What if you could get high-quality video marketing production from top professionals in Los Angeles without ever leaving your office? Well, now you can with LiveShoot, which brings top creative talent, including creative talent, actors, crew and studio sets, all at your fingertips. Today Nick Artunyan tells us about this new platform he’s built.
GUEST: Nick Artunyan of LiveShoot. Email Nick at nick[at]liveshoot.co
HOST: The Video Marketing Value Podcast is hosted by Dane Golden of VidiUp.tv and VidTarget.io | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube
SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.
PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
TRANSCRIPT
Dane Golden: It’s time for the Video Marketing Value Podcast from HEY.com. This is the podcast where we help marketers and business owners, just like you, get more value out of your video and marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden and today we’re going to speak with Nick Artunyan from LiveShoot. Welcome, Nick.
Nick Artunyan: Well, hi Dane. Thank you so much for having me on.
Dane Golden: So, I was really excited to meet with you at Social Media Marketing World, you have this very interesting take on the video production company. What is LiveShoot and what do you do there?
Nick Artunyan: LiveShoot is a new approach to video production. It was designed to empower marketing departments and help them create high quality, branded marketing videos. To put it simply, imagine your marketing department has a fully equipped, fully staffed video capabilities, you know? With all the creative talent, you have all the actors, all the studio sets, everything that is necessary to shoot your next live action promotional videos, advertisements, even how to and explainer videos. So, all we need from you is your creative idea or vision for your next video marketing strategy and we’re good to go.
Dane Golden: So…
Nick Artunyan: One thing I wanted to quickly add…
Dane Golden: Yeah.
Nick Artunyan: Is the cool part about it is, the entire video production happens remotely. So, all your interaction with LiveShoot happens online with our platform. So, you don’t even have to, kind of, leave your office and you still get this highly produced brand videos, that your brand really needs.
Dane Golden: So, what you’re saying here, if I understand, is that I have a marketing team and we may have certainly an idea for a video, but we don’t have to hire all the different people. We may have to hire some of the people, but as far as the video production of it, it happens somewhere other than where I am, I don’t have to be there, I can watch the progress. But, you’re taking care of each of the individual roles and responsibilities?
Nick Artunyan: That’s true. This is a… We need your idea. We need your creative strategy that you have in mind, and everything else we take care of. You don’t have to worry about getting a crew, hiring a producer, or figuring out all the different things that go into production. Everything is designed specifically, so we can slowly break through your vision and get the videos that you need.
Dane Golden: Let’s talk about what the process entails. How does it go? Once I’ve signed up, what do I do exactly?
Nick Artunyan: Good question. So, listen, so I have two little children, and they love pizza and who doesn’t, right?
Dane Golden: Yeah.
Nick Artunyan: Or surprise, you know. And so, we regularly order pizza online, and a lot of people go through the same process. It’s very easy, the pizza you want, you have to go through and customize it, the way you want it. So, you find the toppings that you want, what type of pizza crust, and a few other options that would make the pizza exactly how you love it. And you don’t have to worry about all the other things that goes into it. Like who buys the ingredients? Which pizza shift is going to create your pizza, or how hot the oven would be. No, you don’t have to worry about it, because as long pizza that you want, you get that pizza, you’re happy. And that’s the same approach we want to take with video production.
Dane Golden: So, what… Let’s talk about some of the roles and responsibilities that’ll happen. I assume this is a web interface? Some sort of app that someone is tracking in? Is that right?
Nick Artunyan: Yes. So, let me quickly walk you through how this works.
Dane Golden: Okay.
Nick Artunyan: So, similar to the pizza ordering experience, you go to our platform, we walk you through the creative brief stage. Where we break down your idea and so we can really understand what you’re envisioning, what’s the tone, what’s the feeling, what’s the purpose of this video? And you go to the next stage, which is casting and set selection and you choose… See, as I said before, we have all the actors, all the studios that we already work with, so you don’t have to worry about going and location scouting or doing your own casting. And the last step that the marketer does is, you use our script to break down the scenes and actually bring all these elements together. And then you sit back and the rest of the process we take care of it and by the way, this whole… Everything throughout this whole process, you have a dedicated director that helps you. So, if you have any questions, they can answer you and kind of guide you through this process.
Nick Artunyan: But, after that, then we go through the rest of the video pre production stage. Like, you get your story boards, and the shot list and we just want to make sure that we are on the same page. You don’t worry about all these other things, like hiring a crew, renting gear, scheduling, coordinating, you know, permits, releases, pay roll. Nothing like that, so in fact we automated all of that, and streamlined this whole process so even our teams full attention is to make sure we really understand your creation and execute it the right way. So, our goal is to, you know, at the end we get the exact video that you were envisioning from the beginning.
Dane Golden: Okay. Can you share an anecdote of someone who’s done this?
Nick Artunyan: Yes, actually one thing that I want to mention. We are in public beta, so we really…
Dane Golden: Brand new, yeah.
Nick Artunyan: We are brand new, this concept is brand new, and we have been trying… Working with really closely with a lot of different type of clients. Some of them are more established companies, some of them are agencies.
Dane Golden: You don’t have to say what the name of the company is, but just sort of share what they… How they have experienced it.
Nick Artunyan: Yes. So, but we are working with a few early stage start ups too.
Dane Golden: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Nick Artunyan: And they have never really seen their proficiently shot promotions or advertisements about their products. So, the interesting thing is, the first time they see it, their eyes are glued to the screen and they, honestly, they can’t take the smile off of their face. And, it’s… That feeling is kind of… I can’t really explain it. It’s like kind of seeing your favorite band perform live for the first time, you know?
Dane Golden: Right.
Nick Artunyan: And I guess, our biggest… This is… This video marks the pivotal moment for their start up, but those are the kind of experiences that kind of help us go through, because all these people who really work hard day in and day out to come up with the product or a service, really helps other people. And just to help them create awareness or put that same vision, that they had early on, and project it as wide as we can. That kind of gets us going.
Dane Golden: When you… When you do this, I think we’re all getting used to working with teams that are remote, either around the country, around the world. Visually, so I can envision this, is this team in LA, New York, Malaysia, both? How does that work?
Nick Artunyan: So, currently all of our team, and all the… Everyone involved, they’re in Los Angeles.
Dane Golden: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Nick Artunyan: And this is where we are kind of going and making sure the whole process, the whole experience works perfectly.
Dane Golden: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Nick Artunyan: And as we see that… As we see that this is working, and we have other team… Like other producers and directors that work remotely, some of them are in Portland, we have people in Toronto. We have designed it so we can scale it. So once, because everything is remote and location independent? We can have talent from all over the world to be part of any type of video that we need. And also other sets. Like, we had a client that their idea was in an English countryside, you know? And it’s really hard to get an English countryside in Los Angeles. But, because everything is meant to work location independently? So, the… You know, we are no longer locked into a certain location. And this helps in many different areas.
Dane Golden: Right. You know, that’s why Los Angeles became the location for movies to begin with. Was because it had so many different terrains and weather. Weather is always generally pretty good, so that’s why movies went there in the first place.
Nick Artunyan: That’s right. And actually, not only that, but the talent. We are very particular who we work with, because of… We are lucky that we are in Los Angeles, we have plenty of talent, and we want to make sure that we work with the best people. Because everything translates to the end result, and we are very particular, we are are lucky we are in Los Angeles basically.
Dane Golden: But, importantly, as far as casting, if I want this person or that person, I can select those remotely somehow in your system and watch those over time? They’re… It’s just like selecting it in person?
Nick Artunyan: That’s right. So, we try to… One thing that was challenging and actually was something that we really paid a lot of attention is, if you are not physically there, how can we make sure that you are not missing out? You’re not saying, “Oh, if I was there, I would have done this or that.” That goes with casting and location scouting, and all that stuff. So, the casting process is very similar as if you were real casting. So, you see the talent’s personality reel, you can have them audition for you, and you can see references.
Nick Artunyan: So, by the time you select the talent, you know exactly what they look like, what they sound like, if they’re the right person for whatever creative you have. And same thing with the locations. We wanted to make sure this is not just a bunch of images you go through, you actually… We have a 3D… Ah sorry, not 3D, we have a 360 set where you can move through and really frame the shots that you think is going to help the video. So, everything that we did, we wanted to make sure that you’re not missing out, by not physically being there.
Dane Golden: This is fascinating, Nick. I really… I commend you for this grand enterprise, I know you’re just at the beginning, and growing. But, what an idea, I don’t know if anyone’s ever thought of this before, but I think it’s going to be exciting to watch how you grow.
Nick Artunyan: Yeah, it’s very exciting. It’s very exciting just going to the next stage and actually this started, because a lot of the pain points that I had, and that our team had that going through the past 10 – 15 years? I mean, you know, tell me if this sounds familiar, we go to a strategy meeting, and we are brainstorming with our team, we are throwing ideas around, we are checking what’s the current trend or strategy, or tactics, and we listen to our customer stories. Then we finally come up with an awesome video marketing idea, and something that we really think speaks directly to our customers, something that really shows our brand character. It might be funny, or it might be inspiring and cool, we’re all excited. And then the reality hits us in the face, we realizes actually it’s so much work, so much money that it would take to get this video off the ground, and all the resources that we need that we don’t have. So, unfortunately so many great ideas that could really transform or grow our brand it just doesn’t really leave the room.
Dane Golden: Right.
Nick Artunyan: That kind of, going through this over and over again, and actually being on all sides, of being both in production and on the marketing side. Both on the brand side and the agency side I kind of… I’m like there should be an easy way, there shouldn’t… We shouldn’t be limited to stock footage on one side, which is great, look stock definitely helps in many situations. But, it was… It’s generic by design. It doesn’t really… It was made for many companies, many different… It should work in many different scenarios, so it doesn’t really… It’s not on brand. And, on the other side is a very expensive, very time consuming, very complex video production. So, this was kind of the result that I thought would strike the right balance, where it’s easy and accessible, like stock? But also, it has the high production value, it’s custom made on brand, like it would be a typical video production.
Dane Golden: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Great. And where can people find out more about LiveShoot, Nick?
Nick Artunyan: You can definitely go to LiveShoot.co and we have a lot of information there. And we are trying to put a lot of materials together so people can understand more obviously. Like I said, we are launching this summer, publicly, but we still work with a lot of clients. But you know what? You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Nick Artunyan. Or you can even email me directly, nick@liveshoot.co. I’ll be happy to talk to you and help you with any video needs. Even if it… Even if the solution is not LiveShoot, I really want to help brands put their mission and vision and brand identity out there.
Dane Golden: Fantastic.
Nick Artunyan: So, I would be happy to talk to anyone.
Dane Golden: Fantastic. So that’s nickartunyan A-R-T-U-N-Y-A-N. And LiveShoot, L-I-V-E-S-H-O-O-T is the name of the company. And my name is Dane Golden and I want to thank you the listener for joining us today. I do this podcast now renamed the Video Marketing Value Podcast from HEY.com and the videos, because I love helping marketers and business owners, just like you grow your customer community through helpful how to videos. Because when you share your expertise in a way that helps your customers with their lives better, and do their jobs better, you’ll earn their loyalty and their trust and their business. Thanks to our special guest, Nick Artunyan, from LiveShoot.
Nick Artunyan: Thank you so much Dane, I appreciate it.
Dane Golden: Thank you. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.