affiliate link, which means I would earn a commission if you purchase using this link.)

In this episode, I interview Jonathan Hayes, an award-winning video producer and Executive Video Director at Ammunition, founded by CEO Jemery Heilpern.

We discuss:

• Jonathan's journey in video content creation, 
• the importance of mentors and relationships, and
• the challenges of running a production company.

We also delve into how Jonathan is leveraging AI technology to enhance creativity and streamline workflow, emphasizing the necessity of human input and ethical considerations. What comes through clearly is that while AI technology offers fresh opportunities for many creators, how AI is leveraged will determine the long-term viability of their approaches. 

The conversation provides valuable insights for aspiring video creators and editors on building a successful career in today's competitive media landscape.

Thanks for listening! Do you have a comment or question about a topic or episode? I'd love to hear that. Feel free to contact me via the X App, Instagram, or the Contact Us page. You can also check out these links for resources and merch for content creators.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction: The Value of Video Content
• 1:04 Jonathan Hayes: Background and Career
• 3:58 Building a Video Production Agency
• 13:33 Creative Challenges and Solutions
• 18:52 Advice for Aspiring Video Creators
• 24:14 The Role of AI in Content Creation
• 29:26 Balancing AI With Human Creativity and Ethics
• 41:47 Hiring and Skills for Video Editors
• 44:52 Future Plans and Contact Information
• 47:34 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

[00:00:00] Tim: Hey everyone, my name is Tim, and this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Riverside FM. And before we get into it, I just want to take a few seconds to show you how I've been using some of Riverside's latest features to promote my podcast episodes and YouTube videos. So what we're going to do for this example is upload one of my photography videos, which I created outside Riverside.

[00:00:20] And once it's imported, I'll select Generate with AI and Magic Clips. And then you can select the length, the speaker, add some topics to highlight. Within the text based editor, you can also restore or remove any segment that you want. And you can also edit the captions as you like. In addition to which, you've got access to all the other AI producer features.

[00:00:40] Essentially, what this allows you to do is to quickly create clips of any long form video you have whether you've created it in or outside Riverside. And that's going to be a great way to help advertise your long form videos and be more consistent with posting. If you want to try this out for yourself, check the link in my description and use the code mytogblog for a 15 percent discount.

[00:00:59] And now, on to the show.

[00:01:00] Intro Music

[00:01:04] Tim: So, like many creators right now, I've been leaning hard into trying to improve my video content. Especially in today's highly competitive social media landscape, video offers a great way to expand our reach while building a connection with our audience via short form video and enabling us to showcase our expertise via long form video.

[00:01:24] And partly because of that, if you can build an amazing portfolio as a video creator, there are lots of opportunities for monetizing your expertise as a video producer or editor. 

[00:01:34] So when I heard about the opportunity to speak with Jonathan Hayes, who is an award winning video producer, I knew this would provide a lot of value to the audience.

[00:01:42] Jonathan has been executive producer of an award winning documentary airing on PBS. And in June, 2023, the company he founded Mad Hat Productions, was sold to Ammunition, which is Atlanta's fastest growing advertising firm, where Jonathan is now executive video director. He's also certified in Generative AI for Advertising by the 4 A's, which is a trade association for the advertising industry consisting of more than 600 member agencies.

[00:02:12] In our conversation we talk about how he built his video production agency, what it takes to produce great video content, what he looks for in hiring a video editor, as well as the role in AI and video content production, and so much more. 

[00:02:25] So sit back and relax, and let's get into it. 

[00:02:29] Hey, Jonathan. Welcome to the show. 

[00:02:30] Jonathan: Hey, Tim. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me on this. 

[00:02:33] Tim: Yeah, I really appreciate being able to spend some time with you and I wondered if you could start out by just telling us a little about how you got into video content creation. 

[00:02:41] Jonathan: I think it boiled down to when I was like 12 years old, for some reason, I just really wanted my mom to buy me a video camera. So I had one of these old basically digital aid cameras. And I had a friend who was a really good rollerblader, like inline skater. And so I basically went around and filmed him. 

[00:02:58] And I was doing my own editing from, like, VCR, you know, VHS tapes just trying to hit the record button, and I couldn't overlay music, so I had to play the music in the speaker. 

[00:03:08] And then besides that, I got, honestly, I got really lucky. I went to a public high school in Germantown, Tennessee, that just randomly had a 3 million television studio that with phenomenal teachers, like amazing mentors. And so pretty much from like, freshman in high school, 14 years old, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. 

[00:03:28] Tim: That's amazing. Yeah. So you're sharing this stuff before there was social sharing creating it and, yeah, it speaks to the value of those educational resources and communities that helped you get into this. 

[00:03:40] Jonathan: Yeah, mentors are just so critical.

[00:03:41] I mean, if you have all the gear and you have all the equipment and the software, you know, it can be really good from an experimental point of view, but having like proper guidance and mentors, not just to teach you things, but to keep you motivated and to give you like a bigger idea of what you're trying to accomplish is irreplaceable.

[00:03:58] Tim: And so you had that experience in high school, then how did you make the jump from there into the into doing it as a career? 

[00:04:06] Jonathan: Well, so I went to school at Southern Illinois University, and I immediately knew that I just wanted to just continue doing television production. So while I was going to school, I worked at PBS as well. We had an affiliate inside of Southern Illinois. And so I executive produced a TV show for two years, it was called Alt News, and that was pretty much, I felt like I was working and going to school, that's how I would describe it. And then through my high school alumni, I have a really strong alumni network, some pretty well known people ended up going there.

[00:04:36] And I ended up getting an internship at Turner. And so I went to Turner in Atlanta. I was born in Atlanta, so I had family there. And I did an internship, went back to school for a year, and then when I got out of school, I pretty much came back to Atlanta and the people that I had met in my internship, I was like, Hey let's work together. 

[00:04:56] And so that's where I committed to editing. Prior to that, I was Directing, doing motion graphics, editing, sort of like a generalist to all things production. And then I pretty much committed myself to about six years when I moved to Atlanta to, I was exclusively editing. 

[00:05:11] Tim: And were you working with Turner during that time?

[00:05:14] Jonathan: Almost, almost exclusively. Yeah. A little bit of agency work, but I would probably say like 90 percent Turner work, which was phenomenal because editing promos, which is a lot of what I was doing was, I mean, really fun and entertaining. I got to edit promos and work on some shows that were, very well known.

[00:05:30] So it was good to edit office promos and stuff like that. But they had me cut and edit all different types of videos from like sizzle reels to, you know, originally shot content. So in that kind of six year process, I got to work with all these different people doing editing all these different genres and you don't realize it at the time, but you're really learning like so much on a day to day basis.

[00:05:53] Tim: Absolutely. Yeah. That must've been great. Six years of experience in addition to what you're doing before. And then I guess at some point you decided you're going to launch an agency. 

[00:06:03] Jonathan: Yeah. Or, more or less a production company. So while I was with my first company that that I worked at eventually after six years, I got the itch to start getting back into production.

[00:06:12] I was like, I want to start directing again. I want to start not just exclusively sitting at a computer screen. And so we started doing production and I had brought in a couple of friends to work at the company. In 2014, we decided, Hey, let's open up our own shop. Yeah. And that's when we started MadHat and it was phenomenal.

[00:06:30] We obviously had a really, a lot of really good contacts to begin with, we were just these like very hungry creatives and of course, wanted to do our own things. Didn't really know anything about the business side of it, but we knew like, Hey, let's go in and, you know, make good stuff, continue doing that, and it was a it was an awesome ten years.

[00:06:47] Tim: Yeah, I'm interested to talk about the ride you had there because I understand June of last year, You sold your production company Mad Hat Productions to Ammunition, which was then named one of the fastest growing companies in southeastern US And you're now executive video director there. In doing that, like, what was the process like building that company and what did you learn about the key factors about what it takes to build a successful video production agency?

[00:07:14] Jonathan: Yeah, so, I mean, where to begin? I would say that one of the things that was an embodiment of Mad Hat when we created it, and this is, I would say it's representative of our careers as well, but we never really liked committing to like being like a specialist in any sort of like, you know, specific type of content.

[00:07:32] Interesting. So we could be and even like just the clients that we worked with. So we would do everything from national commercials to editing promos with Turner or with Disney or any of these TV networks. We would do some direct to client where we'd go in and do corporate videos. We did a lot of interview and testimonials.

[00:07:51] I'd say on some level, and maybe it was like a bit of selfishness. Like everyone I know that gets into this, the specialty categories, there's like a burnout phase to it. So we just loved being able to be on set one day, being editing another day. And it sort of turned into this model that no one really anticipated, but I would describe it as like, When we would start a project, because we all had so many different skill sets.

[00:08:15] And when we start a project that we'd be like the first people when you sat down with a client, it's like a group of five, six people. And at the end of the project, it's the same five, six people. We ended up kind of creating this flow of what we ended up kind of calling creative accountability.

[00:08:30] And instead of, getting passed on, it's okay, we're going to work with this director, or this is going to go to this editor. And you have to, you know, carry that ideation over that we were able to play those roles. And of course, we worked with other directors, we worked with other, editors, but overall, the embodiment of it was that we ended up basically being like, we just love to wear many different hats.

[00:08:52] And that's why we named the company Mad Hat. And, honestly, I think that's probably what made us, so attractive to get acquired, because it's not super common, at least in Atlanta for production companies to get acquired. But we just had such a wide variety of skill sets and a wide variety of work that, going now to, to being, at an ad agency where we're basically doing very similar type of thing, we can meet all of these requests without having to necessarily, raise our hand and say, Hey, we don't know how to do this.

[00:09:19] Tim: Yeah, very interesting because it's different than what you hear sometimes in business advice, which is a niche down, right? And the riches are in the niches or what have you where you're focused, but you've taken kind of a different approach. What, why do you think it worked in your case to be more generalist?

[00:09:35] Jonathan: That's a really good question. I don't think it was necessarily intentional. I think if there are certain genres and there are certain types of videos that if someone said Hey, you want to do this forever? I would be like, absolutely. Like for me, I've always been drawn to. Documentary style format that's, being able to go in and sit down and interview and talk to people.

[00:09:54] That's probably like my favorite component of the job. So it's not that I would say that we were intentionally going for it, but I would say, honestly, it probably comes down to just our relationships, right? Almost all of our clients that we work with usually look at us and many different capacities.

[00:10:11] Yeah. And so for us, when someone calls and they say Hey, can you help me with this project? Whether that's like, Hey, we've got this creative. We want you guys to execute it. Or like, Hey, we've got this video that's kind of stalled out. Can you guys help us with it? Yeah. We kind of prioritize the relationships and wanting to make people happy. 

[00:10:28] Tim: I bet that makes a big difference, you know, just being able to be someone's go to, like, if they, if they have a problem, they, they know who to call to solve it, as opposed to like you know, searching for those people, like who is in this niche that can help us. 

[00:10:44] Jonathan: I would say creative solutions are like a big one.

[00:10:46] I think one of the most exciting things about, I think the video production process is that you could always have more money. You could always have, you could always use more money. You could always use more time. And those sort of those natural sort of restrictions. Always open the door for creative solutions, you know, it's like, okay, well, we need two days of shooting, but we don't have the budget for it.

[00:11:07] Okay. Well, let's do it. Let's blow it out on one day. Then let's do a small crew the next day. Right. And we can find ways of basically, getting to the end result without necessarily sacrificing what was really important to the client. 

[00:11:19] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. And I could see what you said about relationships being very important too, because when they do call a company, just knowing that company is actually going to solve the problem as opposed to, like, there's always a risk when you take on a project with a new company, a new service provider. You're not sure, even if they have good reviews, how well you'll work with them or how well they do, right? 

[00:11:41] Jonathan: Yeah, and I think that's pretty universal too as well, just beyond, I think you could kind of apply that to any industry. I mean, we've been around the block, obviously. It's the, just having those trusted relationships and being able to call someone knowing that like, okay, this person, no matter what I throw at them is going to be able to offer a solution.

[00:11:59] Or, or even to be honest enough to say like, Hey, we can't do this. This isn't our cup of tea. You should call this person. 

[00:12:06] Tim: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, that sounds great. Was there a key turning point in building your company? And what do you think it was? 

[00:12:13] Jonathan: You know, I would say that I think we could, I could answer that on a big picture, like from a business perspective, and there's definitely some things that definitely happened that some projects that kind of helped launch us and for clients to see us in a little bit different capacity.

[00:12:26] But I would say for, like, for me, personally, the big turning point in the company is when I reinvested my time into the people versus the work. And I would say that in the beginning, I think in the beginning of the company, I did a lot more micromanagement and, in, in terms of like trying to, let's say, hold like to a higher standard.

[00:12:47] And I think that kind of evolved a little bit more into like, Hey, let's put the people first, let's invest in the people. And the time, whether that's training, whether that's just supporting them and saying, you got this and the byproduct of that. Is then people become more motivated to do, amazing and great work.

[00:13:05] And I think you could take the most talented person in the world, if you put them in the wrong environment where they're not motivated, you're just going to see that work output just go down. And the creativity, we're not in a business where, it's like, Hey, I can just sit down and for nine hours and accomplish something.

[00:13:22] It's a lot of experimentation. It's a lot of, it's a lot of failing, which needs to be embraced. And if people feel supported to do that's when you see the best risks that are being taken. 

[00:13:32] Tim: Yeah, absolutely. But it must be challenging managing people in a creative environment like that, I may I'll just ask this question now, like what happens when a project gets stuck?

[00:13:43] How do you unstick it to meet the deadlines? 

[00:13:46] Jonathan: Like if you're running to like a, basically a creative challenge, I mean, in a nutshell, this does sound a little idealistic and it doesn't always apply, but I think embracing the challenge. There's really a key component to it is that, I mean, they're always going to happen.

[00:13:59] There's always variables outside of your control when, you know, the actor doesn't show up on set on time or something, just, the equipment truck is late and all those different things, and a lot of people can just get triggered from a stress point to that but those things always happen and we can't act completely surprised when they do Right.

[00:14:17] So most of when we have creative solutions usually to my team, it's like hey, how can we kind of embrace this? How can we you know deal with it? How can you know, we find a creative solution from that? 

[00:14:27] Tim: Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Cause you're right. Those kind of challenges they're not, they're, there's, there might be a surprise, the specific one, but the fact that there will be challenges shouldn't be a surprise.

[00:14:37] Jonathan: Oh yeah. Absolutely. And almost on, on some level, if you're not even like in the, whether you're directing or editing, when you get into that creative process, if you're not finding those creative challenges, like on your own and the creative process, you're probably not digging enough.

[00:14:53] There, there's always and we haven't even talked about just the creative challenge of, we're doing all of this work with the expectation of pleasing somebody else on the other end, right? Not just one person, but a whole chain, a hierarchy of approvals. Yes. And so when we go and we're working with, if we're working with another agency or a directive client, and you know, there's probably like five to six different layers of approvals.

[00:15:15] And so being in the, being in that type of business that first two rounds of revisions might be amazing. Like, Hey, this is great. This is awesome. And then the third round or it gets up to the CEO is like, no, I don't like this. Yeah. Yeah. Let's kind of rethink this. So at some point when you're kind of used to those variables happening that at some point you just have to embrace it, otherwise you just end up with a bad attitude.

[00:15:38] Tim: Yeah, absolutely. I've seen the same kind of thing happen on but on the side of research projects where, you know, a lot of stakeholders, so random things will get thrown at you from time to time. And you just got to come up with those, like you say, creative solutions and embrace the process. So yeah, I love that. 

[00:15:55] Jonathan: What kind of research have you done? 

[00:15:57] Tim: Mostly like applied research to support public policy development. So that one, in, in that kind of area, you can see where there'd be, there, there's a lot of different stakeholders with very different perspectives, different outcomes that they want to see from a project and the challenge sometimes is to, how do we reflect what the research shows, but also take into account all these different perspectives that people have stakeholders have that they want to see reflected and feel are important in the report while staying true to the research at the same time.

[00:16:30] It must be similar like with a with a film, right? You're trying to stay true to a specific, certain narrative maybe, or certain approach you've taken but you've got all this feedback coming in from the outside that you have to manage 

[00:16:42] Jonathan: Yeah, like just a great example of that is just a video scripts, commercial script, and what's written down on paper is oftentimes brilliant and you get it with the right actor and it might not be their own words.

[00:16:54] So when I'm on set directing and I encourage this for everyone on our team is that get what's on paper. Of course, you want to accomplish that and you want to let the client on set be able to check a box and say, okay, that's great. And then give them those actors, the freedom and flexibility of putting it in their own words to dream a little bit and to just be yourself and almost always I'd say, like, 75, 80 percent of the time.

[00:17:19] You end up at a place that it, where the piece just kind of evolves and where everyone's happy and the client's happy because they've already got their box checked. And so they're a little bit more open to hearing different things. And then of course you go back into edit and that's like building, it's like a giant puzzle to begin with.

[00:17:36] So, that'll carry over to us. Like, hey, here's a version with what was scripted. Here's what we think might be a little bit more natural form and those types of creative solutions. It's, it's getting there and getting there with also delivering on your promises. 

[00:17:49] Tim: Yeah, and, you know, I think what you said about digging is really important there because if you are putting something out, you're checking all the boxes.

[00:17:58] But you're not having those conversations, everybody could be saying, okay, but what you're producing actually could be fairly mediocre because everybody's just agreeing, right? 

[00:18:10] Jonathan: Yes, exactly. It's a, that's where it that there, there's a healthy amount of adversity that needs to be happening. And some of that is variables you can't control.

[00:18:19] And other parts of that is like, that's your, Kind of your own self motivation where that comes from. 

[00:18:24] Tim: Yeah, yeah. How can we make this better kind of thing? 

[00:18:27] Jonathan: Always. Always.

[00:18:28] Tim: Not like how can we, how can we get this done? How can we make it, get it done, but do it better? 

[00:18:34] Jonathan: Yeah. And I'll give, and there's sometimes where like we get certain projects where I've had clients call that understand like our full capacity and they're like, this is one is just got to go and get done.

[00:18:44] And we can put that out on, you know, we can do that, but it's a rarity that happens. There's always usually some place where you can spice it up a little bit. 

[00:18:51] Tim: Absolutely. So what's the one principle you'd share with someone who's just starting out with video content? 

[00:18:56] Jonathan: That's a really good question.

[00:18:58] I would say that there's always like from a skill perspective, I think if you're getting into this industry, it's the, we're in such an amazing time where like the opportunities that I had when I got into high school were truly rare. Yeah, I didn't have these types of resources and the type of access to equipment. 

[00:19:14] And I mean, of course, I think this is pretty widely known, but like, the technology and the information has caught up. So anyone getting into this is just has just a myriad of tools that they can play with. And that's exactly what I would say is play, have fun with it.

[00:19:30] Don't look at it like a job. If you're getting into it, explore, I would always describe like, you know, you're having fun learning when you, you know, you sit down and it's like seven o'clock at night and then, and then you swear an hour and a half has gone by and it's two in the morning. That's when the real stuff is happening.

[00:19:45] Absolutely. And where you just get to tinker and toy. I've always had the mentality of any kind of software, I just go through all the menus and just click everything. Don't always figure everything out, but that's that sort of like, oh, let me just press this button and press that, what happens?

[00:19:59] I don't get that, let me Google search this. And then from a, I think from a creative point of view, I would say that it's like flexibility of thought. And being able to always boil everything back down to a story that's something that's really important. And when people ask me from like an editing perspective, like, Hey, like, you know, what, like, what's your approach to editing?

[00:20:19] It all boils down to emotional resonance. You can pretty much pinpoint. Every piece of video content, at least in the most idealistic form, like what somebody's intentions are to have some sort of emotional resonance, like, and when people think about, how can we emotionally communicate to people, you immediately think of, like, Oh, tears, like, you know, how can we do that?

[00:20:41] But just even the feeling of getting somebody excited, getting someone, getting somebody to laugh getting someone to fear is obviously like a big one. It's not the, it's not the one you want to, wave your flag around, but. It's obvious that fear is a huge component of, that people people try to, basically get emotional resonance from.

[00:21:00] Tim: Yeah, and a lot of my audience are YouTubers and content creators, and what you said about experimenting, I think is so important especially at first, because you're trying to figure out, I guess, what your main focus is going to be, or what type of content you like to create, what resonates with your audience.

[00:21:19] And I think you do need to do some degree of experimentation to figure that out. So a lot of, goes back to that niche down versus going broad conversation we were having earlier, because a lot of advice on YouTube or Content creation is about, niche down in order to grow faster, and I think that's true.

[00:21:36] But I also think you need time before you select that niche, like you need that experimentation phase to figure out what, what's going to be and where are you happiest creating, along with what's resonating. 

[00:21:50] Jonathan: I completely agree. And I think that your end of content creation being on YouTube is such a phenomenal platform just because you have the ability to get feedback, right?

[00:22:01] I don't know how many influencers that I've seen when you hear their story, when they're like, Oh, I started trying to do this and then it evolved into something else. 

[00:22:08] Tim: Yeah. Almost always, right? Almost always evolves.

[00:22:11] Jonathan: And that's usually based on the feedback, what people are resonating with. And I think you put it really well said that when you, if you can start a little bit more broad and leave yourself open to be able to make those pivots, and then once you get that positive feedback and then kind of focus and zoom in on that, one aspect that was successful, it's a tough, it's a tough business out there.

[00:22:32] I love the fact for feedback, but it's obviously harsh out there. 

[00:22:36] Tim: Sometimes, yeah. 

[00:22:37] Jonathan: Yeah. 

[00:22:38] Tim: Yeah, you got to take all that stuff with a grain of salt. And then the other thing is about the skill building experimenting to broaden your skills or deepen your skills. I really love that idea too, because so many when we're on YouTube, The other part of the feedback is the positive feedback you get, right?

[00:22:54] Like you, you produce a video, it does really well in terms of views, or it gets more likes than you normally get, and you think, okay, gonna double down and just keep producing more of that stuff. I think it's good to do that to some degree, but also if you're in parallel developing and broadening those skills, so that you're not just always chasing the views, because at the end of the day, that runs its course at some point, right?

[00:23:18] And then you're gonna need something else to to keep it going. 

[00:23:22] Jonathan: Absolutely. I've been toying around with an, with a little automation on how I can find, like, the best AI news resources, basically. And like Reddit is obviously such a, a real life one, but where, it's very practical.

[00:23:36] And so I basically have, I have an automation set up to search for comments in YouTube that specifically say, wow, are, this is amazing. Yes. Cause that to me is an embodiment of emotional resonance. Anytime I'm in a comment on something and I'm saying, wow, like something has really been impressive. So it's a great, that positive feedback is such a great filter to actually get to new tools and new practices that are resonating with audiences.

[00:24:02] Tim: Yeah, that's a great point. And then when you're looking at AI and how you're using it, that, that's one example. What are some other ways that your company's incorporating artificial intelligence? 

[00:24:14] Jonathan: Yeah. So the, are you familiar with the idea of a intelligent augmentation? No, I haven't heard of that.

[00:24:21] I think we're going to be hearing a lot more about it because it's like the, I don't know, a less sticky version of AI. I mean, AI is so, like, all encompassing. But it's this concept that instead of using AI to necessarily, hey, Do this entirely for me, just take this entire process and automate it.

[00:24:38] And, people lose their jobs down that rabbit hole. It's more of about optimization of humanity with AI. And I just recently, candidly, I just recently learned the term, but reading it, I was like, this is an embodiment of what I believe in terms of, watching your AI video. I think that you really said it really well.

[00:24:57] Just talking about that, that I think it was when you were using like When you're talking about vidIQ that, Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. You're talking about whether or not you should get AI to do like script writing for you. And that's like the one part of it is that you can't sacrifice like yourself and the ideation process and and not even ideas, just simply what you think.

[00:25:17] It's such an important part of it. 

[00:25:19] Tim: Yeah. It's kind of like, I think some creators, or in the promotional materials for things like this, it's almost touted as like, you know, this will make it easy and like the dream is like full automation. But if you fully automate this, my question is like, why are you even doing it?

[00:25:35] Right? Like, I mean, I guess, in some niches, there's money to be made perhaps, though I question how well so called automation channels will do in the future. Those are those channels where like basically they're taking a topic like ancient Egypt or whatever, using AI to produce a video about it.

[00:25:54] It's totally AI content, it's AI research, it's AI. Images it's going to be interesting for a while, but it's so easy to replicate that I think it'll just get watered down to the point that it won't be profitable anymore. 

[00:26:07] Jonathan: So my prediction on that is that, that YouTube will eventually roll out a feature that you can do any searches so you can basically filter the non AI content. Yeah. And some, I've, it's. It's interesting because some AI content is really obvious. It's funny when you hear people say like, it's so easy to spot like the, the AI altered photos or AI videos. Well, it's easy to spot the bad ones.

[00:26:30] You know, there are ones that are getting through. 

[00:26:32] Tim: That's right. 

[00:26:32] Jonathan: But there are other variables you can look at, like there are a couple of YouTube channels that I subscribe to that, when you're producing when the channels, six months old and they're producing five hour and 20 minute videos a week, it's like, okay, like with the same voice, it's obviously this is a huge AI component.

[00:26:49] Yeah, to this channel in the knowledge of knowing that it's a I really takes away from the sincerity of the video. 

[00:26:56] Tim: It does. And I think the reason people are on YouTube or the reason it became big is like it's a way for people to actually connect with other kind of people. I'll say, I'll use the term regular people who are just making videos about things that they're passionate about, right?

[00:27:11] And it's I guess they call it a parasocial relationship that you develop with these creators because you get to know them, you get to Like their content and the way there they approach things like their distinctive voice and that's really the whole point I don't think people are so much on YouTube to just get information, or Entertainment that is like, you know AI generated because it's it does like you say it takes away that sincerity aspect and that emotional Aspect that you're talking about.

[00:27:40] Jonathan: Absolutely. To answer your original question about how we're using AI, we always want to be very cautious and when we were thinking about, AI and automation, they're going very much hand in hand for us when we're building workflows, but the big thing is how do you get relevant input into an AI model?

[00:27:57] How do you get, or for whatever tasks that you're doing? And of course this is like, you know, super popular, a lot of people are doing this, but we found a lot of success with the idea of transcriptions. You know, transcriptions are mostly brought up with like, oh, let me like record a meeting, and let me make meeting notes from this transcription.

[00:28:14] I'd say that's probably 80 to 90 percent of what I hear about with transcriptions, but Right. I find a lot of success with just being able to even just record just myself or, a conversation of one or one and two people like, Hey, you have an idea, like for a take for a video idea. If I have an idea for a video script that could be, relevant to a client or I'll do is I'll just go in and basically, grab a room.

[00:28:39] And basically record for 15 minutes. Hey, here's just a bunch of different ideas. Then I take that into, a chatbot or a custom GPT model that I've built. And I'm saying, okay, now like this is the transcription, forget everything else, you know, everything. And then now help me like evolve this, help me take this to the next level.

[00:29:00] Sometimes it's just as simple as, Hey, this was a bunch of, Banter for 15 minutes, let's boil this down to a good little, you know, director's treatment or a good treatment to help communicate the idea. And that is just for me personally, it's just given so much confidence because I'm not a talented writer.

[00:29:17] I don't do my best work when I'm sitting typing at a keyboard. I do my best work when I'm What I'm thinking. Right. And we can, and especially in interpersonal conversation. So that's probably a, a big way that we are using AI right now is just being able to, human on the front. Yeah. Human on the end.

[00:29:36] You need to touch points in the front. And then let's let AI kind of help in the middle on the more mundane. Yeah. Trivial tasks. 

[00:29:43] Tim: So, kind of in a way, broaden your ideation or contribute to the creative process, I guess, as a, almost as a partner. A 

[00:29:50] Jonathan: hundred percent. 

[00:29:51] Tim: Yeah.

[00:29:52] Jonathan: You know, if there's like a little joke or something like that, that I have an idea and I'm like, okay, this is a good video, but I'm really this middle section there's some issues there. I could just ask the chatbot, it's give me 30 different ways that this could be improved.

[00:30:05] Yeah. Yeah. And. Of course, 25 of them are just going to be like immediately dismissive. Three of them will be like, okay, that's all right. But I could have thought of that. And then two of them will be like, okay, this is interesting. Yeah. Let me grab those two. And now let me kind of build on that and explore.

[00:30:21] Yeah. And then, basically, not just taking the idea, but let me, you know, creatively exhaust that. Right. And then add it in, and then, you could even, maybe that will reveal another aspect of the piece that could be improved. 

[00:30:32] Tim: Yeah, yeah, and there's two things that kind of scare people about this, and maybe they kind of, cancel each other out because on the one hand you look at you know, when you're using AI to generate things there's a possibility it's grabbing it from somewhere else, but you're talking about how you elaborate on it and expand it.

[00:30:49] But when just coming up with those ideas, you know, one of the things I think that scares people is that that sounds like a person job, right? And so has the AI in your company, do you feel like it's going to replace people jobs Maybe it kind of answered this because you say how you you need to take that Input really and use people to work with it rather than just taking it as it is, right?

[00:31:15] Jonathan: Yeah, I mean it's so So much of it there's you know in America There's like always that kind of guns argument that always always brought up like our guns good or bad Well, it depends on who's who's holding it I think that's kind of relevant to AI right in the sense that people are gonna abuse it You People are going to have those YouTube channels that they're just, just sending content out every single day and it's going to be watered down and it's going to be, it's going to lack humanity.

[00:31:40] And then there are people that are going to be like a little bit more responsible about it. And if I would say that whether or not jobs are going to be lost, I think that on some level, there's, of course, like history has shown us that like when new technologies come out, when the light bulb was invented, the candlestick industry had some rough years.

[00:31:57] The cars to, the horse and buggy industry. But besides that, it's so large and so encompassing and it's advancing so quickly that I think it takes a little bit next level responsibility. I think there needs to be some lines drawn in the sand.

[00:32:12] So how I would blow that down to like our company is that we don't see people losing jobs. What we want to see is we want to see people. Redistributing their time to do the things that they enjoy doing more. 

[00:32:24] Tim: Right. And 

[00:32:26] Jonathan: for us to be able to make time for, for more creative process, for more, you know, even take a job like a project manager, which is you know, there's, there's definitely a lot of automation that's coming in to kind of mimic project management.

[00:32:38] A project manager is one of the most important roles at an agency. It's, they're the connecting thread, so if we can give automation and AI, you know, basically intelligent augmentation to a project manager, that allows them to think bigger picture. That allows them to think more of about how can we improve upon this?

[00:32:57] How can we, how can I make these different roles that I'm supporting, how can I make them more effective at their job? 

[00:33:04] Tim: Yeah 

[00:33:04] Jonathan: And having someone to be able to get away from like, okay, I need to fill out this form or doing a lot of this sort of grunt work, and to be able to think more creatively in their job, is, to me, I think that's the future.

[00:33:17] Tim: That does sound amazing. And having some experience with project management myself, I know like a lot of it is the key to the success of a project is what you're just talking about, the relationships with people and helping people maximize their potential, clearing obstacles for them so they can do their work.

[00:33:37] But in practice, in the wrong context, project management can come down to fill in these hundred templates and, figure out, provide a report to management about, where the project is at in relation to all these milestones. But. I mean, none of that matters if those relationships and the management of the people isn't being done well.

[00:33:59] Jonathan: Oh, a hundred percent. And, the, I mean, the best part about, I think, all industries and the best part of work in its most idealistic form is, like, the relationships. Yet at the same time, it's obviously the most challenging, it's, we're all in generally in like people industries. Yeah, that is just how if I'm giving feedback on a project that like, I understand this now more being at the agency now when client feedback comes in, how you interpret that feedback and how you pass it down to someone who's going to be executing it.

[00:34:29] All right. It's extremely important. Yes. And just in how things are phrased. And how it's and honestly giving when, if we get like a bunch of notes on a project. Yeah. Which can happen from time to time. We like to pride ourselves that generally speaking, we like to come back with very little feedback.

[00:34:45] But it's inevitable. And sometimes you get a lot of feedback. And just you know, if you take that feedback and you're like, okay, this has to be done, this has to be done, this has to be done. And there's no exceptions about it. That's what the client said. You eliminate all of creative solutions.

[00:35:00] Sometimes solving items, revision notes 1, 5, and 7, eliminate the need that the problem, why the problem even existed in the first place for, notes you know, 2 and 4. 

[00:35:12] Tim: Yeah, and helping people, interpret the feedback to understand it or see it in the broader picture. So, it's like, yes, it might be a lot of comments.

[00:35:19] It doesn't mean you did a terrible job. It means that there's, there's this bigger picture. There's this, there's probably often other reasons why there, there's a lot of feedback, right? 

[00:35:29] Jonathan: Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely. 

[00:35:31] Tim: Yeah. So talked a little bit about this in terms of what creators need to be mindful of when using AI and struggling with like that just how do you avoid ethical dilemmas when using it?

[00:35:44] Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a, that's a question that frankly I don't 100 percent have the answer to on any sort of a mass level, but how I try to avoid the ethical dilemmas is really just, again, it sounds cheesy, but kind of staying true to yourself and process. 

[00:35:58] I'm chairing our AI committee at our office, it's leading all of our implementation, and through my certification process, like the governance and risk aspect of it is incredibly important.

[00:36:09] So I think that taking with AI, taking it slow, I think is a really good suggestion and doing it, taking your time and doing it right, especially on an organizational level is pivotal. Right 

[00:36:21] I mean, I think it took, what, 12 years for cars to basically get really implemented into, to our society. So, I, I would say to people just getting into AI, it's easy to feel like, oh my gosh, I'm so far behind and we have to do this so quickly to catch up to other people, but, welcome to the club.

[00:36:38] Everyone behind. 

[00:36:39] Tim: Yeah, I agree. And I think I like what you said about taking it slow because it is there are so many unknowns, and there's no real principles out there except in the most general sense in terms of, like, how to guide this, but in terms of I think the best practices are still evolving, right?

[00:36:57] So there's not as much that you can draw on in some, as you can in some other areas, say project management, you can go back and it's a lot of principles to guide, you know, what you're doing there. But there's so many new things being created that you don't want to be the case study of why new best practices develop by doing something wrong, right?

[00:37:15] So I think that's where you have to be taking it. Slow, but also advancing at the same time, because like, you know, the thesis of my other video was that you can't, as a creator, you can't completely ignore AI and pretend it's not there. You've gotta, gotta start learning it. 

[00:37:34] Jonathan: Absolutely. Well, I mean, outside of the things that we talked about, like vidIQ, what are, like, are you, do you have like a large language model that you prefer to use?

[00:37:43] Tim: I'm, yeah, like I use WriteSonic, which is built on ChatGPT but you know, I, I tend to use that a lot for summarizing stuff that I've already produced. I was looking at another program, which is like a YouTube script writing program. But every time I've worked with a script writing program, whether it's within VidIQ, whether it's WriteSonic, whether it's this other one, So, I haven't found that it produces the kind of content that is natural to me and so I, I find it actually is more effective to use it like the way you were saying, like to ask it questions, or to say, you know, I need ten ideas for this, or what are, what are ten ways that video creators can create better content, and you might, like you say, you might throw out half of those, but then you've got, okay, there's these other things I want to explore this more deeply.

[00:38:35] And you drill more into that. And you combine it with your own research so that you're not just relying on the AI model. But I find if you're doing all that, it's actually easier to approach it from the top level and say like, this is the story that I'm going to tell based on my unique experience.

[00:38:54] And then use AI to help fill in or help flesh out that, or see if there's anything you haven't thought of that you might want to incorporate, as opposed to like, I've actually found it very inefficient to try and say, come on AI, produce a YouTube script for me so that, so that I can cut, I can make that process more efficient.

[00:39:12] I don't think you can make it efficient and good that way. 

[00:39:15] Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. And I think a big gap that from an understanding perspective. And really managing people's expectations that how to look at AI and actually understand what's happening under the hood that in some ways, like artificial intelligence is kind of a bad name because AI, you know, until we get to AGI is really not intelligent.

[00:39:36] It's just able to just, experiment 300, 000 times and quarter of a second. No, that idea, if you like get it to write a story and you were to put up AI against. You know, a human and say, write a, write a story about a, you know, a boy going to the convenience store to buy groceries. The humans are actually much better at doing that.

[00:39:54] And if you took one attempt. Artificial intelligence, like a, and the large language model can process that like hundreds of thousands of times in the iterative, internal iterative process. And that's how it can get to something that, to our eyes it's like, oh wow, that's, that's, that's really cool that it was able to do that, but in fact, we're actually significantly more talented.

[00:40:14] It's just taking, just words and just putting them together over and over and over. 

[00:40:18] Tim: Predicting how they should fit together. And then that, that's what it produces. And I know that some people have shown how you can continually refine something with AI. You get something, get to develop an outline, then develop some paragraphs, and then refine those paragraphs, and get it better and better.

[00:40:35] But I think you're spending so much time going through that process. If you've got good writers, they can still do it more efficiently. 

[00:40:42] Jonathan: Absolutely. I mean, we have a talented team of writers at our agency across many different departments and, you know, people that kind of embody that writer's mentality and.

[00:40:52] There's like no doubt about it. So many times where I've just kick start off something and get like some, whether it's a social spot or something like that, seeing how, what they'll start with and then, if it was something like an AI blueprint and then where they end with, it's so far out of the capability, out of the capability of AI.

[00:41:09] And that's where they're actually the ones that, going back to that idea, is it going to replace jobs? There's that idea that, to give editors, for an example, like video editors, that, that whole idea, they'll say that editors aren't going to go away, but editors who don't utilize AI will. 

[00:41:26] It's almost getting cliche because you could apply it to so many different things, but the, like the take, like the really talented writers at our office, them being able to, in their own way, optimize AI, I think can not necessarily get them to a better product, but I think it can get them to their same.

[00:41:43] Their own personal standard faster, 

[00:41:46] Tim: right? Yeah, that's a great way of looking at and that's probably a good chance to ask about video editors Because I know like a lot of people who watch the channel and they produce youtube videos. They'd also like to become video editors Working for a company like yourself.

[00:42:00] So so what is it that you look for when you're hiring a video editor? 

[00:42:05] Jonathan: You know, whenever we hire anyone, their portfolio is gonna be very important. But like when it comes down to sitting down and like talking to somebody, the talent and the work is at that point a given.

[00:42:15] And that someone, it doesn't necessarily have to be like high profile work. Like I've I've seen really talented people. You can see it in their work at the end of, lower, I don't want to say lower end work, not high profile and you can see the talent there, but the talent is generally a given what we look for more than anything, going back to the nature of why Mad Hat was started.

[00:42:36] Like we like to wear many different hats. A huge component of that is like flexibility and thought, the and to be able to put on different hats of not skills, but of ways to think about projects. That's what I look for more than anything when adding like any kind of talent. So someone that who just happens to, for example, let's just say that someone is like, yeah, I edit, but I love getting on set.

[00:42:59] I would love to hold a camera. I would love to direct some talent. It's that enthusiasm, I think is more representative of their mentality than it is necessarily what their skillset, and that's what we look for. And of course, I need someone to be able to put on a project and say, okay, like this is the project you dump your heart and soul into, and this client is, extremely trusting and doesn't have the vision themselves yet, that now we need to bring it.

[00:43:27] And so that's a hat to put on where you might get another client that might like know exactly what they want. Right. And they might not be a quote unquote creative, but they're, you can tell that they have like a really strong vision. Yes. And at that point, it's a slightly different hat you have to put on being able to, for an editor to, and intuitively understand that, or be open to To progressing towards that. Is that's what we look for. And you can apply that to editors, to colors, to VFX, to producers, to writers. I think that's what is probably, that's how we can survive as being a relatively small team and be able to do high-quality output across, many different genres, many different clients and many different workflows.

[00:44:09] Tim: Yeah, I love that way of putting it because like you say, they, there's often when students are studying this they naturally have a focus on the technical skills that they need to acquire. And that is important. It's like you say, it's kind of like the table stakes for getting. To the interview, but after that, it's all those other things that, we try to encourage in terms of, creativity flexibility, adaptability, all those things.

[00:44:33] Jonathan: Yeah it's really important. And honestly, I think that anyone with the right attitude and the right mind mindset, like you could trust that mentality to pay off in so many different ways that if they don't know a program or they don't have experience with this type of thing, just give them time and they will quickly get there.

[00:44:50] Tim: Absolutely. Yeah, so what are the future plans for Ammunition? 

[00:44:57] Jonathan: So I didn't, I didn't quite get to, to say this earlier, moving over to an agency. You know, I've worked with agencies my entire career, and to be honest, they're, you know, there's pros and cons to every, to every business. It's a different, it's a different workflow, but what I've been the most impressed about working at an agency.

[00:45:15] Specifically Ammunition is just the hunger and the drive for people to, to want to learn, to want to understand, to want to play a role in like the process. And of course I could think, any agency could say that, but from my perspective, the first time I'm at an agency, I feel it every day. 

[00:45:32] Tim: Hmm. 

[00:45:32] Jonathan: And that really comes down to the leadership.

[00:45:34] Our CEO, Jeremy Heilpern, is just very, very open to experimentation. He's very open to doing things differently. 

[00:45:42] Tim: Mm hmm. 

[00:45:44] Jonathan: You know, Mad Hat brought on, the acquisition of Mad Hat brought on a different type of client for the agency. 

[00:45:49] Tim: Right. 

[00:45:50] Jonathan: And, you know, we've had a lot of entertainment background. We've worked with, a lot of sports brands, things like that.

[00:45:55] And so it's brought in a bit of a different flavor to the agency. And so I think the future plans for Ammunition is to basically embrace that continual, like, Hey, let's go out, let's obviously maintain our clients. Let's continue doing great work. Let's be innovative for them. But let's also go out and be willing to try to work with all different types of people, different clients in different capacities.

[00:46:20] And what we were talking about earlier, that it's, where that goes, there needs to be some openness to it. That, that could open us up into, five years from now being a little bit of a different agency than we are now, but that flexibility of thought really goes all the way up to our leadership.

[00:46:35] And I would say that whichever way Ammunition goes in the future, that's what I, I know we will maintain and that's what I look forward to. Yeah, 

[00:46:42] Tim: that sounds amazing. And so people want to work with you, how do they get in touch? 

[00:46:47] Jonathan: Yeah. So we actually are on a, I hope I can say it now we're in the middle of a soft launch right now, but we have a new website and launching a new brand and all of our information is on there.

[00:46:58] Tim: Awesome. 

[00:46:58] Jonathan: There's definitely contact information to reach out. I think we're a very human centric agency. We love interpersonal conversations. So if you reach out, we'll quickly get to a phone call and discuss, we've got a, super talented team of excited people. 

[00:47:12] Tim: Excellent. I'll share the link share a link to that in the description.

[00:47:16] Jonathan: Yeah. 

[00:47:17] Tim: Thank you very much Jonathan. Really appreciate your time today. 

[00:47:21] Jonathan: Yeah, Tim, it's really been a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. This is it's exciting. I love what you're doing with your channel and your podcast. Thanks so much. And your mission to, to want to share information and please continue doing.

[00:47:33] Tim: Thanks so much.

[00:47:34] So a big theme of today's episode was embracing challenges, and that is such a huge aspect of being a content creator or entrepreneur, whether it comes to seizing new opportunities, overcoming creative roadblocks, or dealing with changes in markets and technologies. And right now, one of the biggest technological challenges for content creators and entrepreneurs over the last couple of years has been the development and dispersion of new AI technologies.

[00:48:01] I thought it was really interesting to hear how Jonathan and Ammunition were approaching AI technologies, in that they certainly weren't shying away from it, but they were also being cautious in how they were adopting it. 

[00:48:12] If I could sum it up, I'd say the recommendation is to use AI as an assistant, together with your own research, insights, and experiences. And that's how you could use AI to supplement and deepen your ideation and research without losing what's unique to you and your perspectives as a content creator, and therefore to create content that, as Jonathan says, has emotional resonance with an audience. 

[00:48:34] This lines up really well with what I recommended in an earlier episode on AI, which you can check out here. It goes into more detail about what the use of AI can look like as a content creator because I think as video creators, we need to adopt AI in today's environment to some extent in order to remain competitive, but that we also have to be very careful with how we're using it so we don't impact the quality of our content and also our reputation as content creators.

[00:49:02] And if you enjoy these videos, I've got two seasons' worth of podcast content that you can check out in the links in the description for this video. Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next one.