Ross Jacobson - Are you crazy to pivot into entertainment at 29?! Learn how 3311 PRODUCTIONS indie producer went from "tape-librarian" to producer in four years.

Ross Jacobson is the co -founder CEO of 3311 Productions, a company of film lovers who take movie making seriously, but not themselves.

Ross went from the entry level job as tape librarian at Magical Elves, the producer of Top Chef and Project Runway, to leading the company in just four years. Ross is a film industry veteran who has brought films to Cannes, Sundance, Telluride, Berlin, Toronto, and Comic -Con, and has been a part of Emmy and Peabody winning TV shows.

3311 Productions has produced many films including In A World , The Assistant , Brigsby Bear , and many more.

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Transcript

Ross Jacobson (00:00.238)
What are people wanting to watch? We go through these cycles creatively of like antihero in dark, Ted Lasso and escapism, behind the curtains of the rich and famous. There are these cyclical things going on and you have a film that happens to be ready at a time when the consumer climate is wanting the thing you made and you can have a lot of success.

Anne McGinty (00:27.918)
Welcome to the 13th episode of How I Built My Small Business, the show that is dedicated to sharing the insight that entrepreneurs have about how to start and grow small businesses. Join us as we unravel the stories behind their entrepreneurial journeys. I'm Anne McGinty, your host, and today we have Ross Jacobson chatting with us about navigating Hollywood as an indie producer. Ross is the co -founder CEO of 3311 Productions.

A company of film lovers who take movie making seriously, but not themselves. Ross went from the entry level job as tape librarian at Magical Elves, the producer of Top Chef and Project Runway, to leading the company in just four years. Ross is a film industry veteran who has brought films to Cannes, Sundance, Telly Ride, Berlin, Toronto, and Comic -Con, and has been a part of

of Emmy and Peabody winning TV shows. You can find a link through to his production company in this episode's description.

Anne McGinty (01:34.546)
Thank you to our listeners for being with us today. Ross, it's so fun to have you here. Thanks for coming on the show.

Ross Jacobson
It's very nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Anne McGinty
So what were you doing for work before entering Hollywood?

Ross Jacobson
Well, out of college, I worked for an investment firm in Chicago being a dutiful Jewish son and trying desperately to make my dad proud of me. And realized pretty early on that...

having an aptitude for something didn't mean that it was what I wanted to do with my life. And sort of new instinctively, I didn't want to spend my life making rich people richer. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's just not what I wanted to do. And I was in Chicago when the dot com craziness was happening in my backyard. I grew up in Menlo Park, California, the heart of Silicon Valley, and all my friends were like, what are you doing?

in Chicago, we're all like inventing a new economy. And I come from a long line of family members who have turned away from like gigantic opportunities. And so in the back of my head, I was like, am I going to be another one of these? And so I moved back home and I worked at a software startup in the city until the bubble burst.

That company wound down as a lot of those companies couldn't get further rounds of financing when it turned out they weren't really real companies. And I had to make a decision about what I wanted to do next and got incredibly good advice from a mentor who wanted to know what I thought I would do next. And I'm like, probably go back into finance. I said, as I get older, my hope is that I meet someone, fall in love.

get married, have a family. And I don't think it'll bother me so much that I'm doing something that I'm not passionate about. You know, it's something that can provide a nice life. And he looked at me and laughed and he's a very kind person. This was out of character for him, but he's like, that's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard you say. And I was like, what do you mean? And he said, when you're married and have kids, you don't have the freedom you have today to just make changes. And his whole thing for me was you will resent.

Ross Jacobson(03:47.534)
a job that you don't like so much more down the line when you don't have the freedom to do something else about it. He's like, use this time and figure out what you want to do. Try to find something that you're excited about while you can. And I realized, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so I really spent a little bit of time just thinking about like, forget anything else. You're 29, you're single, you've got some money saved.

What sounds fun? What sounds like an adventure? And I was confident that if I moved to LA and got a job in some part of the entertainment industry, that if nothing else, I would have the satisfaction to be able to say, I tried it. And then if at the end of six months, I wanted to return to the Bay Area and get a more traditional job, that would be available to me. So I really took my mentor's advice and I told my dad,

that I had decided what I wanted to do next. And he said, OK, why don't we go have lunch and we'll talk about it. So we were driving. And so he said, so what is it that you've decided you want to do? And my dad's a very traditional, worked at the same company for 40 years guy. And I said to him, I think I want to go work in the entertainment industry. And he was quiet. I'm not joking. Like not.

exaggerating. There was just silence for like 10 minutes. And then the silence was broken with my dad saying, the entertainment industry, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof. But I took the plunge. I packed up a U -Haul and drove down to LA, rented a really crappy studio apartment. And I had to really accept that when I moved to LA, I had just turned 30.

It didn't matter what I had done. It didn't matter that four months earlier I was presenting to a board of directors made up of luminaries from Silicon Valley investors and VCs. I was going to be starting over. I remember telling myself, you're turning 21 again. This is going to be entry level. This is going to be starting from the ground up and you'll see what happens.

Anne McGinty
So what was the first foray like getting into the TV and film industry? How did you get your foot in the door?

Ross Jacobson
I knew one person in LA who was a friend from college, not even a
particularly close friend, but someone I knew well enough to reach out to. And I got really lucky. They were producing a show called Project Greenlight, which was an HBO reality show. And he knew that they needed to hire some people. He introduced me to the line producer of that show who said he had a job for me, but that the two executive producers were looking for an assistant and he thought I would learn the most doing that for them. And so I interviewed with them twice. I came back for a second interview.

And ultimately they did not hire me to be their assistant. But I was so fortunate that this line producer had kept that other job open in case it didn't work out. And that's how I became the tape librarian on Project Greenlight Season 2.

Anne McGinty
I don't even know what is a tape librarian.

Ross Jacobson
Before digital, the camera crew shot onto tapes and I would need to dub those tapes onto VHS.

Anne McGinty
Oh my gosh.

Ross Jacobson
So that the story producers could watch the footage and decide what would ultimately comprise the episode. So I had to get those tapes for them to watch on their little TV VCR combos. And I had to make copies of tapes for the network and deliver tapes to the post facility and stuff like that. But I remember walking into this office and there was this, it's called a dub rack. I don't think they exist anymore because everything's digital, but all these different VHS players and machines and...

routers in a 20 -year -old teaching me how to use it. But the funny sort of button to that experience is that the two producers who didn't hire me to be their assistant four years later were trying to convince me to run the company, which was fascinating for me to look back on because one of the things that was hard about making that change in careers,

was accepting the 10 years of finance and technology experience in relationships and all that stuff. I was flushing down the toilet. It was such a vastly different field. I really had to ask myself, was I okay saying those eight or nine years was kind of a waste? That's how I really felt about it at the time, but it turned out the advantage I had at 30 in an entry level job, particularly coming out of finance, if you rolled your eyes or if you had an attitude, you were gone.

Ross Jacobson (08:19.534)
Any entitlement that you might enter that world in was taken out of you pretty quickly. And so I was like a superstar as a tape librarian, because I had like a work ethic. Like if I had my dub rack going and I knew I had 40 minutes of nothing to do and I overheard someone needing to get something to FedEx, I would raise my hand and be like, I can do that. It'll take me 20 minutes. And most of my peers who were like 22, their attitude was like, that's not

part of my job description, that's not what I'm being paid to do. I came from you do anything you can to help the cause. And so I was a superstar tape librarian. And I ended up getting promoted within the season to post coordinator and it's got taken on to the line producers next show. Worked my way up the ranks of reality TV making to the point where I was a senior story producer for Supernanny.

which was funny because I was single and childless watching a family struggling to raise their children. And that show went on hiatus and the owners of a company called Magical Elves had Project Runway and it looked like Top Chef might be something people wanted to watch. And so they asked me if I would use my hiatus just to consult with them and give them advice about the finance side and just sort of business strategy. And I

wouldn't have been able to offer up any thoughts around that if I hadn't had my finance technology background. So it turned out it was really not a waste at all. The outcome of that six week consulting gig was them asking me if I'd stay and run the company. That's amazing. I remember to this day one of the kindest people I've ever met in the industry was our agent. He was so generous with his time with me because I didn't know the lingo at all. I didn't know that a season of a TV show was also called a cycle.

And I had to get into these agreements and like really start getting into the minutia of our business. And I didn't know any of the basic terminology. I didn't know this is how things are done.

Anne McGinty
Your path is so interesting.
So then what was the moment when you decided to then branch off and start 3311 Productions?

Ross Jacobson
Yeah. So my best friend of close to 40 years at this point is a film nut. And when I moved down to LA, he had said to me,

hey, if you end up liking it and staying down there, maybe it'd be fun for us to do something together at some point. And I said, sure, like, you know, whatever, who knows. And over the years, he had said to me, have you given any thought to us doing something together? But I was running Magical Elves and having a blast doing it, working with people I loved and enjoying the work and learning a ton. And there was a point at which the founders of Magical Elves had decided that they wanted to position the company to sell it.

Anne McGinty
So it was just like a perfect pivot point.

Ross Jacobson
Yeah, I know I wasn't leaving them in a lurch. And sure enough, they sold the company for a ton of money, which they deserved every penny of it through years of hard work and great work. So I approached my friend. I said, I think I'm ready to do this, but we got to talk about some stuff. And I said, firstly, you have to understand, I know nothing about movies. To which he responded, well, you knew nothing about reality TV, and you picked it up pretty quickly, right?

And we knew that we were going to do some reality TV stuff as well, which I think for me was almost like a security blanket because I knew it. And then we set some ground rules in terms of friendship in business and decided to go for it. So, yeah, we started the company, I think, 11 years ago, 12 years ago, something like that, and made our first movie making every dumb mistake you could possibly make making a movie.

Anne McGinty
What kind of mistakes did you make? We took this big artistic swing on adapting a Jack Kerouac book.

We were bold in that instead of casting someone famous for the lead, we picked the artistic choice, which is just business suicide. The one thing you have when you're making a film and investing money into it as an insurance policy is your cast. If you cast someone of note, even if the movie sucks, you can still sell it because there are people who would just want to see this actor's thing. We had bad luck, I would say, in that the filmmaker on that project, it turned out to be a very problematic process and relationship.

And we kept approving overages. We lost a ton of money on that first film and it was an awful, awful experience. But then you live and learn. You live and learn. And then we were saved by Lake Bell. Lake was the polar opposite of the experience we had had on our first film. And through her incredible directing of that movie, it wound up having a meaningful life in terms of it sold for a nice amount of money. It was very well received. Ironically, we took both films to Sundance to

(13:13.038)
different storylines. One that was sort of a really horrible experience, one that was really a wonderful experience, and one that went on to have a good deal of success and one that had none.

Anne McGinty
So when these films get into film festivals, are they paying you to show?

Ross Jacobson
They're very expensive and we end up flipping the bill for it. You hope to sell the film and then get paid back.

Anne McGinty
So you're there for exposure?

Ross Jacobson
It's how you sell the movie. Things have changed a lot since our first two movies, but

All the buyers come to the festivals. And then you have a PR person who's responsible for wrangling to make sure, don't get the junior person, make sure it's the buyer, the decision maker from like Sony and make sure it's the decision maker from Netflix. The theater is full of fans, people who just like movies, but you want to get all the buyers there. And then ultimately it's a market to sell your film. I had no idea. Yeah. So both of our first two films we paid for, we fully financed them.

but then we have to sell them to a distributor and you hope to sell them for more money than you spend.

Anne McGinty
As someone who knows nothing about the film industry, this is all so fascinating. This may seem so basic, but can you walk us through a little bit more of that process? What does it mean to sell a movie?

Ross Jacobson
So yeah, I mean, all you have at the end of making a movie is a drive that has media on it. So you have to monetize it.

And so the people who monetize the movie are distributors and there's all kinds of different distributors. And how you monetize your movie today, it's very different than it was 10 years ago. It's different than it was five years ago. And you need to find someone who thinks it's worth trying to get people to pay to watch. The distributor is the buyer. There's all kinds of different ways of doing it. You can sell the international rights through what's called a foreign sales company. In a foreign sales company, basically,

has relationships with distributors in Germany, in France, in Australia, in Japan, and they sell your movie territory by territory for like $150 ,000 here. In Latvia, we got an $18 ,000 sale. In the UK, we got a $600 ,000 sale. You accumulate revenue from selling them to people who will figure out how to monetize it in their own territory. You're fortunate if you have the option to get picky about who's buying it.

Anne McGinty (15:29.55)
So what's the difference? Who ideally would be the buyer? I mean, is there a hierarchy here?

Ross Jacobson
Yeah, sure. In an ideal world, you have a global sale where you sell it to one entity. So in today's world, Netflix buys it for the world. Say you made a movie for $10 million. And instead of having to piece your return on that $10 million investment together through selling it territory by territory, your dream scenario is that Netflix comes and buys it for $18 million. One of the things I think is really interesting about

the film industry in terms of our product is that I don't know of another product in the world that the price to consume the product or use the product has no relationship to the cost of the product.

Anne McGinty
Yeah, that's interesting.

Ross Jacobson
Right?! It's kind of crazy.

Anne McGinty
So is that why these streaming services are just pumping out movies at a very rapid pace?

Ross Jacobson
I don't know that it's the pace of being pumped out. It's the pace of distribution. So when we were kids,

You knew that if you didn't go see a film in a theater, you might have to wait a year to be able to watch it.

Anne McGinty
That's right. Yeah.

Ross Jacobson
Maybe two years.

Anne McGinty
Yeah, until you could get it on VHS.

Ross Jacobson
Get it on VHS. Or you had to wait for like NBC to show it with like commercials and stuff and have it be very edited so that there were no swear words, no nude scenes, all that stuff. And so if you wanted to watch the movie, you needed to go to the theater. And how radically that obviously has changed.

Over time, the consumer demand was, I want to stream the movie now. And you get a theatrical release, and then three weeks later, it's available to stream, or six weeks later, it's available to stream. The economic ecosystem for independent films is currently broken. The good news is that I don't think there'll ever be a lost appetite for watching independent films. So I feel like the business model can find its way. But in the meantime, it's a very painful, hard business to be in.

Anne McGinty
Yeah, I bet.
So what's the process like going through scripts?

Ross Jacobson
Every day I get unsolicited scripts in my inbox. I just delete them. People get really upset about like, you only take scripts from agencies or people who are already in the business. You're not creating opportunities for people outside of the industry. And there's totally truth to that, but there's also practical reasons for it. Project Runway was a show that when it achieved its success, there were seven separate people.

(17:50.062)
who either sued or threatened to sue, having claimed to have created the series and that we had stolen the idea from them. The idea hadn't been stolen from anyone. But if I read a script and her script contains a couples therapy comedic moment, and I want to make a movie three years later, it just so happens to have a couples therapy scene that's comedic, you are truly exposing yourself to someone coming out and saying, you stole my idea. And it happens all the time.

And so we don't look at unsolicited scripts partially because the volume would be unbearable if we did, but mostly as a protective thing. Thankfully, there are great organizations which we've supported that try to give opportunities to non -established writers to break in. But there's some very practical reasons why it needs to be at arm's length from what we do. We do a lot of collaborating with writers as well.

We encourage our writer friends to let us know about an article or a book that you're excited about and let's see if it's something we can collaborate on and we'll take down the intellectual rights and do that work and you can focus on writing.

Anne McGinty
Well, that sounds fun. Once you decide on a script, what happens next? Like, how do you identify talent? How do you get that talent on board? And what do you do?

Ross Jacobson
Yeah, remember how it sounded fun? This is where it ends. Yeah, I think there's two fun parts to it.

Getting a script to a place that you think is a great story that will translate well to film. And then I've had a lot of fun being on set, being able to collaborate and just hopefully very respectfully weigh in with a thought here or there in terms of like, I'm not sure that that felt as authentic as what you want. You might want to do that one again. Just bouncing ideas around. And then in post when you're editing a film, that creative process I find incredibly fun.

And everything else is really a nightmare. So you have a script that you think is ready to share with people. Typically, you have to attach a filmmaker prior to going out to talent because an actor is going to want to know who they're signing up to work with. But the bar is incredibly high to get an established filmmaker to want to take on someone else's project versus doing their own project. It can take months and months and months and months and months to attach a filmmaker to a script.

Anne McGinty (20:02.67)
Okay, so filmmaker first and then actors.

Ross Jacobson
Our next film, we're on our third filmmaker because the other ones got other opportunities along the way that were too good to say no to. And we try to be very supportive of our partners. We describe it as gluing a film. To glue a film is really, really, really hard because you need to put all the pieces together. The pieces sometimes have to be done in different orders and then they all need to stick.

And they can unglued for so many reasons, like the filmmakers who got incredible studio opportunity because there's wonkiness with the financing because an actor who had said yes, he or she gets a big opportunity. The vast majority of talent that goes into movies, those careers are controlled by agencies and you've got to be very careful to not piss off the people at those agencies, but you can't make movies without relationships with the agencies. It's just.

how the industry works. They protect their clients. That's what they're paid to do. And we have to be pragmatic about it.

Anne McGinty
And then on top of that, I assume you have to align the schedules of the filmmaker and the actors who have other projects and maybe those are going into overtime.

Ross Jacobson
100 percent. We just pushed our next film by four months because one of our actors is on Broadway and his show got extended because it was doing well. Right. You have to be flexible with that.

There is a certain amount of pixie dust to what we do. Does it come together well? Of course there's talent, there's hard work, all those things. Sometimes the casting didn't quite gel, the filmmaker wasn't really at his or her best, or was going through a tough personal thing. The weather was terrible and everyday being on set was like the slog and the climate for the film once it was released. What are people wanting to watch? We go through these cycles creatively of like anti -hero in dark.

Ted Lasso and escapism, Behind the Curtains of the Rich and Famous. There are these cyclical things going on and you have a film that happens to be ready at a time when the consumer climate is wanting the thing you made and you can have a lot of success.

Anne McGinty
It's the same with publishing a book, right?

Ross Jacobson
Yeah.

Anne McGinty
If the release happens to coincide with...
what's happening in the world culturally or a world event, that timing can sometimes make or break the success.

Ross Jacobson
Totally. Yeah. Totally. So there's just a healthy amount of pixie dust. And you say, we're going to make three movies. We'll have three where we lose money. We'll have five where we're around break even. And maybe we'll have three where we make money. And I hope that one of those three can really make a lot of money. And that's what we're kind of relying on.

Anne McGinty
Is selling the film to a distributor how you get all of your take home pay?

Ross Jacobson
It is now, basically.

Anne McGinty
What about box office profits?

Ross Jacobson
It's changed over the last 10 years. When I got started in independent film, there was a belief in the possibility of having your Little Miss Sunshine, the movie you make for $8 million that goes on to do $100 million of box office receipts. But the way independent film works, broadly speaking, but in terms of profit participation, 50 % is controlled by the financiers and 50 % is in the creative pool, meaning producers, filmmaker, and actors.

What we do is we put up the money to develop a project. So call that a couple hundred thousand dollars. And then as film financiers, we put in some number of millions of dollars to make the movie. And that is a huge amount of risk. You put money into development, not knowing if a film will ever get made. You make the movie, not knowing if it will turn out well, not knowing if it'll get into a festival, not knowing if it'll get bought by someone. And then what happens is you have your finished film, but you need to get your film.

sold. And so you take it to a festival, okay, I got to go in another hundred thousand dollars just for the expenses of the festival. And then the sales agents who are sending your film are talking to buyers and saying, don't you want to buy this? You want to buy this, right? This is going to be big. And then you pay one that the response is yes, that the audience is like your film and they think it's worth buying. Then you pray that they're going to offer you a number ideally that gets you out. So then what you're praying for is that the film performs well.

So let's look at who's gotten paid so far. Say you sell it for $5 million. The sales agent got their 7 .5 % to 10%. The sales agent who sells the international rights also gets their fee. And then the distributor spends what's called P &A, print and advertising, which is the marketing of the film. All the money the distributor has put out, they collect first before I get paid anything.

Ross Jacobson (24:35.79)
But then you go to the theaters with it. You see this reported in the news all the time. $10 million in box office, or $80 million in box office. What most people don't realize is that the theaters retain $0 .52 of every dollar. So $50 million a box office is really $25. So interesting. In terms of independent film, the order in which people get paid is inverse to the amount of risk people are taking.

Anne McGinty
But you know, the distribution model, I feel like this plays out in multiple industries. But something in this industry is worth it to you. So far, it sounds like a pretty uphill battle.

Ross Jacobson
It is. It's a total uphill battle. Look, I mean, I'll be completely candid. It's a question I ask myself frequently, which is, are you doing this from inertia, or are you doing this because you love it? And the inertia side of it is that I've spent 20 -plus years building a career. And so I do ask myself, are there good reasons why you're still doing this? The answer has always landed on yes. So what do I love about it?

You get the opportunity to sometimes put things out into the world that can get conversations going, inspire people. I'm not claiming that that's all the work we do. Sometimes you just want to do entertainment and I don't apologize for sometimes just wanting to tell a funny story or something like that. But you could literally have an idea in two years later. You can have your ideas in front of millions and millions of people. And that's incredibly seductive. It's incredibly powerful. And...

A dream for me would be to be able to have some type of positive imprint on a large number of people. You know, we made a film called Brigsby Bear that was ultimately thematically a celebration of different. The characters in the film come around to realize that the job at task isn't to get him to be more normal. It's for them to see that there's nothing wrong with embracing how different he is. Numerous, numerous people have talked to me over the years about that movie and how pivotal it was in helping a son or daughter and...

Not every project, but you get to do things like that. And for me, as someone who got out of finance because I just didn't want to use my life to make rich people richer, there is a long history of film and television being able to have a meaningful impact on the world around us. But the idea that I can potentially be a part of shepherding a story that could have a positive impact on people's lives, whether that's laughing after a long day, whether it's getting someone to see.

something differently, whether it's just to get a conversation going for after the movie among the people who watched it. And so I still believe. I look at our slate of development projects and I have a team I love as humans and as colleagues professionally. And I see projects that I think should be out into the world. And listen, you also want to make a lot of money.

Anne McGinty
Yeah. You want to enjoy it, but you also want it to be profitable.

Ross Jacobson
Yeah.

Anne McGinty
So speaking more about the positive side of moviemaking and TV, what has been your favorite experience so far?

Ross Jacobson
Being at Sundance or Telluride, being at a film festival, and you've showed your film to very few people up to this point. A few friends and family screenings, some agency screenings here or there, but very few people have seen your movie. And you think that you maybe have something good. And...

you're hoping it's well received, but you really, there's no way to know. And so the first screening of In A World At Sundance was in a big theater, sold out, and that film starts to play. So the same thing happened with Brigsby Bear. In both of those movies, there are some early comedic moments that could land or could not land with an audience. And I remember like 10 or 15 minutes into both of those films, having that feeling of like, they get it, they like it.

You can feel the energy in a theater when the film you're there as part of is being well received. And if you get them in the first 15 minutes with a laugh for one of your like B minus jokes, and you know you've got some A jokes coming up later. So you're sitting in the theater going like, well, if you like that. And listen, I've had the other experience as well where you can just feel like the dread and the like, how much longer is this going to be? And like, you know.

to then have that moment where you're in a theater at a festival and an audience is really into the thing that you spent two years with other people trying to like turn into something that could be something that people enjoyed. And to be in the room with that happening, that is as good as it gets.

Anne McGinty
It's a real art form. So affirming.

Ross Jacobson
Yeah. And it's just like, I try really hard to not shit on other people's projects because every bad movie and every bad TV show had.

a hundred or so people who took a year or so of their life and worked really, really hard doing the best they could. And the reality is that the success of a film or TV series very rarely has anything to do with 95 % of the people who worked on it. You never go out to make something bad.

Anne McGinty
Right. That's really opening my perspective because I'm definitely one of those that is quick to judge movies. So I'm going to think about that twice now.
What is the process like identifying talent for a script?

Ross Jacobson
We read. We try to work with people we feel like we have a shared sensibility with. We try to work with people who we think will be collaborative and will tell us, like, hey, you're overstepping, or will tell us, like, hey, I need help, and feel equally comfortable with those two things. And so who's delivering the line that you read two years ago that you thought could be good? And are they having a good day or a bad day? Did they get into an argument with their spouse in the morning?

Did they just come off of a job and they're exhausted and really need a break, but contractually they're obligated to show up so they showed up? And the same line in the hands of two different people is dumb or brilliant? Do you think about an actor like Jim Carrey? You have in a script, a character says something and then your protagonist says, well then. And then the other character says something else. Well, the well then line reads as nothingness, right? You get someone like Jim Carrey and Jim Carrey's like, well then!

You know, with like a big face thing and stuff like that. Suddenly it's a catchphrase. It's on T -shirts, right?

Anne McGinty
Right. So you're envisioning different actors while you're reading a script.

Ross Jacobson
Yeah, I'd say no different than reading a book.

Anne McGinty
You hear a voice, you hear an intonation.

Ross Jacobson
We're going to be making a movie in the next year that involves a talking cat. We attached a filmmaker. So we've gotten into the next step, which is talking about casting. And when you have a voice role, it opens a wider net because someone can do it from home. It's a very small time asked, you know, no hair and makeup, all that stuff.

And so we all just threw out like, well, when you were reading the script, who was voicing the cat? And for me, it was Jeff Bridges. That has zero bearing on whether or not Jeff Bridges would ever do it or want to do it. And everyone else had someone different.

Anne McGinty
So fun!

Ross Jacobson
The filmmaker I think was like, I worked with Nick Offerman recently. I heard Nick. And then everyone had their own version of it.

Anne McGinty
So then what do you do from there?

Ross Jacobson
Well, 3311 is not a big paycheck project 99 % of the time.

I think that most actors do independent films because they really want to support storytelling. They really want to support the next generation of filmmakers. I really do think that actors who could just get paychecks all the time truly do these smaller films from an incredibly generous place. And they're taking really big risks doing it with very little potential upside. So I think that's amazing. It also makes it incredibly rare to get big name actors to do a small film that doesn't have a big paycheck.

attached to it. Casting a film is really, really hard. You tend to get what we call an anchor tenant, which is like typically your lead role, where you put your energy into once you have your filmmaker, okay, who are the best potential actors for the lead role? Thankfully, there's no shortage of insanely talented actors. And that's part of what makes what we do fun is getting to put mix of talent into the film.

Anne McGinty
So what can you tell us about what you have coming in the pipeline?

Ross Jacobson
You know, our next movie.

We'll feature Ethan Hawke and Daniel Radcliffe and Jessica Biel. And those are obviously incredibly well -respected and known talented actors. We've made movies with no one in it you've ever heard of. And both are great and fun and have their place. You're obviously less likely to put unknown talent into a very expensive independent film than you are in a really inexpensive independent film. I'm so curious.

Anne McGinty
And how many projects can you have in motion at the same time?

Ross Jacobson
In an ideal world, we make two films a year every year.

and it just rolls neatly. When actors can go, when you find a filmmaker, when you have the financing together, when the weather dictates the film can be shot based on what the film is, you have little to no control over those things and you make a film when it's ready to be made.

Anne McGinty
But it's all staggered? It's all kind of in motion at the same time.

Ross Jacobson
Yeah, so you have to have multiple things in the hopper and if a film can get financed and made, you go make it.

You make it when you can make it and you figure it out. And thankfully, I have a partner at work, Jen Dana, who we have great complementary skill sets where she knows the nuts and bolts of making a film intimately. And she was an agent, so she has agency relationships. We have complementary skill sets, and so we're able in that sense to take on more. Divide and conquer. 100%.

Anne McGinty
Let's say somebody is 21, 22, fresh out of college, and they're really interested in one day being an indie film producer. What advice are you going to give them?

Ross Jacobson (33:58.19)
I had worked for eight years prior and set money aside. I wasn't getting handouts. But you need to have some money saved or you need to have some support because L .A. is an expensive city to live in. You have to be in L .A. Maybe a little bit New York, but you really need to be in L .A. to do it. With certainty, the best storytellers on the planet are not in Hollywood. There are very talented ones, but I'm sure anyone listening to this knows an incredible storyteller who does something radically different for a living because it's a very hard thing to get into.

There is just an inherent unfairness to the low income getting started and the expensive nature of being able to do a proof of concept as yourself as a storyteller. I would say check your ego, get an entry level job, or be willing to have a second source of income because you're going to get paid virtually nothing relative to how expensive the city is. And really be more mindful of the caliber of the person you're working for than what the role is.

Be open to, there's a whole array of jobs within the entertainment industry that you don't know exist that could be really interesting and really great homes for you. I became a story producer in reality TV. I had no idea what a story producer was. There have been all kinds of jobs where along the way in my career, I learned like, oh, that's a job? That sounds really cool. So don't go in with a mindset of this is the only thing there is for me here. You may find that like,

I actually love physical production. I actually was fascinated by the way the lighting gets done and you end up veering in that direction. You just don't know. So yeah, show up, work your butt off, check your ego, try to help even if it has nothing to do with the job description. Like just try to be someone that the person you're working for doesn't want you to leave. And then it's an industry that promotes to a fault from within. I mean,

There are no shortage of executives in both film and television whose knowledge base really comes from having been someone's assistant, just having listened into calls. I think that a variety of experience is helpful. Like Jen, my partner at work, having spent two or three years as an agent was a very calculated decision by her. She wanted to have an understanding of that side of the business, to have a well -rounded approach to the business. And it's incredibly valuable. So even if you know that this is the path you want to go down, spending a year on set being a PA,

even if you have no interest in physical production or filmmaking can be incredibly valuable in ways that you won't know until later. You just learn a lot. So it's just sponge, sponge, sponge, and don't have a huge ego. Don't have a bad attitude and be a valuable, hardworking, thoughtful team players and just open to learning.

Anne McGinty
Yeah, that's great advice. If you could go back and talk to yourself in your early twenties or maybe even when you were 29 at the pivot, what would you say to yourself?

Ross Jacobson
Well, projects and deals I've been involved with, what I would love to warn myself and be like, look into this person's background more. Do more due diligence before you get into business with this person.

Anne McGinty
That, I think, is great advice.

Ross Jacobson
I think I fell into the trap a couple of times of seeing what was there, but also seeing what I wanted to see. Confirmation bias, where you think you've got this great idea and this person is acting in support of the idea. And so you become blind to warning signs along the way.

I have moved forward with things that in hindsight, I was given plenty of opportunities to see warning signs that I just either ignored or didn't see. So I would warn myself. And the thing I would say is it'll go by in a blink. Work your ass off. Take advantage of the opportunity if you have it. And do not allow apathy to creep in for very long.

Anne McGinty
Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Ross Jacobson
It's my pleasure.

Anne McGinty (37:44.75)
If you've made it this far, as always, thanks for being here. If you haven't already, please take a moment to rate the show and leave an honest review to help me reach more listeners.

Today's key takeaways.

Take some time to really figure out how you want to spend your life, because when you're older and you have kids and a family, it can be so much harder to change.

Try to be someone that the person you are working for doesn't want you to leave.
People often say you need to have strong work ethic, but I think there's something about the way that Ross boils it down that makes that term work ethic have clear instruction. Be the person that your boss does not want you to leave because you're too valuable. 

If you have extra time or downtime at work, raise your hand to work in other ways that are helpful toward your team's common goal. This may help you be promoted from within. 

The film industry works similarly to other businesses with distribution models. It's just instead of making recipes and putting out consumer product goods, you're crafting a story and selling films. 

If you have a script that you want a producer to consider, it really behooves you to try to get an agent first because for protective reasons and time limitations, producers will often not look at unsolicited scripts. 

If you want to enter the indie movie producing world, you need to have some money saved up because the entry level pay is notoriously low, but the cost of living is incredibly high. Also, keep in mind that the entertainment industry has far greater roles than you may currently know of. So keep an open mind and don't pigeonhole yourself. 

When getting experience, be more mindful of the person you are working for rather than the role. Check your ego and be open to learning. Be a sponge. Work your butt off, take advantage of the opportunity you have, and work with a good attitude and be a positive team player. And this will bode well for future opportunities. 

If you're thinking of collaborating, make sure you do ample due diligence before you get into business with anyone. I have a personal experience with this one and second, what Ross says, pay attention to confirmation bias. 

And lastly, before you judge a film too harshly, remember that there are likely over a hundred individuals who are working a job, doing their best and none of them are trying to make a bad movie. 

That's it for today. Please remember to rate and review the show. I release episodes once a week, so come back and check it out.

Have a great day!