086 – A Whodunnit Happy Hour with Brandon Gries
June 6, 2024
In this Happy Hour podcast, John and Ryan are chatting with Brandon Gries about their recent collaboration, Bare Metal, a film that explores sustainability in the digital infrastructure industry. They also reveal the final act of Backflip’s Whodunnit Murder Mystery!
Topics in this episode:
- (00:04:17) What does Brandon do?
- (00:06:40) Why was Brandon in our Christmas video!?
- (00:09:11) From engineer to film producer.
- (00:13:26) The Bloomberg film festival.
- (00:19:58) The Christmas video reveal.
- (00:45:06) Themed Christmas cards.
- (00:50:21) Is there time to appreciate the project?
- (00:55:15) Bare Metal.
- (01:09:40) The hunt for b-roll.
- (01:21:42) How do you get the average person to care about the infrastructure of the internet?
- (01:24:51) Day in the life of Twitter employee.
- (01:38:47) Copyright vs trademark.
- (01:45:20) Two truths and a lie.
- (01:59:11) How many film festivals??
- (02:04:34) The artbook of the internet.
- (02:08:46) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
Transcript
Ryan Freng:
Hello and welcome back to the let’s Backflip show, happy hour. I’m Ryan Fring, co-creative director and co-founder here, but haven’t done the intro, haven’t gotten it posted. We’ve just been very, very busy, which is good except for the whole. Then we don’t do stuff like this. We don’t get our podcast going. So we’re back on the case Luke’s editing, we’ve got Alexis and Maria helping with the marketing, so it’s going to be really fun to share all this stuff. But this episode is awesome.
John Shoemaker:
It is episode 86, a whodunit happy hour with brandon grease, and this, this episode is really awesome, brandon. We’ll talk more in the episode.
Ryan Freng:
But brandon is a client turned friend turned collaborator who now we do a lot of creative projects with, and he was in our christmas video this past or two years ago actually he acted in it and he did a phenomenal job. Our whodunit Christmas celebration which I think if you go to letsbackflipcom slash Christmas you can see that content so we actually revealed on this podcast it was live whodunit who got the most votes and just shared a good time with our good pal Brandon. So, without further ado, this is episode 86 with Brandon Gries.
John Shoemaker:
Hello and welcome back to the let’s Back Flip show. I don’t know if I have audio, I think I do. We’re doing so many different things today. This is a happy hour. We’re drinking, we’ve got friends. You can see the friends over here. We’re actually doing this in person, which is exciting, and like now that I I’m not talking to the camera like hanging out yeah, through this idea.
John Shoemaker:
Uh, we were talking on the phone, um, and you had initially thought you, you were coming here to do it, and I was like I’m so glad you said that because I was thinking we could do that. And then, when I mentioned the idea that John was like oh dear goodness, yeah, yes, let’s please do that. So we’re going to hang out. We’re going to talk about a couple different things. We’ve got Bare Metal, a short film that we worked on. We’ve got the Christmas video that just released the third part, and we’re going to reveal or we’re going to reveal who the murderer of our murder mystery is, and then what else? I think we’re revealing who was attempting to. I think that’s how it says it in the end of the part two, which is a bit of a spoiler if you haven’t seen part one or any of the parts, because after the line.
John Shoemaker:
It’s like who is attempting?
Ryan Freng:
to knock out do away with that’s fun so let’s go ahead and introduce our guest.
John Shoemaker:
We’ll go to maybe three. Up there we go today. We got Brandon Breeze. Right now it’s Christ, that’s okay it’s Christ.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, my phone always says it like yeah, oh, it’s so funny, like with my phone, when I have like friends that I have to pronounce her last nap. I know how their name is supposed to be pronounced but I have to distort it to get searing.
Ryan Freng:
Yeah, yeah, it’s for me, it’s always like text message from brandon grease yeah, so it’s grace, it’s Grice, it’s Grice yeah.
John Shoemaker:
That strong. German Grice yeah, is it like Grice, yeah, nice.
Brandon Gries:
Like you like, like I’m in trouble, just to you know you’re thinking like how would you say it if you were mad at me? For you know I was in trouble.
John Shoemaker:
Do you ever uh when you say it on the phone?
Ryan Freng:
uh, the e and the n, like people don’t listen to the e, the n can sound like an m and the f could be an s, so it’s kind of tough.
Brandon Gries:
I need to like foxtrot yeah, it is yeah, yeah, I terrified most of my grade school children, my grade school teachers, because they were all terrified of like, you know, crushing me as a child, of like, oh, we’re gonna mispronounce this kid’s name. Yeah, my grandfather changed the spelling of the name because he was sick and tired of being picked on by other kids. You know, just doing all kinds of variations on greasy and whatever. So, yeah, but I take it both ways.
Ryan Freng:
Yeah so.
Brandon Gries:
Brandon, what do you do? So? I’m an engineer. I build modular data centers. I spent most of my career in the built world, although I did spend two years serving as a Peace Corps volunteer as well. Right now, I work for one of the largest electrical contractors in the US, and I build data centers for the largest companies on the planet.
Ryan Freng:
I don’t know if you’re watching this, but I love the right now caveat I love it like my current wife.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, this, but I I love it right now. Caveat, I love it like my current wife. Yeah, I love it. Is that what the uh, the photo of you and the head wrap is from?
Brandon Gries:
from the peace corps no, no, that was, that was a trip to morocco in 2019. That was, we were in the sahara and that was what they outfitted us in before we embarked on you know camel ride into the sahara.
John Shoemaker:
So let’s see, I have that. I can pull that up too um, and yeah, that was legit.
Brandon Gries:
That was not like a plain dress up.
John Shoemaker:
We worked together um years ago, so so what did I call you like friend?
Brandon Gries:
uh, you said documentarian now and I don’t know. Yeah, it’s like there and we made some corporate, we’ve done some corporate work together too.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, but we started off working together, right.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah.
John Shoemaker:
Compatriot.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, we’ve been working together since 2014. Now, since we’re in 2023, that’s like nine years.
John Shoemaker:
That’s like a thousand years ago. Yeah, that’s crazy. Yeah, but you’ve always had a desire, a want, a nerdy film brain.
Brandon Gries:
I was doing little things myself before I got to meet you guys, but the reason why we started working together is because I was on a project in Oregon and there were some things that I wanted to see happen. No, no, oregon, the state, oh, okay, the state. And so, since I was there and I couldn’t be here, there was a project that was being delivered, that was being built here and was going to get delivered there. Since I was working on site there, I couldn’t do things here, but this is where interesting things were. So I needed help. So I wrote like I was on the job site, you know, out there at like three in the morning, which is not unusual for me, but I was out on the job site super early. I write an email to your response page and then Erin Phipps, who now is in London, she calls me two or three hours later that morning. And it was just that, was it? That’s all she wrote. So the shenanigans began.
John Shoemaker:
I was thinking and it feels like going backwards in order, but it might be the most relevant way to start, because most people of the viewers would know that Jeff was our editor for many, many years.
John Shoemaker:
And you and he have similar looks, similar style, and so they were like, oh, is that Jeff? I’m like. Well, no, I suppose it looks enough like him that, if you don’t know him, well you think. But then the next question is wait, why is one of your clients in that big of a role in your Christmas video? I suppose we haven’t had a client in a role in a Christmas video. We’ve talked about it in the past and Max has just played special guest for many years, from almost the beginning, even when he wasn’t working here. But you’re like our first special guest for many years, from almost the beginning, even when he wasn’t working here. You’re our first special guest who’s a client. That’s pretty special.
John Shoemaker:
I think that’s the entry point to starting with where we are now, and then you get the screen that flashes back and says it’s 10 years earlier. Yes, we will reveal that once the time is right. Yeah, but yeah, we started working together on on probably some more corporate style projects.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, we needed to do. I think there was like a. It was editing together like a time lapse video, some of the modules we were building, and then later on there was some things that finally, like the main corporate office, actually started to get you guys involved with some projects. You did this large culture video for us as well several years ago, yeah, so it’s been dabbling in a bunch of different small projects. I was trying to recollect what they’ve all been and I’m losing track of it.
John Shoemaker:
We did a very goofy which was stretching the limits for the corporation and the brand did a very goofy safety videos or series of safety videos yeah that was good. Those are with TC, right yeah it was very funny, with special effects and everything that was good. That’s h ow we do it yeah, it’s about being awesome.
John Shoemaker:
It had to be awesome but then you know, so we’ve been doing these little pieces just fill in some of the gaps in the story, because I think it was few and far between you know, as we worked on those other projects. And then it was a while, and then I heard from you, like about a year ago, exactly around this season. You must have been, uh, musing over christmas holiday, setting the intentions for the year ahead.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, you must have been sitting in front of a fireplace, you know, just thinking about thoughts, um. And then, yeah, brandon reached out with questions. Well, and you had been wanting to do something yeah, going to do film, and for a long time, you know, you thought to us, you talked to John about it and John encouraged you to find something. Yeah, you know, a film festival just find a reason to produce something straight.
Brandon Gries:
So timing, and that’s exactly it yeah, well, really like the, the nudge from our conversation, john’s. So like when I was a real little kid, it was you know the short list of things that I wanted to be. It was like astronaut, spy actor, the spy actor were kind of like attached to the hit because I really liked the. Sean connery, timothy dalton, no, roger daltrey, the guy who was in the early 90s, ron’s been a space too.
John Shoemaker:
So yeah, so yeah, exactly right.
Brandon Gries:
So it was like that was that, was it? Like you know, that was the thing. And then I got a little older and then I started to really fall in love with a few directors. So I had this like mindset of like I needed to make myself into figure out how to become a director. But your little nudge was like brand Brandon, we’ve seen you in action. You should really think about producing. So then it was like then I took on the sort of all right, how would a producer think about you know, kind of making their way into things.
Brandon Gries:
And then after our conversation, I think the other sort of serendipitous thing was this conference I was at in New York where I learned of Bloomberg doing this inaugural film contest and I was like 10 minutes with credits, maybe I can do this, um, so, yeah, well, so it was just and I was just giving you that feedback.
John Shoemaker:
You know, this is this is like how we all got our start, too is like where do you start? We got to start somewhere. You got to start kind of small, um, take a small step that is manageable. And so that’s where we started was film contests. I mean, that’s how we started the company. Really. We were doing these film contests where we like enter a pizza hut cheesy bites film contest and make a commercial for cheesy bites and then enter it, and you know we went a few prizes here and there and that was kind of like fun. Um, really, that’s about like practice. But practice, practice isn’t like valuable practice. Unless there’s something, some constraint, I think well, that’s pretty natural, you can make your own film but, but for us, like we need, like our brains need something.
John Shoemaker:
Well, yeah, put us in a box yeah, yeah it loves constraints.
John Shoemaker:
You need a deadline, I need the constraints, I need the length, I need what you know needs to be included, and then, okay, now I can run with it, come up with some ideas. So we did that several times and then eventually started landing some projects. But to get you started, that was again. My thought was just like well, it’s very, very difficult to just start with like I want to do something at some point with somebody. You know. It’s like okay, well, we gotta um, but yeah, you were, and it would have been great, like it all worked out. I mean more spoilers. We did it.
John Shoemaker:
We made the thing, but yeah, I mean, that was it turned into. So I had recommended the 48 hour film contest, which is something we’ve done before. For those that don’t know, it’s a great. That’s built on the premise of people who are like oh yeah, we’re always sitting around talking about making things but we never do. What if we just made ourselves finish something in one weekend and said, after that weekend can’t work on it anymore, it’s done? And then they develop this contest and it is a great way to do things. So I had mentioned that. And then you called us with this project, the 10-minute documentary for Bloomberg, and we had more than 48 hours, but we didn’t have the year. That would have been nice, we had like a month or something.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, because I found out about the contest in April, when they had actually announced it six months before and for the first two months I really wanted to try to figure out how to do something with my wife, who’s now working professionally in conservation. She works for Northern Arizona University. She’s focused on Native American populations and water rights and land rights and we’re still going to do a project together. I’m fully committed to that and she’s like, okay when I’m ready for it. It wasn’t actually until june and the deadline is in september.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, we took what was supposed to be a year-long contest and compressed it down to uh, to three months and produce something that was pretty great, pretty epic, I mean, and part of that success is well, not all of it, but a lot like a key component of that success is your doggedness, your can-do-ness. You’re on top of itness, being able to just keep going and keep getting it done and keep having the energy to do it.
Ryan Freng:
You know um, and I really appreciate that and what you brought to the project and still bring to it your enthusiasm, because now working kind of in a similar field for so long.
John Shoemaker:
Uh, I’m not jaded per se, but some of my mentality has switched to work. So it’s like I’m working all right, I want to be done with work, I want to sit down and relax, but I have to remember and you have helped, uh, inspire me to remember that basically, this is fun, uh, this is play, this is relaxing. So I have been able to go home and I’m gonna relaxing to be able to do some kind of other thing I want to do like a little analysis of uh space show cinematography.
John Shoemaker:
That’s just something random I’m doing on the side for fun. It’ll probably become a blog or something, uh or whatever here, but it’s just. I’m so interested in it and even though I would do that at work, I enjoy it and that you know your enthusiasm really helped remind me of that and kind of helped me get back into the hobby aspect of it too well because I still have a day job and I still am fully doing that day job.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, this is, like you know, in large part of evenings and weekends which is probably like a day and a half job if you’re being honest.
Ryan Freng:
You’re very busy, man.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, I keep myself pretty busy. I don’t know how to not be busy Like I get nervous when I’m not busy. Yeah, when there’s not enough deliverables, I have, to like, start filling things in.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, does your wife have to slow you down?
Brandon Gries:
calm you down? We’re. They were terrible together because she’s got the same. Yeah, it’s bad, oh really, yeah, well I mean, so then we try to like slow each other down.
Ryan Freng:
Yeah right, yeah exactly did you said did you finish your house with your my father-in-law was moving to in two weeks.
Brandon Gries:
Two weeks ago, yeah, maybe three weeks ago now.
John Shoemaker:
So so yeah, long, long days and nights of that work yeah, yep.
Brandon Gries:
Now it shifted over to other things we did. We sort of crashed through the holiday. We were like yeah. It was not like a planned reset. It was sort of one of those things where when the car just runs out of gas on the freeway, I probably should have filled the tank a while ago.
Ryan Freng:
I just hope it’s not a bubble up. Yeah, does that happen.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, while ago, yeah, does that happen? Yeah, I’ve had, uh, I’ve had seasons where or years where clearly too much has been going on, and then you hit either the thanksgiving break or the christmas break and then you know, whatever like cold flu virus is just like, hey, I’ve been waiting for this moment yeah, it just puts you down.
Bare Metal:
That was like I was waiting for like 10 years at Thanksgiving. Yeah.
John Shoemaker:
Like mostly through college was like where was the worst? Because, like college was not sleeping and all kinds of like you know, not taking care of your body. But yeah, just that was a frequent thing Like you run into that it’s like your body’s just like subconsciously knows that like okay, there’s space now so I can go through this yeah, you don’t have to hold the gates back, yeah yeah, what you guys do to go.
Ryan Freng:
So parents are in town yeah, my father was here.
Brandon Gries:
We spent the holidays mostly in South Dakota. That’s where, where my side of the family, my extended side of the family, lives. My immediate family lives in Nebraska. We talked about it in Sioux Falls.
John Shoemaker:
That’s where they live right now, but they Wah Bay, watertown and now some of them are more spread out throughout the state my family in Sioux City, which is like an hour away from Sioux Falls, some in Mission Hill, which I think is like three hours Two.
Brandon Gries:
You’ve got some background.
John Shoemaker:
My aunts and uncles are in a tiny little farming community in South Dakota, Woolsey, which is north of Mitchell, like an hour north of the Corn Palace. People know where that is. And then I have another uncle and cousins.
Ryan Freng:
They looks like the corn palace and grandma um, in yankton, right on the southern border.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, my parents have lived there, but they just moved to des moines and I’m a little bit closer. But we still make it over that way.
Brandon Gries:
I was saying, I think I’ve done a pretty good job filling in my heartland or Midwest bingo card. You know, because my family’s from South Dakota I grew up in Nebraska, went to school in Iowa. I now live in Wisconsin. I used to live in Illinois, so now I just need to find some reason to encamp in Minnesota for a while. I’ve got plenty of family and friends there as well.
John Shoemaker:
Well, we can go through your wife’s project water conservation or indigenous work.
Ryan Freng:
We’ve done a lot of that. We have a lot of contacts.
Brandon Gries:
I’ve nudged you guys. We should keep that conversation alive. I would really like to talk with you more about that Now it’s solidified on camera.
Day in the life of a Twitter employee:
It’s in the.
Brandon Gries:
Library of congress it’s happening yeah, yeah. Well, there’s like three other projects that I’m like, hey, we should work on this. You know, we have this whole thing about alzheimer’s too to work on, and the docu-series. Yeah well, that’s why I’m committing it to film here. You know, like now it’s uh, now there’s no way I’m burning the ships, right.
John Shoemaker:
Like it’s going to happen. Yeah, brandon would be the guy to burn the ships. We can’t go back. Yeah, so you had a nice relaxing break? Were you catching the? So now we’ll go a little bit to the Christmas Eve. Maybe we’ll get to that reveal, because I think, I can reveal it here.
Ryan Freng:
I think I can put it on there too.
John Shoemaker:
At the same time, oh yeah, seal the technology levels.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, because you haven’t seen the. I haven’t seen the real. I really like to know who had it in for us. Did you get people to vote? I sent it to people to vote. Obviously I don’t know how you know if it was just in the feed of it. I don’t know how you know if it was just in the feed of it.
John Shoemaker:
I don’t know, if people voted or not. Yeah.
Brandon Gries:
Because Hannah was. I did send it to several people.
John Shoemaker:
Did you send it to anybody at work?
Ryan Freng:
No, Look at this ridiculous thing I’m doing.
Brandon Gries:
No, no, the worlds are still working on figuring out how they come together.
John Shoemaker:
well, yeah, well, that one’s very much a side project. I feel like that would just be like look at what I made you know overnight you’re like. No, I sold the Pabst Theater a modular electrical station so let’s see I do have this let’s get it going thanks for the break.
Brandon Gries:
Gave me a lot of opportunity. I do have this. Let’s get it going. Thanks for the break. Gave me a lot of opportunity to get caught up on what exactly was happening with the international premieres of our short film together.
John Shoemaker:
Oh yeah. Yeah because you were able to submit it to a bunch of festivals.
Brandon Gries:
Yesterday it was just accepted by a film festival in Panama which matters to me a lot because it’s where I serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. So I talked to the festival organizers seeing if they can get people in my adopted hometown in Panama to know about it. Maybe not necessarily that they would be able to travel to it, but at least let them share in one of their community members Something that one of their community members, you know something that one of their community members did yeah.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, by the way, this is so new, I have to download it. Oh, the the reveal and upload it. Yeah, there’s one that’s sepia, one that’s not. Do you know which one I’m supposed to do? I don’t know. Oh wait, that’s something else today, at 10 15. Okay, part three, this has everything.
Brandon Gries:
Okay, this will be fun everyone I’ve shared it to has loved the uh. Loved the uh part two especially like part one. They kind of razzed me a little bit, like yeah, you don’t really seem like too comfortable or settled in your role.
John Shoemaker:
When they saw part two they were like you know what they can come at me, because I thought you probably more than anyone else was more set in your role because all of us seem to be like. It’s like a affectation or like a funny thing that we do, like a version of us. We do an exception as well um, but you were like a whole different character and I was seeing that character when you were playing that character.
Brandon Gries:
So one of the one of the guys who’s the uh, the one who was doing the audio. He was like are you just like paid talent to see, like the actor here?
John Shoemaker:
and I was like I’m not, I’m not an actor, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was great Well.
John Shoemaker:
I think again we knew, you know, if it’s still not explained to people who are watching, I think, after working together so closely on such a huge project, with late nights and all the travel and all the conversation and all the discussion, we were like, yeah, brandon can do this. I know the amount and all the discussion and we’re like, yeah, brandon can do this. Like I know the, I know the amount of like energy and like prep and and work that you will do to be to do the role you know. Like we would love to wow, yeah, I’m not going to go down that road. Um, it was fun. We knew. We knew we wanted to kill you off. Yeah, we knew, we knew that it would work well. Like, we just knew that. Like it’s like, yeah, he’s, he’s a friend and a client and doesn’t necessarily act, but we can have some fun and goof around and that’s the thing about doing comedy.
John Shoemaker:
It was. It was a good big joke too, because we haven’t done itunit. I forget what came first, but we were talking about, you know, doing it with you and having you be one of the characters. And then we were like, oh my gosh, we have to like kill Brandon off, like make it between Max and Brandon Max, the editor. You know because, like you guys, were coming down to the wire and you’re like, can we do this?
John Shoemaker:
and tell me no, you’re very polite but as soon as you have an ask, max, just you know, is like and he’s polite as well too. He’s like. I don’t know if we can do that. He’s losing his mind. I have all those pictures queued up for this conversation. Yeah, like the pictures at the last day, Photos of us just like, sitting in the edit suite trying to like maintain, you know focus through the end of the project, so we thought it’d be very funny. We’re like let’s pretend to kill.
Brandon Gries:
Brandon Well my thought that why you needed the way you had explained it initially is that, you know, because it’s your Christmas video and it’s all the staff, you needed somebody who wasn’t on staff to be the person that you killed, so that they would, you know, you guys could all remain active as characters in the story sounds like a good forward-facing uh, reason for doing that.
John Shoemaker:
Well, that that I mean. That was the my intention too when I talked to max. But max, you know, had more like great creative ideas and it was a surprise to me and funny that he wrote you in to the extent that he did, because I was just thinking, oh, it’ll be an easy role. He’ll come in, he’ll say something and then he’ll just die right away.
Brandon Gries:
That’s what I thought it was going to be too.
John Shoemaker:
And then it was a Confidence, yeah.
Brandon Gries:
Well, we had a lot of fun going through some of the green screen. The green screen day was pretty funny.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, wait, let’s see what’s your green screen. Have I seen that? Is it green screen? I don’t know, because I don’t want to reveal anything.
Brandon Gries:
It was the lines that we ran out of time for.
John Shoemaker:
At the that, everybody had a line that they needed to deliver that they ran out of time for at the mansion, so we’ll see you next week. Yeah, I mean, unless you’re the murderer, in which case we’ll see you today, yeah.
Ryan Freng:
Did you attack yourself.
John Shoemaker:
No.
Ryan Freng:
So right now, what I’m doing is I’m doing two things.
John Shoemaker:
I’m downloading and Frame will send the file, so I only have a review copy.
Ryan Freng:
I’m sending it over to Vimeo right now. It might be ready on Vimeo momentarily.
John Shoemaker:
I guess I could play it through Frame. I don’t know why I have to download it. Yeah, everyone else can see it.
Brandon Gries:
I’m always so amazed at your talents of like you know the way that like you would be a great organ player because you got to use, like the right hand, left hand, you don’t even know what my feet are.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, I’m doing all that, is he a? Great organ player he’s streaming on twitch with his feet right now. That’s true. This computer is going to explode, because I think we’re streaming from here. We are live, though, so if you’re watching live, let us know. Oh, maximum g olmsted, cornpalacecom. I do not know about this world only it’s a gymnasium.
Brandon Gries:
That then is like covered in corn yeah, they, they, they make a okay.
John Shoemaker:
So for all the viewers at home who don’t know what the corn palace is, it’s Way better than Waldrug it’s.
John Shoemaker:
They do a mural out of corn on the outside, different colors, yeah, and then on the inside there actually is kind of like a museum. There’s some like history of like agriculture in the area. Agriculture in the area, I think. There’s different equipment that they have used throughout history too, in farming there. I can’t remember all of it.
John Shoemaker:
We always try to make a point to at least just drive through rather than hitting the bypass. Just drive through downtown, and it’s still fun. I think it’s still a memory, a nostalgic memory for the kids we go by. It’s like, look, there’s a cornfield. Oh, look, this year they have whatever it is that they have, and I remember what their mural was. This year I’ll have a picture. Yeah, probably haven’t been in at least 20 years since I went out there with my family. We’ve only stopped like once to like get out and go in there, and it wasn’t easy to do it again. So you haven’t done it with your kids yet, or you have. We did, okay, uh, not all the kids, I mean the oldest ones when they were younger. Sure, sounds like you gotta get that going, yeah. So corn palace there you go, check it out, you should go. Max also says your video will be available next week. Spoiler it expands upon your character in unexpected ways.
Ryan Freng:
And it was great fun to do. I have a lot of fun. I was super excited to see it.
John Shoemaker:
I was in my office and I kept coming out and I’m like you’re still with Brandon. Huh, yeah, it was good.
Ryan Freng:
I mean, I felt like you could have seen that coming?
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, I guess it is my person of the year.
Brandon Gries:
I mean both with the film and with he’s my favorite. Not against anything against you guys. But as far as a character in the Christmas video in the Christmas video his character, I love his character. And then just knowing what he has to go through with the editing. I have a deep respect for editors.
John Shoemaker:
What I really love about Max and his writing is that he’s very talented at leaning into the existing strengths of people, even non-actors. So when you look at Hollywood and you’re like, oh, this person, who are the people that don’t really act? Nicolas Cage, yeah, brad Pitt, brad Pitt, you know they just are who they are, but they work in those roles because the person casting them is like well, I know what they’re going to give me, and Max is really good at like identifying that in people and then making non-actors like shine, because it’s like I know what I’m going to get from this person instead of like, okay, I’m going to give you some character that’s like really challenging for you to pull off. We’re not actors, so like I can’t really do that super well. What I can do is just goof around within what it is that I already get or the comedy that he sees yeah somebody and I.
John Shoemaker:
I also love just the flavor that Max brings is different in ours and mine, yeah, um, so that’s appreciated because it’s different, it’s new and that’s. That was one of my early comments in the script. I was like, uh, more, like more of your weirdness, you know, or you know the uniqueness that you write. You know, we each have our own weirdness. Somebody was trying to figure out if there was a clue in Max’s character’s little limerick or not limerick. But you know, and it’s like my, I remember my Christmas financial things like this, saving money is boring and I didn’t make a comment because it would have been interesting to weave more clues in To actually have clues?
Ryan Freng:
Yeah, because you didn’t have clues. It wasn’t really that.
John Shoemaker:
Well, when I went back and rewatched it I was like, oh, there’s actually. I mean, we give everyone a reason, yeah it was better poised than I. Remember that like oh everybody, and you could then discern which one you think is the most legit or the most. Right.
Brandon Gries:
But you got to vote.
John Shoemaker:
That’s what you got to do.
Brandon Gries:
I really like Max’s comedic timing. You know, that’s like a gift that some of us have and some of us don’t. So that strength with an editor, just knowing what you’re going to get, knowing how to pull it out. I was on your guys’ website and I was watching. I can’t remember the name of the company, but it’s the one that does the trays, the Gibson, Gilded Gilson. Yeah there you go.
John Shoemaker:
That was fun. This is just like we Love Max podcast. Yeah, that was.
Ryan Freng:
Max acting.
John Shoemaker:
So he actually wasn’t back working full time with us at that time. I just called him because I needed an actor who I knew could deliver the comedy that I needed. And that one was an interesting one because I had to write a series of tutorial or how to kind of videos. But all I had for content given to me was just like here’s the manual, here’s the how to use pipettes manual. Yeah, from gilson, yeah, and I’m like, okay, I’ll like add, I’ll write it in such a way that some, like a individual can deliver it. Yeah, but how do I like make that funny, or do you know? And so we came up with the. You know, just an easy, easy format. Okay, you gotta have the, you gotta have the comedic relief, and then the, the straight man in the script, and so max is clearly the like you know, terrible lab partner and then. But he and that actress and he is an actor himself but those two like played off of each other so perfectly.
John Shoemaker:
It was just so many amazing magic moments. I’m going to share this on Facebook real quick, and then we’ll do the reveal.
Ryan Freng:
Share it to people.
John Shoemaker:
Just a bundle of nerves right now.
Brandon Gries:
Part three I feel like I’ve been brought in by the detectives and they’re going to let me know, all the work that they’ve done on the case and I’m going to get sweet relief of knowing who headed out for me.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, or just turn around into you’re under arrest.
Brandon Gries:
We’re bringing up new charges, yeah.
John Shoemaker:
So jump to Facebook right now. Share it If you’re watching. And by if you’re watching I mean Max, I know you’re watching and me I’m trying to share it on Facebook. There we go.
Brandon Gries:
Did you say the hobby was science films? I’m imagining, because we’re doing this podcast, you guys could do like a pretty mean mystery science 3000 oh, yeah, that’d be super fun.
John Shoemaker:
I would love to comment and do that. Um, how do I even share? I’d have to be. What are you doing? Well, I guess they watch them ahead of time too. I have to be in the right mode to like, jump in that frequently and quickly, I guess. Oh, there we go, share. Share is ryan. I’ve also slowed down my um, my commenting on things. So there’s a couple friends and I, uh, who have had this conversation, but you go back to like who you were many years ago, like in high school and stuff, like, and you know, you get older and you’re like okay, I need to shift away from that like, because I could be the class clown or be constantly cracking your jokes and comments and then you know you get older and you’re like like that’s not really welcome in every setting and it’s obnoxious.
John Shoemaker:
So you’ve lost it. Well, I just sit back. Well, that’s probably true. It’s not like I’m not in practice, I just sit back and take it in a lot more.
Brandon Gries:
I just watched this multi-part documentary series about George Carlin and he kind of had to reimagine himself in each era of life. So maybe it’s just a matter of you’ve got to find your new voice. Yeah, you had that voice from that earlier era.
John Shoemaker:
No, I’m just in this discovery. I think I know my new voice just said that it is less obnoxious, not high school obnoxious. Are you guys ready? Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to play it once. We’ll see if it’s janky or not, max or whoever’s watching.
Ryan Freng:
Please help me Then we’ll be off to the races. I’m good, I think we’ll see you up here.
Ryan Freng:
Ready, I’m so excited, all right, All right, I’ll admit it, it was me. After years of disrespect and servitude, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Yes, Dr Tuttle. No, thank you, Dr Tuttle. Please, Dr Tuttle, eat my food. Dr Tuttle, you’re right. Who needs vacation days anymore? Who needs a paycheck this year, Dr Tuttle? Well, I had had enough. And my accomplice in the matter was General Potterton. He turned off the light and I just kind of pushed that knife in a little bit further. And if that’s a crime, then lock me up.
Ryan Freng:
Yep, definitely a crime oh oh no, the CIA agent is dead.
John Shoemaker:
I’m a I’ll link the Vimeo once we get that fixed. I told everyone to vote. I was like it doesn’t matter what you think, just vote for me. I was like what’s the definition of winning? I feel like getting away with it. Yeah, the real killer was Buck Longmore, the investigator all along.
Brandon Gries:
The thing about Scott too. So in part one, when Scott’s character gets introduced, the change in the expression on Scott’s face when he picks up the cupcake and he’s so excited to be holding the cupcake he’s got a stern face and he looks at the cupcake and has this childlike smile. It’s one of my favorite 10 seconds in the whole thing. It’s just watching his facial expression change. He says he’s not an actor, he says he’s just a business fellow. That was some talent there, Going through that whole range of emotion emotion.
John Shoemaker:
You know how to channel childlike joy. Yeah, yeah, it was good that’s how we do it also, I’ve got something in my drink we didn’t talk about our drinks.
Brandon Gries:
What are? We drinking. This is a happy hour.
John Shoemaker:
Oh, that’s gone um. Do you need a refill? So I had the Seedlip Seedlip non-alcoholic.
Ryan Freng:
Are you NA January?
John Shoemaker:
Yes, so far I wasn’t as of January 1st because, I was at Phil’s house. I wasn’t when I was drinking and we didn’t get to spend any time with them. They were sick and I was like, yeah, we’re going to hang out and have a belated New Year’s party. But since then. So I got what I’ll probably go sneak out of that fridge. There is this athletic brewing. It’s really good. Any beer that I like. So did that. And then what was the tonic? Back there, I got one of the little bottles. Fever tree.
Ryan Freng:
Tonic.
John Shoemaker:
It’s good, it just tastes a little bit like this, it’s magical. What’s the macros on there? It’s 90 calories, so it’s not great. I’ll fucking buy it 21 carbs, you know what, right behind that one, if another little elf goes and grabs another one. So this is the athletic brewing company all out. Extra dark. It’s quite good for, like you know, any dark, the athletic light right here this has become a commercial.
Brandon Gries:
See what else he has. Uh yeah, like grabbing into like a magician’s hat, maybe I should maybe I should have this one first.
John Shoemaker:
You see it by the end of the day how much I’ve eaten or whatever, because I’m getting back in the track into it’s jan, it’s the time. Athletic White 25 calories, five carbs, and it’s a pretty good. It’s like a pilsner, yeah, just like a very light beer, but it’s refreshing.
Ryan Freng:
I’ve got what I think is.
John Shoemaker:
Benriac, a blended Scotch whiskey, which this was the prop that we had at the Pabst yeah, the mime and the mime’s assistant.
Brandon Gries:
Definitely, you know made a dent.
John Shoemaker:
Is it still the prop liquid too? Oh no, yes, it’s 100% apple juice it’s gone bad, though I’m pretty sure it’s alcohol.
Brandon Gries:
I’ve been watching closely in films lately when alcohol features on screen and trying to do an informal survey of how often it’s vodka.
John Shoemaker:
Or do you think it is liquor or not?
Brandon Gries:
I’m certain that it’s like water. I’m almost certain, which is why I’m thinking. My hypothesis is that it’s easier for them to use tequila or vodka as the alcohol choice, because it’s the easiest substitute for water. But in those examples where it’s a brown spirit or you know what is the brown spirit selection, because at least, like with wines, I’m sure they could easily substitute that for, like grape juice or whatever, because if you’re on set and you’re doing the same scene like 10 times in a row where you have to, you know whatever. I was going to say.
John Shoemaker:
there’s probably some actors where they’re just like, yeah, just give me the whiskey Anybody who has a mustache or facial hair. I’m drinking this in my trailer anyway, so we might as well.
Brandon Gries:
In fact, just bring the stuff from my trailer. That’s the one I like.
John Shoemaker:
That was actually a really good iPod that I bought for Christmas video. It was this great decanter set that I got here. So when I went shopping for props I was like what do I?
Brandon Gries:
want. Here’s my gift. So for my 40th birthday we went to Kentucky. We went on this Bourbon Trail visit site. There’s quite a story behind it, but in essence I came home with quite a haul of things.
John Shoemaker:
You got some Buffalo Rare.
Brandon Gries:
I have Buffalo Trace. There’s Eagle Rare, but Eagle Rare wasn’t available the day. Blanton’s was available the day after we visited there. In fact, we went to Buffalo Trace and we did a tour of the distillery and there were pallets of Blanton’s that I was like standing in front of, like I had my hands on the pallet and they’re like you know, couldn’t have it that day because it was already allocated for something. Well, lo and behold, it was allocated for the next day, it was allocated for the next day, but we were elsewhere the next day. Yeah, yeah. So so now I have this massive backlog my wife and I are swapping bets on. She thinks it’ll be around for 15 years, I think it’ll be around for 10, but neither one of us thinks it’s all going to be yes.
John Shoemaker:
Well, when are we having the alcohol tasting?
Brandon Gries:
because then it’ll be around for one day yeah, we’ll have to make a serious dent in it then we’ll have to head down to Kentucky again. I’m telling you it’s definitely worth the trip, because the price on the second hand market for all this stuff is cost the plane ticket alone if you get to a dozen distilleries and you go to the distillery.
Brandon Gries:
If you took a trip for a week you would be on the upside as far as total investment, right, because the thing is you do have to be there for a while, because it’s kind of like luck of the draw of what thing is getting allocated that day.
John Shoemaker:
The Eagle Rare was one that I bought for like $90. You couldn’t find it anywhere, and then my dad’s neighbor brought it over because he found it at Woodman’s for $30 or $27. Whatever the actual price of it is you win.
Brandon Gries:
I used to have one of those in my dining room as well. We call it the trick chair.
John Shoemaker:
We’re back. Keep telling us.
Ryan Freng:
You’re going to do a Christmas card.
Brandon Gries:
Themed Christmas cards, so that it would actually be interesting to put it to do a christmas card themed yeah, themed christmas cards, you know, so that, uh, you know it’d actually be interesting to put on your refrigerator because if it’s just two adults, could you grab the christmas card from brian halberth on the tall table right there in the hallway?
John Shoemaker:
did you see that one? Yeah, oh my gosh. So good, it’s amazing like it’s eaten and it’s hilarious and give you some ideas here we. We did one one year with my family and it was very fun and a lot of our extended family was like I don’t get what you’re. The other one.
John Shoemaker:
The one where they’re dressed up as a fiend. Our helpful elf is struggling. I wonder if I the one that looks like the thing that I’m talking about Can’t pick it up, that’s pretty good. Yeah, this is our another producing friend, brian Albert and his family. Are they? What are they? Because, um, what is galena? Yeah, this looks very eastern european.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, it’s like romanian or something yeah, oh, you mean nationality. Yeah, yeah, yeah that’s what I would have guessed was romanian, yeah let’s see if we can see this.
John Shoemaker:
You can kind of see it it’s going to be although not actually watching. It’s going to be a travesty, as we guess through the various nationalities. Yeah, yeah, whatever nationality that you hate the most is probably Russian. Are you Russian? I don’t know. I just think of her as a talented woman capable of many things. This is awesome, and the faces, they’re all like you know, like you’re standing there for hours for a painting. Yeah, this is what you got to do.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah. So my wife and I we started as Peace Corps volunteers in Panama and the family pictures that people take in Panama nobody smiles, so like if you think, you know, like back when you had like the metal plate and you’re saying you have to sit still for a while, obviously that’s not what’s happening, but everybody is just stone-faced, even if you’re like hamming it up and it feels very light before the picture gets taken, when the photo gets taken it’s it’s like serious, like feels like somebody died or mafia-esque, like it’s just stone-faced. So when my wife and I came back, we did these photos with her family and we took a series of pictures very Panamanian-esque, and they’re some of our favorite photos. Still the two of us are just sitting there, not even close to one another, just stone-faced looking at the camera.
John Shoemaker:
That would be hilarious. You’d probably earn a prized place amongst the other photos if you did that amongst the other photos of christmas cards. Yeah, yeah like I’m kind of tired with the current style of glam photo. Uh-huh, and we have our own from this past year.
John Shoemaker:
I’m tired of that like make it interesting. We also uh, we just grabbed a one of the random photos from a vacation that we had taken this summer because I was, and, and it’s tough with the kids you’re trying to like you have young ones if you have a photo from two earlier in the year like, oh yeah, the kids look way different, so you kind of want one that’s recent. But what that leads to is every family photo is an outdoor fall setting with the kind of warm orange colors and wearing matching sweaters.
John Shoemaker:
They’re nice, but they’re just the same.
Brandon Gries:
We’ve been shocked. There are a number of people in the family who have become noticeably taller. They’re like how did this happen? In the last year, several of my nieces and nephews have gone from small people to taller than their parents. Yeah, we were in a state of shock. We weren’t even noticing the settings, we were just in shock.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, my oldest turns 14 in two days and she’s gotten really tall. I didn’t realize that until we were looking at pictures. She looks like she’s taller than Monica in one of those recent pictures.
Ryan Freng:
It’s funny.
John Shoemaker:
I don’t think she is but when they stand around each other, she looks taller. Yeah. But it must just be the old slouch. You know like, at the end of the day, old people are like two inches shorter. I think that’s just what it is. Well, and I guess the other thing is just perception, Because when you have my dad always used to say this, like whenever he would see somebody like his height, he assumed that they were way taller than him.
John Shoemaker:
Oh yeah, Because he’s used to like always yeah, seeing people down here, I’ve seen their eyes if you see somebody who’s there, you just feel like they’re like so tall yeah, yeah it would still be the same height. Yeah, so maybe that’s. Yeah, it’s true, but she, she’s gotten a lot taller I didn’t realize. Until we’re looking at those photos, it was like she has.
Ryan Freng:
She’s probably not that many inches away from me um.
John Shoemaker:
I am downloading bare metal teasers so I’ll upload the teasers, so we can watch them too yeah.
Brandon Gries:
So how’s the like conversation about your guys that you know, like I’ve been obviously continuing to push things in my industry. There’s a whole bunch of other things that are coming from it, and then I know the whole festival thing that I’m chasing with her right now. But like in in your world, in your realms, like what’s the? What’s the afterlife for the, the post-production life that the, the film, has been in in your world it’s just, you know we move on to the next things pretty quickly, which there’s a catch-22 there.
John Shoemaker:
It’s you know you don’t get bored because you’re doing, you know something else, but then you also like we don’t have the luxury sometimes of living in a project longer. I loved it when we, when we did bare metal, um prior to that, when we did our feature length documentary, that was super fun. The work that we’ve done with paradigm, the like you know half hour documentary that we did there I love those because you actually get to like immerse yourself more into the thing versus like okay, got a commercial shoot coming up this week, one shoot day, two shoot days, and then it’s like quick, edit the thing because it’s going to market here, and then it’s gone.
John Shoemaker:
And that’s it. It’s intense and it’s brutal. Yeah, there’s a lot that happens and then it’s just out the door. You try to celebrate that later in the awards season which is coming up If you haven’t signed up for your American Advertising Award entries. Due date next week we haven’t. We’ll do them so we get to relive them a little bit there, but not the same as a film like on the festival circuit. And getting talk and stuff like that.
John Shoemaker:
The difference in the nice thing is two things One you’re pushing. You keep working on it. And two there’s something else after.
Ryan Freng:
Because I think a lot of times, even with our film what’s after the film?
John Shoemaker:
Well, it’s the film release and then they want to make sure that they can sell a bunch so that they can recoup their costs. But there’s not really an after game for us to participate in With this. There’s the idea that we could do a series, that we could produce this in a much better way, a fuller way, and so that’s what’s kept my attention with it, because, like John said and this project concluded, it’s a race to get something out the door, and then you’re like, oh my gosh, I can’t imagine doing another marathon. But in this case it’s kind of a different thing. It’s not a marathon in the sense of we’re going to go do something really hard in a short period of time. It’s we’re going to do something hard over a long period of time and part of the difficulty is just swinging and missing so many times.
Ryan Freng:
And part of the difficulty is just swinging and missing so many times.
John Shoemaker:
But part of what we’re doing as well in working with other groups and working with another client, paradigm, the indigenous agency who we did this other short film with now we’re getting connected with the entertainment industry through indigenous channels is to figure out how best to connect and then what can come of those relationships, because that’s the only way any of this is probably going to happen.
Brandon Gries:
I would love to have a conversation about them with them. I’m super interested to explore that connection you guys have with that community from a storytelling perspective, again thinking about what my wife’s involved in.
John Shoemaker:
So if there’s ever an appropriate opportunity or time, deeply and sincerely interested Well in one of the groups, so the Indigenous Business Group, which is run by Rob, who’s my friend and client. They do conferences and so far it’s been uh, there’s business focus ibc indigenous business conference. There’s going to be entertainment and arts and I think that’ll be one that will be really interesting to be a part of, because then we can talk to other people in the industry, other people who want to produce things in the industry and a lot of that is just from an indigenous perspective which we could partner with with these groups to make sure that we have that authentic indigenous perspective.
John Shoemaker:
So that would be a good time to connect with them.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, because the work that my wife is doing at Northern Arizona University is with the Intertribal Exchange Partnership, which is funded through the EPA, which is about trying to help coordinate and share information among all the tribes across the us for various environmental initiatives that are happening, and so it’s it’s a very fascinating thing that that whole organization they’re really needing to do a lot more to highlight the work that it is that they do, so that they can be more effective at doing that work. So, anyways, it might be something that interests that other group well, great.
John Shoemaker:
As soon as you started talking about it, I was like there’s something. Yeah.
Ryan Freng:
Yeah, I do have this video, you’ll have to watch it on here.
John Shoemaker:
I do have our concrete video. Oh yeah, concrete teaser. Yeah, so I want to throw that out. Uh-huh.
Brandon Gries:
Backstories teaser is quite a story all its own.
Ryan Freng:
Do you want to tell the backstory before we watch it?
Brandon Gries:
Well, so all right. So we’ve just to break the film down to a few statistics. So we had three months to produce a movie that most everybody else had at least a year to make.
John Shoemaker:
We weren’t getting any budget, three months is generous.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, true, okay, and you know we weren’t getting. I don’t think money actually started to come in until after we’d actually finished the whole thing, and early on. I’m trying to explain this.
John Shoemaker:
Good on you for being able to convince the team, or Scott Scott’s very frugal. He’s brought that really great perspective to our company. We’re more enthusiastic about it. Oh my gosh, let’s just run and do it worry about consequences later he’s like let’s worry about the consequences in the beginning.
Ryan Freng:
Uh, but he was on board too, so good job, it was it was because I I told him that I would.
Brandon Gries:
I would take as much pain, like whatever pain he was willing to take. I will. Yeah, I was I would take the same risk.
Brandon Gries:
So that allowed us to kind of make things happen. But anyways, we’re dealing with all these engineers and business folks of like I’m trying to capture their imagination of what it is that we’re trying to do. And there were some folks who had some really outlandish ideas of what they thought that meant, and other folks it just wasn’t clicking. So I was trying to suggest that we needed to make a teaser for this to try to get some of the other collaborators to like capture their imagination so we could build on that. And john was like, well, you know, we usually wouldn’t do a thing like that until we were at the end of the thing we don’t usually. So I was actually on, because even amid the three months, I actually went on vacation too and I was in alaska, and the great thing about being in alaska is that it’s at least three hours time separate. So I was able to work from about 2 am to 5 am before everybody else got up there, because once 5 am comes, now you’re going to start fishing for the day, um, and so like I’m corresponding, I’m still trying to push this thing like feel like I’m pushing rojo the hill.
Brandon Gries:
I didn’t have any idea that john had taken it to heart about this idea, about a teaser. And then on my last day, when I’m leaving Alaska, I get this email of like hey, we decided to go ahead and make a teaser. And then, an hour later, I was on the phone with Dean, who’s one of the big contributors to the project. I share it with him. He shares what it was like immediate. I mean, this was the speed that this project had to go at.
Brandon Gries:
So right, the project wouldn’t exist. We’re not. We’re not for two things that that john did amongst the many things that other people did. So there was a conference in chicago and john was like, yeah, I’m willing to come down to chicago for a day, which got us the interview with christy who’s in this teaser. And then it was john seeing through and I’m sure you guys were all involved with it don’t mean to, you know, heap all the praise on John, but then the choice to make a teaser, which might not have been something you had done before, those two actions made everything else possible. Coming down to get the interview with Christy gave you the material for the teaser, and then the choice to make the teaser made it possible to get all the other collaborators.
John Shoemaker:
If people aren’t in the industry, they maybe don’t know the difference between films and client projects. Like the film project, there’s not like a client. They’re making a specific request and saying I want you to do this, and so here’s the budget to make that happen. Well, the end product might not be that dissim, yeah, but what leads to it is very different, which is what you’re talking about.
John Shoemaker:
So here is like okay, we’re hatching this idea, we’re trying to find people who might be interested in it and then say if you’re interested, would you give money to that project? And so you’ve got a whole different sales pitch that you need to create. And so that’s where, yeah, when we finally figured out, I think the only way to get this off the ground is to get something in the can, cut something, because people have a hard time imagining what something’s going to look like. Yeah, and then once we had that, you guys just kind of ran with it.
John Shoemaker:
That was just because of our confidence in you and how we’ve worked together in the past before, how you’ve made things happen.
Ryan Freng:
We just had confidence because at the
John Shoemaker:
end of the day again the most fiscal decision there is. Can we assume the risk? We were stoked about the project and scott was kind of the one who tips it on in that regard. It was like, yeah, I think you know, with these first initial things we can totally do it. Um, so we were able to to do that and then fly all over the country again without any dime, in you being like we’re feeling pretty confident. You know, we’re confident in Brandon and that’s what we need. So that’s been a fun process.
Ryan Freng:
So I do have this.
John Shoemaker:
I can switch over here.
Bare Metal:
Concrete is the most abundant man-made material on the planet and a lot of people don’t realize it’s actually the second most abundant material period after water. Because of the fact that concrete is everywhere, it has a relatively significant environmental impact. The production of cement, which is the main ingredient used in concrete, creates about 7% of the world’s CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. If cement were a country, it would be the third largest emitter after China and the United States.
John Shoemaker:
Now we got audio, we’re back. I think we can look at the other one too. So this is the first one right, which is the Christy interview from chicago, and so, yeah, this next one. We had footage from denver.
Brandon Gries:
Is that right? Yeah, we had a question, denver, yeah yeah, so you were in alaska.
John Shoemaker:
I was out two different weeks early on in that project as well, weeks early on in that project as well, yeah, you were. I was in the Bowery Waters, completely out of communication, for a week, and then I was back in between, which, I think, is when we got the teaser done. Yeah, because we did the shoot in Chicago beforehand.
Brandon Gries:
Every major contributor to the project went on vacation during this job. I went on two, that’s true. You were in Sonoma. You were out for two weeks. Nancy was on a couple of different vacations. Allie, who’s Melissa’s boss, she was in Mexico for a period of time. I think Melissa had also been on vacation. Dean he was out of the picture for a while. Everybody still had their lives. It’s amazing to think about.
John Shoemaker:
All of Europe was on vacation for all of August.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, that’s right, which is apparently a.
John Shoemaker:
Thing. Yeah, it’s a thing, it’s a thing.
Ryan Freng:
You can’t get a hold of Europe in August.
Brandon Gries:
Like you’re trying to explain to other people the brevity of time in which this all happened, I have a difficult time, like you kind of wish that.
John Shoemaker:
I mean it’s. It’s a great project either way. But like in a 48 hour film contest, people understand what you went through. And here you’re like somehow it’d be nice to be able to bring that to the front, to be like how tightly it would come and how polished it turned out, with those constraints, with like once we had all the footage, you know, it was like two weeks to put it together.
Brandon Gries:
So my favorite punchlines to tell people about the film are so the deadline was a Friday, september 16th, at 5pm pacific time, so 7 pm anyways, point being that we we submitted it 45 minutes before the deadline, like we went non-stop till 45 minutes before the deadline, which is why that picture with max, you know, is so cathartic, because, like it was, we were like, we were like puddles, um, at the end of that, the second one which whenever I call this to mind, I think of you, uh, brian, because I’m always saying I’ve got some idea or somebody else that I was going to interview, probably actually made the hairs on the back of your neck and max’s next stand on it. The last interview for the film. So again, deadline is september 16th. Last interview for the film was on september 14th.
Brandon Gries:
That was with the, you know, kay butterfield from the world economic forum, you know, um, and then we had to spend so much time because it was a zoom. It was a zoom interview but she sent a viewable link, not a downloadable link. So then, while we’re trying to do the edit, like we got derailed for hours trying to figure out how to harvest the interview so that it was potentially usable. Figure out how to harvest the interview so that it was potentially usable.
John Shoemaker:
Figure out how to get a transcript done well and for the you know outsider, not part of the project. Uh, this is also you continuing to push things while you were working in here that whole last week yeah, doing my day job and then fitting in the Zoom, maybe the two weeks prior, but also we were editing.
John Shoemaker:
So it was like, okay, we’ll have you working in here so that when we have something ready to review, you can pop over and take a look. But then it was like, oh, here’s another interview. We’re in the midst of the edit and then it’s like, oh, Brandon’s doing another interview over Zoom over there in the conference room and we’re kind of like we don’t need any more. Did we end up getting?
Brandon Gries:
her. No, well, she’s in the credits. The last interview that’s actually in the film, which was a super important interviews with stacy smedley, which happened at 9 pm on, or it happened on the 9th. That one happened on the 9th at 5 pm. At the end of that interview she mentions to me the Girl Scout video which I then shared the following week of like guys, this is our competition, because that that video was super engaging were you here for that? Interview.
John Shoemaker:
I was in your office and I did a zoom call like noon. I didn’t know what time the interview was, so I’m like we’re good, and then it’s like 4.30 and I’m like good luck.
Brandon Gries:
I gotta go. Actually, that day we got two super important interviews, because the one before Stacy, that was the interview that we finally got with Allie after, like the saga, and we had to get the other production company out of California to do it on location. You, you know, you, we did the uh. What was it called with the ipad? The you, there’s a name for it that you uh I enterotron yeah, but yeah, yeah
Ryan Freng:
yeah, yeah.
John Shoemaker:
So yeah, we had you on an ipad that she could see interviewing her? Yeah, and then you could see her through zoom yeah, through a laptop also an indispensable interview for the film.
Brandon Gries:
You know, she, she features kind of a major piece which was important because they were also major contributors to the project did you guys run into covid?
John Shoemaker:
like it was like a week we were at google, they had new code restrictions. Oh yeah, to get in did?
Bare Metal:
you run this, or was it just when we were a missile?
John Shoemaker:
No you went to a location but then weren’t able to get into the interview. Do we have a picture of you outside? Oh yeah. That was Ali’s location. One of our other pictures promoting today’s podcast was Brandon. We were there, luke, brandon and I were all there. We were just. Well, we haven’t heard any confirmation yet. Let’s just go there. We were just sitting in the parking lot.
John Shoemaker:
We took a picture of Brandon next to the car with all the equipment with the sign in the background. We did. He was texting with them. He’s like here I am. The best part is, too, they’re probably like this guy’s crazy.
John Shoemaker:
We were on our way to the airport they still did the interview. We had our flight home, like coming up like two hours, you know ahead, and we got a call back from them we were on our way to the airport and they’re like, all right, we just got approval that you can do the interview yeah, and we’re like I think we’re gonna have to do it a different way because we’re on our way to catch some flights yeah so, and they were trying to back up saying, like you know, you don’t really have to worry about the interview with us, and I was like no, for as much as you’re.
Brandon Gries:
You know, investing this like you asked for thing, I have to help make your company look good in this. I’m going to see that through, I will make this happen, and so we did.
John Shoemaker:
It’s easy enough here. All right, we got this next one.
Bare Metal:
We’re going to have 135 billion things connected to the internet by 2030. 135 billion. We consume 594 terawatt hours of energy every year. That translates to 2.4% of the global energy drop. So digital infrastructure equates to 2.4% of all the energy that we consume on the planet.
John Shoemaker:
It’s a central nervous system of the economy. Everybody is connected to it. Everybody is using it. Therefore, any progress that we can make has a multiplier effect throughout all of the industries that are leveraging that infrastructure.
Bare Metal:
It doesn’t matter if it’s the dirt to the concrete, to the copper, to the steel, to the servers that are going inside of it, to the fiber that’s actually connecting to the towers, to the repeaters that actually get back to your device. Every aspect of digital infrastructure needs to be thought of in a sustainable way.
Bare Metal:
The digital infrastructure industry has a couple of choices. They can either be the great equalizers or the great dividers, the great givers or the great takers. I want to be on the positive side of that.
Brandon Gries:
Looking into the future, it will only accelerate. We have to think about it long term and we have to think about it sustainably.
Bare Metal:
Can we come together as an industry and figure out one thing that we can do together that will help address climate change? Can we do something together that would actually allow us to move the needle, because we all believe that we’re running out of time?
John Shoemaker:
being tighter cut to, like some in between and then back out so it was, like you know, all just using the same piece, like, even though it wasn’t high quality, so all just using the same piece even though it wasn’t high quality. Are you talking about B-roll? How this one had so much B-roll and how many years ago? That was four years, five years ago, well just the, and just the.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, techniques to use stock B-roll that you don’t always think about where you’re like oh, this piece of stock footage is not 4K, it’s not the quality that we need. Well, if you’re creative, you just use it anyway. Just find a way, put a filter on it, do an effect, do some weird editing thing with it, and it’s your job.
Brandon Gries:
In the last days of this project. I hope that I was a good employee for Max because I felt like I worked for him in terms of getting the editor through. He’d be like you need to just go find B-roll, Brandon, that’s your job, Don’t stop finding B-roll. So I kept finding links to different B-roll. I found links to some different premium beats, audio tracks.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, it was great.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, I really enjoyed being involved with the process with Max and I really was grateful that he trusted me. Maybe he didn’t have a choice but to because it was all hands on deck, you know if we’re going to pull across the finish line.
John Shoemaker:
That was nice because you know that either falls to him or us, depending on the size of the project and what’s going on with other projects. So I know that was super helpful to be able to be like oh yeah, brandon’s going to throw some ideas, even if we didn’t like them, you know, or they didn’t jive. I don’t remember where we ended up with our music, but there was maybe one song where we’re like Brandon really likes it, but it’s not really fitting.
Ryan Freng:
You had the grace to be like hey, I’m going to throw a lot of ideas out there.
John Shoemaker:
I’ve been thinking a lot about it, but I trust you, which is great, because then I think that allowed us to trust you to be like we’ll go find stuff. We trust that you’re going to come up with good stuff.
Brandon Gries:
Well, that was one of the things that I really liked about our engagement with the project you and me, ryan is that your approach to the storytelling you were thinking your center of gravity was so strongly focused on the quality of the story, right Like the storytelling arc. And you know, I was so focused on making sure we have to figure out how to get all these different characters involved, because I need them later and all these different really important story elements. But I think that, even though I respected and valued the storytelling process, that wasn’t the center of gravity for me. It was for you, which meant that we were these two very strong forces, and then Max being there, like from a practical perspective, like I only have these many seconds to work with, I think all of that creative tension actually meant resulted in a better project, you know oh yeah, 100 yeah and we find that, you know, we kind of approach projects that way as well.
John Shoemaker:
Just having different opinions is always great. That’s why not being the same? All of us you know the four of us.
Ryan Freng:
It’s really nice there’s a.
John Shoemaker:
There’s a term that I heard one time, um, where they they made a distinction between, you know, producer or just producing, and creative producer. And I really like that, because a producer, in general people think of like oh, that’s just handling all the logistics, but creative producer is like, okay, yes, logistics, but those logistics need to be tightly tied into the creative vision that’s taking place in the project. Now, you were driving this project and so you had you, you know a lot of the creative in your mind already. So you’re very much creative producer.
John Shoemaker:
But in other projects, maybe more traditional division of labor, where the director is like handling the creative, uh, or maybe, if I just tie that analogy together, if you know, if Ryan’s looking for some story element, then there’s logistics that you have, but the producer also is working on creative to like okay. So I know we’re lacking this piece of the creative vision. I have a list of names and dates that I can use, that are available, and various places we’re going to be traveling and whatever. How can I, what can we, you know, make use out of those to serve the creative vision? So, like, I really like that term creative producer as, like what we do, we’re also a small team. We don’t have the massive division of labor. It’s like I have very little use for somebody who’s only handling logistics that can’t also be thinking about creative or other parts of the project or digging for b-roll or whatever, because that was a thing we didn’t have a lot of time on on this project either was like shooting b-roll she got a little no, no.
Brandon Gries:
Well, there was that one trip down to texas, which I didn’t even. I wasn’t even there for it. It was just, you know, uh, just you, lucas, and uh ryan that went down there and did some drone footage, almost lost the drone, you know, because they had just poured concrete and they were riding over it. With you know, there’s this piece of equipment that has these massive fans on it, you know. So you’re basically air riding on top of the concrete to smooth out this massive floor. They fly the drone over it but obviously the you know there’s a lot more turbulence, you know, because this is shooting air straight up. So apparently the drone passed over this piece of equipment. There’s a shot of it I think it’s almost the first shot of the film and I think the drone like almost tips sideways. Uh, luke ryan was able to recover it, but yeah that’s great yeah, uh, it was such fun all hands on deck thing.
Brandon Gries:
So every time I see hannah, I mentioned to her about all of the feedback that I get about the credits and she’s she really tries to play it down like it’s just this small element, but it was so well done. You know, even just I think that was being done the day before that the thing had to be finished, but it was so well executed that you know everybody intuitively nobody tells you that it’s a nutrition label, but everybody just intuitively gets it and it cements certain ideas for people with the film. I think Scott actually said this is one of the best credits that I’m actually willing to stick around for. I think you had said earlier on nobody sticks around to watch the credits anyways, especially when you’re talking about like, like these student project films where it’s like minutes of uh, all your patreon followers, it’s like our part three of uh, the back foot.
Brandon Gries:
It’s half credits, uh-huh yeah, um, you know, one of the other things that was really special about you with it is that you had so many moments of like little genius insights, because one of the other things that really makes the movie special for a lot of folks is that moment when christian is just sitting silently. That was all your idea, you know. Just hey, what if we just had him pause, right, you know, because in a 10 minute film to with all the interviews that existed, to a found breathing room, to a forced breathing room into which you were a really strong advocate, for.
Brandon Gries:
It’s a really powerful moment for people in the piece.
John Shoemaker:
I mean, I’ve learned a lot about that because our and I think it’s a successful project. But the feature-length documentary that we did suffers from the same struggle. It’s like there’s so much content, there’s so many people talking, that it just goes for like the whole time. And like you realize, like, oh, a two minute video, that’s like a promo. You can cram it full with content the whole way and just have it be content the whole way and just have it be talking the whole time. But if you do that for two hours or an hour and a half or whatever, your brain just like turns off.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, at some point the words don’t make sense.
John Shoemaker:
Well, like space, having space in the film. We learned that with Power of my Hands. I think we got some. I would have loved more space in that film. We learned that with Power of my Hands and I think we got some. I would have loved more space in that film. But in this one, the 10 minute, you know it’s a 10 minute, like just coming at you, flurry, you know. And then we were talking about the moment with Christian where he like stopped for a second and just let him like think on the camera. There’s a lot that’s communicated in that moment. You didn’t need more words there.
John Shoemaker:
There were several moments of pacing like that.
Ryan Freng:
That I think really helped the whole piece succeed Because you are drinking from a fire hose and you probably watch it twice at least in order to understand what’s going on.
John Shoemaker:
I watch it and I know, in order to understand what’s going on, like I watch it and I, you know, know the material a lot better than 98 of the people out there even so, I only catch a little bit of it. So I think those moments of pause allow you to actually think and collect and recollect and understand better so for the Bloomberg Festival they shortlisted the top five.
Brandon Gries:
They got over. I think they said now in the end it was almost 400 submissions and it was 38 countries and it was a lot, and they shortlisted five for the film festival and then they had one finalist. So we did not get shortlisted. But I went to the film festival. I knew it going in that we hadn’t been shortlisted, but I wanted to thank each one of the jurists personally, you know, for helping kind of like catalyze my own creative journey.
Brandon Gries:
One of my favorites was getting to shake hands with ed begley jr and you know that he encouraged me. It was like we need more from you. So that was like it like hit me pretty hard. But all of the jury, all the jurists, when I mentioned they were like, oh, which one is your film? Because they were thinking that it’s just the people who, because it was a pretty small gathering, reality. Yeah, they’re like which one’s your film that’s? And I was like, no, it’s not being screened tonight. Um, but you know it was submitted and then I would mention what it was and, uh, I would just mention what the name of it was in their facial expressions, every single one of them.
Brandon Gries:
Separate conversations all changed and they were like they remembered the film. They started telling me about things from the film, like it had made an impression on them, but every single one of them was like I was just, I was just so overwhelmed with uh, you know, with information. It was just, it was almost. It was like blowing my. You know, I don’t want to put words in the mouth without saying it was mind-blowing for him, but basically it was. It was a lot to, it was a lot to take in.
Brandon Gries:
But people in the data center space you know who? This is the funny thing that, like the afterlife or the post uh film release life of it is the same kind of thing, uh, that it was before, which is the data center community talks so much about sustainability and is so hyperactively engaged with the subject, about sustainability, that they love them and they’re like this hits all the right beats and this is exactly what the message is. Nothing feels overwhelming to any of them about it. They’re like this is what we’re talking about. I was like I know, but we need to get people who aren’t us to be connected to the story. So we still have the same uphill. It’s still the same uphill climb with, like getting engagement from the primary material space and etc. But little by little um picking those, picking those people in pieces up.
Ryan Freng:
But well and as you’re saying that, the energy that drive.
John Shoemaker:
I don’t remember if you characterize it this way or if it came from you or who came from, uh, but the idea of this train, you know, like this is this? Infrastructure is already being built yeah, yeah, yeah that was the whole idea.
John Shoemaker:
It’s a thing that’s going to happen anyway, I think and I think Brandon brought the uh, industrial, industrial Revolution idea to it, or maybe that was coined somewhere else, but but it helped me understand it too. It’s just like if you looked at the scale um, so you know diving into the topic of the film a little bit, but you look at the scale of stuff it’s, it’s on par with like building the interstates of the country or laying down rail for the expansion west or you know anything like that because, people don’t think about that.
John Shoemaker:
I mean when I talk to people about it and tell them a little bit about the project and I point out the idea like oh yeah, you know, like it’s about how data and data centers, you know our physical spaces, they’re not just like the cloud, isn’t just an imaginary thing, and they’re like intellectually, like oh, I knew that. And then I’m like, yeah, I mean, there’s like millions of acres of buildings and they’re just like. You know, there’s always a stop and like a thinking yeah, Like what we just don’t know, yeah.
John Shoemaker:
What we just don’t encounter. If we could show that, I think that’s a really good thing to bring up, especially as we look at a series. How do we make the average person care about it? I don’t know that someone like myself would necessarily see something like bare metal if I were to read a description like I want to watch that now. It’s super interesting and pretty and all that stuff. But I think what we need to do is take where it’s at and take, you know, the fire hose information treatment.
John Shoemaker:
It is and distill it down to something personal, like a personal moment, and we did have kind of some creative ideas on that of like, well, what do you think the cloud is? I think that’s still something we explore, but to bring it back down to a personal level, to where you know we could break it into these chunks.
Brandon Gries:
Yep.
John Shoemaker:
So that’s not all these chunks in one 10 minute piece, it’s a chunk per 20 minute episode or whatever. But then we distill it again back down to that in personal impact because, like you know, recycling, like yeah, we should all recycle. Why? Because we saw that commercial with the indian who’s crying yeah right uh, you know like that was impactful.
John Shoemaker:
There’s other, other marketing things that are impactful to us, and we know that we should recycle um the reality different, but with great energy. There’s something there too, and maybe that’s what we can help with is the marketing of that through this piece.
Brandon Gries:
Yep, what I say to people is that it’s a lot easier for people to understand themselves as customers of the internet. You’ve got a phone, you use your computer right. It’s very easy for you to think of how you are a customer of the internet. But I think what’s harder for people to realize is how many of us are vendors to the internet. Like the ways in which our livelihoods in terms of how it is that we make money, who we do business with, like the things that are supporting our livelihoods the extent to which how many of us are vendors well, I said to you so you’re asking about you know where, where it is like it is still on in the back of my mind.
John Shoemaker:
I say that message, if you saw. I watched it last night yeah, um, it was just a little special in, you know, those things that are in the works, I guess, and it doesn’t, none of it has to be secret, you know like flow the ideas of trying to make this into a series and then, like, connecting with, we need to. We think we need to connect with a celebrity or somebody named and you know, dicaprio has come up because he’s connected to some stuff we tried. I chased.
John Shoemaker:
I earnestly tried to chase that the whole way through the film and then, but the most recent one you told me about was mike rowe, and at first I was like, oh, that’s interesting. But then, very quickly, I was like oh yeah and his the new singer songwriter. No, no, dirty, jobs guy dirty job.
John Shoemaker:
Oh yeah, that was what I first thought of so he’s a big advocate too yeah, yeah well and and that’s where it was the connection, because I was like, oh, does that have a connection? But then it was pretty quick to that’s where it was the connection, because I was like, oh, does that have a connection? But then it was pretty quick to realize and then it was just highlighted. I sent him the segment that I saw on the news about some like viral video of somebody on TikTok showing their like day at work at Twitter and this is like nothing that they do it’s like adults yeah.
John Shoemaker:
You know they like show up, they get their smoothie, they go like sit in a pub for a while. There’s like one meeting they have. That, you know, and they’re showing this and getting commentary from Mike Rowe about how you should watch this.
Ryan Freng:
I want to watch this.
John Shoemaker:
And how he’s like the concept that some people have of work is so far removed from what other people have of work and it’s connected in this way and I was even telling brandon in my message I was like it’s directly connected because that person’s working at this you know data technology company, but the infrastructure lying beneath it is all these raw materials and it’s all these like you know, uh, trades, workers, like working in you know physical, physically demanding things, but there’s a disconnect between them, yeah, and so you could make a lot of parallels like that’s another angle, but there’s a disconnect there. This will probably be twitchy, but I do want to watch it because why not?
Day in the life of a Twitter employee:
and honestly took a moment to just soak everything in. What a blessing. Also started my morning off with an iced matcha from the perch. Then I had a meeting so quickly scheduled, one of these little pod rooms, which were so cool they’re literally noise canceling took my meeting, got ready for a bunch look how delicious this food looks. Oh, my goodness, goodness, I was so overwhelmed. Then made my way down to this log cabin area I don’t know what this is, but it was really cool. I played some foosball with my friends, unwind a bit. Also found this really cool meditation room that I thought was super neat. I didn’t do any yoga, but they have this yoga room if you are a yogi, so also thought that was really cool.
Day in the life of a Twitter employee:
Um had a couple more meetings at noon, had a ton of projects that we needed to knock out. Say hi to my teammates. Um went to the, went to the library to kind of get some more work done. Obviously had to have our afternoon coffee, so so made some espresso and then, before leaving for the day, had some red wine that’s on tap, went up to the rooftop and just honestly enjoyed the beautiful weather. So awesome trip.
Brandon Gries:
Of tech workers in the Bay Area are now working remotely. Tech workers in the Bay Area are now working remotely. They can see a rate for commercial office space in San Francisco is now back up to 25%, which is what it was 30 years ago, which is like the dot-com bust, yeah, and a lot of these still like even Twitter is an example, I think. Elon Musk has currently stopped paying rent on the headquarters office in San Francisco and all the tech companies who have all cut their staff by like 10,000, 15,000, whomever employees Within all of these companies. It’s not the infrastructure part of the business that’s being slashed at all. None of the people that I very few. There’s only maybe like one person of all of us across any of these companies that I work with that has been affected by this. Because that, underlying that infrastructure, that utility piece of this we are marching towards this because it’s like collectively where we’re all going. It’s like it’s a thing you cannot stop.
John Shoemaker:
Now the interior designers are out of business, but all the infrastructure is because we need more buildings. We need more buildings.
Day in the life of a Twitter employee:
We need more data centers we need more processing.
John Shoemaker:
That’s not shrinking, that’s growing at an exponential rate. So one of the points they were making when they did Mike Rowe’s commentary was just the perception that people have of what is an important job and what’s an unimportant job. They’re like if you took away all that stuff underlying the infrastructure stuff, you wouldn’t have it, you wouldn’t have the internet, you wouldn’t have twitter, you know.
Brandon Gries:
I think that’s one of the other things too, though. Is that the reason why a piece like that was even able to make the news is because it feeds into, because there are certain things about this that are a little exaggerated. Obviously, somebody has made a very short. That whole video was like a minute and 26 seconds.
Brandon Gries:
They were there for a whole eight hours right but the reason why it was interesting to show in a national media broadcast is because it feeds into the narrative of what we think of when we think of these technology companies. But what is below the radar for everybody is the realization that this infrastructure, the assets, the only assets that these companies have on their balance sheets, really are these data centers that they’re building. Like that’s the durable thing. If you’re a long-term investor and you’re trying to size up whether these are healthy companies, you’re thinking about their real assets, like the way you might think of the number of miles of railroad track that somebody has laid.
John Shoemaker:
Isn’t it more so, and I’m asking a great ignorance. Isn’t it more so? Their intellectual property, though, because the data centers, it’s ubiquitousness, it’s like, well, are they on Google or are they on AWS, or are they here or are they going invest? Or they could move over here, or they could build their own, and that will lower their bottom line. But what makes them valuable?
Day in the life of a Twitter employee:
is their.
Brandon Gries:
Well, there’s a lot of tension about how valuable is that intellectual property? Because just take Google as an example Right now there’s a whole bunch of scaremongering about how like things like chet, gpt are going to effectively just destroy, yeah, and undermine the entire value proposition.
John Shoemaker:
Uh, google search questions. I don’t want web pages, I just wanted to answer yeah.
Brandon Gries:
So I mean, there’s a lot of you know stuff in the market. That’s why a lot of these tech companies have lost value in the past year, because we’ve transitioned from sort of the aspirational thought, like they’re the next utopia, to nope. You’ve been around now for 20 years, so we are going to size you up on the basis of you know, are you a healthy company for the long term? So they’re, the way that they’re being evaluated by investors is maturing. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what we’re advancing into. I mean, that’s the struggle that tesla is into now. You know, are they up to the hype? They’re not even the largest electrical car manufacturer. So now there’s more penetration of other major auto manufacturers ford, volvo, etc. That are all in the electrical.
John Shoemaker:
So in that analogy then I mean, could you say that that, similar to a highway or railroad or whatever, you could do away with the intellectual property of a particular company and those assets would still have value because you? Could say well, I have these data centers, and if there’s no value anymore for Twitter or for Instagram or whatever, well then, whatever the value is, you can house your data there. So you just on-ramp, you know, use our highways and so I still have value.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, if in the coming years we all collectively abandon Facebook’s newsfeed or whatever, all those two or never adopt the metaverse, over the next several years, meta is going to put the money into building infrastructure that is capable of doing the types of workloads that make a metaverse possible. So they’ll build the machines that will allow that type of work to occur. So even if they have a terrible software and nobody wants to use it and somebody else has a better software like Microsoft develops a much better metaverse. Well, if the infrastructure exists, then maybe it’s better from Microsoft’s perspective. I don’t have to build the infrastructure, I don’t have to have the liability on my balance sheet. I can just go lease space from you know Meta, who built all this infrastructure.
John Shoemaker:
Amazon’s kind of done that right, because they’re like online bookseller. And then we need this faster. So now we’re going to and Google too, now we’re going to do custom hardware to make this work and then, once we have it working really well for our company, now let’s sell those extra cycles.
Ryan Freng:
Let’s sell that extra compute.
John Shoemaker:
Let’s sell that extra energy and whatnot, so Amazon Microsoft to some extent, but that’s interesting because that’s more niche. I think, too is what you’re talking about, with Facebook developing an infrastructure for something that they can’t achieve software as a service. Very well, if they marketing or whatever it is, but then maybe Microsoft or somebody else comes in and can do the front end better than probably back end for you. So then there’s more value to Twitter or Facebook because they have infrastructure.
Brandon Gries:
It’s what the federal government has just now basically admitted to as well, like they announced a month or two ago that you know they had $9 billion worth of data center contracts they’re going to let to one of four companies Google, microsoft, oracle and Whoa just the one? No, I mean these companies. That’s the level of funding that these companies announce every year. I mean Google announced another $9 billion of investment.
John Shoemaker:
No, maybe the government’s just going to go.
Brandon Gries:
No, no, no, it’s going to be spread across these four Oracle, Microsoft, Google and. Am.
Brandon Gries:
I forgetting Amazon, right? So the NSA tried to build their own data centers and now they’re like no, no, no, we were doing a bad job of it, you guys will do a better job of it. So if you guys can give us the security that we need, why don’t you build the infrastructure and we’ll just use infrastructure from you, right? So it happens that maybe one company is better at building the infrastructure, another company is going to be better at building the software for it, and the thing that’s happening, too, is that even all these major data center companies, they can’t build enough infrastructure for themselves, which is why there’s this other whole crop of co-location companies, which is why there’s this other whole crop of co-location companies that I, you know, I talked like companies like digital realty, equinex, dupont, fabros, vantage, etc. All these companies.
Brandon Gries:
They were around long before these major tech companies that we know of, because they existed. And then those companies who, 20 years ago, were just, you know, a couple of people who needed one server. They were leasing space from these co-location companies. Well, now the tables have turned and they’re such massive users they can’t build enough infrastructure for themselves that they’re like will you, co-locators, keep building data centers and we’ll be your only customer. We’ll take over a whole building, but you’re going to build it, you’re going to manage it, et cetera. So there’s still space for everybody. But how the market segmentation, how the value proposition gets divvied up, that’s going to keep evolving.
John Shoemaker:
You can’t the way intellectual property goes, you couldn’t copyright anything remotely close to the idea of modulating. Can you imagine early computing, a whole room and you have to have your own thing because there’s no way to transport data or information at a speed, that’s useful.
Ryan Freng:
So you had to have everything local.
John Shoemaker:
But then, once we were able to do modularity what you do for your day job too- if you need more power we’re going to get more power from the power company We’ll need to be able to split that up in our building. Okay Well, we’ll design, develop and ship and install this new modular system. It’ll just sit next to the other one. Plug in, plug in go.
Ryan Freng:
We have data centers like that. I manage our web department.
John Shoemaker:
It’s so great it used to be 15 years ago you had to know your servers really, really well. Now I just have an agency service on servers and geared towards hosting. I can spin up, spin them down, move it over, move it physically to a different location, move it physically to different servers to different states to different countries.
John Shoemaker:
So modular and so flexible that allows us to provide that front end service because of the reliability and capability of all these servers. But to get to where we are that would be insane for any one person to build. It’s only gone through that idea of modulator, the modulator, the data center, the computer, the server, the software. You know, I can spin up Linux over here and I can spin up Linux over here and it’s all the exact same things really easily on separate units, but it’s too bad, can’t go back in time and copyright.
John Shoemaker:
An idea like modularity?
Brandon Gries:
oh my gosh talking about, you know, um, certain copyrights. Even with 95 years they’re, uh, gonna start to expire like steamboat willy. It’s apparently going to come out of copyright and enter public domain. But one of the things that they’re trying to do is some of these companies are trying to make arguments about trademark. You know, like some of these things that they’re trying to do is some of these companies are trying to make arguments about trademark. You know, like some of these things are, they’re so strongly associated with the brand that they’re trademark and trademark has no expiration right, like because it’s part of their trademark, versus just simply being a piece of intellectual property that will exit copyright.
John Shoemaker:
Well, that makes more sense with what you shared. You shared the velcro thing right um, which maybe we can share later in show notes, but yeah, velcro’s like stop saying velcro or we’re gonna lose our yeah, we’re gonna lose our.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, we’re gonna lose our trademark.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, yep, say hook and loop. Yeah, get some hook and loop shoes that’s right.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, those two videos are hilarious. Yeah, the fact that it’s a whole bunch of actual lawyers in the film the bloopers, or the follow-up one that’s about the feedback, where they make another music video about the trolling that they got from the first video.
Ryan Freng:
Those two videos are hilarious. That’s the way to do it.
John Shoemaker:
That’s what Chosen which is Angel Studios’ kind of crowdfunded series about Jesus and it’s really really good. So if you haven’t seen it, if you’re Christian or not, you know, watch it. But they take their feedback and they make Instagram posts and it’s like somebody smiling like this and it’s like worst thing I’ve ever seen and I know a lot.
John Shoemaker:
I’m 16 or something like that, you know, and they just pick some of the most ridiculous critiques and they put them up there with something kind of funny and you know, eating into that. Well, they even have like billboards that they put like physical billboards up that say, like you know, I guess it’s not that dissimilar to, uh, what chick-fil-A did, or Chicken, but it’s like chosen sucks, it’s like the devil’s on the billboard.
John Shoemaker:
I thought that was really clever too, but there was brand confusion back because I think and I experienced this and I read about it the way they did it, it felt and looked so real. It looked like somebody defaced their billboards or had a campaign against them and then after, like you know, five seconds at the spot, satire yeah, but there was a little bit of brain confusion and I feel like old people probably like having a real hard time.
John Shoemaker:
but almost there, so I was having a little bit, but I mean, did it get enough attention though? Like did they was the oh yeah, the net positive right amount of attention that it got?
Brandon Gries:
well, there’s no that I’ve yet to see that error. Funny data center aside, about chick-fil-a sentence you probably didn’t think you were going to hear. No I love it.
Brandon Gries:
Apparently they operate a very interesting mesh network for all of their locations In terms of the way back to the thing about virtualization if one location went down. That the way that they. Apparently it’s noteworthy and unique, the way that they set up their kind of network infrastructure across all of their locations. And I don’t know if this is the case with Chick-fil-A, similar to how it is with In-N-Out. If all the Chick-fil-A’s are any Chick-fil-A’s, are they franchise locations or are they owned by?
John Shoemaker:
They don’t run well, so I feel like they’re not franchise. It’s sort of partially franchise, is it?
Brandon Gries:
The thing with In-N-Out is that it’s all the In-N-Out is privately held. The family owns all the in and out locations, which is why you are only barely seeing in and outs in other locations, why it’s so concentrated in California versus McDonald’s it’s everywhere, because it’s super franchise model. But you’d have to have a business structure like that and a Chick-fil-A did something like that if you were going to do this major, very unique internet infrastructure for your company. It’s an interesting thing to look into the mesh network that Chick-fil-A uses.
John Shoemaker:
We can also get into the Chick-fil-A game for the little price of $10,000.
Day in the life of a Twitter employee:
It actually seems low, you can get into the franchise.
Ryan Freng:
You’ve got to build a building and all that stuff.
Brandon Gries:
The franchise cost for McDonald’s is over a million dollars. Really, yeah, it’s crazy. Oh yeah, it’s very difficult to get.
John Shoemaker:
Well, what is it? I don’t even know, I don’t know much about any of it, like what’s your profit sharing? You know, like maybe it’s more with the one and maybe 10,000. I would have to imagine chocolate’s better. Yeah, pretty good. Yeah, pretty good yeah.
Brandon Gries:
Well, and another shout out to Hannah is that it’s thanks to Hannah. Coming back to Velcro for a second, the sign in her office mentions Velcro. It’s like you see it. I don’t remember what the rest of the thing says, but you know, it’s just a hive of just inspiration being in your space, and so I was I. Really it was a good moment of levity to be able to share. It’s on a wooden or brown. Yeah, it’s on a back wall.
John Shoemaker:
Whenever you’re in life you’ve just got to be like and here’s an espresso machine, I’m going to make a fancy coffee. Oh, I got a phone call. It’s really important. I’m going to go to work one hour later After an hour of work’m gonna go play ping pong.
Brandon Gries:
As I was watching that video, I was like yeah, like when you did your drawing on the dry, on the dry erase board. Yeah, you’re drawing contest.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, or just don’t just, don’t even justify, do the same thing it’s just like what? Yeah, we’re, we’re just like twitter.
Brandon Gries:
You should. You should hire us because this is, this is what it’s like. Like what? Yeah, we’re just like. You should hire us because this is what it’s like working with us. I know I were a premium.
John Shoemaker:
Here I am laying on the couch out in the front after I’m called Brandon this is why I won’t do this work for free, unless I really really trust you what do? You do. You know what. It’s almost 2 o’clock, you know we gotta do. We didn’t talk about it, but you might have already known. Let’s see, I got this right over here. It’s ordering graphics. Two truths in one You’ve seen that before, right I know two truths in one. I don’t know if it participates. I think, it takes over.
Ryan Freng:
The internet will have to let me know.
John Shoemaker:
So we could just talk for hours and hours, but we’ve been on for about two hours, so I’m going to wrap it up with two truths and one lie. Two truths and one lie so.
Ryan Freng:
I’m going to vamp but what you’re going to do is you’re going to tell us three stories or three facts about yourself.
John Shoemaker:
Let’s do that.
Ryan Freng:
Three facts about yourself, three stories or three facts about yourself.
John Shoemaker:
Let’s see that Three facts about yourself. One of them is a lie and we all have to figure out which one is a lie. And for those who want to listen to me, or if you, don’t want to listen to me just hit mute, now Just hit mute, it’ll be about 10 seconds, 20 seconds for all the random pieces of the story. We do have a podcast. We just moved over to a new system, the Buzz Scrap, but everything’s going to be the same to you, so hit that, follow, subscribe do that thing, Let us know some feedback.
John Shoemaker:
Who else in the area you’d love us to have on? I think we’d probably like to do more of them in person. This is just. It’s a better dynamic. I hate talking over Zoom. It’s nice as a convenience in some instances, but like you can interrupt me or we can kind of feel alive and move more quickly instead of like and now I stop, and now if you let go, yeah. Does it start talking about that, yeah, or where I’m just constantly?
Ryan Freng:
looking at john like is he opening his mouth?
John Shoemaker:
because also is he gonna open? Because I’ll stop, but I’m just yawning.
Brandon Gries:
You guys have known me and I’m so forward to sharing crazy stories about myself. I feel like this is going to be too easy.
John Shoemaker:
I’m really having to dig into the archives here, I bet there’s some. I had a dream and you told us three stories. They were all outrageous. They were all true. I mean, I talked about some of them here already. Yeah, I did have a friend who canoed in Alaska. He got knocked out of his canoe by a killer whale. Jeez, he was terrified. They grabbed their boat and swam to shore and the thing that got out was just take it on water they don’t have to know about the killer whale that’s the story.
John Shoemaker:
I guess you just don’t hear the stories. Yeah, that’s true. I’ve never heard one where somebody was eaten he was also at an boarding school in Mexico. I think His parents sent him there.
John Shoemaker:
And him and his friend escaped and they were like running, you know, across rooftops and down alleys and this and that, to try to get away from the security, from the thing the police are called and they’re running away from the police, and then they ended up jumping into the ocean and getting caught. They swam back and forth Like a, ended up jumping into the ocean and getting caught. Did they swim in that killer whale? Killer whale, jeez yeah.
Brandon Gries:
We’re going to try. All right, we’re going to try. So these need to be stories or like just little one-liners about how much context do you want about these things.
John Shoemaker:
One-line is great.
Brandon Gries:
Okay. Yeah, then if we have questions, we’ll ask questions. Okay. All right, I have been an extra in a major feature film. I have met and shook hands with Leonardo DiCaprio and I nearly killed a friend in the ocean.
Ryan Freng:
Really All right, so you’ve been an extra in a major feature film.
John Shoemaker:
You’re shaking hands with Leonardo DiCaprio nearly killed a friend in the ocean alright, Max anyone else who’s?
Ryan Freng:
listening actually, maybe we gotta figure out the podcast way of doing this.
John Shoemaker:
Let’s have a quiz yeah but then we can’t reveal the answer nevermind that’s more work for all of us one, two or three. We can’t reveal the answer. Never mind that’s more work for all of us One, two or three. We’ll start with you, Luke. You’ve been astutely listening to everything.
Ryan Freng:
Luke is operating.
John Shoemaker:
Our switching today.
Ryan Freng:
He’s been an actor in a major feature film we can ask questions too.
John Shoemaker:
What’s the feature film?
Brandon Gries:
What was the feature film? Yeah, so if this is the the film would have been. Election Election. Election. Aka.
John Shoemaker:
Erection.
Brandon Gries:
No Election. Is that a different film? I don’t know.
John Shoemaker:
I feel like Election was Nicknamed Erection because it was 1999., yeah, 1999. I never saw it, I’m unaware. Alright, so you’re an extra in the election. That was number one. Number two was he shook hands with Leonardo DiCaprio, who I don’t think was in the election and then he killed a friend in the ocean while dressed as a killer whale I’m going to go with number two, alright, so Luke is guessing in the ocean.
Bare Metal:
While dressed as a killer whale. I’m going to go with number two.
John Shoemaker:
We had a pretty quick answer, all right, so Luke is guessing number two. Anyone at home who’s watching you can guess too. I think I’ve checked. Yep, let’s see. You know what. It’s harder in person too, because you can stare at people yeah you know like you can avoid their gaze while they’re. While you’re, you know on your computer.
Brandon Gries:
So get other questions I think it’s why I you?
John Shoemaker:
he smiled when thinking about killing his friend in the ocean. So that’s a real story, because and uh, that’s hilarious I think we all. I don’t know if I’ve heard, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s feasible, because you’ve been in close proximity, I think through your connections or conferences, but I don’t know. I feel like maybe I would have heard the story or you would have ended up with him in our film.
John Shoemaker:
Maybe I would have heard the story or you would have ended up with him in our film because you would have convinced him during the handshake. So, yeah, I’m going to go with number two. And yeah, because the number one coming up with the movie name, even if you were, even if it was a lie, and you quickly came up with the name of a movie. Yeah, I don’t think it would be this random one from the 90s. It would be like, oh yeah, it was yeah yeah uh, it would be a.
John Shoemaker:
It would be a more widely known film that you would come up with in a lie.
Bare Metal:
That’s yeah I’m, I’m, luke, I’m with Luke on the two Reese.
John Shoemaker:
Witherspoon stars as Tracy Flint. Yeah, high school teacher meets his match in an overachieving student politician. Let’s see Brian Grease, brian Grease, brian Grease, grease.
Brandon Gries:
Grease. Like I’m in trouble, I’m by trouble yeah, exactly that’s how I think of it too. That’s going to be the documentary about your life.
John Shoemaker:
I love it. That’s good branding. Right there did you say good branding? Huh, alright, extra. I’m not going to look up where Huh? All right, chick-fil-a franchise. Extra Major Future Film. I’m not gonna look up where Election was filmed, because I don’t wanna test it, so okay, you can test it.
Ryan Freng:
Major Future Film.
John Shoemaker:
Shook Hands of the United, dicaprio yeah.
Brandon Gries:
Nearly Killed a Friend in the Ocean.
Ryan Freng:
Yeah, been an extra to Major Future Film.
John Shoemaker:
You’re just running through him again or you’re just gonna keep hitting me with him yeah, he just looked down maybe the last one is a lie, because Leonardo DiCaprio was in the movie Titanic and maybe Brandon was shaking his hand and almost dragged down right. That’s why he wasn’t on the door. Yeah, brandon was shaking his other hand yeah, james. Cameron is gonna prove that, only roads will fit on that door.
Ryan Freng:
I think I saw that article.
Bare Metal:
I, I think they yeah, they did that like yeah, wouldn’t have been able to flow it with that much.
John Shoemaker:
Okay, so you really want me to pick number three, because you look down like very obviously. I’m gonna go with number one because they picked number two. That’s my guess, and I don’t think we have any other guesses.
Bare Metal:
So, alright, we got B for number one, M for number two and L for number three.
Brandon Gries:
So now I just tell you, I was not an extra in a major feature film, but election was. But many of my friends were oh really, yeah. So I have met Alexander Payne. He was in Omaha, so he’s from Omaha, alexander Payne’s from I still wouldn’t.
Brandon Gries:
I was in high school at the time when the film was being made. The film was filmed in my hometown, at the public high school in my hometown. Oh wow, so many of my friends that I went to primary school and middle school with, who went to that public high school, were extras in that film. While it was being made and while he was on set for production he came over because he and I went to the same high school. He came over one day to my high school and, you know, presented to a group of us students, so I got to sit right. I sat literally right in front of him, was literally at his feet, yeah.
Brandon Gries:
And then I did get to meet and shake hands with leonardo dicaprio in a similar type situation, except I was in college at this point because he had come to iowa state to give a presentation about environmental issues. So he spoke at the design college, where ashley was in, a student, and we were, I think, running a little bit late to the start of this um, and so we came in this other door thinking we were coming in in the back. Lo and behold, we were actually coming into the front. So again.
Brandon Gries:
I’m like literally feet away from him. So then at the end, just I’m sure he didn’t even it’s like more of a politician shaking hands, kissing babies, like just leaving the space. So yeah, I had this like very close encounter thing with him. And then, yes, when I was serving as a Peace Corps volunteering panel so out in this remote location, a friend of mine who was from California, major surfer, so we had this beach.
Brandon Gries:
It was a very aggressive wave activity on this beach and so he was super interested in getting out in the water. We also both had this other friend who was from Lancaster County, pennsylvania, who’s as tall as Redwood, so he’s like super tall, no experience with the ocean whatever. So they’re in my community so I’m like ultimately responsible for everybody and they get pretty deep in the ocean. It was a pretty stormy day too and it was like a pretty harrowing moment because the friend who was, you know, had all this experience with the ocean, was from san luis obispo, doing fine, but the other friend got stuck in an undertow, got stuck in a riptide, and it was a very hairy.
John Shoemaker:
It was a really hairy situation of getting him out so when he’s like trying to come out, you pushed him down.
Brandon Gries:
No, I was on the shore, but, like you know, the fact that we even allowed anybody to get into the water, we should have, we should have I assume you were very active I feel deeply responsible, like for this whole thing, you know, and so I’m like watching from a distance, and so we finally were able to get him out of the water. And then we’re having to, like we spent like the whole night like recovering him.
John Shoemaker:
He was it was bad.
Brandon Gries:
He was, oh, it’s probably just super tired from fighting it yeah, and he was pale and like I’m calling the country doctor about this and it was a doctor, it’s not a city doctor sort of situation. Yeah, this was the within peace corps we had. You know, the doctor within peace corps was covering the whole country, so like that’s the within Peace.
Ryan Freng:
Corps. It was covering the whole country. So like that’s the yeah, it was pretty. Oh country that type of country.
John Shoemaker:
Now like he’s like yeah, looks like you almost drowned out there.
Brandon Gries:
No, no, no, this was like yeah.
John Shoemaker:
Looks like you ain’t around. Yeah, looks like you ain’t around. From.
Brandon Gries:
Estepartes. So it was a pretty harrowing, pretty harrowing thing.
John Shoemaker:
Well, make sure we never go to the ocean, yeah.
Bare Metal:
Luke and I were in by the ocean. He brought us to the ocean. He was trying to do a repeat.
John Shoemaker:
This is his thing. By the way, we had no reason to be there. Brandon was just like let’s go to the ocean, no particular reason. Why don’t you swim under the toilet Behind Brandon, you kind?
Ryan Freng:
of see it. If we go to his angle, you see Clue.
John Shoemaker:
Knives out. Clue. This is our rainstorm from like months ago. Shows you how often we use this. Barometal was up there for a long time too well, we put that on the dry areas, yeah, yeah um, this is everything so the other ideas were hallmark, uh-huh, uh, and then some marketing ideas with it, um, pothead, which we have a literal pot to like, like flowers grow out of it like as a character. He’s our pothead character.
Brandon Gries:
It’s not characters, say um, but that’s the uh affectionately titled, yes, uh concept there, so yeah, you see it, I think that it was great I think it’s a great idea it’s a great story. It was a lot of fun it was fun.
John Shoemaker:
Thanks for hanging out. Yeah, thanks for doing that project with us and doing bare metal with us, and yeah, we’re not done hanging out and sticking with us. We’re not done with that yet.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, yeah you know, just you guys. I don’t know if you realize how many festivals I’ve entered this film into. It might terrify you to know how many. It’s no, how many, it’s a lot.
John Shoemaker:
You really want to know. I mean, I assume like 30.
Brandon Gries:
No.
John Shoemaker:
Hundreds.
Brandon Gries:
Hundreds for sure.
John Shoemaker:
Hundreds no 200?
Brandon Gries:
No. How many festivals are there.
Ryan Freng:
Did you ask for forbearance?
Brandon Gries:
on all of these Huh From the.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, from the festivals.
Brandon Gries:
Can I ask for forbearance? No, it’s in film festivals and I haven’t submitted it into film festivals in close to 100 countries. No, no, no, that’s not film festivals.
John Shoemaker:
That’s countries. Yeah, I think that it’s almost $3.50. Oh my gosh, did you mortgage your house?
Brandon Gries:
No, I did not.
Ryan Freng:
I did because you can you can I did.
Brandon Gries:
I did dip into a lot of savings for it. Ask for a waiver or waiver.
John Shoemaker:
Thank you, forbearance exception waiver gasper waivers okay, well, 350.
Brandon Gries:
Uh, there’s a lot of them.
John Shoemaker:
There’s a lot of them, yeah.
Brandon Gries:
We’ve been accepted. We have been accepted by 12 so far.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah that’s great the last notification currently is in December and getting play in the festivals is good, but even just entering them is good, because it puts you on the radar of the people in charge of just the who’s who and various connections.
Brandon Gries:
So there’s a couple things driving this. Number one is that, in terms of true to the spirit of the mission of the film, it’s about getting engagement in the conversation. Two is trying to play the theory of large numbers, of making sure that at least something pans out. Three, I don’t know, because, you know, the future is never promised. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to do something like this again. You know yeah so, if not now, when?
John Shoemaker:
if not week, who?
Brandon Gries:
yeah, well, because here’s what I was thinking about is, let’s say that something is more successful. Later, there’s a lot of the terms and conditions where, in terms of like, who’s got the rights for the distribution, yada, yada, all that kind of stuff like, I feel like it would be more successful with something else that if, if something else was like that, it might be stickier of whether it’s even allowed to get submitted into X Y Z, because the production company expects it’s got to get a certain whatever.
Brandon Gries:
So it’s like you have to go huh, is it heads up? No.
John Shoemaker:
Or is it the production company?
Brandon Gries:
No.
Ryan Freng:
I mean the distributor.
Brandon Gries:
I should clarify. I mean like the distributor who’s like you know, we bought this and we have to get x amount or whatever back from it, so it’s only going to go to the. It just feels like it’s this really sweet spot.
John Shoemaker:
Of people are interested for this to just well, it’s really hard to do the first thing, you know, the first thing, like what? What’s the several popular, uh famous examples? And the one that comes to mind is like um, just because it’s the weirdest one, it’s uh, peter jackson’s like first thing. It was like a weird, like puppet movie, um, and it’s on the tip of my head, so like doing, the first thing, like is like.
Bare Metal:
Nobody knows you, that’s what I was saying is like on a future project.
John Shoemaker:
You go around and some of these festival runners will be like, oh, that’s right, they did this, you know. Other thing you don’t have. That on the first time is like who is this? Will they even give you the attention to screen the?
Brandon Gries:
film. So, ashley, my wife, for Christmas this year she got me only three gifts Past, present and future were the themes of the gifts. The first one that she got me is this cut piece of crystal thing which commemorates a patent that I have for modular data center design.
Day in the life of a Twitter employee:
Great.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, so that one it was. First. The patent application process started back in 2015 or 2016. And back in 2020, apparently it got finalized, so now it’s like a legit patent number for it. So you know, she had this basically trophy made.
Brandon Gries:
But the one for the president is she got me this book about my first movie, which is 20 directors, um, and all like kind of the backstory of each of their first movies. Yeah, so, like you, you’ve got um, I think the coen coen brothers are one of the the ones in this. You know you only got 20 directors that did this, but the one that stands out to everybody when they look at this, uh, is steve buscemi, which I didn’t even know that he directed films, right, but he, he’s one of the 20, um, yeah, I said it and other who like steve buscemi, what? But yeah, so that was the one for the present and the one for the future is she got me a book. Stand, because, aside from the film projects, there’s this other thing that I’m going to make happen, which is an art book of the internet. Have I?
John Shoemaker:
told you about this. Yeah, it’s an art book of the internet.
Brandon Gries:
It’s like the physical internet, so like imagine a cross between National Geographic Wired Magazine and something anthropological.
Brandon Gries:
I guess that’s National Geographic. You’ve got the visual spectacle, all these far out places where the internet exists, like a cable landing station on um uh, saint helena island in the atlantic, which is the farthest point from any other landmass on the planet, like you’d think that it’d be out in the pacific. But you’ve got all this micronesia, oceania, all these different islands, but literally, if you want to go in terms of open ocean, from one point to another. St.
Brandon Gries:
Helena is the farthest away you can get anywhere on the planet, so you’ve got kind of the visual spectacle of it. But then on another level, you have this Benjamin Button nature to the internet, where it’s extremely young but it’s also extremely old. It’s like devouring itself. So you have places that have already become obsolete, like here in Milwaukee there’s a data center that was bought by a paving company, you know, because it’s gone into disuse as a data center. This facility was built in the mid-90s but it’s now fallen into disuse as a data center and so a paving company is taking over it as an office space, right, right, so like the fact that we’re talking about a thing that only goes back to the 90s but is also kind of becoming uh, archaeological, almost right.
Brandon Gries:
So imagine kind of an archaeological layer to this. And then you of course have the physicality of these places that people can’t get to, that are extremely, you know, uh technological, you know structured, cabling servers, etc. Visually compelling, but you know kind of uh, in this very cloistered world. So if you had that in a very art forward, you know, um massive coffee table book, that I think it would be compelling to, yeah, a lot of folks, people who are in the space and people who aren’t in the space. So again, trying to help the people who are in the space have a point of pride about this thing that they do and, at the same time, something that is compelling to the generalist, that would be awesome.
Brandon Gries:
I’m committed to the mission of bringing the, you know, transforming the idea that people have about the Internet. You know, this whole notion of helping people reimagine themselves not only as customers of the Internet. Here, at this time of year, we’re all saying, well, I’m going to use my phone less or I’m going to eliminate Facebook or something like that. Because we have this conception, we first think of ourselves as the customers to the Internet. But as we get deeper and deeper into the machine learning age, we are irrelevant as customers of the internet, because the major customers of the internet are the machines talking to the machines and the data that they will generate and the speed with which they need to interact with each other. We will be much more relevant as the vendor to the I’m sorry, as the vendors to the internet, the ones who are developing the technology that will feed into the internet, or the construction companies who are building it the manufacturing businesses.
Brandon Gries:
So we’re working for machines. Yeah, just like it right. No, no, no, no, no. We’re like the maintenance staff. We’re the maintenance staff to the end. That’s like worse.
John Shoemaker:
Who is it?
Ryan Freng:
Elon.
John Shoemaker:
Neuralink, I think all his companies. He just ends up having 80s with the CEOs and presidents of his companies like Neuralink. He’s got like 9 kids or companies like Neuralink, he has like two babies of that person.
Brandon Gries:
He’s got like nine kids or something. He’s got 10. Is it 10? I was just looking it up yesterday, oh yeah, yeah, they’re all twins and triplets, oh wow.
John Shoemaker:
There’s like one kid and twins and triplets. Wow, ivf. I was just thinking about Ne mineral link and like being the product and uh you are the vendor I mean we are the vendor when we are the product. You know, we’re providing a lot of that too. The content as well, which is?
Brandon Gries:
then just going to get used by ai to market to us, to sell us things to hopefully improve life I don’t know if you have a stomach for a long book, but a really interesting book to read is a book called Surveillance Capitalism. It’s about a 700-page book or if you’re into audiobooks, it’s probably a 25-hour book to get through. But fundamentally, the thesis of the book is that we’re no longer in the information economy, we’re in the surveillance economy with all these different companies, because if you’re trying to guarantee, the best way to ensure a prediction is to guarantee the outcome. Yeah, as a magician’s tool.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah. So the thing with it is you have all these companies who are doing all of these things, like Facebook’s a great example of it. They just modify the algorithm a little bit and they can almost drive behavior modification.
John Shoemaker:
Not even almost Definitely, can Twitter files.
Brandon Gries:
So, in terms of the thing is that we can’t get away from digital infrastructure, we can’t get away from the internet as we’ve built it. So we really need to think about the ethics of it. Who knows in terms of information about us or whatever, and then who decides who knows? And then in kind of a seinfeld-esque way of its turtles all the way down of who decides, who decides who knows, right, like so basically saying you know what is even the scope of what’s knowable to then who’s in possession of what is known? Then what is the regulatory framework around what businesses and agencies and organizations actually get to be possessors of that data? To what extent does it belong to us? To what extent does it?
John Shoemaker:
belong to governments, etc.
Ryan Freng:
We’ll say a lot too, right, yeah, from a human attack like there’s anything damning or damaging, like you know my computer or my accounts, or you know something like that.
John Shoemaker:
So but on the other side of it like if somebody steals my information or understands me in such a way that they’re impressing upon me, you know, so that I make certain decisions like yeah, that’s scary, yeah, and that you know.
Brandon Gries:
Reality is that probably already happened yeah, so who knows who decides, who decides, who decides. But over 700 pages, it’s super fascinating read. The book came out in 2016, 27 it was 2019.
Brandon Gries:
no, it’s just saying that we really have to pay attention to this, because there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of things that you might encounter about our relationship, the air, that are more about just reject it, right, like, just push it away. But this film, that book, these other things is like, listen, this is just the world now. It’s like, you know, there are people who choose not to get their kids vaccinated, but it’s like, well, we live in a world where we’re in like a post vaccination world, like vaccines have been created. This is part of the modern health system, etc.
John Shoemaker:
Mcdonald’s sells them, but you know french fries with the feedbacks that’s it, you can release and then you yes, of course, usually the the machines are down so you can’t get the vaccine to get there. It’s like sorry we can’t process credit cards right now. It’s only cash and the vaccine machine is down.
Brandon Gries:
So, the point being that she’s just more so saying we have to focus on these questions. We can’t just reject the internet, um, because that’s just not even logical, right like it’s just part of the world now. So we have to get more serious about asking these questions, and so she’s basically laying out it does highlight.
John Shoemaker:
You know, and this will be, this is going to be like one of those albums where there there isn’t like the final note of the song. They just fade out because the jam band is just gone. This podcast, it’ll just fade out.
Brandon Gries:
We’re actually already done. He’s already turned it off.
John Shoemaker:
That concept is worth thinking about because the whole concept that. I don’t disagree with it, that it doesn’t work perfectly to just say, oh, just reject it and whatever, because this is the world now. But also even that statement, even though it’s true, is part of the problem that we walk ourselves into. It’s like well, this is the world now. Well, that’s the issue.
Bare Metal:
Like we’ve created a if you want to participate in the world.
John Shoemaker:
You must like do this, so that’s you know, it’s just like a new. No, it’s true, because we haven’t.
Brandon Gries:
It’s not necessarily been an inclusive transition. There there was an article that was talking about you know, somebody tried to cut themselves off from the internet for a year or whatever, and how difficult they found it to just lead any quality of life. They were talking about how, with certain restaurants, certain restaurants have stopped publishing menus.
Bare Metal:
And if you’re going to access the menu, you have to scan the QR code.
Brandon Gries:
We’ve moved to a situation where people are treating it as though you’ve got access to the internet, or if you, even in California I think it was just no. This is about a heat map of the whole US, about internet penetration of Chicago, just the Chicagoland area. So the University of Chicago has produced a heat map of internet access or internet utilization across, you know, like a borough by borough or parish by parish. You know level, not county by county because that would be too generic. You have some areas of chicago that still only have 55 internet utilization. Like that’s an enormous digital divide if people, half of the people in that community don’t have access to the internet.
Brandon Gries:
You take it during the pandemic that families who had means, you know, could make an easier transition to learning from home versus people who might not have had good broadband in their house or technology to access the internet. Like part of this longer docu-series is really my ambition or hope, for it is the, the way in which the internet is at the intersection we basically it’s become the new town square of every contemporary geopolitical, socio-economic problem that we face, whether it’s wealth, inequality, whether it’s sustainability. You pick your subject the internet at the intersection of all of them and it’s kind of like the active discourse about it. So, yes, it’s the world that we’ve walked into, but it’s still young enough, it’s still malleable enough the baby’s skull hasn’t totally hardened that we can still impact what that world looks like. I mean, we’ve just gotten to the end.
Brandon Gries:
We’ve gone through two eras of the internet. First we had the utopian internet All of the crazies, all of the weirdos who had this idea of free knowledge, free information, etc. Then we moved into this next area. That was the corporate internet. We’ve got these major titans of industry. Now we’re entering into this next chapter. We have an opportunity to make a choice at a community level, at national levels and you know whatever levels of. What is that and what’s our relationship to it. We can’t say that we will have no relationship to it. We do have a lot of opportunity, and that’s the point of this book is to say what choices are we going to make.
John Shoemaker:
But then you know, yeah, you go to the topic of capitalism and it’s like well, who controls it? Because there is a certain amount of control that could be implemented if you wanted to be that draconian or whatever. You know there’s a certain level of control that any powers that be can have over a physical town square. You know you could have like curfews. You could have curfews, you could not allow people in the streets for whatever reason. But if I have to sign in and have an on-ramp and I’ve got to pay companies to allow me to connect to that, and then I’ve got to have accounts to log into platforms, or pay, or whatever there’s a lot more control that if I’ve done away with the tradition of a physical town square, I don’t have that to fall back on.
John Shoemaker:
So I have to participate in this space and if I want to participate then I’m subject to all these various controls you know like that’s necessary it’ll be, interesting to see like in 20 years, because I think of like growing up versus my kids growing up in technology, information so maybe that’s a good time frame, too, to think like, okay, what’s it going to be like in 20 years, when we have figured out? This surveillance and marketing privacy thing.
Brandon Gries:
And influence.
John Shoemaker:
Will we not? Will we be able to think of it? Something?
Brandon Gries:
to think of is we talk about. See, I’m not a digital native. I grew up before the internet, but I’m kind of in this transition, so I can imagine a world before the internet. But we’ve talked just in terms of digital natives. But there’s this whole other crop of people who are mobile natives, right like the only interaction they’ve ever had with the internet is mobile based. You know people who, yeah, who don’t even think of a computer which is probably the majority at this point.
John Shoemaker:
right, because? Because when you talk about the lower income or just like people who don’t have access but a lot of them actually probably do have access or have in the form of a phone- When’s the first one?
Brandon Gries:
I think it’s like 2007, 2008. So we’re we’re still kind of like. Those people are maybe tweens right now. You know the um. Yeah, they’re not quite fully adult in the population yet, but pretty soon they’re going to be the ones in charge. I think we’re just at the foothills of it with. Generation Z.
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, it’s interesting Because I think Apple even did an ad about it where the punchline of it was what’s a computer? I think it was even like two or three years ago. It was an iPad advertisement because they were talking about the iPad Pro and basically, how, it’s not really a computer. The young person in it is like well, my kids learn computing in computer class, but I don’t think that they understand the concept of a desktop and Windows. It’s like apps.
John Shoemaker:
Yeah, just apps. It’s just like you open it and it’s there. It’s like yeah, just apps. It’s just like you open it and it’s there, and you don’t have to manage spaces or hardware or anything like hardware is ubiquitous everything’s an ipad, uh-huh you know, everything’s an ipad or a kindle if we more read on it.
John Shoemaker:
It’s a kindle if we last read on it, it’s not, it doesn’t matter who makes it, even the computers, you know, like the little kids, like I think there was a meme about this, but I see it with my own kids. Try to touch the screen sorry, the interface doesn’t work that way yeah, exactly now.
Brandon Gries:
I’m with you about that. It’s an interesting world now on that note we gotta wrap it up because I’m going to go to the bathroom again.
John Shoemaker:
This is a twofer, what else?
Brandon Gries:
We’re supposed to leave the room for that.
Ryan Freng:
No, I’ve been doing it the whole time. Yeah, I have a yeah when I just yeah, anybody.
John Shoemaker:
Anybody who’s like Just audio. Actually, he’s coming back in now.
Ryan Freng:
Anybody who’s like just audio podcast Actually he’s coming back in now.
Brandon Gries:
This got a little weird.
Ryan Freng:
Is this going to either be?
Brandon Gries:
your best podcast ever or your worst one ever like this.
Ryan Freng:
If you don’t like, subscribe, follow. Follow us to do podcasting like Spotify and Apple. Let us know who else would like to bring on the show. Anybody you know in town you can introduce us to.
John Shoemaker:
That’d be fantastic. Well, we’re not in town. We can do it remote. I think we want to do more in person. It’s more enjoyable. Air Metal you can check it out. I think we have it posted online Vimeo probably a webpage about it as well. Christmas stuff let’sbackwoodcom slash Christmas. Check that out. The Whodunit is out. We’ll probably share a bunch of that as well. Anything else you want to?
Ryan Freng:
plug.
Brandon Gries:
No, just look forward to more work together in the year ahead. I think it’s going to be a wild year. Air Metal is entered into five film festivals in the state of Wisconsin, so the Wisconsin Film Festival, the Midwest Weird Fest which is in Eau Claire. There’s a Door County Film Festival that actually happens here in the first couple months of the year, so there, might be one of these?
Brandon Gries:
Yeah, you should, and they haven’t been selected by those yet because they haven’t gotten to their notification dates. Yeah, when those notification dates arrive and we find out that it’s one or more of the ones that are in the region, yeah, you should, absolutely. The one that I’m the most excited about is if we are selected by the Wisconsin Film.
John Shoemaker:
Festival yeah. She’ll be in April. We’ll check that out. We’ll let you guys know what’s going on there. Anything else? We’ll let you guys know what’s going on there. Anything else? Get your advertising submissions in for the American Advertising Awards coming up. The awards show is in February. I’m expecting us not to get a best of show, because it would be very awkward if you announced that we get the best of show Because you’re going to announce it.
John Shoemaker:
Well, no, actually I’m glad you asked, asked. Right, there is a sponsorship available. Uh, this year a new sponsorship level called presentation sponsor, and at that level they get to announce the best in show. It’s kind of fun, you know, like oh, thank you for that as a way to not have to present.
John Shoemaker:
No, no, just as a, you know, as a way to like get more of the vendors and more people involved, like, if you sign up that level of sponsorship, you can have like a table, um, to actually have stuff there, sure, and then you can also, you get to like, oh, and our, you know, and the best of show brought to you by america, exactly. Oh, and the best of show brought to you by American Fan Exactly. We better get our pictures in there. That’s why I think we’re doing that for this.
John Shoemaker:
Thanks everyone. I don’t even know how I end these. It’s been like a couple months since we did this Is that it? Good job everyone. Thanks for coming, brandon, thanks, man. It was a lot of fun. John Matt Luke was a lot of fun.
Ryan Freng:
John, always a pleasure. Matt Luke, nice, always a pleasure.
John Shoemaker:
Find your camera and wave at us. All right, bye.
