Interview with Noah Veneklasen of Muse Media Center

Mike interviews Noah Veneklasen of Muse Media Center. Some good tips on handling media for events, broadcast and film. Check out their website Muse Media Center. It is across the street from Pixar Studios in Emeryville.

Transcripts:

Mike McAllen: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen for Grass Shack Events and Media and today, we are here at Muse Media Center with Noah Veneklasen, the founder, co-founder.

Noah Veneklasen: The founder and co-founder and …

Mike McAllen: And President and CEO of Muse Media Center. Noah, thank you for being on the show.

Noah Veneklasen: Dr. McAllen, thank you.

Mike McAllen: [laughs] We were just laughing because we’re in this fantastic – the sound …

Noah Veneklasen: Recording studio.

Mike McAllen: Recording studio and we’re using my edroil. So, [laughs], Noah, tell us – tell me a little bit about your self, how you started this wonderful place and let’s just start there.

Noah Veneklasen: Yes, yes. I am 32 years old. After high school many millions of years ago, I got involved in the film industry and worked in it for a couple of years in various roles and decided to kind of take a vacation from it, went to college, came back out and did some corporate event production, did some corporate video production and fast forward about three or four years, I got really tired of driving from the East Bay into San Francisco into the  and started telling all my friends at those places, gosh, you know, the East Bay really needs a facility and gosh, not very long after that, we decided to – you know, there’s a real need for a post production here and so we opened this facility, Muse Media Center. And I also produced videos, you know, In addition to doing post production. I produced videos, produced television commercials, some television and then also films. I’ve got three feature films and a whole host of short films that we’ve done, you know, mostly because that’s where my interests lie but also because we have this wonderful resource here so it’s very easy for us to make short films and lower budget feature films because we have this – you know, everything after the film, you know, is pretty much taken cared of here.

So, that’s where I’ve ended up. I’ve got four employees here. We have this lovely facility with four video editing suites and a recording studio, graphic design stations. We have a whole camera department, camera rental department now with about five, six camera packages. Yes. What else can I say?

Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s fantastic. It’s a very creative area too down here which is kind of fun. It’s a funky area in Emeryville. It’s also easy to park down here which is a huge thing, you know.

Noah Veneklasen: [laughs] People love that about this place, yes. You know, Emeryville is basically – at the heart of it is Pixar. You couldn’t ask for more. I guess you would call it creative heart to Emeryville, right across from city hall, giant campus. And other media companies have kind of surrounded them. They moved in next door, around – you know, down the block from Pixar and the funny thing is Pixar doesn’t outsource so really, none of us stand to gain anything, whatsoever from being across the street from Pixar. But there’s just – I think there’s a credibility by proximity thing going on.

Mike McAllen: Yes, I think so too. It’s very nice to say, hey, we’re across the street from Pixar. Yes.

Noah Veneklasen: Can’t hurt.

Mike McAllen: Can’t hurt at all. So, tell me a little bit about – so I know our listeners to this podcast are basically like meeting planners or marketing communications people. So, what does a post house do? I mean, that’s kind of a basic question but I think that people might be thinking, okay, what – where in the process – I know you rent cameras, you have crews that go out and shoot. You’ve done that for me in the past. What does this – what happens here?

Noah Veneklasen: Well, in the facility, I mean there are several phases of video production, film production, TV production. There’s pre-production which is planning. There’s production which is actually shooting the video, working with actors, working with executives, shooting the video and then there’s post production. This facility is a post-production facility meaning everything from digitizing and editing the footage that you’ve shot, recording voiceovers, recording – you know, mixing sound effects and doing a final sound mix, laying things off to tape for broadcast stations. We’ve got high def decks We’ve got, you know, Digi-Data, all these very, you know, high end formats for laying things off, for their final deliverables but we also have a whole host of partners that we work with and associates. We do a lot of 3D animation, motion graphics work so, you know, really this place is meant to be sort of an all in one – you know, one stop shop, I think is the term that I often used for all things, video, and television post production.

We actually do have some contracts with Sony and NBC to do ADR which is dialogue replacement for a couple of television shows that are on the air. We just did an episode of Lie To Me recently. Actually, my film business partner starred in an episode of Lie To Me and we did all of his ADR here. So, we worked with the studios, people would call in to the studio. They can manage the sessions from Los Angeles, Australia, Europe, wherever they want. It’s really meant to be a one-stop shop and that’s I think what makes us stand apart, makes us a little bit unique is that we put it all here. You know, a lot of places are just video editing. A lot of places are just motion graphics. We made it a one-stop shop so you can come here and basically take your project from, you know, D to Z, you know.

Mike McAllen: Yes, I know.

Noah Veneklasen: A through D being shooting and all that kind of stuff but, you know …

Mike McAllen: Yes, I know. When I’ve had – whenever I have a problem, I call you. [laughs]

Noah Veneklasen: That’s good to know.

Mike McAllen: Help me figure this out.

Noah Veneklasen: [laughs]

Mike McAllen: But just like – remember when we did that – a couple of years ago, we did that interview here with – what was the guy’s name?

Noah Veneklasen: Peter Coyote.

Mike McAllen: Peter Coyote and we did it here in the edit studio. We called in. We had a podcast. The interview went through. That was a fantastic experience and it was just easy, which is good.

Noah Veneklasen: That’s the whole idea is to make it easy. You know, this is very complicated stuff. This is not – you know, I mean it’s not rocket science but it’s –

Mike McAllen: It is.

Noah Veneklasen: You know, it’s complicated stuff and what I try to do is shield people from the complicated stuff and just say, come on in. Come on in and we’ll just take care of it. You just be here and make sure that we’re doing what you need.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Noah Veneklasen: But, we’ll take care of all the technical stuff. And you’ll see my staff are all here to basically shield people from things like machine rooms and servers and Fibre Channel RAIDs and Final Cut Pro and Avid and Pro Tools and microphones and all that stuff and just say, hey have a seat. Can I get you a sandwich? And let’s make your project happen.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Noah Veneklasen: I think that’s something that I’ve tried to do my entire career because I’m a pretty technical guy but I don’t really care about the technical side. I care about it but it doesn’t get me going. You know, I don’t – I believe the term is I don’t geek out on the technical side of things.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Noah Veneklasen: So, I don’t need to sit and tell you what all the technical mumbo-jumbo. I just go, okay, let’s have a seat. We’ll take care of it and I can go and I can with my employees but I don’t need to involve you on that. And I think the technical side of things is what really puts people off. It’s what really, you know, convolutes projects. You know, if you’re the producer, the director of a project, focus on what you’re shooting, focus on the script.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Noah Veneklasen: Focus on, you know, working with your cinematographer to get the shots that you need. Don’t worry about the technical side of things.

Mike McAllen: Yes, that’s nice and that’s a big hang-up for people, why they don’t want to try new technologies or use videos. It’s because they’re worried about all this stuff and they don’t have to be formats. And how come this doesn’t play and, you know …

Noah Veneklasen: Some of my smarter clients actually call us ahead of their shoot and say, hey, we’re thinking about shooting on this camera format or we’re thinking about shooting this, you know, highly compressed, you know, photo or on this red camera that everybody loves because it’s a $20,000 camera that shoots beautiful, beautiful high def footage for a really low price but the reality is the workflow is just – is dreadful and there are a lot of issues with this so they call me before they go out and they say, hey, we’re thinking about shooting this. We did a test that looks beautiful. But what are we looking at when it comes to post production? And I’ve had people change their minds on how to shoot just based on calling me and tech-talking for a minute about ramifications of this format or that format.

Mike McAllen: And you say workflow, what do you mean by workflow? Like, what would the …

Noah Veneklasen: Well, workflow – again, it’s a complicated process but the workflow is basically getting things into the computer, working with them, manipulating them and then putting them back out and in there are 25 steps to 50 steps in some cases for how to work with that footage, how to get it so that you can work with things in real time so the things will actually just play in the computer as opposed to having to stop every two minutes and render things out and wait for the computer. You know, the spending [Indiscernible] [0:08:41] on the Mac.

There’s a way to get things to work properly and appropriately in video and in sound editing and that – that’s something you have to think about before you shoot it. You can really shoot your self in the foot by working in a format that you know your facility or whatever technical capabilities you have are not up to par and can’t keep up with it so …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Noah Veneklasen: It’s – yes.

Mike McAllen: I guess you run into costs, more costs and more costs. I mean, that …

Noah Veneklasen: Yes.

Mike McAllen: I – because after – actually, that recently when I did that event camp thing and we did the live stream and that came in in the last minute and so we shot all this stuff and it – and we – I had no idea how to get it off so I called you immediately like how the hell do I do this. And – but it’s interesting because with a little bit of pre-planning, wouldn’t have had all these problems …

Noah Veneklasen: Sure.

Mike McAllen: … that I’m running into.

Noah Veneklasen: Yes, and that’s – I think it’s a lesson that we actually don’t necessarily learn once. I think it’s something that we encounter often. You know, it’s so easy these days with consumer electronics to just, oh, this must be super simple. It was a $400 camera and …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Noah Veneklasen: … you know, $69 a box of software to Web stream. Can it really quite be that easy?

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Noah Veneklasen: Probably not. And so, it really does benefit everybody. If you’re doing something you’ve never done before to research and you have a plan for it, then call people who might have some experience in that and I’m the first person to do that. I call people all the time. I have a partnership with Chater Cameras [Phonetic] [0:10:04] in Berkeley and I call them weekly and say, hey, if we do this, are we going to – you know …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Noah Veneklasen: Can we rent this from you? Because we don’t have it but it’s going to really change our workflow. I think it doesn’t even come down to being humble. It’s just being realistic, not being able to understand everything technical in the world.

Mike McAllen: Right, right. And that’s being a producer though.

Noah Veneklasen: Yes.

Mike McAllen: I mean, that’s – you don’t know everything but you can find the answers and make it happen.

Noah Veneklasen: That – if you ask me, that’s why we go to school for, you know, 12 to 15 years is to learn how to find answers to things.

Mike McAllen: Yes, I agree. I agree. And then now there’s a such a [Indiscernible] [0:10:37] of information out there, the internet and stuff. You could spend hours looking at everyone’s opinions.

Noah Veneklasen: And it’s difficult because, you know, when you think about Wikipedia, there are some specific sites, Wikipedias of filmmaking and things like that, that provide a lot of conflicting information. I think, you know, once you’ve discovered who your go-to guy is or gal is, for a certain information, you tend to go back to them because they trust you and you trust them and vice versa. You know, people call me because they trust that if I say, you really don’t want to shoot on that camera. You will come to a screeching halt when you try to edit this. They know that I mean it. I stand to gain absolutely nothing by …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Noah Veneklasen: Oftentimes, I’m not even editing here. But they just know me and they trust my opinion and I say I wouldn’t do it and sure enough, they will change their minds off because they trust me and I have that same relationship with other people.

Mike McAllen: I agree. I agree. Talk about relationships.

Noah Veneklasen: I think life is all about relationships and especially business.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Noah Veneklasen: You know.

Mike McAllen: I agree.

Noah Veneklasen: And long standing relationships, you know, you and I have talked endlessly about this. You know, it’s maintaining relationships both from a friendship standpoint and also a professional standpoint is if you ask me a hundred times, more important and more successful, makes you more successful in business than advertising. You know, when you have a business like ours, if you’re an event producer, event planner, event company, placing, you know, cold calls, sending out post cards, things like that. You know, having a big web blast [Phonetic] [0:12:01], paying the Google pay per click thing on – those – that stuff doesn’t get you new clients. So really what you have are personal relationships and recommendations from current clients or even friends. I’ve had tens of thousands of dollars worth of projects come through by neighbors.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Noah Veneklasen: Neighbor of mine worked at Procter and Gamble. All of a sudden, they did a $30,000 project, bought her a nice bottle of champagne at the end of the – said thanks neighbor. It’s because we’re – you know, we’re friends with them. They respect me, they trust me and I can’t place enough value on maintaining personal relationships and friendships and having social lunches first and business second.

Mike McAllen: Yes. I agree. I really agree. And that has been happening a lot more and more, I think, as people are more transparent [Inaudible] [0:12:48] now and the social media stuff happening, that people really – you can really find out about somebody and the gatekeepers are kind of gone these days. You can really actually talk to the people straight away and start those relationships. Interesting.

Noah Veneklasen: Very important, very important.

Mike McAllen: Yes. Alright. Well, thank you very much for talking with me, Noah.

Noah Veneklasen: Pleasure.

Mike McAllen: And where can people find Muse?

Noah Veneklasen: They can find Muse obviously on the Web, www.MuseMediaCenter.com or at 510-655-1111 or you can Google my name but you won’t know how to spell my last name. It’s Noah Veneklasen. I’m not going to bother spelling it for you. But yes – or just type in Muse and you’ll find it. We’re not the band. I wish we were the band. They’re awesome. But we’re the post production facility and production company.

Mike McAllen: [laughs] Alright, Noah. Thanks a lot.

Noah Veneklasen: Yes. Thanks, Mike.

Mike McAllen: Okay. I’ll talk to you soon.

Noah Veneklasen: Take care.

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