Crafty Apes' Chris Ledoux and the Georgia Hollywood Review's Miles Neiman Talk Entrepreneurial Philosophy with Ryan Millsap
Ryan Millsap, Chairman & CEO of Atlanta-based Blackhall Studios, is one of today’s top entertainment executives! With a vision for Blackhall that’s ambitious, energizing, and boundless, Millsap is blazing a trail through the heart of the South – and setting his sights on the future of entertainment. Listen and learn as Ryan Millsap journeys through the myriad industries, people, and landscapes that traverse the complex and dynamic world of film production.
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Ryan: I'm Ryan Millsap, chairman and CEO of Blackhall Studios, and this is the Blackhall Studios Podcast. Moving into 2020, I was thinking about my project to expand the studio overseas into the UK, and about how I might utilize this podcast to express my personal values as a businessman and entrepreneur. With the onset of COVID-19, like you, my world changed — and changed, and changed again. Shutting down the studio for three months was not part of my plan in 2020. And now, reopening the studio is exciting, but has huge challenges.
Here, my friends, is where being an entrepreneur is the most impactful. I like new ideas. I want to solve problems. I want to create the best environment for my staff and our clients. And I'm doing just that. You're going to hear a lot about this incredible year we're having on this podcast — from a cultural revolution, to an international healthcare crisis, to an unwieldy political scene, the world has never been more frightening or more exciting. I can't wait to see the movies that come our way because of it. Thank you for joining me; for listening. I'm a fan of yours, and I'm grateful that you're a fan of mine. There's a lot more to come with the Blackhall Studios Podcast.
Today on the podcast, I welcome two of my friends, both Atlanta-based entrepreneurs: Miles Neiman, publisher of the Georgia Hollywood Review, the South’s largest entertainment publication; and Chris Ledoux, CEO and founder of the incredibly impressive special effects company Crafty Apes. And, as you will hear, we do not hesitate to jump into my favorite line of discussion: philosophy. What does it take to be an entrepreneur? What's the mindset? What do we share? What makes us different? Are we creative? Do we buck authority? Do we love what we do? Are we leaders?
Hosting a discussion between friends on what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur was not easy. Miles Neiman, a well-known international publisher whose lifeblood is building alliances, is a very different species than special effects guru extraordinaire Chris Ledoux, who left the wolves and bears of Alaska to create digital worlds to entertain the masses. Both hold their own with me, and both have promised me a rematch. So prepare yourself for a bit of philosophical boxing on this one. It made me smile to listen — and it's a peek into a conversation that is sure to be continued over a beer, or maybe a scotch.
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Ryan: Hi, this is Ryan Millsap. Welcome to the Blackhall Podcast. Today, we're very fortunate to have two entertainment entrepreneurs from Atlanta, Georgia: Miles Neiman and Chris Ledoux. Gentlemen, welcome.
Chris: Hello.
Miles: Thank you very much, Ryan.
Ryan: I have some inkling of the kind of trauma it takes, psychologically, to become an entrepreneur, but I'm always interested to know the trauma that other people who are entrepreneurs attribute to their driving journey to build a life that is independent. So, Miles, why don't we start with you? Tell me: what do you think the traumas in your life were that led you to entrepreneurship?
Miles: I love that, Ryan. That's great. When I was in my 20s, this very successful local restauranteur here in Atlanta and I were having a drink, and he said to me, “Entrepreneurs are people who can't get a job working for anybody else.” So I think that goes along with that sentiment that you're expressing. I never really enjoyed working for somebody else. And I never really found my passion after college, working for other people. I think I couldn't really dissect exactly how or why my journey into entrepreneurship began. But I think it stemmed from that inability to follow someone else's structure.
Ryan: What do you think the key motivating forces are? What is it about entrepreneurship that gets you going?
Miles: For me, I think it boils down to creation. I really like to create things; to develop a vision; to put together all the components. In a business, obviously, it's more than just creation. To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to be a successful implementer, and you have to be a successful manager if you want to have a staff. These are all challenges, I think, that we perfect as we go along the way. Some come more naturally than others. But for me, that's been my experience.
Ryan: Well, Chris, you grew up in Alaska, which is trauma in and of itself, right? But my other friend who grew up in Alaska became one of the most famous Navy Seals of our generation. And he seemed to think that being a Seal was easy after growing up in Alaska.
Chris: What part did he grow up in?
Ryan: I can't remember. He grew up in some little town. His dad was like that character who’s the magistrate; judge; sheriff. I can't remember what they called that in Alaska.
Chris: Oh, so one of the villages.
Ryan: Yeah. He was in a village.
Chris: Oh, okay. Yeah, if he's in a village, then yeah — he’s not wrong.
Ryan: Tell us — I mean, you're a reflective and self-aware guy. What do you think are the things that led to you being such a driving entrepreneur? What do you attribute that psychology to?
Chris: I was miserable working for other people. I was killing myself. I love working hard. I love visual effects. It's fun. And it was pretty simple. It was like, “If I'm going to work this hard, then I think I'm going to reap the benefits of it.” The right opportunity came along, and I was a shameless opportunist. It seemed pretty obvious. I figured, if we could offer a better product, and if I could live and die by my own hands, that's way more exciting. I was a good VFX employee, but not good at much else. I was probably the worst fish and game employee in Alaskan history.
Ryan: What did you do in fish and game?
Chris: I was 19. It was my first summer back from college. And they flew me out to the middle of nowhere in the Alaska Peninsula to count fish. They have to have a certain amount of fish, because salmon spawn every four years, and they swim upstream back to where they were born. They have to let a certain amount of fish escape up the river before they open the fisheries, for sustainability.
And so they build these — what's it called — weirs. These wooden bridges across the river. And you're in the middle of nowhere with one guy. They throw you a shotgun to ward off bears. You're in this cabin, and you just sit there in the weir. You let a gate open, and these fish go through, and you sit there with a clicker and count them. Then you radio back to base and say, “We saw 86 fish; four o'clock.” And they're like, “Great.”
It was ‘98. So it was the same year Timothy Treadwell was out there, from Grizzly Man. I wasn't very far away from him at all; like, a few miles. And so, yeah — it was bears all over the place. I had a shotgun — and I'm partial redneck, but not redneck enough to probably kill something that well. So it was a little bizarre.
Ryan: Did you ever have a bear encounter?
Chris: Oh, yeah. They came up to the cabin; they were crawling all over the place. I was a rover, so they kind of sent me all over. And one of the guys they put me with was this kind of philosophical hippie from Eugene, Oregon. He was like, “Oh, you don't kill them.” I'm like, “Oh, man, what's wrong with you? There's a bear out there, and I'm a computer nerd.” It's ridiculous.
Ryan: Now, you fancy yourself a bit of a philosopher. You're an incredibly practical person, too. What does that mean to you? What does being a philosopher mean?
Chris: Well, I just think you have to think about existence. For me, it means trying to create an objective opinion of my experience — so, separating myself from all external osmosis and influence and saying, “Okay, I'm not going to get caught up in whatever I was taught from the year I was born.” I'm going to say, “What kind of world would I want to live in? And what's the point of this? What am I doing here?” So I like to hit reset and go back to the beginning.
Miles: That’s awesome.
Ryan: What do you think the point is? And what kind of world do you want to live in?
Chris: I'm into this philosopher lately — sort of a made-up character named Hanzi Freinacht. It's a concept called metamodernism. I think the environment is something where it's sort of weird. We all know climate change is happening, especially in Alaska, where it warms twice as much based on the angle of the sun. But we don't really do anything. We just keep going about our lives. I'm guilty of it. We get caught up in these little bubbles of our own existence in reality. And I think that it's weird.
I think there's a holistic nature of things. You realize you can't separate things. So I have some bizarre theories; sort of Carl Jung meets quantum physics. There's sort of this interconnectivity to everything, and it's this collective unconscious — everything is energy, and we're all linked. And then there's this sort of... you can't really separate it. Western science likes to try to isolate things, to identify them, which makes sense on a first-step logic level. But when you sort of take it out there, you realize you're part of this whole
So I think there's a certain enlightenment that we're kind of going to go through. We're in a chaotic period, I think, where a lot of the old sort of mores and institutions are going to die out, and people are going to think, “Okay, what world would I want to live in?” I think, maybe, some kind of Gene Roddenberry-esque Star Trek future — hopefully. But otherwise, I'm going to ‘Metropolis.’
Ryan: Do you think the universe has a personality?
Chris: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's influenced internally; there's independent forces at work, but not truly independent as we think about it. But all these different forces are pushing and pulling, so we have a certain amount of will to create an influence. Just how gravity is a factor of mass. I think, if we are energy, that we can exert, push, and pull, and influence on the universe. And that, if you look at it from a wide enough angled lens, resembles its own personality. Just as how we're just a bundle of trillions of cells.
Ryan: Right. But do you think it just resembles a personality, or do you think the universe actually has personhood — consciousness?
Miles: We probably make up that personality of our individual energies and inputs.
Chris: I haven't drawn a conclusion there yet. Actually, you posed a very interesting question. I'd have to think about it. I don’t have an answer for that. I don't know very much.
Miles: You mean empirically, Ryan? Like a higher-power personality, or an element that the universe exhibits? What do you mean by, “Does the universe have a personality?”
Ryan: What I mean by that is — you have a personality. I experience Miles Neiman as a person with a very particular set of characteristics. I can recognize your voice and your intonations. I know when your laugh is real or fake. I mean, I have a sense of who you are as a person, right? And it’s the same with Chris. So, then, when I say, “Miles has a personality, and Chris Ledoux has a personality; Ryan Millsap has a personality.” Where did personhood come from? Where did personalities come from? Do we possess something that the universe does not possess?
Chris: No. It’s a mechanism to adapt to our environment.
Ryan: Right. But these laws that we observe — as you trace them back, it's very complicated to try to unwind where laws would even come from. Or adaptations; the notion of even trying to adapt; trying to survive. Life being better than death. All of these fundamental ideas that we live by, and that we use in science to observe. And yet, philosophically, they become incredibly complicated to explain if the universe doesn't actually have a personality.
Chris: It would suggest there’s some sort of inbuilt code into it. You know, the nature argument: there is, to a degree, some sort of code we arrive with. There is some kind of need and desire to survive and to reproduce. Well, you can argue ‘reproduce,’ but there is at least at the very least to survive.
Ryan: Correct. So then, in that code — which then implies that someone had intention — who is that someone?
Miles: It might not be how we think of it. It might be a concept that's a little beyond our current evolutionary capacity.
Ryan: I mean, that's possible. And philosophers for thousands of years have punted questions of mystery. Philosophers and theologians have gotten to difficult places and said, “We just don't understand.” Okay; that's one of the options. But the next option is to say, “All right; logically, am I being illogical, based on everything I know?” Now, you could say to me, “Well, Ryan, you're an idiot. And so are all other human beings. So your logic doesn't really count.” But right now, that's all I have. So if I have to stick to my own logic as a human being, then it seems like I've never experienced anything that has code — that has intention — that isn't somehow tied to a person, or a personality. Not necessarily, like, a human being person, but...
Chris: I could agree on that, logically — because you're right. If we say that we're not smart enough to understand, then the argument ends. So let's throw that out for a minute. If you say, “Okay; if there's intention, why does it suggest that it actually comes from a person?” That's where the leap comes from. Intention can happen without necessarily being driven by what we might think of as a sentient being.
Ryan: So you think that's something that's not self-aware and conscious can have intention?
Chris: I believe it's possible. Yeah.
Ryan: What would that look like? I mean, how would we how would we attribute any intentionality to something that wasn't even conscious of itself, or aware of what it was doing?
Chris: I mean, I would say, “Gravity exists. What's the intention of gravity?” That's a force. If these are all just forces, then we’re redirecting energy.
Ryan: Listen. 100%, we're in agreement that we can observe forces all at work in the universe. That's the role of science: observation. What I'm asking is the very complicated philosophical question, which is: there is intention that we observe in the universe everywhere. Where did that intention come from? How can it be from anything that ultimately doesn't have a personality?
You could say, with gravity, “But where did gravity come from? And why was gravity put into the universe?” And as you trace all of these things back, then ultimately you have to say: did somebody intend anything? Was there intention, or is this all truly just randomness? If it's all just randomness, the difficulty then becomes to account for our self-awareness. Because where does self-awareness just appear from, if it didn't have an origin?
Miles: I think personality is more of a human concept. The rules of the universe are perhaps more scientific, or theological, depending on your viewpoints.
Ryan: What's the difference for you between theological and scientific? What does that mean, when you put those in contrast to each other?
Miles: Well, I think of spirituality as having different guidelines, different inspirations, and different rules, so to speak, than science. Science is more mathematical, empirical observation. I think spirituality is more of a metaphysical type of feeling. I guess it's obviously different for everybody in the human experience. But I think that would be how I would define the difference between science and theology.
Ryan: Now, what's interesting to me about that is that I consider science to be a subset of philosophy, and I consider theology to be a subset of philosophy. So, I look at theology and science really under the same umbrella, which is seeking understanding.
Chris: Yeah, I would agree with that. It's sort of that quote: “Anything sufficiently advanced will appear as magic.” And, if you look at it, a lot of theology is basically magic. It's very close to what we might describe as magic. And so, to me, it's a holistic thing. I think I would agree with you there. I think it's all part of the same thing. It's just people seeking to understand. Like you said: “What is the intention? Why am I here?” It ultimately comes down to that. I appear to be self-aware, but even defining that becomes a little rough.
Ryan: Well, and the word you used — magic — I think is an incredibly important human notion, because I'm not sure if there's anything that we value more than actually trying to find magic.
Chris: I agree, 100%.
Ryan: When I say that, I mean some sort of tapping into the energy of the universe such that we discover some new law of physics — and we say ‘magic.’ We meet someone and fall in love, and we say, “God, it's magic.”
Miles: You could even tie that into the entertainment industry, Ryan. It's storytelling. I think at the center of storytelling is the idea of magic. You know?
Ryan: Right. So, this notion — and I mean, this is really what I'm driving at in this philosophical conversation — is that our deep longing for magic is not indicative of a species that was born into a meaningless universe.
Miles: I completely agree.
Ryan: And that's what I'm trying to account for.
Chris: Okay, then. Assuming there's meaning, then, given what we can observe about the universe, what would the potential meanings be?
Ryan: Well, I mean, we could go on endlessly.
Chris: That's the thing. There must be some theory. If we see how life works — or at least we perceive life to work, being that our senses are somewhat blunted. But we learn more all the time, and further uncover magic, you might say — or actually get rid of more magic. Maybe even create more as we find out more. There must be some sort of hunch or hypothesis on what the intention might be. But that's the problem: there does appear to be a certain randomness to our existence, or the appearance of randomness.
Ryan: Well, I think there's certainly randomness. And that's a different question: why is there randomness? I love that question. It's very similar to the question of “Why is there evil?” Right? Why do things happen that don't make any sense, or seemingly don't make any sense? And that's a separate exploration. But let's stay on point with this question of magic.
I think, fundamentally, we can use the word ‘magic’ to describe a lot of things that all of the spiritual masters of the past have been seeking, which is: how do they find true unity with the universe; maintain their own personality such that they can be conscious of what they're experiencing as magic? And how can they celebrate that magic in some sort of human, honest, authentic way? None of that is possible, right? The magic all becomes a negative word, right? “Oh, well, it’s just magic.” Like it's all pretend, or it's an illusion, right? Versus actually discovering power — magical power, which is, I think, ultimately what we really love.
Miles: What good filmmaking really is, is creating that magic. And you could also argue that a life well-lived is a life where we are consistently creating magic within our lives: with ourselves, our families, our friends; even our business relationships. The memories that stand out to me throughout my life are ones that that resonate in a magical feeling.
Ryan: This is kind of where I was originally driving when I asked you the question about the traumas that led to entrepreneurship. I think that entrepreneurs fundamentally wake up to a notion early — for whatever reason. There's a whole bunch of traumas that can lead to this kind of awakening — but it’s an awakening to the notion that the magic is real, and we can chase it, and we can find it.
Miles: I love that. I think that's spot on, Ryan.
Ryan: How do you feel about that, Chris? Do you resonate with that, too?
Chris: To an extent, yeah. I mean, for me, magic is simply things we can't figure out how to articulate properly. What they might have called ‘magic’ 200 years ago — this is just technology; a discovery. And so, as I was saying, if you erase everything, or do your best to erase everything you've ever been taught, and start over, then you can all of a sudden realize a lot of things — such as that there are no real rules except for those which I impose upon myself, or which were externally imposed on me from the beginning of my programming.
When you sort of wake up to that one day, and realize that there's no one really calling the shots except for you, then anything becomes truly possible. And that's where intention, and your ability to flex your intention upon the different energies and paths of the world, really comes into play. I think that's an important threshold for people to cross, because it tends to help eliminate a lot of fear.
Ryan: I love that place that you arrived at, which is where you take a lot of personal responsibility. Where I find it becomes even more fascinating is when you push that into the corner of realizing there are some things that are just totally incongruous, and can't sit next to each other — such that you can't be both someone who wants to perpetuate evil and find out what your soul is like when it's good, right? You can't say, “I'm going to both seek virtue and be a mass murderer.” It doesn't work, right? So then, everything isn't possible. Every path has conclusions. Every path has consequences.
Chris: Would you consider Sergeant York a mass murder? I mean, he did kill a lot of people, but he did it for a certain reason. So it suggests some kind of dimensionality.
Ryan: It’s different, yeah. It definitely has dimensionality. What I'm talking about — you're right on point there. There are rules woven into the fabric of the universe. So it seems such that some of the rules, if we conform to them, give us greater access to certain types of power — whereas, if we don't conform to those rules of the universe, then we often lose that power.
So I have a theory. These are working theories that I test — which is that I believe that, fundamentally, goodness should actually lead to deeper happiness, because it should allow us to tap into the power that's fundamentally woven into the universe that gives human beings the true ability to know what it means to be full of joy.
Chris: The connectivity between us means, I think, that when someone commits evil, you're actually harming yourself in a very holistic way. There's a connected energy to everything. So the murderer who kills the person is actually harming themselves, because they're part of a whole. And whether they die right there, there's certainly a major effect on them.
Miles: You see that theme in literature throughout history.
Ryan: 100%. So, Chris — you see how, in that sense, there are rules woven into the fabric of the universe that aren't just things imposed upon us by other humans, or things that we create ourselves.
Chris: There are sets of rules. Like, Newtonian physics is great, until you go down to a certain level, and then all of a sudden it completely breaks down. So I would say that rules tend to exist in dimensional bubbles — they exist in certain areas, and certain sizes and scales, to an extent. But even quantum nonlocality — they've demonstrated in the last few years that it exists on a much larger scale than they even thought possible. These rules might be very flexible. I think, even looking at things like the double slit experiment, observation changes rules. So the universe seems to be a lot more flexible than we might be led to believe.
Ryan: Well, no; science is a lot more flexible, because I think what you just identified is the old Thomas Kuhn Structure of Scientific Revolutions notion, where enough knowledge appears that's anomaly to what we think is true, and we have to revise our theory. That's not necessarily the rules of the universe changing or being flexible. That's our knowledge growing and what's actually true about the universe.
Chris: Sure. But I think our own knowledge, and our own enlightenment, in my opinion — because we're connected — contributes to the growth of the universe, or some kind of change in the universe as a whole, because of that connectivity. My way of thinking about it is, once they demonstrated that observation can actually change behavior of things, that suggests something that’s pretty mind-blowing. No one really knows where to go with that. There's a lot of theories out there. But the moment that experiment happened, we saw it. It’s been demonstrated over and over again. Observation changes reality, or at least the way we measure reality.
Ryan: Explained to me what you mean by this. Like, observation changing what reality? Who's observing, and who's being changed? Or what's observing, and what's being changed?
Chris: Everyone’s familiar with the double slit experiment?
Ryan: I know that word.
Miles: I think I learned what that was in college, but I think it was a different thing.
Chris: Well, long story short, they found that when humans actually observe subatomic particles traveling, they actually change their behavior.
Miles: Right, right.
Ryan: The subatomic particles change their behavior?
Chris: Yes. The subatomic, which is insane.
Ryan: So when things are observed or acknowledged as existing, their behavior changes?
Miles: Not only their behavior, but you’re saying their physical characteristics. Correct?
Chris: Yeah. It's insane. That first experiment was done a long time ago. But it’s been repeated ever since. And, sorry; I'm really into quantum discoveries, because there's so much happening there. But it's a philosophical and scientific thing. All of a sudden, you're like, “Hold on a second.” We always assumed that if a tree falls in the forest, that it definitely makes a sound, and that we know that. I'm not saying that literally; I'm just saying that all these things around us, we assume happen — whether we're there or not. If I knock on my shelf right now, that's a shelf.
But just by demonstrating that things change behavior because we've looked at them — because we're actually actively observing them — all of a sudden it begs this question. “Hold on a second. The universe just isn't going around us, doing whatever it naturally does — it actually changes based on our observing it?” That suggests a lot of stuff.
Miles: It plays up that interconnectedness in energy — which is magic, because it's a mystery to us. It's kind of like... there's also studies where they put water in petri dishes, or whatever, and they've had people say cuss words with nasty intent to the water. And then, with a different set of water — and apparently it's all supposed to be the same stuff, and whatnot, in a vacuum — they say nice things to a different set of water. And the molecules actually change their characteristics. The water molecules that have been created start to break down. And I might be getting some of the details wrong, but the concept has been scientifically studied and shown. So I think it speaks to the same type of thing that you're talking about, Chris.
Chris: Yeah. That's exactly it. Somehow, we're not separate. We're actually connected in such a way where we can at least observe our environment simply through observation — which could be as simple as, maybe there’s an electromagnetic thing we're putting off that we're not even aware of. Maybe it's that simple — which would help get Newtonian physics back in line.
Miles: But there’s really no such thing as objectivity.
Chris: Well, yeah. To an extent. It only exists in a relative space. Kind of like non-locality, or superposition. If you get subatomic enough, you can never actually say where something is. It only exists in a potential space.
Ryan: It only exists in a relational space.
Chris: Yeah. But the terminology they say is ‘potential.’ They can't actually tell you exactly where particles are. They can tell you the potential of where they are. And then, on a subatomic level, things actually don't... it’s not like, “Hey, this is it. Point XYZ in space.” They can't do it when you get small enough. It just exists somewhere in this space, and we can't tell you how. It's not our tools. This is actually inherent to existence.
Ryan: Right. But at the same time, all of that deep physics relies on how everything relates to each other, which I think then is a fascinating reversion to the notion that the universe is relational in a very personal sense. That explains to me — well, I mean, it doesn't necessarily explain in detail, but it explains philosophically — why everything is relationally interconnected, if fundamentally, at the core of the entire universe, is a being that has enough personality to have intention when they're writing the code.
Chris: I’m actually in agreement with you. I just can't explain it properly. But my hunch; my intuition — even though I can't logically articulate it to you. I am in agreement with you. I do believe there's intention.
Miles: When you say that being writing the code, who would that be for you? Would that be God?
Ryan: Well, I mean, it’s certainly God that I'm seeking to know, right? I mean, I don't claim to have like the kind of life experience that is like, “Jesus is my homeboy,” because I just have never had that kind of life experience. But I certainly have had a real experience.
Miles: That needs to be a T-shirt.
Ryan: I think it is already. I think it was Madonna who made that t shirt famous. I think you can Google that. Madonna, “Jesus is my Homeboy.” But I haven't had the kind of life experience or spiritual experience that makes God incredibly personal in a like, ‘appear before me, speak, audibly,’ kind of experience. My experience has been much more metaphysical — about interconnectedness, and a sense of personality, and a sense of intention, and sometimes deeper insight into what's happening in the universe. At least, it feels like that. And it feels like it's insight that's being given to me rather than insight that I somehow conjured.
So I attribute all those things to God. Then I seek to try to understand what God is, and I seek to try to know God as best I can as a human being. But I don't have a lot — when you get really deep into the theology, I start to run into a lot of walls. Because I'm much more in tune with the vastness of God than I am with the specifics of names.
Miles: That's well-put. Sometimes I think people limit — I'll use the word we were using before — the magic of God. And I think that's where theology becomes a challenge for some people, because mankind kind of screws it up.
Ryan: I had a wonderful professor in college ask me a fantastic question one time. He said to me, “What percentage of the knowledge of the universe do you think you have?” And I thought. I'm like, “I don't know. Somewhere far less than 1%.” And he said to me, “Arrogant!” Right? “You're arrogant.”
I said, “Okay, okay; I don't know what the number is. It's just teeny tiny. The percentage of the knowledge of the universe that I have is teeny tiny.” And he said to me, “Do you think it is possible that, in all the knowledge that exists that you don't have, that God might exist?” And I was like, “I don't know how you say no to that.”
Miles: Right, right.
Ryan: So there's no way to not be incredibly, unbelievably arrogant and be an atheist. I think that from a logic standpoint, we can we can be agnostic, the classic Greek “I don't know.” We can be an “I don't know” guy. Cool, right?
Miles: I like that, Ryan. I think that's very poignant.
Ryan: But if we are to step out and then start making these huge claims about the universe, I think we lose the humility of knowledge that allows us to not only punt to the magic — punt to the mystery — and just say, “We will never know; we're just little human beings,” but instead pay homage and almost humbly submit ourselves to the vastness of the universe, such that we might actually then get in tune with that real power.
Miles: Yeah. I think it’s that zen-like middle ground that's the sweet spot.
Ryan: What is that? What did you say? The dim-light middle ground?
Miles: I said I think it's the zen-like middle ground.
Ryan: Ah. The zen-like middle ground.
Miles: You sound like you were ordering off of a Chinese menu, with what you thought I said.
Ryan: Fair enough. Okay — so we've now established enough to at least have some hypothesis as to why the three guys on this phone call like seeking magic, on one level or another. So tell me — tell the people that are listening — a little bit about the small portions of magic that you're bringing to the universe in your businesses. So, Miles, tell everybody a little bit about what you do, and then let's circle back to Chris.
Miles: Ryan, I love you, man. I love that arc you just created. So, what we're trying to do with our businesses here in Georgia is create an infrastructure for the entertainment industry. We're working right now on setting up a distribution company for content distribution originating from here in Georgia. Obviously, I have the magazine in Georgia, Hollywood Review, that really celebrates and highlights the creatives here in Georgia making a difference in the industry. They have the TV channel that does the same thing.
We've recently set up a production company called Grow Georgia Films, specializing in creating Oscar and Emmy contender content with Georgia talent above and below the line. And then we also have a publicity management and talent agency, where we take Georgia talent to the next level. So really, everything we're doing has the focus of building industry infrastructure in the state of Georgia, and bringing us up to the level — the next level, as a state and as an industry — and doing our small part.
So for me, the magic in that is helping other people to tell their story, and other people to live out their dreams, and to achieve their goals — as well as creating my own stories with teammates and colleagues. I'm working on writing several scripts and concepts. Some are based on iconic figures in American history. Some are just based on social issues that are relevant today. But for me, that's where the paradigm of the magic lies in this industry: just being able to tell whatever story you want, in the best way you know how — with professionals like Chris, with Crafty Apes, who are the best in the visual effects world. To make their stories, and those messages, really resonate with the magic.
Ryan: Chris, why don't you dive in and share a little bit about what you guys do?
Chris: At the moment, I’m taking on multiverses, but fine. In this universe, visual effects do what a lot of people call ‘movie magic.’ What's cool about what we're doing is that it's always developing so fast. It's such a young industry. It's the youngest department on a film set, so every day there's new stuff. As much as a disaster as COVID's been for people's lives and livelihood, it's actually forced a revolution in our industry and accelerated a lot of technologies. That's that magic that we call science a few days later, and it's pretty fascinating.
I mean, stuff that's going on with machine learning. We're doing a lot of deepfake R&D, automation things. And what's cool about visual effects is, every time we figure out how to do something faster, it tends to create more jobs, not less — because what happens is, we could do something, and then some producer says, “You could do that? Here. You guys do this now.” It's kind of the opposite of how a car factory might work with automation.
Every day is exciting. We're in a lot of VR stuff right now; utilizing game engines to build environments; digital people. I mean, all movies are just environments and people. We're working on both of those, in terms of how to make it faster or better; how to do things quicker. And every day is different. The industry is very free with knowledge, and people pass around data, and it's just a bunch of nerds. And they're, above all, just very curious people — figuring out new ways to help directors and storytellers get stuff on the screen.
Ryan: How much fun are you having, building a community of curious people?
Chris: I mean, that’s all I work with. It's a blast. If you can keep that sort of childlike curiosity your entire life, that's a pretty damn well-lived life. And that's all I've ever wanted to do. I've been very... I guess I'll say lucky, if luck is the residue of design. I've definitely intended to find myself among curious people that are like-minded, and we just have a blast. There’s stuff happening right now that’s so exciting.
As much as COVID's a pain in the ass, we're about to see a lot of virtual environments and things, all of a sudden. We're going to revolutionize a lot of things that would have taken, normally, a number of years — because Hollywood's so risk averse. A producer just can't take a chance on something, unless it’s a music video or something — which is why you see so many breakthrough technologies coming out of music videos and commercials, because they can be a bit more daring. If you watch the behind-the-scenes for ‘The Mandalorian,’ we're going to see a lot more of that.
My personal aim is, I want to bring that to the masses. I don't want that to be just something that the highest-end, super-expensive TV show can afford. I want a mid-budget narrative that's really going after a beautiful story — the kind of movies that win Oscars and things like that. I want them to be able to use this technology and be familiar with it, not be scared of it, and understand what's going on — because that's something VFX hasn’t sometimes done the best job of as an industry: educating a lot of people on set as to what we're actually doing. We're kind of these ‘magic guys,’ quote unquote, in the corner, that occasionally get called out. But how do we do this? “We'll fix it,” you know. But I think the more we can do to help let people know: “Here's what we're doing; here's the logic behind what we're doing” — I think you'll see much more widespread adoption.
It would be good for Ryan, because it'll be a lot more stage shooting. A lot less location shooting. But yeah; I think we're going into these virtual environments and game engines. Video games and VFX are starting to merge in a lot of ways, which is really exciting for us.
Miles: Can I ask you a question about that?
Chris: Sure.
Miles: I know, with the traditional visual effects that you do, I have often heard you say that if someone's good at it, you really can't see it — unless you really know what frame to look for. You can't tell the difference of what was real and what was created in visual effects. Do you think that that same sentiment will apply to the virtual effects that you're talking about now?
Chris: Yeah. I think there's always going to be things that are visual effects, because nobody owns Smaug the Dragon. That doesn't exist — at least in our version of reality. So, it's like, “Oh, this thing flies into space.” Well, we know that someone didn't attach a camera to any Elon Musk rocket and send it up. Well, maybe they do. But certain things are obviously visual effects.
I think, for most things, 95% of movies are people talking in a location. That's what they are. And so, if you integrate it right, you do it right... ‘The Mandalorian’ — 60% or 70% of what was on the screen was a game engine. The interiors of the bar. It was pretty amazing. I didn't realize the full extent of it until I saw the behind-the-scenes. It was like, wow. So, yeah — I think, like anything, it's expensive at first, and then the prices come down. So I think it'll get better and better.
Digital people is the next big one that we'll see in the next few years. We can't have 300 extras on set anymore, and they don't want to do crowd shots. It's expensive. You're going to see really good digital people, because you're going to see a lot of R&D thrown into that, on how to do that properly. And you'll see big libraries get built, where you can go buy... like, say we're in a New York coffee shop, and hey, I need 50 people out here dressed in 80s period gear. There's going to be a library for that, and you're going to be able to go get it and say, “Okay, we got our digital extras.”
I think some of the more traditional purists will say, “Oh, this takes the magic out of it.” And it does. I mean, I love going on location. It's fun. But, at the same time, if you really break down what this is, and sort of see it as a more advanced version of the stage — but with a camera, which changes a lot — it's really locations, and people in those locations. There's certain things that you're always going to want to be on location for, so I don't think this is a magic bullet for everything. But I think 20 years from now; ten years from now; the normal way to make movies will involve a lot of this stuff. And it's pretty exciting.
It's, I think, maybe not good for a lot of the people in LA that own the houses that always get filmed for something like that. But I think, for guys like me and guys like Ryan, it's great. I think for guys like you, as a producer, I think it's really exciting — especially given how many good period stories are out there and how expensive period stuff is. I think this will help out a lot.
Ryan: If somebody can figure out how to scan those houses that work so well for film sets and upload them into the game engines, then those people still might get paid for the forms of their homes.
Chris: Yeah. That's already happening. You’ll see that there's gonna be a lot of copyright wars and all sorts of things happening. I mean, you already saw it with... there was some movie that tried to do it recently, and it's not quite there yet, but it's getting close to “What happens when I decide to go make a movie and cast John Wayne in it? John Wayne's dead. What is that, philosophically?”
Ryan: I’ll tell you what happens. Some hedge fund owns the rights to John Wayne, most likely — the way they own the rights to Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.
Chris: Yeah.
Miles: It creates new engines of commerce, basically.
Chris: Ryan's house is a beautiful location. If I scan it for a movie, does Ryan get to resell that over and over again? Or does he get a buyout, like in a commercial — and then Universal, or whoever, owns the rights to that in perpetuity? How does that work?
Ryan: Most likely the second. Universal's going to go for the second. They're going to go for paying you one time and owning the rights in perpetuity. And then it's just a question of the sophistication of the marketplace.
Chris: Well, what if I change my house? Is that sufficiently different? Is it now a new thing?
Ryan: You’re into the deep recesses of the lawyering class.
Chris: Well, no; but it's weird how much that drives what we do. I mean, how many NDAs have you signed in your life? How many times has it affected you?
Ryan: They’re gentlemen's agreements.
Chris: Yeah. “How many pages?” It's just interesting.
Ryan: It's always a question of precedence; antecedents. How does everything fit together, and who gets credit for the evolution of things? That's been a constant problem in all of human history — trying to account for where ideas and companies and ventures evolve from, and who profits from them. These are all going to be similar questions that have to get solved. It's just in the world of digital entertainment and digital assets.
We're out of time. This has been fantastic. I'd love to do it again. So I'll have the producers reach out and see when we might be able to continue the conversation. But thank you guys for taking the time. I had a blast talking to you.
Miles: Thank you, Ryan. It was a pleasure. Unexpected and refreshing as always, my brother.
Ryan: Of course. Love you guys. All right. Talk to you soon. Have a great day. I'm Ryan Millsap, and this is the Blackhall Studios Podcast.
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Ryan: I'll leave you guys with thoughts that I write on Instagram. “The entire world is yours today. The universe has told it to exist just for you.”
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