Making Noise: Creative Production for the Age of Everywhere

Orlando (00:00)
where content flows endlessly across screens and platforms, creative professionals are being called upon to stretch across mediums. Commercials, branded content, feature films, series, digital shorts, often all at once. Add to that that just last week, Nielsen reported that in February, YouTube dethroned Disney as the top TV distributor in America. Not online, not on mobile, on television.

So have the rules of what counts as TV, film, advertising and content almost become meaningless? It begs the question, how do directors, producers and studios keep pace with that change while holding on to what made them great in the first place? And what does it take to build a production company that cuts through the noise across formats, platforms and expectations? This week, I sit down with Dav Karbassioun CEO and co-founder of Magna Studios.

a creative production company that’s built a reputation for guiding directors across formats without sacrificing artistic identity. As the economics of entertainment stop being enough, it’s important to guide directors across mediums. Brady Corbet one of Dav’s directors, recently stated that although he won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for directing The Brutalist, he hasn’t been paid enough to survive. And that seems crazy to me. But is it placing an even higher importance and value

on the ability of companies like Magna to get him work in advertising? Magna’s motto, “your work is your noise” isn’t just branding. It’s a creative philosophy grounded in the idea that cut through is everything. No matter the screen size or budget, what matters is how deeply your work resonates. AI is producing kind of a flattening effect. When everybody has the ability to make anything, the human touch becomes everything. It becomes the thing that helps you break through a thousand algorithm led scrolls.

We talk about Magna’s unique hybrid approach, the difference between building brands and building careers, and how they help directors navigate the evolving creative landscape without losing their voice. If you’re in the creative industries and want some insight into how directors and production companies can navigate the changing paradigms, this episode might give you some insight.

Dav (02:19)
Congratulations on doing this. I think it’s a brilliant idea. And I’m in a phase of learning, especially when it comes to sort of the artificial intelligence of it. And you’ve been a real helpful person on that. And I think as a business, we’re on that kind of learning phase right now. And but actually the podcast itself, I listened to a couple of your other contributors thinking that would, you know, soften the pain of

Orlando (02:21)
Thanks!

Yeah.

Dav (02:45)
of this and it just got me more terrified because they were really brilliant and actually super informative and I love the diversity of perspective that you’ve invited. it’s really great and I look forward to seeing how this evolves.

Orlando (02:56)
Well, yeah, thanks. think that the perspective of it is, it seems a very silly thing on some level to set up a company that is built on creativity or to build on a foundation of ever moving sand. And so I think it takes a very specific type of person to

reliably be able to generate creativity such that a business can be built on its back.

Dav (03:22)
and I think why I got into this industry as someone who not necessarily considering themselves a creative person and actually someone that I felt I knew very early on that I would never be the center of creating something and, you know, and but I was always very kind of inspired by,

creativity

I think whilst I knew I would never be the next Spike Jones, I very quickly realized that there’s people out there that are working to help him create his art, his kind of, know, transmit his kind of storytelling.

Orlando (03:52)
Mm-hmm.

Dav (03:55)
that’s when it really clicked for me. It’s like being a part of that really is what kind of felt like the most fulfilling thing in the world,

Orlando (04:02)
Mm-hmm.

part of that. I think in London, one of the things that people don’t really understand is you’re more likely to shoot more shoot days if you work in commercials than you ever are if you work in film. And I think that that is an incredibly attractive path for somebody who’s interested in film, interested in production. know, advertising is an incredibly rich environment and film is an incredibly sparse, slow.

Dav (04:27)
Hmm.

Orlando (04:28)
miserable life actually in the UK. It’s somebody who came out here to produce said, Orlando producing in LA is like mining where there’s actually oil, you know, And they had been a successful producer in London. producing in London is just, you know, like, like trying to find a glass of water in the desert.

Dav (04:30)
Yeah.

that’s where I kind of started started running on set and realizing the world of advertising was sort of populated by the good and the great of creativity. You know, I grew up watching MTV in Vienna and being obsessive by those music videos and the commercials that would be in between, which were directed by and created by the same people. And I’ll never forget one of my first roles

when I started as an assistant, was to organize the video showreel library,

and I watched everything and organized everything by production company and well, and then you, as I was going through it, you sort of find, yeah, you find Spike Jones, find David Fincher, Chris Cunningham, Frank Budgen like, you know, and then you just like, it was just extraordinary, like the talent out there. And then, yeah, so the idea of being part of that journey and being part of a business that…

Orlando (05:28)
Yeah.

Dav (05:45)
kind of celebrated creativity was really, really appealing,

Orlando (05:48)
okay, so I’m going to embarrass you a little bit now, because I’m going to do a sort of whistle stop tour of your career, just to kind of give a perspective on you and what you’ve done, and then most importantly, what you’re doing now.

you started out at Legas Delaney So you started out agency side, very similar to myself.

Then you move to BBH, one of the world’s great advertising agencies that’s global headquarters is in London. as somebody who,

was a contemporary of yours at an agency I very rarely heard anybody speak more positively about anybody they worked with than they did about you. You were this sort of mythical legendary figure who at an incredibly young age, you’ll tell me exactly when, had become head of TV, which was it just wasn’t the done thing. Somebody that young wasn’t given that sort of

role. And you became quickly known as the head of TV who really understood where the creatives and the directors were coming from And I think that then

on the back of that, Thomas Benski at Pulse, brought you over to become Global President of, Pulse. And then, out of that, you have started a company named Magna Studios, which although it’s sort of only just officially PR launched for the last two years has been doing incredible work.

And you’ve just announced that you’ve got the Oasis documentary that you guys are going to be producing and launching based on their, their upcoming tour. which is a huge coup. I want to know what that path through the industry, what unique perspective that’s given you

on your job or the industry at large?

Dav (07:25)
Well, thanks. Yeah, exactly why I want you to do talking Orlando, you know, my best PR agent and you’re very good for my confidence, but it’s very kind. Yeah, I mean, look, I genuinely and I know this sounds perhaps like me trying to be overly modest, but like I just was in the right place at the right time

At the time of where advertising really was all about creativity, know, did clients didn’t fire agencies, agencies fired clients if they didn’t buy their ideas. And, that was, you know, the power of the creative idea. And, it was amazing. And, you know, it was hard work. I worked for someone who’s, motto was if you can’t make it on Saturday, don’t show up on Sunday. every day it was, late nights.

Orlando (07:52)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dav (08:06)
But it was so much fun and I realized how much I loved that industry and then quickly went into BBH, which at the time, yeah, it was just kind of an amazing place making advertising that got talked about more than the programs it was interrupting, And it was just the best job in the world.

Orlando (08:21)
Hmm.

Dav (08:25)
I was lucky at BBH, John Hegarty always talked about the producer being the third creative,

And he talked about how

You know, every great piece of work is 80 % idea, but it’s also 80 % execution. And I always loved that line because it’s not a science what we do,

I’ll never forget going to the cinema when I was at university in Bristol to watch The Matrix, which is still one of my favourite films of all time. But when we came out of that cinema, we were all talking about the commercial we saw at beginning, was Jonathan Glazer’s Guinness Surfer commercial. And it just hit me in the face like a sledgehammer. Like, what have I just seen?

Orlando (08:49)
yeah.

Yeah.

Dav (09:04)
just the feeling it created, the poem, the Moby Dick poem, the way it was read, the black and white cinematography, it just like, that’s when I kind of realized exactly where I wanted, where I would be lucky to be a part of, just a small part of.

I’ve always realized I’m at my best when I’m surrounding myself with interesting people that are pushing me.

Orlando (09:23)
Mm-hmm.

Dav (09:24)
But I wanted to be closer to the work, to the making. And I remember working with you and you would solve so many problems, We’d kind of break the rules in the spirit of creating something really special. so getting into production was sort of the obvious next step for me.

Orlando (09:27)
Yeah.

Dav (09:43)
And also wanted to be somewhere that was creating entertainment rather than just advertising. Cause I really felt that that was something I wanted to lean into, but I also felt that that was important is understanding, how brands can kind of enter into popular culture in general, rather than interrupt it.

Orlando (09:47)
Mm-hmm.

you know, when you moved to Pulse, there’s a sort of, experienced it myself, there’s a culture shock moving from agency to production company. Not least of which was the vast differences in the way directors operate and the way they’re inspired and the way they come at projects.

That was a big surprise to me. Was that to you?

Dav (10:20)
even, I represent a lot of filmmakers that I’ve literally grown with as they’ve been making music videos in their bedroom, Our first feature film is with a director who started in music videos.

went into commercials, won lots of fancy awards, and now we’ve just made his first feature film at Magna. And that kind of is what we are trying to do with Magna is create a sort of unique home for talent in a world where it’s increasingly hard, it’s increasingly competitive. I grew up working with Chris Cunningham, Spike Jonze.

Frank Budgen, And I often wonder if some of those, you know, talents who in my mind, the creative geniuses would, how would they would function today? You know, like it’s these days, you have to play the game. have to talk the talk. You have to take ownership of talking to the brands and, listening to the brands. You know what I mean? I don’t think, you know, he could barely make it Yeah, no, no. And I think.

Orlando (11:04)
Yeah.

I can’t imagine Chris Cunningham talking to a brand. just, yeah. And I don’t want him to. I don’t ever want to have to watch that interaction. It would be soul

destroying.

Dav (11:19)
That expectation on talent to have to be able to tap dance, do the jazz hands and be told by a corporate executive why the wardrobe is wrong or the music isn’t good. So our job is to really kind of help power but also help protect and guide talent through that journey where still a lot of the best creative talent are not necessarily the best.

Orlando (11:32)
Yeah.

Dav (11:46)
collaborators, you know,

And so helping them on that journey, think is what we try and do at Magna.

Orlando (11:53)
Is that, imagine the part of the attraction of moving to Pulse in the first place was that they sort of did what every production company really wanted to do, which was a little bit of everything. You know, they came out of that promo background. And if you can shoot promos in London and still have a viable business, you know, and start from there, you’re kind of, it’s like companies that start in a recession. You know, you’re,

Dav (12:19)
Yeah.

Orlando (12:19)
stronger,

you you’re the the the runt of the litter who made it. And then it was the Blur documentary, I think, that won them a Grammy. And that was the beginning of a string of theatrical release music docs. I think it was the Katy Perry doc, the One Direction documentary, I think directed by Morgan Spurlock.

And it really meant that you had these, multiple viable revenue streams and a really interesting amount of work.

Dav (12:47)
Yeah.

I think there’s always, you know, that phrase, you know, jack of all trades, master of none. think that was always when I joined Pulse and, you know, Thomas said I went on this journey to, to, to build out and create what was a very unique model because commercial companies weren’t making films and the studios weren’t making commercials. And we were really interested in that bit in between, but we really knew the only way to, to, for that to work is to be a

a jack of all trades, but a master of all. And you’d have to deliver hits across every division, you know? And there was a moment which weirdly happened in 2020

it all happened in one week where we launched the Beastie Boys story directed by Spike Jones as a documentary. Gangs of London was a TV show breaking in, the UK And then we’d also launched this Nike commercial, which just kind of was one of those pieces that entered into popular culture

Orlando (13:29)
Mm-hmm.

Dav (13:41)
And this film was sort of celebrating the return of sport, which felt like a very positive moment. And that changed, and that moment changed everything. And I feel like with Magna we’re…

Orlando (13:44)
Mm.

Dav (13:51)
very conscious of, you know, our motto is let the work be your noise. You know, like we deliberately, you know, we’ve been work operating for over a year now. We haven’t done a press release. We haven’t done any. This is the first time I’ve even talking about Magna So like, like, and I think it was sort of deliberate because we didn’t want to look back. wanted, we felt like you got to just make the work. And I think as a CEO now of a business, I’m a firm believer of

Orlando (13:56)
Mm.

Dav (14:17)
what goes out dictates what comes in. And I know that’s not a very sophisticated business model, but it’s true. for us to get the Oasis documentary, you know, is one of the hotly pitched documentaries right now, because it’s such a big story with the brothers coming together is significant. And, know, it’s sort of like, I think what we strive to do is to create

Orlando (14:19)
Yeah.

Dav (14:41)
what we always called moments of culture, you know, and the idea to impact and ignite culture. You that’s what we all, you know, in advertising at its best does that. But in, you know, certainly within the entertainment world is like, that’s our goal. And I think that’s why, yeah, the multidisciplinary model is important, I believe is important, is definitely not easy,

Orlando (14:43)
Mm-hmm.

Dav (15:01)
I’ve actually taken a lot of pleasure working with Academy award-winning filmmakers and then bringing them into the world of short form. And one of the nicest compliments I ever had was director James Marsh. He’s won two Oscars, one for a documentary, Man on Wire one for the Theory of Everything.

Orlando (15:08)
Mm-hmm.

Dav (15:21)
He’s a very humble, modest, very intelligent, brilliant person. He doesn’t make studio movies. And he sent me this note once, And he said, you do realize the only reason why I can make the films I make is because of you and because you facilitated me in short form.

Orlando (15:21)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Dav (15:36)
and more more recently you know we just worked with Brady Corbet who in my opinion has made

Orlando (15:36)
Hmm.

Dav (15:42)
you know, one of the masterpieces of our generation in The Brutalist. And, you know, he’s very vocally talked about how he didn’t make any money out of this film, which is extraordinary and insane when you think about it. Same with Sean Baker talking about Anora You know, these guys don’t make any money out of doing that. we’ve been making commercials with him and he’s like, said to me, that’s the first paycheck I’ve had in eight years. And this is someone who’s just won three Oscars a couple of weeks ago. it.

Orlando (15:45)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dav (16:08)
It’s sort of insane, but I think that relationship is really, really interesting and really important.

Orlando (16:16)
as I was saying before,

you’re more likely to get to shoot stuff in commercials than you are in film. It’s the fulfillment of a lifelong dream that got them to start creating in the first place. But it’s also an incredible risk. And so I think that at its best,

managing talent in commercials helps create a soft landing And I think that part of it is just, you know, managing expectations on the agency side, because you’ll know that, you know, agency people are also very concerned about their work and they want to make sure that if a creative team is only going to sell one idea this year, they want to make sure that the director who they allow to be the custodian of it isn’t out to lunch because they’re only thinking about the film they’re going to make later on in the year. You know, so.

Dav (16:39)
Definitely,

Yeah.

Yeah, completely.

Orlando (17:01)
you when you’re on the buying

Dav (17:02)
Yeah.

Orlando (17:03)
side of, you know, of a director’s treatment, you do spend a lot of time going, well, yeah, but does he care? Is he invested? Is, or, or she, I’m sorry, but, and I think, yeah.

Dav (17:12)
Yeah. I think that’s the word

by the way, sorry to interrupt you, but caring is the key word for me, especially as a producer. know, as a creative, of course you got to care and you got to be like, and you’re right, know, especially when you’re making advertising these days, you know, you want to convince and reassure your clients who are spending a lot of money by the way. And the stakes are very, very high in a very noisy world.

Orlando (17:34)
Yeah.

Dav (17:39)
that you really care that this is the most important thing in the world and we’re gonna make something very special. But as a producer, caring is everything. you know, it’s so hard to hire and find great people. And I constantly find myself trying to, you know, describe what are we looking for in terms of, especially the production role, Like I said, it’s a film school.

Orlando (17:47)
Mm.

Dav (18:01)
the best version of film school where you get paid, you get all the toys and you get to work with amazing, amazing people. you don’t need to be super creative, although curiosity is the other important word but caring is everything. If you don’t care.

then you’re in the wrong industry. There’s plenty of other industries where you can kind of apply skills without really being emotionally involved. I think for producers, for everyone in film, it’s really about that.

Orlando (18:17)
Yeah.

think that’s one of things that I think people don’t appreciate at a broader level about advertising is how much you do care. And especially at places like BBH or Wieden and Kennedy and Fallon when I was there certainly, know, places that really value creativity, people really do care quite a lot, And then on the other side, you have people like, you know, like Shawn Lacy at Biscuit. I’ve never met anyone.

who cares more about her directors than she does. and fiercely protective. She’ll, you know, go to war for them. And also she’s another emotionally soft landing. And it’s all about deeply caring about the work because, you know, on a practical level, this work will decide.

Dav (19:00)
Yeah.

Orlando (19:13)
as silly as awards may be, those awards get people a raise. Those awards get more opportunities for that director.

Dav (19:22)
I think that’s right. And I think the talent really feel it, you know, and I think what comes with that and with caring and especially running a production company or an agency, you know, what was brilliant at BBH, we talked about entering popular, you know, making commercials that were part of culture, but actually what was the key to that beyond the brilliant people was that was the culture we created internally. Like I think you probably had a similar thing.

at the great Wieden + Kennedy, you know, like that kind of it, like where you create community and, you know, John always, yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Orlando (19:52)
I mean, the fights that would break out about, you know, art direction choices. really

raised, you know, raised decibels and, and raised heart rates, you know, really people are, yeah.

Dav (20:00)
Yeah. Yeah, no, was heavy, heavy,

heavy culture. I mean, it’s sort of what John brilliantly still describes as like, it’s not, know, culture isn’t what is printed in the handbook. It’s not that kind of set of values or, or even what’s said in meetings. It’s what was being said at that time in the lifts in the pubs.

it’s the behaviors, it’s how you behave and it’s the dialect. There was inside jokes, there’s a shorthand. You you got into the culture like at BBH, it was all about the black sheep and about, you know, if the world zigs, you zag, you do the opposite, you don’t take the easy route.

Orlando (20:31)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dav (20:35)
it just fostered such a environment where people cared so much about what we were making, how we were making it. And everyone felt whether you were a producer, a writer, an art director, an intern that you had your…

your blistered fingerprints were all over anything that left the building. And I always loved that. The pride of what we made was always really important.

Orlando (20:53)
Yeah.

one of the things I think people also kind of don’t see a lot in advertising is how much technological innovation often starts in advertising. It’s, because you’re doing 60 second spots and the cost for that, I mean, you know, a 60 second spot might have a production budget of upwards of a million dollars.

I remember when I was when I was at Wieden, Amsterdam, and we got to work on a Heineken spot called Beer Run where David Fincher worked with Brad Pitt. But it was the first time I remember working with a digital camera. And.

Dav (21:32)
Red camera, yeah.

Orlando (21:34)
that point it would still have hard drive dropouts. You know, you’d lose frames. was the equivalent of checking the gate. You know, you’d have to check the hard drive to see if you had frame loss. and he was trialing that out on the commercial because he wanted to use it. I think Zodiac, I want to say, he wanted to use HD on a film and trialed it out in commercials. you know,

Dav (21:38)
Yeah.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Orlando (21:59)
I think that because of the nature of it, commercials often see a lot of those technological shifts before entertainment does. And you get feedback very quickly about the final result. Have you noticed, obviously there’s so many technological shifts happening now and many since the pandemic.

Dav (22:09)
Yeah.

Orlando (22:18)
Are you noticing your workflows changing at all or in response to any particular technologies?

Dav (22:24)
Yeah, I mean, I, like I said, I think we are very much in the learning phase of certainly with AI and the impact on the industry. short form in general, music videos, advertising, I think has always pioneered sort of technology I think inspiration unlocks the future and,

I mean, I’m a real believer in the positivity of AI and how that’s only gonna kind of potentially elevate the creative process. Again, you’re coming back to the Brutalist. Brady was, you know, through his awards,

run there was a sort of moment where there was an AI controversy, which was clearly a bit of a smear campaign on the thing. what he’d done is he’d sort of, he’d leveraged an AI tool to help Felicity Jones and Adrian Brody, what sort of really deep dived in the sort of Hungarian accents and wanted to perfect them.

Orlando (23:00)
Right. Yeah.

Dav (23:17)
in post-production, which then became like this, that’s so controversial because Hollywood’s still like AI. It’s like, well, actually what they were doing was really in the spirit of authenticity, actually wasn’t even replacing any roles. It was actually meant more people got involved, more jobs were created and all of that. And it was all in respect to the, you know, the kind of where the stories were coming from. And so I think that’s a really great example of AI.

Orlando (23:33)
Yeah.

Dav (23:44)
at its best.

But yeah, think there’s so many positives. And, know, weirdly, I’m doing a film at the moment where we are, you know, it’s a film all about relationship with a human and an AI, in this case, a driverless car. And it’s just really interesting how this is a film that we actually started with a mutual friend of ours actually.

Orlando (24:08)
Mm-hmm.

Dav (24:09)
Ringan Ledwidge was a late great filmmaker tragically passed away as we sort of started making the movie so swinging back and and we’re now exploring it in this film he’d written this film is only four five years ago and here we are a few years later and we’re we’re we’re looking at packaging up with with his his estate and we are in a world where you know i mean no joke yet i drive to work and i see a driver’s car every day i was at the traffic lights in l.a.

Orlando (24:12)
Yeah.

Yeah, horrible.

Dav (24:38)
drivers car pulled up next to the end as we stop the truck is a little robot crosses the road it’s like you know it’s that James Cameron quote of you know we there is no more sci-fi because we’re living it you know we’re in the future it’s bananas this is blade runner and

Orlando (24:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I saw one waiting, I

saw Waymo waiting in an In N’ Out line And I couldn’t tell if it thought it was in traffic or it was actually waiting in the In N’ Out line

Dav (24:57)
That’s amazing.

That

is amazing. That’s amazing. Yeah. know, we really, we really are. mean, I’m trying to educate myself is the honest truth. Like I said, I weirdly did a thesis in, in AI, I studied fuzzy logic, which at the time was sort of, you know, allowing kind of, kind of for shades of gray, know, nothing is binary that, you know, considering all the information available will get you to the best possible.

Orlando (25:07)
Yeah, that one cracked me up.

Dav (25:28)
decision AI is just a kind of new way of really utilizing the amazing information, collecting and curating it in a way that’s really helpful for us. I’m reading this amazing book at the moment by Harari called Nexus, which is all about the history of the information that was have you read it? It’s incredible. And he I think he really draws on some really interesting

Orlando (25:43)
yeah, I’ve read that. Yeah, unbelievable. Yeah.

Dav (25:50)
It’s the of the conscience and the intelligence and the kind of interesting relationship there. But it kind of really comes back to the difference between information and wisdom. And I think that’s the kind of conflict we’re having as a human race is like, are we any wiser because of these tools? I’m not sure. There’s a great quote, Jimmy Iveen said,

I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then. And he’s talking about growing old and how growing up and how you’re kind of bombarded with information that kind of changes your perspective. And that sort of childlike perception, especially in the creative world is so precious.

Orlando (26:14)
Hmm. Yeah.

Dav (26:27)
as you get older, you start to realize the power of that, especially in creativity and why so many, bands first albums is always the masterpiece And we’re in a world now, I actually, looked up the top 20 grossing movies of last year, and you have to get to number 17 to get to something that isn’t a.

sequel or a prequel or a franchise, which is extraordinary to me. AI from a creative perspective could play a role in perhaps creating some of the extension of those stories using an original idea or franchise or moving it on. But all those things are relying on something original.

Orlando (26:48)
Yeah, yeah,

Dav (27:03)
whether that’s Beetlejuice or Kung Fu Panda or Wicked or whatever, they’re all kind of going back to some original piece of, and when you look at the most recent Academy Awards and the films that are kind of resonating, like The Brutalist, like Anorah and films like that, you’re looking at films that, yeah, where did those films come from? Like, I don’t know.

But those are the things that are really powerful for me personally, like being in the cinema and watching a film like The Brutalist reminds me why I ended up in this crazy industry. So it’s an interesting time I’m sort of terrified of not being able to leverage those things in the right time.

Orlando (27:36)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dav (27:45)
your business is a great example of that. you’re already with some of the tools that you’re offering, certainly, you know, studios, filmmakers, in terms of curating their IP, creating their stories are like, are incredibly helpful. And it’s a great example of this is the power of AI of like, you know, kind of the sort of organizing the the cultural content continuum.

Orlando (28:04)
Yeah.

Dav (28:06)
And, and, and then this as an extension of that is great because it’s starting the conversation going, okay, well, how can we be really disciplined about this? How can we use these tools in a way that kind of enhanced the kind of huge, you know, the human experience. and yeah.

Orlando (28:22)
Yeah, because I

think that it’s imperative that we amplify the new stories and new voices, because you’re right. I think that part of the no new stuff at the box office is part of it’s an economic reality, where everybody’s worried about getting fired at studios, and studios like Paramount are worried about getting closed or bought or sold off for parts. Warner Brothers just moved its TV division and separated it logically, presumably.

Dav (28:38)
completely.

Orlando (28:50)
because they’re preparing it for sale. you know, and they’re basically constantly looking at pieces of IP and going, there’s a following there that we know we can tap into and a bit like a tax rebate. You’re like, well, if I get a 20 % tax rebate and I have a 20 % inbuilt following, I’m only risking 60%. so I think there’s that, but I think there’s also the way things moved us when we were kids and the way things moved us when

Dav (29:03)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Orlando (29:17)
we were funneled into a slightly more restricted content stream, whether it was television or box office, meant that we had these group experiences. And so we share a lot of those things. And now those experiences are so fractured that it’s difficult to cotton on to any one of them. But I think it shows up in AI. Like for me, when I…

watch Reddit and every day there’s a, this is some short film created with AI. I don’t really care unless it’s like watch the Muppets in Mad Max land, you know, like the Muppets Thunderdome. And I’m like, well that I’m going to watch. Like, and so weirdly what it’s preying on is it’s, is it’s using IP that honestly moved me before when I was a kid and I watched Thunderdome.

Dav (29:48)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando (30:07)
it’s pressing that button and that that works and I will then watch this thing, but I won’t if it’s original, but I will watch a Anora that’s original. And so in that way, I think our generation is a little safe. I can’t speak to what comfort the next generation is going to have with AI developed content.

Dav (30:10)
Yeah, that’s fine.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Orlando (30:32)
But one of the things I said when I was chatting to Kate is, Gary Kasparov was beaten by Deep Blue in 1996 at chess. It didn’t usher in a whole new era of people watching computers play each other in chess.

Dav (30:47)
No, no,

and I think that was an interesting point. list that brilliant podcast. And yeah, the point she made about sports, you know, and how the emotion in sports and how nobody wants to watch 22 robots play football. think, I think it’s interesting. But again, yeah, I mean, I’m not, I’m not ready to read a book written by an AI. I’m not ready to listen to music,

But it’s interesting because one of the things we’ve been looking at on this film we’re making, we’re talking about AI therapy as a kind of key theme, but it’s actually really interesting. When I was thinking about therapy

To me, that’s something I could really channel right now. I could see the benefit there. But again, to quote Sir John Hegarty to you, he was always the one to say, the practices change, but the principles remain the same. And I believe if we can hang on to that.

then there are sort of, you know, innovations in technology that are only going to make that better. there will be something genius where someone hacks it in a way that no one’s really thought about. And that kind of opens up a whole new window.

Orlando (31:51)
you’ve mentioned John Hegarty a lot. he’s one of the, the, the faces on the Mount Rushmore of advertising. He had a quote that I disagreed with. And he said, he said, creativity can’t be put in a box.

And I disagreed with it because I felt fundamentally that what we’re constantly creating is the box. We’re constantly creating the most interesting, intricate boxes of human systems that can be relied upon to produce phenomenal feats of creativity. And especially, an advertisement works the same way as a haiku works. There are certain rules. You have to abide by them.

Dav (32:10)
Yeah.

Orlando (32:32)
And the beauty of it is the way you bend yourself and contort yourself to still achieve something beautiful within this set of rules. I think that’s true of music videos. think it’s true of songs. I think it’s true of advertisements. I think it’s true of films and television. There’s four act structures, three act structures, you know, and those things, when they’re respected and they’re done expertly are impressive. And I think

Dav (32:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Orlando (33:01)
What’s

interesting with Magna is it’s taking a lot of the soul of Pulse, but what you’re creating is a fertile human system that can as reliably output documentary as it can an ad, What do you think is unique about that human system?

Dav (33:18)
look, I think we’re in a really interesting time. You know, like things are, let’s be honest, tougher than ever in many ways. But I we see it as a quite diverse business when you’re looking at long form, short form and everything in between. Yeah, and it’s not just the whatever the the the economy, it’s not just the looming

sort of questions, existential questions with AI and when it comes to the creative process, that production is again, the process of creating something.

that creates a feeling you can’t put into words. And we’re in the danger of production being turned into a service, a shared service in the way that so much, you know, as corporate businesses grow, kind of, you know, there’s certain services that can be shared, you know, whether that’s IT systems or, yeah, I think most…

Orlando (34:08)
Wasn’t it Publicis or Omnicom that just brought their agency production

into the holding company rather than the agency? Yeah.

Dav (34:14)
There’s, yeah, so

that’s exactly right. So I can, so what’s happening with a lot of the agencies is they are beginning to consolidate production and turning it into a service, which I think is a massive mistake.

Orlando (34:26)
becomes more like project management than creative production, yeah.

Dav (34:28)
It’s project management, kind

of you decouple the human element. and again, that’s not just the kind of the culture that comes with the creating the community, but the inspiration, the curiosity, and that whole idea of care, like, who really cares? there’s always the easy way to make something, there’s always the very hard, challenging way to make something great.

Orlando (34:39)
Yeah.

Dav (34:50)
So it’s a real interesting time. think what we’re trying to do with Magna is really offer a unique destination for talent in that we want to…

to kind of get in a kind of more holistic journey across different disciplines, but also start turning production, pivoting it from a service into kind of an IP creation model where, you know, the creators really participate in the ownership and also in turn have more control of the stories that they’re telling. what gives me real great pleasure is being able to

Orlando (35:12)
Mm-hmm.

Dav (35:25)
to power the people that we think are the most incredible filmmakers, diversify their income and their kind of skillset and find a way to protect them in what is a very challenging time right now. And so that’s a really big part of what we’re setting up at Magna.

Orlando (35:38)
Hmm.

It’s funny because there’s a lot about how AI is going to sort of people out and whatever else. But actually, even a human system can do that. If you move production into a holding company, the architecture of that human system can also stifle creativity and can also limit the human interaction with the final product and make it lesser somehow.

Dav (35:56)
Yeah.

Yeah,

I think so. I think, look, we’re getting into a world where I think also the other thing is, you know, overheads, everyone’s sort of the baggage that comes with being a very heavy system. You know, you want to be really backing the people and being quite agile and quite tight about how you approach things and so that you can react to projects. So.

So yeah, no, it’s definitely a challenging time right now, but as you said upfront, it’s usually in these challenging times where creativity thrives, you know, looking at punk rock coming out of the sixties to kind of the post.com crash and like all the amazing creativity that comes out of that.

You know, it’s a very cluttered market. There’s too many, too many people trying to do this too many of the same things, but I believe the, you know, AI will in many ways replace a lot of systems. But equally, as culture gets more flattened by kind of algorithms and all the rest of that is like, how do you kind of cut through those tech filters?

Orlando (36:51)
Yeah.

Dav (37:11)
is by creating spikes and the spikes It’s those moments that just don’t make any sense, but create that feeling that changes everything. And I think those are the people who are going to kind of win in this moment. And so, you said it earlier, like people are not taking the same risks as they used to and that’s true.

Orlando (37:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dav (37:30)
But risk taking is an inherent part of creativity, you know, and obviously you have to, you know, have to leap, you have to leap with your ideas. You know, you want to look before over the edge before you leap, but, that’s a big part of it. And I think, I think we’ll start to see more and more how ideas that kind of factor, you know, the zip when the world zigzag, you know, are kind of doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing, which is increasingly feeling generic. So yeah.

Orlando (37:55)
Yeah.

So one last question I’ve been kind of asking everybody is Dan Wieden had a great quote where he said, you’re useless to me until you fail big at least twice. So I was wondering if you can think of a time where you really, you know, shit the bed and what you learned from it.

Dav (38:18)
I mean, I’m a firm believer in failure and making mistakes and making them fast. I don’t think I have. I don’t think I’ve ever made a mistake. No, I mean, you know what? Recently I had a fuck up, it was a really humbling experience where, look, right now it’s, being a filmmaker in advertising is harder than ever.

Orlando (38:22)
You’ve just never messed up, you know? None of us who know you were surprised, Dav

Dav (38:39)
and there’s so many people and we’ve set up a new company, we represent about 25, 26 filmmakers, we feel like that’s the right size, we don’t wanna go too big because you start to end up, as I said, these relationships are personal.

And recently and I won’t name who it was, but like someone reached out who’s an amazing filmmaker, incredible. I was sort of kicking the can down the road a bit. I wasn’t sure whether I was ready for another person. it’s a big personal like.

Orlando (38:58)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it’s a commitment. You’re now responsible for their mortgage. I mean, it’s a big deal and people forget that.

Dav (39:07)
You know, it’s a thing. And so we got, no,

And then I sent this email to the team and I was just like, look, I just don’t think this is the right time to sign this filmmaker. He’s clearly talented, but the type of work they’re making, I don’t feel is enough.

Orlando (39:26)
bright.

Dav (39:27)
for the market that we’re in right now. It’s so competitive. And I was just like, I just think we need to, you know, we gotta be brutal about who we take on. And I sent the email and realized I copied the director on the email. And it was one of those moments that I was like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, And so, but what was amazing about it was, and I wasn’t, it wasn’t like a damn, I mean, I was honest. I was like,

Orlando (39:43)
heartbreaking.

Yeah. Yeah.

Dav (39:55)
I was more honest than I would have been to this individual. I was like, look, the work’s good. The work’s good, but there’s a

Orlando (39:56)
You were maybe less tactful than you might have been when you, you would have told him the exact same thing. Just, you know, yeah. Yeah.

Dav (40:03)
and so I realized what I’d done. was fucking, I was like, nah, I can’t believe we’ve done that. And then I reached out and apologized

and what was amazing was the director’s response was incredible. and actually I became more connected to the director as a result. But anyway, it was just kind of like one of those stupid fuck-ups that, it’s not a funny story, but it was definitely.

Orlando (40:16)
Right.

Yeah.

No, not at all.

Dav (40:29)
learning and

it’s just like I think you learn to be you know honesty and not being cynical and is really important in this industry and yeah and you know treating people yeah and owning up yeah yeah no

Orlando (40:40)
And I think owning up as well. know, owning up.

And I think that when you’re honest about the situation that you’re in, I find that you get a lot of grace back. You know.

Dav (40:51)
Yeah,

yeah. No, yeah, I think so. But look, I’ve made so many mistakes in my life. but I do, I am someone who I think learns from the mistakes and like you, I mean, yeah. So I will continue to be making a lot of mistakes. Like, you know, we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re making all this shit up as we go along. It’s sort of terrifying the more I think about what we’re doing, how we’re doing it. But, but yeah.

Orlando (41:10)
Yeah

Yeah.

Dav (41:18)
Yeah, I’m sorry that’s not a super funny story.

Orlando (41:20)
No, that’s a, listen, it’s not

intended to be a funny story. think like, to be honest, that’s what I’m trying to get at is like, A, that, you know, even people in your position still have fuck ups. There are things that happen and we still, you know, roll with it and move on and learn from it

Dav (41:31)
Yeah.

look, the philosophy is start every day asking the right questions, you know, and it’s a mistake to believe you have all the answers, but making mistakes is not a bad thing and is definitely where the lessons are learned. And actually I believe, especially in the creative process.

it’s often the mistakes or the happy accidents that are the magic, know, like there is that thing that happens. So if you don’t allow kind of room for chance, you know, then yeah, then, yeah, then that would never happen. So you have to be able to take the risks and like I said, take a leap with what we do. Yeah.

Orlando (42:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, dude, thank you so much for that. I really, really appreciate you taking the time. And it’s awesome to see what you’re doing. You’re absolutely crushing it. I’m happy that you’re finally talking or finally PRing yourselves because you’ve been succeeding so much behind the scenes. And I know you’re not one for taking a curtain call. But I’ve definitely been watching what you’re doing, feeling that you should be getting a lot more.

pats on the back and a lot more recognition for how hard you work and how well you’re achieving at it.

Dav (42:52)
Well, thank you, well…

No, I really appreciate that and congratulations for being to you and I just like, just thought it’s validation to me that you’ve asked me to do this. like, okay, I hope I haven’t fucked it up too much. But when I look left and right at the people you’re interviewing, who are all really brilliant like yourself, it’s really appreciated and I appreciate your, yeah, the kind things you’ve said, but above all your friendship, mate, you’re a dear friend and you’ve had such a great impact on me and yeah.

Orlando (43:04)
Of course.

No, you’re fantastic.

You too,

and you mean. Yeah. Well, love you, dude. On that note, thank you so much and love you loads and congrats.

Dav (43:26)
I appreciate that.

Yeah, man.

Cool.

Thank you Orlando. Cool. Take care. Bye bye.

Orlando (43:35)
No problem dude, have a good one.

Bye bye.