Budgeting Smarter, Not Harder with Jens Jacob

Welcome to On Production brought to you by Wrapbook. Today we're diving into the world of film production and technology with Jens Jacob, who is a friend of mine and also the force behind the groundbreaking budgeting platform Saturation. Jens is not only just a tech entrepreneur, he's also a film producer known for a really wonderful documentary called The Heart of Man that really was very successful and made an impact on audiences around the world through Netflix. And I'm really excited to ask you about that experience, Jens, as well as I want to know about you know your journey into film technology and how your platform Saturation is going and how it's transforming the financial management landscape for the gig economy in the entertainment industry. So welcome to On Production.

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1:07  

Thanks, Cameron. It's such a pleasure to be here, and they are looking forward to this convo.

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1:13  

Well, I mean, I got to know you many years ago when you were leading Sypher films. Can you tell us about your initial journey into film production and what really inspired you to kind of pursue that path.

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1:27  

Yeah, I have always been a creator. I just didn't know what that term was back in the day, it started from graphic design, then turned into motion design, anything that was innately creating. I just loved being a part of and doing that has manifested over different art forms over time. I had worked for the Tampa Bay Lightning in Tampa, and I did a lot of the motion graphics and stuff there that transitioned into a a freelance job with ESPN, and I was just doing a lot of these different like gigs and jobs here and there for different creative work. And at some point, it felt like I needed to kind of maybe stick to something, or at least that's what people told me. I needed a career and I needed to stick to one thing. And the filmmaking bug really bit after I started doing more in videography at the time, it was kind of the the surgence of when the DSLR, I don't know if you remember this, when the Nikon D 90 was able to do video for the first time, and that's what really kind of skyrocketed my ability to get in because I didn't come from film or film school or anything like that. And so I would say that's what it bit and something that I think of fondly is when I think about creating, and I think about art and the different art form, the art forms film making, feels like the pinnacle of all these art forms coming together. You need sound, you need picture, you need art, you need, you know, all the various, yeah, to have film, any one of these doesn't make film. And so I loved being able to have a form of creating that could touch a little bit of everything. That's awesome.

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3:15  

I mean, so you've produced a lot of films and commercials and things. I mean, can you give me an overview of what you've been producing, and then your most successful production, I touched on The Heart of Man. I mean, maybe walk us through that experience of bringing a film to market. Yeah. So

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3:29  

I actually started out in commercials and music videos. It was, it was short form when I first came out to LA it was from different types of productions, from Nicki Minaj music videos, Bruno Mars music videos. Did a lot of music videos back in the day. Got really lucky, and got under a wing of a really talented producer who was just starting to come out into the scene. And I was just there readily, like just around and so it was just, I would work for free, I would PA, I would do whatever I could just to be around her and this team. And thankfully, she gave me a shot and would put me on projects and sets and then that kind of fairly quickly, within a year, I was producing just by being in proximity to a lot of the stuff that was just happening, and I was just thrown different tasks. So my first year was all music videos. Second year turned out to be all commercials started working on one of the first commercials that I ever did was for Apple. It was when the Beatles came onto iTunes for the first time. It was like a pretty insane moment. So it was cool. Some of the early work that I was able to hop on to with really talented teams. My third year was documentaries. So it was kind of this interesting pattern where every year was a new type of production or a new type of filmmaking that I got. It was my version of film school, I guess, like where I was just learning by doing. And in that year is where I started Sypher films. And it was a mix of two big things that. Been for me at the time. One, I was doing a 27 country world tour where we had to go to 27 countries in one year. And so I was basically producing and directing this series for that. And then second, we did a a really widespread short film, and I didn't know where it was going to go at the time, but it was called Anomaly, and it really took, like, kind of, when Vimeo was kind of coming up, it was a lot of these, what I call the the Vimeo kids. Now they're all, like, really incredible commercial, uh, filmmakers, but a lot of these Vimeo kids came together and we did a 40 minute short film called Anomaly, and it was one of the most ambitious projects that I think any of us had ever done at the time, and I think that really did also reflect externally as well. And it went kind of mini viral. And those two things, I think, is what set me up for my production company, and how I started Sypher films. So for the first couple of years, cipher films was just branded content, mini docs, short films just kind of playing in this like short form space and five in 2017, about six years ago, we did a film called The Heart of Man, which you just referenced. And I came a little bit later into that production. It was already shooting. It was a hybrid documentary, hybrid narrative, when the narrative was starting to take shape and form, is when I hopped on to the project and I was able to work with that, that team, and that was a very interesting process, because it was my first foray into feature films. And as you know, commercials operate different, like commercials and music video short form operate a little bit differently, maybe not in terms of production, but in terms of funding and distribution and kind of the bookends of how a project like that gets set up and then then comes out into the world. So that was a crowd funded film, and we were able to get theatrical distribution on that. We went through Fathom Events, which does the series of one to two night showings theatrical runs. And we got really lucky and fortunate that we got onto an 800 screen count that went all across the US from the success of that is what helped us get on Netflix because we funny enough. We pitched Netflix before that, but we got declined, and then we were able to show the box office number for Heart of Man. It was like, hey, look like people want to watch it. And then that completely changed the conversation, and we were able to walk that back in as a as a licensing deal. And since then, it's done International. Wow,

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7:41  

really inspiring. That's a really inspiring story. I think, I think our listenership would be encouraged to hear that, you know, like, sometimes the door doesn't open when you knock, but on the second time, you know, there's an opportunity

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7:54  

that's right, yeah. I mean, people think that a lot when it comes to films, right? Like, there's usually a shelf life, or, like, you just have the one shot at something, and then it kind of either does well or not, but it's true, if we didn't just naively decide to go back and, like, knock again, you know, who knows where that film would have been. And since then, it's also opened up a lot of opportunities internationally as well, where we were able to what was the blessing in disguise of that particular project of streamers and early distribution saying no is that we ended up self distributing. So we had to learn the distribution process on a global scale, where we negotiated country by country, and we had no idea what we were doing. We just knew that we wanted to get it into all the different territories, and so because of that, it just expanded our knowledge and our ability to even now, as we work with distributors, there's things that we know now that we just wouldn't have known if we didn't actually physically go and do self distribution ourselves to these different territories, negotiating with different distribution companies in different countries. So it was a huge learning lesson for us, because it was our first foray into features, and it just so happened that we got everything we wanted in terms of distribution globally and

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9:12  

super inspiring. I mean, what's interesting Jen's is, you know, you you've had these great experiences of your career, of really starting up short form commercials, branded content, commercials, documentaries, breaking really into actually even, like larger feature films and films and Indies and then, like even sort of flirting with the studio system slightly as a sort of an input to their distribution channels. You know, I want to ask you, like our audience here, our producers, they like knowing about what types of things you're doing as a producer and you as a tool maker, as a technology entrepreneur, are trying to, like, marry these two worlds, right? Like being the ultimate producer, I think, is trying to build tools to make producing easier. So before we get to saturation, though, I mean, what are some of the biggest challenges you think you've. Sort of faced while producing films in your career, and what are the core things that you've done to overcome those issues? I mean, you described distribution, but I mean even long before that, just in the production process itself,

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10:11  

I think for us, like coming from commercials and music videos, it was just production that you were focused on, most likely the client or the artist had the money, gave you the money, and then you were just tasked to with the creative and to go make the thing. In what we've been doing in the feature side, it feels like making the thing is only half the battle. You really do have to figure out you're constantly selling, no matter what part of the phase you're in in time, whether it's fundraising, whether it's then making the thing and then distributing the thing and then marketing the thing, it's a constant. You're just constantly having to sell, no matter what part of this so I would say it's just no matter how successful we've gotten, no matter the box office numbers, we've been able to show, we're still selling as if this is our first project. It didn't necessarily get easier from the success. I feel like the landscape is constantly changing in terms of what people are looking for and what is considered marketably viable, and for us, we're constantly having to make that case to say that there is an audience for the types of projects that we're making. So I would say that that is a big challenge as we've kind of come into the feature space. Secondarily, I would say financial management has just always been a struggle in terms of production. It's why Wrapbook exists. It's why, you know, I decided to try to do something about it as well. And there's just so much that is there across, you know, multiple spectrums of what finances and financial management looks like. So I would say that's constantly there too, and something that's evolving, and I'm glad that there's technology or innovative companies like yourself that are coming into the space to do something about it, because it's been kind of stuck in a stone age process for so long. So yeah, that I would say that's kind of like maybe for two different reasons, different struggles that we've had as a production company, and you're also kind of beholden to the industry. Obviously, the industry right now isn't so hot. It's not what it was, you know, just a couple of years ago. And so it is a constant, ever changing landscape, and you're kind of having to figure out how to roll with the punches, how to get creative in those seasons. It's not quite like a sausage factory, where you can just keep making sausage, and as long as you have the supply chain and you have the distribution channels that you can just constantly make the thing. So there are definitely some unique challenges to our industry, absolutely,

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12:51  

I mean, so I think you touched on two, sort of four problem sets that you have to sort of navigate over the course of your career. One of them is on the financial back end of running a production company, and that really sparked for you the creation of saturation. Can you tell me and our listeners a bit about saturation and how it specifically sort of caters to the needs of the entertainment industry? Yeah,

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13:15  

Saturation is a collaborative based budgeting tool. It really is hyper focused on productions, line item based budgeting, but is even agnostic of film and TV. We kind of have said that it could be any type of project or production that you might be doing, whether that's film, TV, commercials, events, photography. I even did my wedding budget inside of saturation. You know, it's another type of project. A wedding is a production, even though it's a different type of scale. We wanted to be able to bring collaboration with access, control, something that just wasn't happening prior to saturation and what that looked like. Let's

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13:59  

dig into some of the like use cases outside of like examples of projects and like, really dig into the nitty gritty, because again, we have a listenership that are actively working with all different types of budgeting tools. So like, walk me through Jen's like, how saturation enhances the budgeting and financial process for productions, regardless of industry, whether that's events or film and television, etc, yeah,

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14:23  

so traditionally, the way that I think budgeting has been thought of sometimes can be an afterthought or just a I can do this in a Google Sheet, because it's a spreadsheet and it's a table, and I can, you know, put in all my costs associated with the project. What's interesting about a Google Sheet is, I think Google Sheets, or something like a spreadsheet, is very powerful, and you can highly customize it, but then what happens is, fairly quickly, is when you get to scale and you're trying to collaborate, any one thing can throw that off. Could be somebody coming in and messing up a formula, or just that you. You're you're starting to get congested in certain areas, and we've seen this time and time again with different people that we've talked to, where they're afraid to share their budgets. And also, traditionally speaking, in production, budgeting has been a very siloed process. You have somebody like a line producer or somebody that just solely focuses on budgeting that I think has changed within the ever changing landscape of how workflow tools and how just the Internet has changed. What it looks like to collaborate remotely. If you think about collaboration back in the day, everybody was in the same production office, or everybody was in the same room, so the access to certain types of information was readily available or right next to you. Now, trying to collaborate with teams all over the US or the world, it becomes a bit challenging, so we've decided there's got to be a better way to do this. The example of Google Sheets, a lot of other types of management have birthed from maybe something like a spreadsheet and then turned into its own SAAS or platform, right? You have monday.com for, like, tasks. It's a database, yeah? And so, like, whether that's like a monday.com or a task management app or, you know, calendar apps and things like that, notion, it's all birthed out of what used to be like a spreadsheet or a database app and but we haven't seen that for budgeting, budgeting has still remained largely a database or, you know, something that you just manage in a table, which we have that is our core functionality. I would say what sets us apart is the way that we've thought about collaboration is very different than what you can do traditionally in even current shared platforms, I think because you're talking about budgets and numbers, certain types of information and data are going to be shown to certain people. Your executive producers might see a version or a part of a budget that maybe your department heads don't necessarily see, and so there's a level of access control. And traditionally, the way that this has worked is people will take industry leading tools like a movie magic or a hot budget or whatever it is it's a file, they'll put it in Dropbox. They'll then play the sharing thing, where they'll just keep syncing back and forth and saving it back and forth between multiple people and whoever needs access to it, they'll even make multiple documents. Sometimes you're now having 510, different spreadsheets, one for my art department, one for managing what my list is with my Gaffer, for lighting. Another could be with my production manager or my accountant of what's getting actualized. And we found this, that the producer was playing this aggregating of information and then playing octopus, and like each tentacle goes out and tries to share selective information with different people. So we decided to streamline it. Our collaborative based budgeting tool gives certain level of access to certain people, and you get to decide who and what that looks like. Pair that with integration, my biggest issue with budgeting was the amount of manual data that and the manual entry that you have to do when it comes to anything financial management. And so we wanted to be the most integrated budgeting platform where it doesn't matter where your data is coming from, we don't even require you to do the budget inside of saturation. If you wanted to do the budget in another platform and then import that over, and then you're then just being able to then give the access control or track the budget from there afterwards. So it's agnostic of the type of phase that you're in and also who you might be working with.

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18:47  

I mean, I think you've, you've described before in the past, as an emergent, like, sort of data house for these types of important inputs and outputs related to the finances of a project, of an econ, right? You're actually doing some actualization in there as well. Like as you utilize saturation as a database, you're also kind of retaining core information that can make your next budget easier to produce, or your next sort of productions actualization process easier. Is that accurate? Yeah,

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19:17  

yeah. There is a part of our app that is just for actualization. And as you know, actualization has been a very manual process for most production teams, where they're going into a spreadsheet and then just typing out whatever the costs were. And to your point, we just want to be able to integrate the data to make it quicker. Yep, one of the ways that we do that is that we give you the ability to connect your bank accounts and credit cards to the platform, and then now it's just a one button click to actualize certain costs that are associated with that production or project.

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19:51  

That's awesome. I'm curious, like, I think those are like, some pretty helpful tools for producers and production companies. Just. Straight up. I'm curious that Jen's like looking towards the future. How do you see the intersection of your technology and film productions

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20:07  

evolving? You know, our ethos and our core driver is helping creative stay creative. However that manifests. We are constantly evolving with the ever changing landscape. But a lot of that is figuring out how to automate certain parts of what is manual labor, or what is like. I tell people all the time that I became a filmmaker to be creative, and I ended up becoming an accountant, and I don't want to do any of that. It just kind of fell into my my role, or my hat. So how we can continue to help automate that process, or be able to just connect the dots for certain types of projects or productions we want to be able to do so you've seen this a lot in the consumer space. When you think about like consumer budgeting, the mints of the world, or like co pilot, or what QuickBooks has done, they've been able to some, in some ways, visualize data better, connect the dots better, and we're just trying to bring some of that more modern tool sets to projects in production.

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21:14  

Lastly, you know, what advice would you give aspiring producers who are looking to sort of make a significant impact in the industry, both creatively, commercially, maybe even technically, based off of sort of your experience. And you know, we didn't even get into this, but I know that you even had a scent as a restaurateur. You know, you've spanned the gamut of sort of creative endeavors, which you've

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21:36  

been to one of the few. Yes, I you know, I think it's something to the earlier problem that I, that I was starting to share, which is, you're constantly selling. You're constantly having to get back on the horse. There's a lot of no's. There's a lot of you can't, or you shouldn't, or, you know, it's not needed, or, you know, whatever it might be, you're, you're going to hear a lot of that, and you have to know, to your core, that this is something that you want to spend the next couple years on, or, you know, because if you think of your time as a currency, you really do need to make sure that you're focused on what it is that you want to do, whether it's for impact, or whether it's missionally, or whether it's philanthropically, make sure The types of projects that you want to do are what you want to work on. You only have a, if you're lucky, you probably have like, you know, 510, films really like that you might be able to, like, meaningfully be a part of. And then, what is that? What is your top five? Are you just working on what's coming in front of you, or are you working on what you actually want to pursue and do, and what you want to be known for, and what your legacy is going to be. And that's something that's been a more recent, even reconciliation in my own career. It's like, okay, I've been able to do some really meaningful stuff, and I want to make sure that the next, you know, handful of projects that we do, so it's a constant re upping of your focus, and that if you are true to what this is, then no amount of no's should stop you from doing whatever that is. So it's keep the hustle alive, keep the why a center to what you're doing. That's

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23:17  

awesome. Jens, thank you so much for joining me and sharing a bit of your story. How can people find you?

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23:22  

You can find me wherever you can Google me. I guess Jens Jacob or jensjacob24 is usually what you can find my socials as or feel free to look us up at sypherfilms.com or saturation.io awesome Jens. Thanks for joining me. Thanks. Cameron