EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

OUR INTERVIEW WITH Joshua

Nick Lange

Alright guys, welcome back to the show. Today, we’re here with Joshua Noel – creator of Sonduck, and one of the most popular VFX and color correction and editing teachers on YouTube. They make tutorials about every style of animation and post-production you can possibly want, and sell hundreds or thousands of amazing after effects and other templates at sonduckfilm.com.

Joshua Noel

Thank you, Nick. I really appreciate you having me here.

Nick Lange

Well, Josh, I’d love to just start with your story of how you got into film.

Joshua Noel

Yeah, so, I mean, I really felt like me getting to film was something I didn’t really choose; I kind of just rolled into it. So, my entire path started back when I was a young teenager – 13-years-old – playing a simple video game called Call of Duty – and I was exceptionally somehow really good at it. I didn’t even play that much when I first started, but someone suggested I should start recording and uploading these gameplay montages – and that’s exactly what I did. I got a capture card device and we started – I started, you know, coding like gameplay and uploading to YouTube, and a community started to form around gaming and this was fairly new back in 2007– 2008. And, you know, people were bringing in some really cool edits into their videos, and I really wanted to learn how to do that. So, I downloaded, you know, Adobe After Effects and started learning, you know, VFX and motion graphics to implement that into my projects. So then, when I graduated high school, I got into TV production, and I was able to implement those skills that I learned from game editing and put it into VFX for short film content, and that got me into actually making short films and filming and having to learn all these new skills. So, by the time I graduated from high school, I decided that I definitely want to film – pursue film, but also I had the opportunity to film a handful of different client projects right away, you know, through motion graphic projects and also video production clients that I had to, you know, produce. So, that’s kind of how it rolled in over that. I’ve always loved creating content, and specifically telling, you know, stories with film. Of course, you do what you have to do as you graduate college, and you do what’s makes most sense financially, I guess, as well.

Nick Lange

When you were doing those eSports videos, you had one video – I think it’s Call of Duty, where you had like eighty-four kills in a row. 

Joshua Noel

Wow, that’s incredible that you found that.

Nick Lange

And that video got a hundred  – a hundred 100,000 views, plus. So, what was that like, building a – an eSports channel way before it was cool? That was like 14 years ago, right?

Joshua Noel

Yeah, something like that. I mean, first of all, I’m gonna say how impressed I am for you finding that video. That’s crazy. I still remember as of yesterday I got that, because that was a big deal, that one specific gameplay. But with that said, when I was 13, 14, 15-years old – that’s when I guess the timeline that I was doing this – you don’t know – like at that young, you don’t actually know how big this could have been. Especially back then, there really wasn’t a massive community around this. There really wasn’t a way to make money or anything, and I think the only way you can make money back then was with a machinima contract if you –

Nick Lange

Oh, yeah, wow. MCM. I forgot about that. 

Joshua Noel

Yeah, I had one, but that’s when I was – anyway, let’s just move on there.

Nick Lange

They kind of – they kind of imploded within like, a year or two of their height, right?

Joshua Noel

Yeah, they’re – I don’t – they’re not around anymore, as far as I know. Yeah, but as a young kid, you don’t – I see the – how big this could have been. I was just doing it because I enjoyed it. I had a great time, but if I would have known and, you know, what I know now, I probably would have stuck with it a little bit longer, at least. But the thing is, I realized, like, that’s not truly what I want to do with my life; sit around and play video games. Nothing wrong with that if you’re, you know, making money and, you know, producing great content, but it’s not – I think I have one thing I realized is that, you know, it’s very hard to sustain that, because one, you’re reliant on the game, and games constantly become, like, outdated; the new version – the next game comes on, or the next big thing like Fortnite or whatever is coming along, and then you have to constantly be playing to be good at that game; and then you also have to be consistent with producing content. That’s not something I wanted to do when I was that young, but knowing what I know now, and seeing that some of the people that I played with are actually, you know, have millions of subscribers – you know, maybe I would have done things differently. But at the same time, I’m very happy how things turned out. So yeah, when I was young, I had no idea what I was doing or understood the – what could the – you know, what the potential could have been.

Nick Lange

Did those guys go to Twitch, or where are they – tell me about those guys that are now – that you once played with. What are their careers like?

Joshua Noel

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I know they don’t play Call of Duty. I know they probably play more Minecraft.

Nick Lange

Oh, really? 

Joshua Noel

Yeah, I don’t watch their – I don’t watch any gaming content anymore. So, I don’t know what they’re doing specifically. I just knew the last time I looked at them, you know, they had several – you know, they were very – they were really popping off their viewership and all that.

Nick Lange

Those guys – so, how involved do they get in the actual production of the videos? Is it more Livestream focus, or are they doing some pretty sophisticated post work?

Joshua Noel

So, I mean, it depends on what time frame we’re talking about. Today, everyone seems like they stream. Right? And I – my expertise in that is I don’t do it, so I don’t really know. But back when I was young – 15-years-old – I mean, people – the montage was the thing. Nowadays, it’s the gameplay commentary that you just record it live through a stream, and you post it, and it’s kind of done, which is very smart. But back when I was doing it like, it was all about how good is your montage? Is it very well edited? Does it have this awesome soundtrack to it? How’s the gameplay? And that was the loop that I was kind of stuck in, and if I was more into the gameplay commentary, I probably wouldn’t have, you know, moved on; because when you’re creating this highly edited montage that requires great gameplay clips, it takes several months to record it, and then you have to have the skills to actually edit it or get someone to edit it. So, it takes months to produce one video. So, that’s my experience. But today, obviously, we see people live stream, and they just post their clip on to YouTube when they streamed it on Twitch or whatever it may be.

Nick Lange

So, when did you shift to teaching After Effects, specifically? So, you took that pause from gaming – then what?

Joshua Noel

Yeah, so, I – so you got to fast forward several years of my life here. I was doing client projects, but I also was doing – I also loved color grading. And I started posting DaVinci Resolve tutorials on color grading, so, I didn’t do it to make a YouTube channel; I just wanted to just share this information that I have learned from color grading. I didn’t do it for any reason; I think I just wanted to do it for fun, to be honest with you, when I first started. And so, for the first two years, I just posted maybe one video a month, not taking it seriously; just hey, I want to put something out there. I’m bored. I think this might be fun. And then after doing a, you know – after having a lot of experience doing client work, you know – and I think at that time, when I made the transition over to doing tutorials, I think we have five thousand subscribers on YouTube channel. So, from doing client work, I learned that I don’t love, you know, constantly doing client work. I don’t like really working with clients to be honest with you. You know, everyone has their own needs, every job is different, and one thing I was constantly was doing was, you know, working for clients rather than also building my business. And I really wanted to business – I really wanted a business that I could focus on for myself, rather than focusing on someone else’s business. So, I had 5000 subscribers. I had some really bad experience with client work. Very unlucky. It’s probably not, you know, spotting out in everyone’s situation, but I realized I see this opportunity. So, I started posting four videos a week and it quickly grew into teaching After Effects content at that time.

Nick Lange

That’s awesome. What happened with the client projects? What was that bad experience?

Joshua Noel

So, I did – I’m a person that pursues knowledge. I love to learn things. Right? So, I was learning website design. I was learning, you know, graphics design and everything that you can know for creating content from, you know, from digital creation. So, that’s websites, video production, motion graphics, graphic design – and I had some very rough clients. And I was actually kind of – I designed a website for a client and they were nightmarish. Right? Like, I probably undercharged them, but I was also afraid that they were gonna sue me at one point. 

Nick Lange

Wow!

Joshua Noel

Yeah, it was – like, when you hire someone to design a website, especially something that for an ecommerce site, you know, you create the website, but you need to hire them also for ongoing maintenance because things are changing; you’re uploading products and there’s things that can go wrong, and they didn’t want to do that. They expected me to just create this website and that was it, and any bugs that they had moving forward, you know, several months moving forward, just hey, we already paid you – go fix this. I’m like yeah, but this is what happens when you’re updating things on your own; things can break, and they won’t do that. And, you know, they were blaming me for them losing money, but I’m like, I hear – I’m willing to help you, but it was my job just to create this website. But you guys are doing things that is not my problem. You know?

Nick Lange

They thought you were their indentured servant that was just going to be around for forever, fixing things.

Joshua Noel

It was my fault. I mean, I definitely put myself in that situation. Definitely much younger, but also a handful of other things. I mean, one thing that, you know – one thing I was very passionate about was really video production and shooting projects. That’s really what I wanted to do. But when you try to be like a jack of all trades, and you try to do a bunch of everything, you don’t really focus on those things. So, I’m like, you know, I need to just focus on something that I control my business. I want to be able to provide more value into what I’m working on rather than, you know, working a bunch of people’s different businesses and, you know, not being fully happy with everything. So yeah. So, that was my entire reason for, I guess moving forward.

Nick Lange

How did you decide that After Effects was that thing that you were going to focus on? And by the way, I think that’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned and continued to learn: the important of – importance of focus. Not trying to do too many things, and being really a master in one discipline, which you’ve done and more with After Effects.

Joshua Noel

Yeah, so, why we pick After Effects? So, After Effects was definitely my strongest skill set at that time when I decided that we’re gonna make After Effects motion graphics tutorials. I had the intention of implementing filmmaking and cinematography tutorials, but the reason why we stuck with After Effects was because YouTube, you know, it doesn’t really – you don’t really know if YouTube – what content is going to do well. So, my entire strategy is put as much content there – content out there as possible. So, After Effects tutorials are just the – I wouldn’t say the easiest, but they’re definitely the less – they take the least amount of time to create when you’re talking about – relating it – comparing it to like filmmaking tutorials. So, like, I could produce an After Effects tutorial within a day. But a filmmaking tutorial, which is also what I want to do, that can take like a week to do, and the After Effects tutorials were also just performing better and you don’t know what videos will perform well. So, it’s really good to just put as much content out there as possible, and you’re more likely going to have a video that’s going to do really well when you’re posting, you know, three to four videos a week, versus one video a week, because that one video a week can totally flop and can kill your momentum.

Nick Lange

What are the common themes you’ve noticed of your videos that do surprisingly well? What have you learned about popularity for certain topics?

Joshua Noel

You know, there should be some element of originality in the video. So, when I make videos that are similar to something else that’s already been created, they tend to not do as well. So like, for example, I was probably the very first creator to do like top 10 effects in After Effects, and top 10 plugins in After Effects – and those videos got over a million views. But now, almost everyone in this niche is doing those videos, and I even I have recreated those videos, and not none of those other creators or me have out viewed those first, you know, top 10 effects or plugin videos. So yeah, I mean – and since I do, you know, one hundred and four videos a year, I do end up trying to recycle some ideas, and those recycled ideas never really do as well as the original idea. So, it’s really about owning the key word. So – and being the – I wouldn’t say being the first, but at least having the best video out there that’s gonna keep people engaged. And typically, since you’re the first one to it, it already has – your video already has all those metrics, and YouTube knows that the people have been watching this. Here’s the watch time. It’s automatically going to rank higher than the person who’s kind of copying the idea. Right?

Nick Lange

How do you pick your topics? Do you brainstorm as you go through your day? Do you just write down ideas that might be interesting? And then how do you narrow that down to what you actually produce?

Joshua Noel

That’s a great question. I don’t have a great format question for you. So, this is what I do: I have a schedule and I stick to it. I do not miss an upload date. I have not missed – so, we post – we post two videos a week; I have not missed an upload in two years. So, that’s two hundred and about eight videos not missing an upload. So, to me, consistency is key. It doesn’t matter if you can’t come up with ideas; you’re gonna have to figure out. So, what I do is like, okay, it’s two days before we have to release the tutorial. I’m gonna sit down for how many hours. I’m going to search for what idea I want to do and, you know, I use, you know – I sometimes do like, research keyword research on what should be done. But at the end of the day, because I have to be consistent, I don’t have all the time in the world to find the perfect idea. So, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to search on the internet. I’m gonna look through my work. I’m gonna just get some ideas, you know, looking through Instagram, looking at people’s motion graphics. And once I find an idea that like, I liked that idea, I know I can pull it off, I go with it. So, I usually spend a couple hours at most, sometimes thirty minutes – it depends on the day. And once I find it, I go with it. I don’t overthink it; I just do it. So, that’s the entire.

Nick Lange

I like that theme of your YouTube channel is that it’s you’re straight to the point. A lot of tutorial videos will spend a few minutes talking about other things and you’re like, I need this information. When does the information start? Yours literally begin immediately, which I think people probably really appreciate.

Joshua Noel

Yeah, I try to keep that theme up. I think we have lost some of that aspect because we’ve – when I first started the channel, or first started creating tutorials, we didn’t go on camera at all. I didn’t go on camera at all. And then it was all about streaming, we just got it going, but now we get on camera, and we usually say his videos about this. If you want to prove your work – blah, blah, blah. Right? But yeah, we are straight to the point, because I – when I was learning this software – After Effects – all this stuff when I was a teenager, yeah, people would spend a couple of minutes talking about how they were – they had a cold, and they explained that. I’m like, this is evergreen content. So, people who don’t know you are going to be – I mean – yeah, you know,  it sucks that you’re sick, okay. It’s fine. But people five years from now, probably – who don’t know you, don’t care that you were sick; they are there to find – digest the information that they’re looking for. So, my entire strategy is SEO-based. So, I have to assume that nobody – the people watching the video at first don’t know who I am; they’re not gonna care who I am. They’re only there to find this piece of information. So, I want to deliver to them as fast as possible, so they’re not clicking off; they’re not frustrated; and I can provide them the value that they need. So, then they can, you know, like the brand that we’re building. So, that’s my entire strategy.

Nick Lange

What tools do you use for SEO research? How do you know which keywords are going to perform?

Joshua Noel

I have like keywords everywhere. Do I do much SEO research? No. At the end of day, my entire thing is consistency. So, I create the content, and then I form the best performing words around that title and what that title is about. So, you know, at the end of the day, I’m putting in After Effects content. I’ve done every topic, basically. At the end of the day, I’m more focused on watch time and producing something of value. So, that’s – I don’t do too much.

Nick Lange

What is a good runtime for a video in your experience? What do you target?

Joshua Noel

So, as far as average retention?

Nick Lange

Ah, yeah. Are you – how long do you try – do you have a window that you aim for, or is it literally as long as it takes to teach this effect is how long this video is?

Joshua Noel

Oh, okay, I understand. I understand the question. Yeah, so, the average length of a video, basically? What’s my – gotcha. Yeah, so, I do not like doing longer videos; I try to keep everything under ten minutes, roughly around that. So yeah, it’s – I want to get straight to the point. I don’t want to create a twenty minute tutorial; people want to just learn it as fast as possible, especially in a world where like, there’s so much content out there, and people can spend their time doing other things. My goal is to teach it to them as fast as possible. Also, since we’re doing two a week, we can’t do like a thirty minute video, because at that point, it takes several days to create that, whereas a ten minute video can take us one day to do. So, my entire thing is just making sure we are consistent, and we teach straight to the point, and we find that under ten minutes is usually the sweet spot.

Nick Lange

Awesome. What was the first template that you sold? And how did you get into that business? It looks like a big business – thousands of templates, a subscription plan  –  all sorts of different target audiences, even a wedding pack but tons of transitions. You have one that’s just black, and they’re beautiful – the site is beautiful. Each one, you know, makes you really want to explore what’s possible with all these templates. So, it’s clear that you’ve spent years building that out, but how did you get there and what was the first step?

Joshua Noel

Well, thank you for the awesome compliments on my work there – appreciate it. So, it’s a little bit of a longer story. So, when I created the channel, I had no intention – I knew that I wanted to do something kind of businessy around it, but I had no idea what it was gonna be. And I had the opportunity to be an affiliate marketer for some other websites that were selling templates, you know, after a year or so doing content consistently on YouTube. And I saw that, you know, the stuff was selling pretty well, but I wasn’t really happy with the commissions, or I didn’t have any, you know, control over like, any of the business models or pricing or you know?

Nick Lange

How did that work? Affiliate marketing. So, you would basically put a link to someone else’s template at the bottom?

Joshua Noel

Yeah. So yeah, affiliate marketing works – yeah, you pick a product on their website, and you get a tracking link, and you put it on the video description of your video When someone clicks on it, you get a – well, when they buy from that clicking on your link, you get commission off of that.

Nick Lange

And what was that commission like at that time that you weren’t happy with?

Joshua Noel

So, it really wasn’t the percentage; it was the rules of how it kind of worked out. So, like, for example: I want to get paid if they were a repeat customer – and that was also an issue. Yeah, I mean, the percentage was decent enough for me. But at the end of day, like, it was a big brand, and I knew I was referring a lot of repeat customers to them. And also, I really wanted to have a business; and when you’re an affiliate, I don’t believe you have a business. Right? Because you can’t control pricing. You don’t control the product. And it made more sense to me because I wanted to have a business.

Nick Lange

More of a spokesperson, or like a sales rep for that.

Joshua Noel

Yeah, your – I didn’t want to be – I didn’t want my income to be dependent on one source, because selling templates was the highest – was my biggest bulk of my income. The YouTube ad revenue is relatively not high in the tutorial niche. So, I didn’t want one day like, we’re going to cut your percentage in half, which by the way they did after. I mean it. Yeah. So I’m like, yeah, I’m glad I made that decision. So – but I had already switched over to someone else before they cut it. So, they couldn’t cut it because they saw me in competition, but I don’t think that was also the reason. I mean, the person that you had contact with could have just quit, and the new person’s like, was gonna get paid this much? Let’s cut it in half. So, I saw that coming. I’m like, I’m not gonna put my entire future on one business, because that’s me working for like, a client again. I didn’t want that.

Nick Lange

At that point, was that revenue both from the affiliate marketing and then from your own templates bigger than your client revenue? So, was that you’re – strong enough that you could focus exclusively on that if you wanted to?

Joshua Noel

Yeah, so – yeah, I mean, I haven’t – so, I don’t do client work anymore. And back then, when I started making affiliate income, and I was like, okay, I have no reason to do client work anymore. I’m just gonna focus on this content and at least be able to have some level of free time, or at least be able to read books and learn and do this sort of thing. So yeah, the ad revenue back then – yeah, I was still heavily, you know, freelancing and doing other projects. But once I started selling templates, that’s when I was like, okay, I’m going to just focus on this, there’s so much potential here, and also because I was able to focus more on my channel. That’s when I would say we started consistently getting over one million video views a month, and over ten thousand new subscribers a month. So, because I had made that shift in focus, I was able to I think produce better content as well.

Nick Lange

would you say that the the way I view that transition from client work to creating your own product and selling it direct to consumer is that takes a lot longer building something, building an audience building products that you can sell. But when you get there, the revenue is generally greater, and it’s less demand on your time, would you say to the client work was sort of the necessary support that you needed was the revenue that that let you build these products, build this audience so that you could make that transition.

Joshua Noel

So it really was the affiliate income that allowed me to build our own products. So I didn’t have time to actually be the one only creating the product. So I had to be able to hire other people to part of my team to create the templates as now we have people that create these templates. Now, I don’t actually create any more templates, because I’m focused on running the business as a whole and still making sure we’re creating YouTube content. That’s my big focus. So now I’m like, Hey, this is a project we’re doing. Or we work as a team, and it’s like, this is what needs to get done. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, at that time, when, before, when we started creating templates, I was already doing YouTube full time. I wasn’t doing any more client work.

Nick Lange

So tell me about how you’ve built this team, how you found these the the right template designers, do you choose the templates that they’re going to work on? What’s the process of work?

Joshua Noel

So it’s different. So it depends on who it is. We have some ongoing projects, and I’m just like, hey, within my internal team here in your, in our city, we like, hey, well, you guys wanna work on here’s some ideas, let’s do this project. And usually, those are smaller templates. And then we I have a context that live across the world. And I’m like, there are already template creators. And I’m like, okay, whatever you create whatever you want, as long as good, I will pay for it, and it will sell it. So that’s how that kind of works. So I have, yeah, it’s a way for us. So I can have people produce the best work that they want to do. And then we have a team here that’s like, we can’t produce as many because, you know, you don’t want to do that having to do budget for things. But, you know, let’s create something that we need.

Nick Lange

Yeah. What’s the future of your template? Business? So when did you launch this subscription? How was that performing? How do you limit people from? So you know, they’ll see the this bulk pack for a couple $100 with 1000s of templates, then they’ll see this $18 A month subscription? And maybe you’re tempted to say, I’m gonna go in there and download everything. How do you moderate that?

Joshua Noel

Okay, that’s a big question. So let’s see. We launched the subscription back at the end of March. So it’s only been there for a few months. The reason why we started this subscription is because we’re constantly adding in new packs, new templates out and 1000s of new templates almost every single month. And people were huddled, we had the bundle deals where you could buy everything we have at like, you know, a 5060 70% discount. And one thing we saw that as we’re adding more packs, people were like, hey, you know, can you give me a discount, so I can upgrade or, you know, they were missing out on all this other content. So they had to spend, you know, the full price to buy the single pack rather than saving money on the bundle. So I’m like, it probably just makes sense, just to have a subscription to where people that want all of our future contents. And all of our past content, they can just describe at a you know, what I’m considering, like what costs, you know, for one lunch, you know, out a month, for 18 bucks, that he’s describing everything we post in the future and everything we currently have. It’s great. Yeah. Yeah, so what I’m trying to cater to people that want to own the product, but also, you know, care about having as much assets as possible without, you know, having to buy the single packs that they buy a bundle in the future, if that makes any sense.

Nick Lange

Absolutely does. And so how, again, how do you stop people from taking advantage of that and saying, I’m gonna get everything for one month?

Joshua Noel

Yeah. So how it works is, you don’t download any of this to your you don’t download individual templates to your computer. Right? So you can import it? How do you download a pack into After Effects or Premiere Pro? And in that pack, you might have 1000 plus templates, right? Out of all the packs that we have, we have, I think currently 12,000 Plus templates. And, yeah, so if they unsubscribe, they lose access to all those packs, right. But they don’t lose access to the templates, the important in the project file, but you can’t realistically import all those templates into a project file. So I’m not so worried about that. So, because if you try to import all these templates in a project file, I mean, it’s gonna take time. And also it’s gonna, if you don’t, our big feature isn’t so much the templates is the pre viewable extension window. So unlike other templates, websites, where you have to go onto their website, you have to watch the promo, then you have to download it, you have to unzip the file, and then you have to import it into your project. And it might not be the right template for your project after you realize that anyone who works with music knows this, like you might download a song for your project. It doesn’t fit into your edit when you thought it was going to work. So you have to download it again, unzip the file, same thing with templates with our product. You have this extension with all the templates in so you can preview it inside of After Effects and Premiere Pro, you apply into your project. If it wasn’t the right fit for it, you delete it, and you import another project another template into your project. So so it’s the extension window, which is really the main product.

Nick Lange

Okay, okay. That’s, that’s cool. And how will you evolve the offering what what templates will you add additional software’s as time passes?

Joshua Noel

Yeah, so I’m worth I’m focused on me Be sure that we create templates that fit every single need and make sure we have every style and type of genre of templates, if you will, you know, we do have plans on to moving into other applications. So right now, we’re only add effects and Premiere Pro, but our extension is built for Photoshop and Illustrator. That’s something I want to hit. But really right now I want to produce the best experience for motion designers and video editors. So I’m really much focused on that experience. And since we just launched scription, a few months ago, I don’t want to go full out at the moment until maybe a couple like until like a year has passed, because I want to make sure that if there’s any bugs, we get that fixed, I want to make sure that this thing entire thing is tailored to produce a great customer experience. But we do have some plans to move on to other software and obviously more candidates.

Nick Lange

I want to come back to the subscription in a moment. But on the topic of software, what’s what’s coming up right now? How do you feel about DaVinci? How do you feel about some of the other free software out there? Blender unity? Could it can that be relevant in the types of animation that you’re teaching?

Joshua Noel

Yeah, so I first of all, love when something else comes to the market, that’s a game changer. I’m all for, you know, better software, making it more accessible to people because it’s free. I’m all for that. And I, I want things to be better. I’m all good. It’s just some some software comes and knocks out Adobe, I’m all for it. I mean, we’ll just switch over to that, we’ll make that change over time. And we’ll get to reproduce all of our YouTube content is great was doing that software. Exactly, exactly. But as I said, I don’t as a creator, as a, you know, I don’t consider myself an artist, but let’s just say that’s the term I’m going to use, right? I’m not so much obsessed with the tools, I’m more obsessed with the trends in the, in the craft, rather than the individual tools, because one day, you know, as a, as a filmmaker, for example, you know, it’s not the camera that produces a great image, it’s the team behind it. So for me, I’m always focused on what styles are being produced. And if there’s a specific tool being used to create that, then that’s where you will learn that but for me, you know, I’m mostly focused on 2d motion graphics. And outside of, you know, doing motion graphics, you know, I love cinematography. So I’m focused on just that specific part of that crap. So I don’t have great insight on the new technology other than I’m totally for it.

Nick Lange

What are the trends that you’re seeing right now in 2d motion graphics? What’s what’s hot? A lot? What’s becoming cool?

Joshua Noel

Yeah, a lot of typography, texturing. Definitely a more movement towards 3d. But at the end of the day, I think what’s best for people is not just the trends, but as an individual creator, to form your own style and sticking with it. Right, because trends will constantly change. But you know, as a creative, you want to do what you can to stand out. And if you’re just like everyone else, you’re not going to have much price negotiating power. And because if someone else can do what you can do, you know, then someone else is competing with your price. But if you have a style that no one else can replicate, you get to dictate what your price is going to be if people are interested in what you create. So what I have, or what I talked about is, don’t be so focused on copying someone else do it to learn, that’s fine. But Nia be focused on what individual methods can you implement into your work that is going to make you stand out? You know, what effects are the best? You know, what, what’s your color palette look like? What typography should you use? Think about these things and form of your style. And that will benefit you way more than any trend that’s going on.

Nick Lange

Oh, that’s, that’s cool. I totally agree. How so for those artists, those motion designers that are learning from you, learning from other creators, developing their own style, what’s the best way to transition that into a career? How do they get their work seen? What are the most exciting paths and getting traction for your animation work?

Joshua Noel

That’s a great question. It’s an amazing question. And here’s the thing. The reality of being a creative person is that there’s two sides to make him money, right? You have to have somewhat of a business mind and you also have somewhat of a creative mind. So what that means is I find a lot of people who are amazing i at creating content at their craft, they’re awesome. But they’re not making that much money when they could be. And vice versa. I see people who are really good at business that are not great creatively, and they probably, they more than likely hire other people to create the work for them. So as if you’re the creative person, that’s great at creating content, this is what you want to do. It’s important just read a couple of books on main business. You know, figure out what you want to do first of all, establish like, do you want to be an employee? Do you want to be a freelancer? Or do you want to run a business, right? Those are all three different things. If you want to be an employee, that’s totally great. Build up your portfolio, get your portfolio website out there and apply to those jobs. If you wanna be in freelancers, there’s plenty of websites out there that can help you, you know, you might want to sell yourself locally. You know, build out your portfolio, build out those gigs, if you’re gonna say five, or whatever, you know, freelance website is best for you. If you want to run a business, you’re gonna have to learn what it takes to build systems and execute those things. But at the same time, there’s a balance that you’re gonna have to figure it out as a creativity. It’s not just about creating great work. It’s also about being able to market yourself, and you’re gonna have to learn some of those skills as well. If you want to be successful as a creative person.

Nick Lange

Any books that you recommend or blogs, reads or podcasts you listen to?

Joshua Noel

Lots of books now I have to look back at the bookshelf there. I think mastery from Robert Greene is a great book.

Millionaire Fastlane is great. A good starter book, if you want a new business as a Acme implemented to anything. Trying to pick the best ones here. You don’t mind me looking away. Yeah, I’m gonna have to get up here. It’s like one second. Probably go with psychology. Money is a great starter book, if you want to learn about money. As we say also.com secrets one on one is great if you want to build your presence, through marketing through emails, and understanding how to build a funnel as a creative. But yeah, I mean, there’s a handful of books, I just don’t want to get up and look at all of them in my head.

Nick Lange

That’s great. Well, you tell me about about your funnel for for service, trying to remember the well. I’ll rephrase that, we’ll get this. Will you tell somebody about about your funnel? How do you get people to your site? How do you get them to sign up? And what have you learned along the way designing that?

Joshua Noel

Okay, so I am, in fact, I’m actually, as a fun project, I am writing a small book on how to do this stuff. And I’m gonna get that out in the near future. But I follow. I want to thank you, I follow three things. All right, free value, great product, and great customer support. So my entire funnel starts off. Well, not the entire thing, but for the most part is by providing free value. So through our YouTube videos, we’re able to build a relationship with people that watch it in Washington videos, he gets to see the content, you know, we’re not asking them for anything, or, you know, they’re not paying for anything to watch the content. They’re able to learn and get value from the videos as they hope they are. And as a result, we, you know, we talk about some of the other products that we have that are also there to help save you time and produce awesome work. So as a result, we’re able to fly that fee value mission, our product, people click on the link and then we are able to show them those products wherever they want to click on whatever it is. And then we get them in further into our funnels through retargeting. We also have a free packs, we have several free packs where we, you know, we have put them on our email list where we provide even more free value, but also offer several discounts every now and then to get them to buy those products. So that’s the very, very top end of that funnel there.

Nick Lange

When your retargeting Are you showing them display ads of templates that they looked at? Or how do you what do you? How are you doing that?

Joshua Noel

Right? Yeah, I mean, it’s pre roll on YouTube. I don’t play around with Facebook. I stick to one thing, right? I want to just be focused on the stuff on something that I know because everything always changes on these other platforms. Yeah, so you know, we’ll show them you know, a temp With that they really like well mention, hey, you can download this free pack you didn’t buy. So here’s try this out with a free pack that you probably didn’t know about. So then you can try it. And also, here’s the beauty of it. When you download the free pack, I mean, this is the beauty from a business perspective, let’s say that, okay, we download the free pack inside of the extension window that we’ve talked about earlier, when you see all these templates, they’re able to see all the packs that we actually sell. And there’s links right over that pack. So while they’re editing and After Effects or Premiere Pro, they see our product that’s in there. And hopefully, they’re using the free templates in there helpful. So I have a, you know, your charter company? Yeah. I don’t know anything about coding. So I had to outsource that. And he’s, I consider him a partner. It is an amazing service.

Nick Lange

Yeah. And so for the email list, so you’re building I imagined a huge email list through all this free content through the signups for the free templates, etc. How do you market to them? What what are you? What are you putting into newsletters? And how frequently are you

Joshua Noel

selling? Right? So we have this automated list, right? So in the list, when you first join up, sign up, you’re gonna get an email every other day, for several months, where we talk about how to get work. As a motion designer, as a video editor, as religious as a creative in general, the advice can be applied to anyone you know how to build, you know, what tips we have for building a portfolio, you know, even specific motion graphic tips as well. So really, the goal is to just provide value not to sell to them initially. But, you know, we do run, you know, consistent discounts on our products. So while you’re getting these, hopefully, you know, great value free emails, you know, you as you’ll watch our content on YouTube, and see some of the other ads. You know, a product that maybe you’re interested in, is now on sale for a limited time, and maybe that will hopefully I get some of the bite, which does perform. So awesome. That’s, that’s the goal.

Nick Lange

Okay, very, very impressive. Once people are subscribers, is there are a community element? Can they Is there a discord? Can they communicate with each other? Or is that on the roadmap?

Joshua Noel

No, actually, I have not. We have not even really considered that. I mean, it’s been backstops. But no, I haven’t had any plans for that at the moment. Okay, unfortunately. Okay. That’s just for playing.

Nick Lange 

Oh, you know, I’d really like to hear about your short films. And so I looked at rate. I looked at Aakash, I’m forgetting the names. There are a number of celebrate short films that you’ve produced. appreciate some of them. Wraith, I think he produced for $1,500 in two days, is that right? That is crowded you tell me about that. Tell me about your ongoing efforts to keep making really high quality short films. And and why you do it.

Joshua Noel

Gotcha. So filmmaking is what I truly enjoy doing. I love it. But also then a day, it’s not my business, right? You don’t really have a way to make money doing it. Yeah, I get it. Like you go to festivals, and you get to meet people I don’t, that’s not my strategy in life, I want to build my own thing. So I haven’t made any short films recently. I’ll get into that in a second. But as far as, you know, when I make short films, you know, I have a network of people that I’m able to tap into, like, hey, you know, let’s work on this project. And I’m able to get people, you know, get people excited about working on this thing. So we can, you know, kind of do this on the low budget side. And usually what we do is, if we’re filming in a house, we’ll Airbnb a place for a couple of days, and we’ll film that project there, or we’ll go to get those locations. And, you know, we either outsource some of the post production to our network, or I do a lot of it, because I enjoy it or whatever. But I really my goal is I partner with someone who’s also going to be a co producer at the same level of producing level as me. So we have to have these networks put together to produce these, you know, this low budget, but also trying to make as high quality as possible film project, but we do it for fun. I’m not doing it because I want to because I can’t make money off of that I do. I love doing it. So because I love doing it. You know, I’m getting to the point where we’re going to start implementing some short film content into our marketing. So for example, I’m really much focused on business and I took a couple year break to make sure that we can start producing Some templates and billing this entire program that we had that we have, because I want to actually make short films that have a purpose other than fun or going to festivals. So as we add more content, I will be producing some short films to promote that content, but also trying to prove something that’s entertaining as well.

Nick Lange

Awesome. And so I saw on your channel, you’re going into some of the making of some of the color correction or some of the filmmaking technique that you use, is that one way that you’ll be producing, or one one motivation for making more short films that sort of letting letting your audience go behind the scenes of the production and post?

Joshua Noel

That is something we would obviously do, I love producing those types of that type of content. The issue is, it takes a long time to do it. And then day, if I’m gonna produce content, I don’t want to do it for viewership, I want to just do it. Because I think it’s going to be a great piece of content, and we can really relate it to something that we’re selling on our website. So at the knee, yeah, well, we’ll produce BTS content and showcase those techniques being used in those videos. So, yeah, I don’t really have much to say on that.

Nick Lange

It’s great. Do you see yourself producing a feature?

Joshua Noel

No, no, no. No, I don’t think so. Maybe not now, maybe in the next 10 years from now. It’s a lot of work. It’s also a massive risk. And I’m not the type of person that I like to take calculated risk. And with the film industry, there’s a lot of variables that you do not control. And you have to, if you’re gonna make money, you’re more than likely going to have to make some deals, now you can post it online, and, you know, whatever Amazon or whatever it may be, and try and maximize how much money you make. But then you have the whole marketing factor, you have to, you’d be responsible for marketing, some of that cost maybe $20k. And using your own money, you know, that’s, that’s a risk right there. Because, you know, maybe if, if you’ve run ads, you know, like how much you can cost and make a conversion, I think something like that, there’s no upsells, there’s no bundles or anything there to increase your conversion, there’s no really way to retain a customer. So I don’t personally see the value in self-marketing of film. So therefore, you have to go through to the actual traditional distribution route. And then you have all these companies taking percentages, and blah, blah, blah, and all this bureaucracy and politics and I’m not worth that I like just, I love freedom, I love being able to create what I want. And with films, I would like to do it where there’s not a dollar sign back in my head that we have to recoup our costs. So that’s probably why I won’t do a feature.

Nick Lange

I get that. Tell me about the freedom that you have right now that you’ve created through this lifestyle.

Joshua Noel

Well, let me see if I can do whatever I want. Basically, I mean, obviously, you know, I’m very much involved in my YouTube channel. So you know, I have to still give people what they want. But as far as not having really, I mean, here’s the thing. When you decide to not work for anyone, you build your own business, that’s the myth. First of all, when you have 1000s of customers, you now have 1000s of bosses you just created for yourself, you serve them. So at the end of day, I, my freedom is to just accomplish what I want to do, which is free value, great product and great customer support. You know, that’s my entire strategy. But yeah, I can do whatever I kind of want. But in day, I do work for my customers. And then my biggest concern, so if someone writes an email to me, I have to take care of that and serve that right. So make sure they’re promised. But yeah, there isn’t anybody that is dictating what I do at the end of the day as far as like an individual as a business I can wake up and kind of do whatever. Yeah, that’s all having options. Having options is what creates freedom.

Nick Lange

What are your thoughts on the value of film school? A lot of people ask, is it worth it? Should I go to film school?

Joshua Noel

I went to Flagler College.

Nick Lange

Okay, what was the value of that experience? I’d love to hear about, you know, paying off that that student loan which was a lot lower than some of the other student loans that that people are saddled with? And what advice do you have for people who are trying to learn as much as they can about filmmaking about post production and just looking for the fastest way of creating a career.

Joshua Noel 

The biggest piece of advice I would love to share is watch what it caught, like, look at how much it costs to get this degree. And don’t put yourself in a situation where you’re not going to be able to pay it back within talent manner. It’s not worth going to, it’s not worth paying 50, grand, 40 grand, whatever it may be a year to get a degree, and something that you can learn online for free. If you’re able to pursue an education, you know, a college education in a creative field, not just filmmaking, any of it, and you can do it without debt. You know, I know that that’s a challenging thing. But if you can do it, where it’s not gonna be that bad, where it’s reasonable, where you could pay it back within, you know, your first year salary as a job, then that’s something but if you’re gonna be loaded with $200,000, of debt, or even obviously $50,000 in debt, by the time you graduate, you’re, you’re really putting yourself in a very tough situation financially, even though as, as a young adult, especially me when, when I was college, like, Yeah, dude, I’m gonna be a millionaire, making films and stuff, you know, and it’s no problem, it’s a small investment, that’s not a great reality, to live in a great mindset to have, you need to be thinking about stuff financially. So at the end day, don’t put yourself in a bad financial situation to get a piece of paper and thinking that you’re going to be able to pay it back in the first year. Or, you know, because at the end of day with interest rates, and then being able to pay for your cost of living is going to be incredibly challenging. It can take years, even decades to make a decent income with the fields of folk field, a study that you went in for. But with everything that you you can learn everything creatively for free online, it’d be better to pursue that. And if you have to go to college, get a degree in something that will actually get you a job, a film degree doesn’t actually get you a job unless maybe you’re applying for some government position, you know, in the media, PR, whatever it may be. But no, not, I don’t, I don’t see an actual job that requires you to have, yeah, you do see the four year degree, but specifically your portfolio is the reason why you’re going to get a job, your portfolio and who you are, as a person, some opportunities may be off the table to get you on the piece of paper, but you’re gonna have plenty of opportunities, if you’re great creatively, you have great, you know, personally, personality type skills. And you’re not going to be you’re not going to be held down with his debt when it’s sad that people don’t, as a young adult, 1819 years old, you don’t know these things about interest rates, you don’t you can’t really fathom the fact that you’re gonna maybe be $100,000 in debt. And you just think, Oh, no big deal, you know, just be careful.

Nick Lange

I feel the same way. We were talking before this podcast, I did one semester of grad school film MFA program in New York. And after that one semester between going in that one semester, between tuition and books and housing, I was about $50,000 in debt. And I was looking ahead at it students coming out of this program about two years farther along than me coming out with about $300,000 of debt. And I said, this is a really brutal way of starting a film career, we’re not getting hired at a fancy law firm or into a prestigious hospital because of the degrees that we’re getting. We’re just part of the pack every other you know, starving filmmaker trying to create a career and, you know, being being saddled with a mortgage sighs that is a really painful way of going about that.

Joshua Noel

He can’t, you can’t find out that you can’t file for bankruptcy on it either.

Nick Lange

You can’t, you can’t dropping out was was the right choice, painful and scary and hard. But and it took me quite a while just to work off that $50,000 debt. But I can only imagine how much harder it is.

Joshua Noel

Here’s what’s crazy about it, you can get a loan on something that’s not guaranteed to make money, right, though, like your $300,000 in debt, there’s no guarantee that piece of paper is going to make you money, and you can get a loan for it. But no bank would ever give you a loan for you know, financing $100,000 worth of gear to start your production company where there’s actually a better chance of making money right there but this piece of paper Yeah, well, yeah, it’d be a several $100,000 in debt by the time you graduate, and then you’ve figured out that it it’s so bad, but yeah, it’s a sad reality for sure.

Nick Lange

It is. One that I had I had a question for you. Let’s see, I was gonna ask you Oh, well, I’d love to hear what what you what are your favorite YouTube channels? Where do you go to learn and find inspiration when you’re not working on your own stuff?

Joshua Noel

As far as like people in the niche?

Nick Lange

Actually I’d love to hear any YouTube channel, but also anyone else teaching visual effects or editing or who else is doing a great job teaching out there and your opinion.

Joshua Noel 

So I have a rule of thumb, I try not to look at other YouTube content creators in the niche, because I want to avoid making sure I don’t copy them. Because there are times when it’s in my videos, when somehow it happens. People were like, Oh, you took it from this person. And like, I didn’t even look at their content. But because I produce because I produce two videos a week is there’s bound to be some level of overlap. So I tried to avoid that. But end of the day, like there are some great teachers that I know of right, so on YouTube. So like I know, don’t motions is one bed Mario is the other one. Obviously, Video Copilot from back in the day, Andrew Kramer, definitely the best. You know, I think the best teacher in the niche of all time, sadly, he I guess he’s more focused on his business, and he doesn’t create content anymore. But, you know, one thing I see in this niche is that there are some great teachers here and here and there. So like one of my favorite from back in the day was Mount MoGraph. And he doesn’t produce content anymore. And the sad reality is niche, if you don’t figure out how to build a business around it, you’re probably not going to stay in it for a long time, because YouTube ad revenue is not enough to sustain a life on. So I see a lot of great people over time that are no longer creating content, because of that reality. So yeah, I mean, as a, as a creative person, I think it’s important to you know, be focused on learning your craft. But at same time, you also want to broaden your knowledge as well. Because when you’re working with motion graphics, there’s physics involved. There’s lighting involved. You know, there’s other real world aspects. So it’s good to maybe learn a little bit about science, read a book or whatever, and learn other topics to then you can implement your work. So like, I love physics, right? I mean, I don’t know if I love this, but I know I think about it when I’m doing my motion graphics. And that’s not something I exactly, cause in effect sort of deal.

Nick Lange

So how will that translate to? I don’t know what your thoughts on the metaverse are. But as more and more visual effects artists are pulled into creating worlds or objects. How are the skills that you’re teaching going to translate to that future?

Joshua Noel

I was very so. I haven’t looked at the metaverse lately, but when I first was learning about it, I was very excited about it. I’m still very, very positive are still very excited for it. So I would think that there’ll be a great opportunity for motion designers for post production people that create digital services for the metaverse. I don’t know where the metaverse is gonna go in the first place, but because, you know, you can buy land and you can show off photos or NF T’s or whatever, within whatever you’re doing. I thought to be amazing opportunities for people to create digital content for whatever platform is going to be mainstream. You know, I don’t know where it’s gonna go. I’m not into the whole digital crypto or Metaverse type stuff. I don’t invest in that stuff at all. But I think that I’m just saying I’m not a professional at this. That’s not my place of expertise. But if he does move forward and gains traction, I think for for motion designers and for digital creators is going to be another great opportunity to capitalize on that. So look into it if yours did.

Nick Lange

I agree. Final question. What what is something nice that someone has done to help you along in your career?

Joshua Noel

Think it’s my I could say mentorship is probably the best thing anyone has done for me, right? So I’ve had several I consider several people in my past to be my mentors. And just being around them having an opportunity to be around them and learn from them is probably the best thing that I think anyone can get is being able to learn from somebody else who’s doing what you want. have to do, right? Or who you look up to. There’s nothing more valuable than that if you want to be successful, and, you know, anyone, anytime someone asks me a question or whatever, I’m always happy to reply to that and give them the best advice that I have. Because I know, sharing information is the best way to build the best life possible, or at least find the route.

Nick Lange

Who’ve been those mentors for you?

Joshua Noel

So specifically, people here locally in Ocala that ran production companies, also one of my old college professors that really directed me towards the focus of cinematography. You know, they have definitely shaped how I view things, and, you know, at least been on the path to learning the skills that I use today.

Nick Lange

What are you working on? What can we look forward to?

Joshua Noel

The only thing I’m doing is business as usual more templates, we’re adding as much as there as possible, create more YouTube content. Writing a book on how to, you know, do business from a creative perspective. So I’m going to put that apart our product line is I don’t teach business on our YouTube channel. But in a book is something I want to offer, externally as well, to help, you know, creative people be able to understand how to market themselves and build a business. So that’s really my main passion project that I’m doing on the side. But business as usual, creating more templates, and just trying to continue what we’re doing because, you know, it’s the path forward, you got to be consistent and stick with this what I believe in.

Nick Lange

Awesome. That was great. Thank you, Joshua.