IFH 255: Behind the Curtain of Blackmagic Design with President Dan May

Alex Ferrari 1:50
Now today on the show I have a treat for you. We are going behind the curtain of Blackmagic Design. Anyone who's listened to this, this podcast knows how much I love Blackmagic designs, cameras, their editing systems color grading everything they have to offer just the general company culture I just love what they're doing. And no I'm not getting paid for this interview. I actually reached out to them because I wanted to bring on someone who can really show us an inside look at the company at the the corporate culture and you know what makes the company tick because the products that they're they're putting out is honestly revolutionising filmmaking and revolutionising, you know, tools for filmmakers to use to tell their stories. And I'm a big fan. And I wanted to get somebody on the show that could do that for us. And I was able to get the president of Blackmagic Design, Dan May, who I met at nav this year, and he was the most unassuming guy, he was like one of the many guys with Blackmagic Design shirts, walking around and AB I had no idea who I was talking to when I talked to him for the first time, it was absolutely crazy. Then someone told me Hey, that was the president of I'm like, what he's just out here, like mingling with the commoners. And I was really blown away. And I do call Blackmagic Design, the biggest mom and pop company I've ever seen dealt with spoken to, because they have their monster company. They're very big company. But they have a very mom and pop kind of mentality behind it. And the one thing that I really loved about talking to Dan as he came up with he said one really crucial thing. Unlike a lot of other companies in this space, they come up with a product, or they come up with a price that they have to match and then they create a product for it. As opposed to Blackmagic Design who actually creates a product because it's going to be cool, and it's going to help people it's going to take things up to another notch. And then they figure out what they're going to charge for it. And they always keep it at a price point that is accessible to everybody. And sometimes they give stuff away for free like DaVinci Resolve. So without any further ado, I want you to enjoy this rare insider's look at Blackmagic Design with President Dan May. I like to welcome to the show. Dan May, Dan, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you're a very busy man.

Dan May 4:20
No problem, Alex I'm happy to be here.

Alex Ferrari 4:22
I was I had the pleasure of meeting you at this year's na B and you were you were you were like the the prom queen or king.

Dan May 4:31
Yeah, well look, I'll take it either way we were busy, busy is good. You know, maybes for us are always exciting. We generally tend to have a number of new announcements out and this year was no different. So it was great to be there be talking to you know, folks that are using our products people that are excited about what we're doing. And you know, we were really pleased without the whole show when as a whole

Alex Ferrari 4:51
It was it was insane because I had never been to nav before when I when I drove up to the convention center. All I saw was black magic.

Dan May 4:58
Like yeah, it is It's a good place where we're at right now we, you know, obviously the company has grown massively over the last few years. And, you know, we've had, I mean, a lot of our enemies have been great shows where we've had great product announcements. And, you know, some of the standouts were the obviously the the first time we came out with DaVinci Resolve at $1,000. And, you know, when we came out with that first camera, it was like, earth shattering news was rippling through the hall. So, you know, we've had a number of just na B's, they've been really, you know, outstanding for us as a company. And, you know, we really tried to make the most of that opportunity to be there and engage with users face to face, but also, you know, it is it is really one of the few shows that globally, is kind of seeing now, it's not just those people that show up in Las Vegas, you know, there are, you know, plenty of media folks that are there, the reporting from all over the world. So we definitely try to make the most of that opportunity and, and go big, you know, go big with announcements and with our presence, and, you know, to try to help change our industry, that shows a big piece of our ability to do that.

Alex Ferrari 6:02
And you guys are definitely doing that. So I wanted to get I wanted to first ask you, how did you get into the world of black magic? Because obviously, you weren't born into it out of the womb? So how did you get into black magic?

Dan May 6:14
I was created in a lab for no. So I, you know, interesting for me, I actually my background was in music, I have a degree in music, and I'd been doing some some work, just you know, as you do after university trying to find your way in the world and, and ended up landing at another video company and transition quite smoothly into into video for a manufacturer because, you know, while audio and video are different, certainly, you know, like, hey, it's a timeline things move. This is how things edit and kind of did started working for a manufacturer there started doing just some side, you know, like, here's how you work on video project type stuff, and just had worked for a couple other manufacturers for a few years. And eventually, when Blackmagic Design decided they want to start start an office in the US. You know, I kind of got that call to say, Hey, you know, we want to we you know, we sold some product into the US I think Blackmagic was about getting on to about four years old as a company. They had essentially no full time employees in the US. And they said, Look, we want to start this office in the US. What do you think? And I was like, below Yeah, that sounds like a great, you know, a great opportunity to basically be employee number one. This is, you know, a time when we were selling decklink cards, and that was pretty much it,

Alex Ferrari 7:34
I remember those decklink cards very fine

Dan May 7:36
Yeah great card, great products. And, you know, he kind of kind of looked at the landscape and said, look, I think this is a great opportunity, kind of believed in the vision of what grant pay the CEO wanted to do. And and came on board is basically employee number one in the US. So when you're president of black magic design, Inc, in 2018, that sounds incredibly impressive. When you're when you're president of Blackmagic Design in 2000. And was that six? Yeah, it's it's less impressive. Your employee number one in the US and you kind of build from there. But, you know, it's

Alex Ferrari 8:08
Not many people knew a lot about black magic, other than some day cards.

Dan May 8:11
Yeah, exactly. In cards, what we wanted to do so so, you know, obviously, it's been a quite a transformation and, and, obviously be a part of what black magics been able to do, you know, play my role to help in the company and, and help grant with his vision, you know, it's been a, it's been a fantastic run, and, you know, 2018, some 12 years later. Yeah, if you had told me 12 years ago, this is where we'd be, you know, it sounds crazy. But these are the stories that happened when companies do, you know, figure out the kind of the, the magic, the black magic, what it is they want to do when people latch on to, you know, what we what we're all about, and the fact that we continue to kind of push the envelope, you know, that's all led to growth and success and, and, hopefully, continued growth and success as we continue to, you know, have any of these, like when we had this last April?

Alex Ferrari 9:04
So in 2006, you joined black magic, how was the digital landscape then compared to now?

Dan May 9:11
I mean, the big thing, then, well, as you know, what, what Blackmagic had had been able to kind of figure out was, you know, things like Final Cut Pro, and what, what that application was able to do was was able to really take a major crack at that kind of glass ceiling as far as the democratization of, of, you know, professional video production, right, you before before, I mean, look, dV existed on kind of what was the consumer prosumer I hate using those terms, but it was it was a way for people to have some capabilities that didn't really exist before. You know, obviously, personal computers we're getting more more faster, right, more powerful to be able to do some amount of processing a video DVD was compressed enough to where you didn't necessarily require the crazy crazy computing processing power but and that's where Final Cut kind of had gotten its, you know, almost start as a look, we know we can be this other great DVD editing software. But when you start bringing in uncompressed capture cards like Blackmagic Design hadn't hadn't developed, you know, you're talking about now being able to have this uncompressed video quality that was really limited to the Hollywood hate to say this Hollywood elite but really those you know, the had the big budgets to be able to do that professional quality and and gain the benefits of working in uncompressed video. And suddenly Final Cut became a tool that folks in Hollywood can use immediately because, hey, look, I have the same uncompressed video capabilities at this much lower price point. Now, of course, what ended up happening there was every other independent filmmaker or student filmmaker, you know, anybody else said, Well, wait a minute, for a few $1,000, I now have the ability that took hundreds of 1000s of dollars to do in that Hollywood and post production facility. So that was already on the table. That was what was changing the game. So when I, as I went outside of that piece looked at it said, Look, that's really fascinating. And, you know, I feel like I can help with some of that, you know, literally, that I know, the entire roadmap, and the opportunities that we were able to tackle as a company, as the last, you know, kind of decade plus has gone by, to help us get to where we are now.

Alex Ferrari 11:30
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I remember when Final Cut came out, and basically allowed me to open up my post facility. Because before then, avid basically was the dominant factor of of editing, and it costs hundreds of 1000s of dollars to have an editing system. So Final Cut, did open that door and did the democratize. Thank you. Yeah, that's the word that is the word that a lot, and you guys are black. It is very black magic. And you guys do that not only with software, but also with digital cameras and cinema cameras to be specific, When was the first time you guys decided to look into creating the first cinema cameras.

Dan May 12:12
So we we had, like many people that are looking around the industry, and we hadn't seen that there was a gap in kind of that camera space. And, you know, you know, we had at that point, we had already made the da Vinci acquisitions, we had already had kind of resolved cooking along, you know, we had kind of diversified our breadth of products there. And we had made these hyper decks for these video recording purposes where we were seeing that, you know, the DSLRs, had come in and shaken up a bit of the landscape as well, where you had these amazing photo cameras, that also did video, and they did video pretty well, it was compressed, and it looked good. And it suddenly put kind of professional video into a lot more people's hands, again, the democratization of having this great looking video. Now coming from the post production side of things, we also realize the trouble with that highly compressed h 264 format that you're seeing out there. And where, you know, it was just problematic, it wasn't a super high quality, it didn't give you the real time performance, you know, there's just some problems on there. And then from there, when you when you say, well, let's solve those post production problems. Well, from there, you're jumping up into 40,000 plus dollar cameras that are in that Sydney world, which are amazing cameras, you know, they obviously function at the highest level that gives you that great post production capability. They're very flexible, and they are largely unattainable by many, many most people show rental cameras, most people that can even get them at that level, but they're not cameras that are largely owned by people and certainly aren't something you're going to go out and shoot on the weekend or do student films on you know, there's, there's a big gap, big, big gap there. So, you know, we had we had said like everyone else will look someday some one of these, one of these end of the spectrum is going to, you know, make a decision to move up or down stream, right, we're gonna find DSLRs that suddenly have that workflow capability that's going to be very post friendly, or we're going to find these high end Cinema Camera manufacturers have figured out that this is how they're going to make that sub $10,000 kind of camera that gives you some functionality of their premium brand, I guess you could say and then you know, we would heard whispers of that for years, right? We'd heard people say that we're gonna have, you know, 4k for 4k or whatever. Lots of different rumors that were out there never seem to come and pass year after year kind of went by. And I remember we were sitting there and this must have been, you know, sometime in 2010. If I want to say and we were we were talking about our next version of what the hyper decks Were going to be. And, you know, these are little SSD recorders at the time, they just had some button funktionale and we talked about adding them monitor and marketing, things like that. And, you know, eventually what became what the video assist later became. And that kind of became the, but you know, if we just put a sensor on it, basically a camera, and literally a few months later sitting in Australia and having these engineers come out, and this was been, you know, December, November, December timeframe, having them walk out with this giant PCB with a lens on it, and then going, Well, this is a working camera, and we can show this in April and you go, there's no way we're going to show that in April. That's insane. Of course, this is what we do all the time. We all the time frame up these ideas, we have these brilliant engineers, and lo behold, you know, a few months later, that's the first Cinema Camera 2.5k. And it was no, it was brilliant. For what is basically our first camera, I still love the image that that camera, you know, makes And while many, many things we've done in the year since then have helped build upon that camera

Alex Ferrari 15:57
And the camera speaking of is the 2.5. Okay, yeah, and wonderful, I shot my first feature on that.

Dan May 16:04
It's, it's and again, he now you would call it an old camera by black magics standards five years old, where it is old. It is that image is still amazing, it's going to assert that 13 stops of dynamic range, if you're really just doing 2k or, or HD, you know, that is a beautiful image that creates now we've added to our kind of subset of like, Well, here's how you build a better menu system. And here's our these ergonomics may be more what people want to see. But for a first camera, it i mean that I tell you that na B It was like aftershocks had just rippled through the industry. And I remember that was an amazing moment to be a part of Blackmagic. And to say, Wow, we've really changed things. Because even if that camera sold, you know, 5000 or 50,000, or 500,000, or whatever it was going to end up doing. We had realized that at that point, we had entered a place that Blackmagic hadn't been before, that it was a very big stage that we were stepping on to and that even if you know regardless of how we did with that camera, which I would say we did well and have continued to do well with that camera, that that was going to change the way that people looked at cameras in that space forever. There was never no one was ever going to be able to say, Well, I'm gonna buy this other camera and not say, but how does it compare to what Blackmagic is doing over there. And that and that's a really cool thing to be a part of when you know, you know, when you can actively say this is a moment in time, we are helping shift this industry what we believe for the better for the users out there.

Alex Ferrari 17:30
And how much and how much was that camera? The price point was also another big thing

Dan May 17:34
$3,000 I want to say at the time there so No, it was it was it was it helped. But there's there's a lot of things that go into the thought of what we're doing right. And when you look back at that camera, it was the idea of you know, we need to be able to convince someone that using a DSLR already, why they would want this camera Look, it's using the same EF glass you probably already own, you're interested in doing better post production work anyway, this is the camera that's going to give you that more post production friendly workflow having things like pro res, having things like raw capabilities that you don't have on your DSLR if you're really serious pursuing the, you know, the cinema style of post production, heck, we're going to give you DaVinci Resolve as part of that package, because we want to pull you into the abilities that resolve offers. And kind of step up your game that way. And, and it was a great opportunity for us to help pull people over there. And then at the same point, I remember like one of those first conversations at any be talking to a cinematographer and then going, look, I'm still going to rent that other camera package for that week long BMW shoot or whatever, you know, commercial work I'm going to do. But this is the camera I can own for the other three weeks of the month, where I'm shooting my independent films while I'm working on my pet projects, you know, these are the this is the type of product that I would want to have there. So we know we left that nav, feeling like we had ticked off a lot of the boxes. Now of course you get lots of other feedback like well, you should have done this and you should have done this better than that. That's great. We want that feedback. That's what's helped us these last five years continue to refine our camera development shape the products that go every year. And you know, every year you've seen kind of new developments from Blackmagic but that's another big shift. When we started coming out with more cameras, people were like how can you make another camera 12 months 18.0

Alex Ferrari 19:23
God I know

Dan May 19:25
You kind of go look Blackmagic tends to pursue a model that's more like say your cell phone or your graphics card. You know you don't necessarily buy a new graphics card every year just because there's a new graphics card. It's more powerful. Maybe there's new features. same can be said for your phone. Now if you want to great if you've got the capability or you've got the return on investment, we would say look we hope that $3,000 camera has served you well for the last 12 months or 18 months or two years. You don't have to buy the new Ursa mini or the new Ursa Mini Pro or the new pocket, cinema 4k but you know you spent 12 12 $100 or $2,000, or $5,000, at some point, you're going to decide you want to make that step, just like you wouldn't be your cell phone. I mean, I upgrade my cell phone every year, I may upgrade it every three or four years. But that's much different for a lot of folks that will coming from that market where you buy a DSLR, and you use it for the next five years or 10 years, because maybe they haven't come out with so many quick things. Or if you were going to buy a higher end Cinema Camera, it's an investment that clearly you're going to hold on to for five years, 10 years, and maybe you would sell it and you'd get some type of return on that. Well, that's not really the Blackmagic model, the Blackmagic model is going to be we are going to price that thing as affordably as humanly possible so that we can get it out to the most people we can possibly get it to. And we're right back into the kitchen to work on something that's going to be two years down the road. You know, hopefully even better, maybe you need it. Maybe you don't. But you know, we're going to continue to have this frantic push to get engineering done. Because, you know, that's what's going to best serve our customers.

Alex Ferrari 20:59
Well, one thing I love about working with Blackmagic products is that you are the only company currently that has the full ecosystem, from camera to final deliverables, and post production and so on. You haven't done lenses yet, but I'm sure that's probably always discussed. Definitely. trepidation, it's tough. That's a tough, that's a tough one to crack. I've seen many I've seen many companies come and go in the lens game. It's a really tough, tough place to go into. But with DaVinci Resolve, you know, first of all, what made you guys go after a color grading system, which is basically the color grading system that cost $300,000 before and then now buy it and then basically give it away.

Dan May 21:46
So yeah, there's lots of I mean, look like everything in life, a lot of things come down to opportunity, right, recognizing what the opportunity is when something does come across your way. And for some of our products, we can look at say like live production switchers. And you can say that's something that was on black magics roadmap at that point in time, when the opportunity to go out and buy Ecolab, a company that didn't switchers came along. So you say great, that makes sense. Let's get it that's closer to market to do that than to continue the development that we're already working on da Vinci was probably a little different Da Vinci was our first acquisition, obviously was at a time when we were we were growing, we had we had made the ducklings we had moved in the converters and some video hubs. And we were thinking about what our future and how to diversify was going to be. And along came this opportunity for us to acquire DaVinci. And, you know, as you say, you know, the Vinci was kind of like the coke brand of our industry, you know, it was such a rarity. And when you when you walk into a post production facility, if they had color grading a suite, it usually was like the crown jewel of the facility. And you know, it was a lot of times in Hollywood was DaVinci. And, you know, it was just kind of this amazing product that was out there that was was a big standard of Hollywood, essentially. And I remember trying to explain to you know, like my mother and people that aren't part of our industry. And it was right at the time when, when Disney had bought Marvel, right? And I said, Imagine if Marvel bought Disney? It would seem weird. And I think in our industry, people were like, how did black magic this company that makes very nice widgets. And I say that lovingly, we're doing just fine selling widgets, blue products, how are they buying this company? DaVinci, which is this, you know, 25 something year old company that's building these, you know, half million dollar million dollar systems, you know, what are they doing? And that was a large leap of faith, I think for us to go in and say like, Look, this is what we could do if we do this. And you know, hear me out because it sounds crazy. You know, we could, we could continue to be a great partner to partner, all the software partners that are out there. Because obviously, we were partnered up with, you know, all the guys out there making software. But we also take a bit of control of our own destiny by doing this because we can have a software platform that we can build around that we can kind of have as a piece of a workflow that kind of fits into our vision of where we want to go as a company. And you know, what ends up happening there is you end up not necessarily being completely beholden to other partners that you may have. So again, we want to we want to have the great partnerships with all the other software platforms out there. It's incredibly important for us to make those Dec links and ultrastudio products work with those companies to make sure that our cameras have great workflows through all of their platforms, but we're also not completely beholden to, you know, like, well, if they if they were to go away, or if they were to withdraw support from us as a company, you know, we're not left out on an island and so it was it was good for us. But we also said You know, look, this is going to continue with our mission of being able to provide these incredibly powerful platforms and solutions to as many people as possible. And, you know, clearly, when you look at what we've been able to do with that over the last eight years, you know, it feels like we've advanced, we've advanced back patient along considerably well, because you might have a little pat on the back for that one.

Alex Ferrari 25:24
I know, I mean, what you guys were able to do with resolve, I mean, I was one of the I think I was one of the first guys to jump on seriously as an editor on it a few years ago, because when you guys switched it over to I think was the 12 to 12. Five, when editing became a really, or 11, even. But I think 12 is when it really kind of took off. It was really solid nonlinear editing system, when I edited my first feature on it, then I did shoot shows, and you know, Hulu shows and other big projects on it. And then I started preaching about I'm like, Guys, you don't understand this is amazing. And I started like preaching from the top of the, of the of the mountaintops of like, everybody, it's free, jump on it, and please use this, and then it's just been getting better and better. It's fascinating what you were able to do with that software. And now, I swear to God, when I, when I showed up, then a B, actually, I got the email a day or two, before I flew up to nav that then you have now added not only color, not only sound, but you added fusion

Dan May 26:27
And that and that goes back to building out that platform to be as the best platform it can be. And I think there's two important points that, you know, we always try to kind of reiterate to folks is that, you know, we want, like I said, we want to work with everybody out there, right. So if someone comes along and says, Look, I'm using this other camera, we want to say great, we've got resolved, it's a great platform for you to use. If someone comes along and says, Look, I'm married to this other software platform, that's what I use, we say no problem, you know, we've got these Dec links, or mini converters, or our camera has a great workflow, you know, part of the great Blackmagic plan has always been don't force people to use what they don't want to use, right? Don't use proprietary media don't use proprietary lens choices don't say great. Once you've gotten into our solution, you have to use all our solution, because that's not what anybody know, said nobody ever nobody, I hope, a lawyer I hope they forced me to use everything that they make, because that's just disastrous. And we've seen it be disasterous in our field, and we've seen it be disastrous in other fields. So we want to be really upfront about that, like, Look, you love your product, other product brand product, by all means if we can make that work within our ecosystem, we want to make that be the case. And if you want to stay in a black magic ecosystem, that is our goal, like you should be able to buy a camera from us use DaVinci Resolve use our IO hardware, you know, stay across that platform, use all that, you know, as much Blackmagic product as you're comfortable using with hopefully will provide a lot of incentive to do that price will be one of those other workflow capabilities will be others. But look, don't feel like we're gonna come and say like, well, you're not a true black magic person, because, you know, you decided to use that other product, like they are just tools, and we all recognize they are just tools in the look, we want to obviously do well as a business getting those tools out there. But, you know, we don't feel that forcing people to stick within an equal structure is, is going to lead to that. So, you know, that is a big piece of what we do. But, you know, how great is it to be able to go to one software application and say, Look, I brought in my Blackmagic camera files, whether they're pro res raw. And while there, I'm one person, and I've got this one tool to go, yeah, great edit color, the effects, audio, you know, basically don't have to worry about conform, where everyone pulls out. Yeah, and be done with it. Or, you know, I'm a post production company that says, Look, I can have multiple people working on the same product at the same time, same project on the same product at the same time. And I again, don't have to do the conform where again, everyone loses their hair and is up at four in the morning wondering what's going to go wrong next. Like these are great workflow benefits of being able to have that so, you know, we feel like not only did we just go out and say like, Look, we're going to take this great platform and and give it away, you know, we can actually do something that's not been done before, right? And put this all into one tool, do it well. And and and hopefully you know, the the fears are always like, Look, don't add this in and suddenly make color be terrible. Or you know, like don't try to overdo one thing. So we, you know, we've had to take it slow. Like I said, you know, 11 1212 five, every ever

Alex Ferrari 29:39
Between 14 and 15 was not that slow cuz I just updated to 14, and then all of a sudden I'm like, son of a doubt. They just got 50 literally like within a month of when I updated it

Dan May 29:52
Still in beta. So it's still exactly what you mean but goes back to what he said is like we're never going to stop or rest on our own. And do that kind of like, cool. We're done. Now let's just collect checks the next three years and just off the mighty else, you know, kind of messes with the plan, like it's always going to be about us going. Okay, that was cool. You know, we you when you go to a show like nav, like I said, that's where you get all that great feedback. This is amazing. But you know what else you could do? Oh, yeah, you're right, that would be cool. How cool would that be? If we did that? Or, you know, we still like how many of our hardware products have we gone out? And we're like, we're building all these racks. We're doing all this live production and stuff? Like why do we keep buying these other audios? Which are, you know, audio monitors that aren't made for video, either expensive and bi can't select which, you know, audio tracks I want over the SDI? Yeah, we could build that. Let's just build, like, I mean, we are, you know, grant is champion of like, the nerds in the workshop that are just going like, this is cool. And we can do it. Let's do it, you know, business model. Okay, let's figure out what that is. Okay, cool. That should work me.

Alex Ferrari 30:58
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

Dan May 31:09
But, you know, for us, it's about kind of always comes back to what's best for the users if we think this is a good idea, because we would want it or we're going to use it, or we think it empowers more people. And that's pretty good. Like, let's start there. Instead of, you know, how do we build a really expensive camera like built that's useless? Like there are other folks out there to do a fine job with that, you know, how to how do we sit down and say, how do we build the best $1,000 Cinema Camera, which was that first pocket camera? You know, how do you how do you do that? Like, what does it take? You know, how much can you shove into a product like that, and still make it be great at $1,000, and profit much and profitable, profitable, that's a much different approach than we built this product, how much can we charge for it, which is a very typical kind of manufacturing approach to things. So it's just a very different way. Blackmagic approach is a, you know, building products, building solutions, and hopefully helping, what we consider the most amount of users out there,

Alex Ferrari 32:09
What I find fascinating, I've told this to people a lot, since I've been, you know, working with you guys over the years is like you are the biggest mom and pop operation I've ever seen. I mean, it's just like, you have that mom and pop, beautiful, like small, you mean, like, you know, I can have access to I can get access to someone like you, you know, there is no big ivory towers, everyone's just like this small little community, but it's not it's a massive competition. It's huge.

Dan May 32:37
And, and look, to be honest, like, it's hard, like, these are hard things to do. And there's a reason why you don't see this, you know, out there often because as a company grows, you know, you get more people, you have more processes, you have more things, and the risk ends up being there, that you you kind of get diluted from your main goal. The main goal to be stuffed for bureaucrats to make things be easy is it about, you know, profitability, and how much money can you know, we're all gonna drive, you know, fancy cars and have boats and or whatever that what is the actual goals and the fact that black magics been able to maintain that goal of empowering the most users out there, that's the single focus and the, you know, the thing that drives us every day, and and the rest of it becomes a look, let's make sure that look, we obviously want to grow. And we do have to have processes, and we do have to have profit, and those are the things but that's not actually the first goal. The first goal is empowering people and then down the list becomes, okay, let's make sure that this process makes sense and is efficient, because that efficiency is going to help us keep that cost down. But that is an incredibly difficult thing to do. And, and and look, I'm glad the black magics grown, the way it's grown, I'm glad it didn't grow necessarily overnight, you know, because that obviously would be you know, like jumping into cold water, you know, just just shocking, we've been able to kind of have that organic growth, that's allowed us to stay focused on what we're doing to still have that kind of, like you said, sort of mom and pop feel, even though the company has gotten a lot bigger, because the core values of the company are still there. And that hunger to still succeed at whatever level of success you want to kind of put down there, whether it be growth or whether it be empowering people, whether it be you know, just building out a product line that we think is exciting, you know, those are the things that keep us kind of keep us going and and the other stuff is important, obviously want to keep the lights on paychecks. Yeah, that's great. That is important part of it. But you know, all those other things have to be about does that help empower more and more users out there

Alex Ferrari 34:45
Now are what are some of the films and television shows that use Blackmagic cameras because I think a lot of people don't realize that you you at the highest levels.

Dan May 34:54
Yeah, I mean, the thing that's hard with the camera stuff is that you know Mr. namedropping, but, you know, when you go into a major production company that that does Hollywood type stuff, you know, and I can think of a distinct example where we're sitting there, and they're showing us these are tests, and they are so thrilled with how the Blackmagic cameras are standing up to, you know, the very expensive cameras that they they use on on all of their productions. And they said, Look, you know, we, we do this, because, you know, we have, you know, that being who they are, you know, of course, they can afford to use whatever camera they want to use, and they'll say, look, we're gonna use, we're gonna continue to use those cameras, because we can on all of these highest level things, but you best well be sure we're taking Blackmagic cameras on every one of those shoots. Because the last thing we want to do is put that camera in a situation that you know, it shouldn't be in, whether that be in a tight corner or in a car or in a danger zone where we can use those Blackmagic cameras almost flippantly because they're almost disposable at that highest level. But at the same point, when we have, you know, smaller projects, they can be a cameras and we have other behind the scenes things, we can use them for all of that. So, you know, that's how they generally get used on the highest level. And when I use a lot the Mad Max example of, you know, of course, they used to think it was two Ari's as their primary cameras, all their headshots all the things we're doing with a beautiful press story, you can find our website about this, but they use some 30 or 40, other Blackmagic cameras, because the last thing they want to do is run all of those stunts over and over again, you know, a lot of those are, we're doing this once, let's put all the Blackmagic cameras out there because they cut so beautifully when they do if if a camera ends up getting blown up or run over, a Hollywood person is not that concerned about losing their $3,000 camera at the end of the day, right?

Alex Ferrari 36:48
That's craft services for five minutes,

Dan May 36:50
Exactly. They've they're not worried about that, at the end of the day, they have so much footage to then be able to pool, they can run that very expensive stunt once and the cameras are just a very small, small piece of that. And that's a great example of at the highest level. And why would they not want to use other beautiful, expensive cameras, they're all customed to it, they give them everything and more than they'd ever want. But they can use our cameras in ways that really give them new capabilities that they wouldn't have had before. Now, when you move back from that you start talking about television and work when you talk about commercial work when you talk about you know, that's where you start seeing all the Blackmagic cameras starting to show up as a cameras and commercial work. And you know, that's that's always exciting to be but you know, we're we're always excited is when it suddenly becomes in when you want. I remember well, gosh, it must have been 12 boy, 434 years ago now, going into a university, bringing whatever the latest new camera we had, and having the university professor talking to his group of film students and going like, well, how many people are familiar with Blackmagic cameras, and every film student puts their hand hand up? And then he says, Does anybody have a Blackmagic camera and literally half the students raise their hand because they had Pocket Cinema cameras, and they had cinema 2.5 cameras, and even the professor was blown away, because that's such a big change for that ownership of a professional camera. Right? You know, these are the things that when we look and we say like, you know, have cameras been successful? Yeah, look, I'd love to have the next Marvel movie be all shot with Blackmagic cameras. That'd be great from just again, calling up my mom and telling.

Alex Ferrari 38:25
Because she's still there, she's still not impressed with you.

Dan May 38:27
Yeah. Because really, I still will never be impressed. But, you know, for me to be able to walk into that university or that film school and say, hey, how much magic stuff do you use? And they say, Well, I own this camera. And I've been learning on resolve, and I, you know, I've been working on these other products and you go like, well, that's amazing, because that's something that, you know, again, 12 years ago, you said, that's a goal, that's a real goal for us to have, because that's going to be what helps continue to empower more people goes back to that mission statement every time and be willing to help the brand going forward. Because, you know, when those film students graduate, you know, they're going to be very comfortable with, you know, black magic as a company as a brand and, you know, relate to what we're trying to do. And that's incredibly empowering, and incredibly important to us.

Alex Ferrari 39:12
It's what you've been able to do with like, specifically resolve where you're giving it away, you're basically creating a generation of filmmakers who are going to be using your product just like Final Cut did back in the day when it first came out. Like that's what because when they were students or when they were coming up, when they moved into, you know, full blown facilities or into bigger companies. They like, Hey, why don't we set up DaVinci Resolve I did that specifically when I, I grew up and I grew up, I was an avid editor. Then I jumped the final cut. And then when I moved into a studio job, I was headed to the post production department and they're like, well, we want to get there was one old app and I'm like, well, let's set up final cuts. And I set up in like 10 final cuts for the price of one avid and they were like oh my god and i know That's exactly what's gonna happen and is happening today with resolve and then also the cameras and all the other things that you you guys do. So it is quite genius. What is he doing?

Dan May 40:10
It's a it's a, you know, we talk we talk internally short term long term. Now what are what are our plans? What our hopes? What are we tried to do when the you know, a few of us kind of think about where we're where the ship is going, you know, Grant's got both hands on the wheel. And he's swerving lefties Wurman. Right, yeah, the conversations about Okay, what's, what's the plan here? And we're obviously goal is to empower people, how do you do that? Right? You know, it sounds great, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna win, we're going to be successful. And there's the long term plan and the short term plan, the short term plan is, you know, we're going to build the next planet, we're going to have this launch, this is how we're going to package these things. This is how we're going to get out there. This is how we're going to be efficient, and all the doing that long term plans. How do you be a company in this industry that has had major, you know, strangleholds, on certain segments, by certain brands? How do you? How do you become someone that's visible at that level as some of those folks that have been around 20 3040 years as a brand? And how do you do that in a way that can be both disruptive? Because obviously, you can't just come in and be nice. But how do you do that without necessarily making everyone your enemy and and that long term plan has to be about that, look, we have to play nice with everybody, we have to be open, you know, we have to obviously have a stick, you know, if the stick is just be very affordable, or give it away or whatever, you know, like these are, these are important to being able to to differentiate. And again, hopefully creating workflow advantages. Look, we don't just build a product, because we want it to be inexpensive. You know, that's nice. But it also has to do something, you also have to do something better than what's already out there. So you know, these are the type of conversations we have. And we say, look, should we build a resolve, affordable panel, and for a long time, we didn't think that was worth doing. Because there are great panels out there that are very affordable by other manufacturers. And we said, Look, we can focus on building other things, work on cameras work on switchers, because those guys are doing a great job there. Now, a couple years down the road, you kind of go and you say, you know what, those are great panels. But one of the things about those other panels is they're great, because you can use them for any application out there. That's kind of the great part about them. The problem with that is is they don't become a resolved specific panel. So what we can do is we can create the best resolve specific panel. And that's what led to those micro and mini panels to say amazing, you know, they are amazing panels for resolve, we're not pretending that they're great panels for anything else. Those other panels do a great job of that. But here's how we can do something that a differentiates B empowers people. And c really helps fill out, you know, a piece of the overall workflow. But that's kind of how some of those processes come around. Everyone comes to nav and says, again, like the lenses is a great example, you should build lenses. Yep, that sounds great. If we could build really affordable lenses, that'd be awesome. But what are we actually going to do? That's, that's not been done there other than being affordable, like that may be enough on its own. And those are, those are the conversations that we wrestle with and say, you know, what, next, what are the next C, we're gonna say all the SS Blackmagic into havoc and, and, you know, totally change our industry. You know, it's hard, it's tough. And it's part of, you know, part of the big, the big picture that we're always trying to look at.

Alex Ferrari 43:30
So what speaking of disrupting, and the SS Blackmagic. And, and, and changing the industry. Let's talk about the new Blackmagic Pocket camera. Because I saw it, I held it, we spoke a little bit on the floor about it. I just literally finished shooting my second feature on the original pocket camera. And it was wonderful, because I love the look of that super 16 sensor. It is such a unique look that there is nothing else on the marketplace like it. So but of course the one thing that everybody always said about the pocket camera was like, Ah, it could just be 4k.

Dan May 44:10
Yeah, I mean, so this is one of those. This is again, one of those, like, you know, you get to nav and people like you know what you guys should do?

Alex Ferrari 44:18
Of course,

Dan May 44:19
First of all, let me get out my notepad real quick, because I want to jot this down, because you're the only one who's ever the only one who's coming from the pocket 4k camera. And I say that very lovingly. We want that feedback from folks. But when we would tell that very passionate individual that I always have to remind our team that like, it's great because so many people want black magic to succeed. How fortunate are we as a company that people come and they they like I love what you're doing and I can't wait for you to make more stuff and I want you to be successful. And even people that say I don't use your x product. They're like I I'm so happy with what you're doing because you're changing industry. So we are so lucky to be in the position. We're in where people are literally cheering for black magic and wanting us to be successful because of how we are helping them and helping change the industry. Back to the pocket 4k camera, we would tell that very impassioned person that came to us, we say, look, we get it, like we understand why we want it. But, you know, we had made this production camera 4k that kind of feels like about the smallest, we could build the 4k camera at that point in time. We know we're not so sure what else we can do. Or we could add to that. And of course, this is, you know, four years ago, three years ago, sure. And about two years ago, you start going, Okay, look, we could we could actually do this, like we can get it to be a bit smaller, you know, what are the other things that we could do that would improve upon this and it takes, it takes time, right? It's not like we mean is as magical as black magic is, it's not like we can just, you know, turn anything out of anything like it does actually take engineering, and resources and developments in technology to be able to do it. So, you know, when we finally kind of started going, like, Look, we worked on building smaller kind of electronics, you know, you see some of these crazy little, you know, micro converters and ultra studio minis and we had worked on building smaller products and getting compact down and dealing, how do you deal with heat dissipating heat, you know, obviously, as Blackmagic grow, we were able to add more engineers and bring more talent on the table to help with all that. So it's not just a, like, let's get back in the lab and one guy comes out like it does take time it takes those developments to get done. So we started building, what became the Pocket Cinema Camera 4k and, and you know, again, when you do have the ability to kind of sit back for four or five years, we're able to kind of say, okay, cool, like, you know, we've advanced some of our menu systems, we've advanced some of our, you know, recording capabilities. Like I said, some of the heat, things that were concerns when we had not been sure about how to make it smaller and, and even still, you know, where we're having conversations as early as I think, maybe the beginning of the year going. And this is the kind of things where, you know, like, you're probably very fortunate to be in a situation, I'm like, should we call it the pocket camera? It's, like, the biggest problems you're worried about? Right? You know, having a discussion about like, Look, you know, you know, like I said, when we started out with that original pocket camera, you know, how do you build the best $1,000 camera, and we're starting to look at this camera going like, Look, this is this is maybe not going to be $1,000 like, you know, again, we want to keep the lights up and keep all those brilliant engineers paid to build more products. Sure. 95 is gonna be a bit tough. And you know, what are we gonna charge for it, you know, we want to, you know, we want to get as many of these out there, we don't want price to ever be the reason why someone can't buy a Blackmagic product and should be 1295 should be 1495 is 1995 too much. And eventually, you know, the conversations you're having as you're getting it out the door, because the price was never really the first problem. The first problem was, well, how are we going to build this amazing product, keep it as low as we want, as far as cost can be. And eventually, that's how we got it. We eventually said, you know, resolve and come down to 295, because that's how we roll. And we said, well, we're not gonna do 995 Let's settle on 1295. And we'll give them resolve for free, which we had not given on the pocket camera. And that became a very incredibly agreeable line for us to be able to stick to so you know, it's it's insane. It's 95. That's, yeah, and look, it's always that there is their internal wrestling that goes like, yeah, should we charge 1495 for that, that wouldn't be an extra $200 it would basically go to help pay for engineering and you wonder, would we sell less? If we did? Or would we sell more at 1295? And it's you know, these are, these are the questions that we do wrestle with, but at the end of the day, it goes right back to that first mission statement, which is how we're going to help our users the most. And if we stick to that, we feel that we're more we're more right than wrong most often. So what becomes a fallback kind of for us in a lot of ways.

Alex Ferrari 48:49
I've what I find fascinating about the pocket camera is I do believe out of all the cameras that you've created and recreated the Ursa and the minis, and and so on, that have been disruptors. This product specifically, when I first saw it heard about it like this has the biggest potential to be an absolute industry disrupter, because you're basically finally giving a DSLR style camera or size of camera, but with raw capability and pro res capability, which does not exist. Yeah, at that price point is in SAM giving them a free editing software.

Dan May 49:30
They're gonna want that if they're going to be doing any type of overall workflow. And you're right, it is something that you look and you say, that is why the price is so important, because you want to make that that threshold to get this product as low as possible, right? You want to make it so that people look at it and they'll find faults because there's no perfect product out there. And they'll say, Well, I wish I had this. I have my own wishes. But at 1295 are you willing to overlook that because where else are you getting this kind of price performance In a product and then, and then like in, again, why these pricings are so important to us. Once they do that, and then hopefully they open up resolved and they see some of the benefits of the workflow. And then they think about, maybe I should get a decklink or ultrastudio product to get, you know, video out of the computer into a monitor or in if I have other things that I want to get input. And you know, and that's how someone becomes if they hadn't been familiar with the Blackmagic brand. That's how they become familiar. And they and they start looking at what we have to offer, and hopefully have that experience that says, Look, there's a lot of great things here. And I am never going to claim that any one of these products do the same thing that the 40,000 or $80,000 ones do. But there's a reason those products cost at a mountain. That's great. They shouldn't that's what they cater to, and they sell 10 or whatever. I don't know what the reason why that model exists, our model is going to exist to go out there and empower the most amount of people possible with the hope that they're going to turn around and say, Well, I got this amazing camera I got this free software let me buy some converters, let me buy some decklink card right me when we when we look at these other products and build them in and Wow, now I've got this one company that really is helping me and giving me the choices that I don't seem to be able to find elsewhere. And hey, look, Alex, it seemed to have worked out pretty well. And well as

Alex Ferrari 51:18
You guys have been doing good. So basically your products are like doorbusters on for on Black Friday, you put it

Dan May 51:26
But every but every product is it's like an L we've got you know we've got yo system will hit you with the $10,000 a year support contract like we would come from that's

Alex Ferrari 51:36
Exactly it. Every product is a doorbuster. And then so that's it's it's genius. And then how you guys are still alive and functioning as a company and these boys, it's amazing!

Dan May 51:47
That goes back to the business end of things about efficiencies like Don't, don't stuff yourself with a bunch of bureaucrats and everyone has to be really doing, you know, no one can hide it black magic, you know, you hear about these companies where it's like, well, I'm employee number 39,722. And what do you do? Well, I have coffee six hours a day, great. No one can hide a black magic because we everyone has to be efficient. All of our how we build things, how we develop, you know, how we do everything has to be super efficient. Now, sometimes that comes around where people don't understand, you know, hollywood customer comes around and says, Well, what, what's my price? And you say, it's $12.95? This, it's the same price is the film's student, it's trying to scrape together the money to buy their first professional camera. Well, you know who I am? I don't know, man, when you get on Southwest, you just decided to pay more money so that you can, you can write and then there have those things out there. But, you know, this is the this is the world of democratization. And look, you know, everyone pays Edu pricing. That's, that's that's how we're rolling a black man.

Alex Ferrari 52:49
Yeah, I've heard stories off off air, which I won't repeat names, but there have been very famous directors who just like, Don't you know who I am? Like, that's nice. That's, um, it's 1295. And then like, you just made 20 million on your last movie. Can you afford it?

Dan May 53:05
Yeah, and the problem. And the problem with the Hollywood and this is what happens with, there's a reason why the Vinci was in this situation where they were in, they were catering to Hollywood, they were building half million dollar systems, and those 10 customers and just using that number, because you know, those 10 customers would tell them what to do, they would struggle to get it done, they would sell one or two systems. And that was the business model. The problem is, no one wants to spend a million dollars anymore, or even a half million dollars anymore. And what we what the terrifying thing for those customers when we did we we didn't do it eventually, when they said you're going to screw everything up by giving it away for free or $1,000, or whatever they perceived it to be. It was a look, you have to realize, you guys are not funding the development that's needed for this application to be successful. And what's going to fund the development for those applications to be successful is all of these other users. So yes, we realize it's terrifying that we're putting professional color grading software into everybody's hands out there. But you know what, that major film is not going to go to buckos color grading company out in the middle of nowhere. They're coming to you because they trust you and your service. And you've have all of those believe that but and look, you guys want more capable colorist and more people to come to you to work workforce. And to have that workforce, that's never going to happen if there's just this elite product that no one can touch in us. But these are the things that, you know, like I said, we have to sit down and say, Look, we're going to empower users Check, check that box, you know, how are we going to make this be as efficient as possible so that we can build the user base we can have, we can't just ship 100 of these things. We got to chip 100,000 of these things to make that all work and it has to be incredibly efficient. But that's how these last 12 would fit in before even I was here. 15 years for black magic has been you know, building a business exists like that. And that's very hard to do if you're one of those companies. There's also in that South hall or other Hall, that nav and you go, Well, how is this company going to be here in 10 or 15 years, they've built business around selling, what they sell at a model that they have? How do you turn that tank down the windy road? And say, No, no, we're going to do it all over again and give it away for free. Like that kind of has to be built from the outset, or you have to have, you know, massive revolution from within. And that's obviously higher. And that's why I say, this is very hard to do. And look, someday when the black magic book gets written, you know, maybe people will appreciate it more of what what it all is. But you know, for now, we're just happy to see the success of the products out there, you know, when you again, see it may use by a Hollywood user, or when you walk into that university, and the students say, you know, we are so glad that you guys are doing what you do. You know that that's, you know, that's what makes us a great back to the lab,let's get on with building more great products.

Alex Ferrari 55:58
All right, so Dan thank you so much for being on the show, I have a few questions that I asked all my guests is going to be kind of a speed round, if you have got it. All right. What advice would you give a filmmaker wanting to break into the business today other than buying Blackmagic products?

Dan May 56:12
You know, one of the things that I realized actually doing this job and that I tell filmmakers today is, you know, the only thing that separates you from that other successful person you idolize is the fact that they've done it and you haven't yet there was a time where I thought, look, you know, someday, someone's gonna realize I'm a fraud, I have no idea what I'm doing. I you know, I don't have any of the same skills that other successful person that I idolize is, and you realize, once you kind of start breaking through that that's totally a load of crap. The only thing that actually separates you is the fact that they've gone and been able to do it. And you haven't done that yet. So obviously, it takes hard work. Obviously, it takes discipline to do. But that's it. That's it's not that they're brilliant. It's not that they've got some special formula. Sure luck's involved, there's other things that are in there, but you actually have to go and do it. So don't be discouraged by the fact that I'll never be able to be a filmmaker or an audio person or a post production engineer, whatever that dream is, it just the only thing that separates you from the person that at that level is the fact they've done it. So just go do it.

Alex Ferrari 57:17
Fantastic. Now, can you tell me what book had the biggest impact on your life or career?

Dan May 57:23
Boy book? I don't, don't just audio man like audio. But then But yeah, I had read a lot about I can't pull anyone up. But being I had come from music I had read about a lot of, you know, composers and musicians throughout history that and so even as I transferred into video, like that last bit of advice, I just remember thinking about the troubles and the tribulation news, especially, you know, when you think about musicians, in particular, the struggles of not really having a lot of money, or obviously lots of folks went through, you know, drug and alcohol abuse and the struggles, they went, one of the reasons why I decide I didn't really want to pursue that lifestyle. And that's still the same video, but you know, reading the biographies of so many people out there and the troubles, it makes you recognize that you're not, you know, you're a you're not unique, so like, you know, everyone's got their struggles, everyone's got their challenges. You know, it helps you kind of say, look, all you have to do is kind of keep going, keep reaching, and keep at it. And you'll that's the plan to be able to get there. Because if you don't, you just won't get there.

Alex Ferrari 58:26
What is the lesson that took you the longest to learn whether in the film industry, in your business or in life?

Dan May 58:31
Don't be afraid of admitting failure, because failure is a part of growth. And when you're young, you're so worried that if I do this, and I do this wrong, and I'm going to fail, and everything is going to be over? And when when you're very young, real, like if you really think that like life is over. And as you get older, you realize that that is just all part of the process. So you know, hey, that didn't work out the way I want. What can I learn from that? How can I do it better the next time and again, just get on to the next time? And three of your favorite films of all time. Oh, boy, as well. Fun. Yeah, I mean, look, you can't I cannot ever leave like an Empire Strikes Back off off the list, of course, completely. Revolutionary, you know, just change change how you saw film. You know, Godfather, probably too, is got to be up up on that list, too. But man, you know, here's a weird one. I remember being a little kid and watching ice pirates. That was such a great film, like, like, but and I think it was at that age where it was just like, Oh, you know, being the sci fi nerd that I was like, You must have watched that film, literally 3000 times because it was just, I don't know, my parents probably didn't even know that. I was watching it that many times. But I just remember being, you know, a five or seven year old kid and Jessica, zillions out yeah, totally not on the normal list of films

Alex Ferrari 59:52
A few films that remind me of but

Dan May 59:54
Probably if I watch that now I'd be like, this is terrible.

Alex Ferrari 59:57
Oh no, you can't you can't have to live in your mind. You can't have go back

Dan May 1:00:00
In my mind, as you know, just something that was very formative as what adventure meant

Alex Ferrari 1:00:06
To to add to that list of those kind of movies, ice pirate movies Time Bandits,

Dan May 1:00:10
Time Bandits, is right there.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:12
Crawl. Yes. Horrible.

Dan May 1:00:16
Terrible. But again, like I you know, there's a lot of things that I think I can look back and go like, you know, wasn't Voltron and amazing cartoon, you go back and look at it. It's not the same tropes that every one of those things have. But look at the time you go like, this is amazing. And that's part of what kind of, for me built in that sense of adventure, that sense of creativity. And you know that I mean, even if it's not something that you carry with you day to day that it is still part of what you who you feel is you. So look, sometimes you can't deny it, you just got to embrace it, and you know, work with it.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:49
And now where can people find more about more about black magic,

Dan May 1:00:53
The best place is to just go to our website, which is www.Blackmagicdesign.com.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:01
And there's a lot of stuff in that website.

Dan May 1:01:04
A lot of stuff you can dig through in there if you've got the time, patience and energy.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:08
Dan, thank you, man, you've been an absolute pleasure to talk to you and inspiration. And again, thank you for doing the good work that you're doing over black magic with, with all of those amazing people that work with you.

Dan May 1:01:18
No problem, Alex happy to speak with you anytime.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:21
I want to thank Dan Mae for taking the time out of his busy schedule, to talk to the tribe and really just give us an insight to what they're doing and how they're doing it. And I don't know about you guys, I am super excited about the Blackmagic Pocket camera 4k that's coming out in the fall. I already got pre orders for it. Because I think it's going to change filmmaking in general, I think it's going to do what the DSLR did when it came out for filmmakers. Because now you're going to be able to get a much cheaper DSLR as far as cost is concerned, but have much more capability and much more power than a lot of those DSLR cameras out there. Now, by being able to shoot RAW pro raw Apple pro res raw cinema dng files, as well as Slo Mo, with I mean, it's just has so much stuff. And for $12.95 plus a free copy of DaVinci Resolve, you can't beat it. So again, I'm always a champion of anybody that was is able to give power to the people who are able to put tools in creative people's hands, that would not be able to afford them normally. That's why I'm such a big fan of the company and what they're doing, and the whole mentality behind what they're doing. So, Dan, thank you again, so so much for being on the show. And if you want links to everything we talked about, in this episode, head over to indiefilmhustle.com/255. And in those show notes, I have a link that you can download DaVinci Resolve for free. I have a whole bunch of episodes and videos discussing why I edit strictly on DaVinci Resolve now and I do all my post production through the DaVinci Resolve package. It is insane edited two features on it. Three television shows, and it's worked like a charm. And if you haven't already, please head over to filmmaking podcast.com and leave me a good review on iTunes. It really helps out with the rankings and helps us get more and more filmmakers getting this information. So thanks again for listening guys. And as always, keep that also going keep that dream alive. And I'll talk to you soon.