This project was our first big step.

Bringing content creation in-house, I knew I wanted it to be more than just filming on iPhones and throwing together reels. The vision has always been to get paid to create beautiful things.

Having worked with artists and arts organisations in the early days of Forge Studio, I knew one thing for certain: convincing people to pay for art can be really hard. So, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and offered to do this shoot for free.

Part of me squirmed doing this, despite finally growing Forge Studio to a point where we didn’t need to offer freebies or discounts, this project was essential to prove if this production team had legs.

Our team was very green, and running a production house was new territory for me. But by focusing on what worked well when I started propGen, now Forge Studio, I quickly found my footing. The key tenets remain the same, and I still say them in every meeting:

"Fkn good design" and "ROI for all."

This meant making the best assets possible (only limited by our limited gear), which involved more than a few shopping trips to DJI. It was a scary investment for someone who built a business with a nice cashflow off a laptop and a handful of subscriptions.

Before the shoot, I sat down with Lawrence and Lachlan at our local WeWork to quickly develop some rough pricing models, offer various options, and look for ways to operate a production company like a design agency. It was about more than just making videos; it was about creating something new and different, with a deep consideration for emerging technology and how it's rapidly shifting. Just like my digital work, production was starting to become quicker and more efficient than ever before with AI led software, so we had to leverage new tech and embrace it off the jump.

One of the initial ideas was to keep all the footage for use as B-roll in future edits, ensuring nothing went to waste. This meant investing in storage, as a standard shoot could produce 500GB of raw footage....another few thousand dollars spent hard drives 🫠

From running ad campaigns, we knew the importance of creating content in different aspect ratios. Years ago, when working on real estate ads, it was painstaking work making graphics in every possible aspect ratio to be rewarded by algorithms. So, our own creative IP evolved: every production would be exported in both desktop and vertical aspect ratios, doubling the deliverables and preparing them for social media.

The finished product exceeded expectations. We had successfully made the "hardest barber video of all time" and the response was incredible – and after a quick ad campaign on Instagram, the inquiries started pouring in, validating the concept and approach.

This team has legs.

We were cooking.