From Love Island to The Crown: Inside Spain's Production Revolution

Orlando Wood (00:00)

Imagine waking up in paradise, walking to work in Palma de Mallorca, and producing The Crown, Love Island, Below Deck, as well as a dozen major ad campaigns for brands like Nike, Stella, and Mercedes all in the same month. If it sounds like paradise, well, that’s Mike Day’s life. He’s the CEO of Palma Pictures, the production service company behind some of the most iconic shows and commercials coming out of Europe in the last decade.

From feature films to glossy reality TV, Mike’s team runs one of Europe’s most powerful creative production engines, and they do it from a Spanish island most producers would kill to retire on. This week on Technically Creative, we talk about what it means to build a global production hub outside of LA, how tax incentives and talent are shifting the map, and why Palma Pictures is designed like a four-engine plane, able to fly no matter what’s happening in the industry. And yes, we talk about Love Island. I couldn’t really help myself.

but we spend more time talking about the sweaty glistening bodies working behind the camera in the Spanish heat. We also talk about why the best brief should terrify you a little bit. If you’re interested in how production companies run and what producing in paradise is like, please enjoy this episode.

Orlando Wood (01:16)

one of the reasons I’m so excited to talk to you is I’ve always kind of felt that you have one of the coolest jobs in all of production. not only do you get to live in paradise, you know, you live in Spain and you run the biggest and best production services company in Spain and Portugal. but you get to live in paradise. You get called up to do all sorts of really cool, different types of jobs, which is really all producers ever want

But you run Palma Pictures, arguably and demonstrably one of the best service companies in all of Europe. And I guess my first question is, can you explain to people who don’t know what a service company is and what Palma Pictures specifically does?

Mike Day (01:51)

Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for inviting me on your podcast. Delighted to be here. Delighted to connect with an old friend. Yeah, so Palma Pictures, we’ve been established in Spain. We were born in Spain, I’m looking at my calendar now, 32 years ago, started by a Swedish guy called Ulla Hongren. And we were born in Mallorca, which is where our headquarters are currently. It’s where I’m speaking to you from.

And our operational footprint now spans Iberia, so Spain and Portugal. So we help producers realize their content creation needs, their image capture, their movies, their TV series, their TVCs, their unscripted reality shows across Iberia. And we are basically…

You know, our job is to provide a sounding board, advice, infrastructure, know-how, logistics, and to all of those different kind of media. And, you know, it typically starts with the creative. So, you know, what is the project that someone is trying to realize? If I start with, you know,

movie or a TV series scripted piece will often will be contacted by a production house or a studio looking to shoot a 10 part series, a six part series, a movie and Spain will have jumped onto their radar for whatever reason. And the first thing we do is look to interpret their creative needs. So with their scripted sequences can

Can Spain or Portugal provide an apt backdrop for their storytelling? Now probably, excuse me, 80 % of the time we’re asked to double Spain as another location. So for example, a good example of this would be we worked on Four Seasons of the Crown, we’re very good friends at Left Bank Pictures and Netflix and…

Not once did we shoot Spain as if it was Spain. We had almost every other conceivable country under the sun. had Athens, and we had Australia, we had Mystique, we had Los Angeles briefly, had Arizona, we had Paris, lots of different locales. And it was because of Spain’s diverse location backdrop, versatility.

that caused them to bend their eye towards Spain in the first place. And then that is quickly kind of followed by a comfort in the crew depth of, in Spanish crew and suppliers, infrastructure, ease of filming, a welcoming culture for incoming studios and foreign production companies. The tapas and the wine doesn’t do badly.

Orlando Wood (04:23)

Great food.

Yeah,

great food, good wine, great, you know, so many good reasons to go.

Mike Day (04:28)

Yeah.

So many good reasons. Often I’ll have a conversation with someone at a studio and they’ll be talking how their above the line talent doesn’t necessarily need a lot of arm bending if they’re, okay, you’re gonna be shooting in Barcelona for four months, you’re gonna be in Mallorca for three months, you’re gonna be in Madrid or the Canary Islands, so that is appealing. then, so we’ll interpret the materials.

Orlando Wood (04:43)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Day (04:54)

or feedback with a visual deck, a database, kind of pool of images, saying, okay, Spain will look like this for your scripted sequences. And often this work can run to hundreds and hundreds of kind of pages of images in PDF and let’s say how we present. And if that then triggers a positive emotional response, we’ll then get into logistics and budgets.

what the tax rebate looks like and what the structure looks like. And that’s typically how we kind of open the batting, if you like. And then if the project then moves forward to being booked and green lit and starting to shoot, we’ll provide all of the backbone and the framework for their filming. we’ll,

Orlando Wood (05:40)

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Orlando Wood (06:14)

Yeah. And your, you know, your clients are primarily, whether it’s commercial production companies for your commercial division, whether it’s a film companies, large studios, you know, smaller studios or TV companies, for shows like the Crown and, and things like that. you become the funnel whereby you see all types of different projects. I mean, what I kind of loved about it is you described it not too long ago to me as,

Palma Pictures is really a plane with four engines all really running in sync. You you do production services for things like reality TV shows like Love Island, marquee TV shows like The Crown and Industry, feature films like Den of Thieves 2 and things like that. and a huge engine room of lots of TV commercials as well.

That seems to me to be the most exciting position to be in, to be able to lend your hand and your expertise to that breadth of different styles of project.

Mike Day (07:08)

Yeah, thanks. And, you know, well recognized, you know, we we’ve constructed it that way on purpose. You know, I’d say it makes us. Well, it differentiates us, I think it makes us unlike most other production service entities that I’m familiar with. You know, we like being across a broad kind of landscape, but also, I mean, for creative, financial.

reasons as well. And also I think in terms of looking to attract and retain the talent that works within Palma Pictures, I think having a broader scope of work that that young kind of young gun out of university or that, you know, that that talented individual who’s working in production or locations or casting or tech or whatever it might be, I think being able to call

home a company that operates across multiple different media genres makes it perhaps more of a dynamic workplace because on the one hand they might be working on a scripted series and then perhaps a couple of months later they’re working on a clutch of advertising work and then beyond that they might be working on an unscripted series. So I think it gives them a great kind of entry point to image capture and how things operate and work.

Orlando Wood (08:23)

Mm.

Mike Day (08:25)

And also from a financial standpoint, from running a business, things move in different ways and are affected by different kind of input. So as an example, during COVID, when obviously everything paused, to begin with everything paused, and then some of the first, you know, being…

You know, living in you know, our business is, is basically welcoming international producers to, to spend Portugal and not having the means to travel and being prohibited from travel, not having the means to kind of congregate and get together wasn’t great. Wasn’t great for our business a lot with, with many, many others. But it was interesting to note that actually advertising started to come back online to a certain extent because people were using remote technologies and, and, you know,

remote shooting. So we’d be shooting on our stage here in Majorca with the director in Los Angeles agency in kind of, you know, San Francisco, wherever it might be and, and us kind of, you know, moving the camera to order. And but that was

Orlando Wood (09:24)

Yeah,

there was some fear where that happened that that was going to be just a new way of doing things. Everybody was like, once everybody gets a taste of doing this from their living room, they’re never going to stop. And of course, that’s just that’s just not in the nature of people who want to film things. They want to be there. Well, you know, the making is the joy of it.

Mike Day (09:28)

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah, exactly. And that

was more of a an emergency measure just to kind of be able to capture, know, capture what they needed to capture. But it wasn’t, we didn’t do that with a lot of frequency. We did that, you know, when when required. So hardly rebalanced our kind of revenue loss, let’s say. But we started to do that. And then what became apparent is that those big scripted shows that we were working on where you have, you know, a crew of

Orlando Wood (09:49)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Mm.

Mike Day (10:09)

150 to 250 people moving like a small army from village to village to town to town, location to location. That was never gonna be agreed to, and quite reasonably, by the production companies or the studios because there were just too many moving parts in COVID times and too many things that could have gone wrong. However, some of the unscripted work we do where…

some of these big reality formats that we work on things like Love Islands are much more, let’s say, defensible and containable because, know, extensively most of the action is taking place in one location. So you can set up all of your health screenings and your safety and abide by that and have testing and all of those kind of things and have a robust kind of entry into the premises that was much more manageable.

Orlando Wood (10:55)

Mm-hmm.

Mike Day (10:55)

And so

that stuff came back online a lot sooner than our scripted work did. As an example, another example would be that during, obviously, we do a lot of US scripted work and we were amongst many others impacted by the strikes of 2023. And so it slowed our scripted US workflows down for

considerable time as there was the lag created. But obviously we are still involved in advertising at that time and still involved in unscripted at that time. we, from a financial viewpoint, we like the fact that we have four engines kind of running with the fourth being kind of photo digital stuff. And also the timelines are very different. We’re toward the end of May now.

Orlando Wood (11:24)

Yeah.

Mike Day (11:39)

we’re still looking at a considerable clutch of advertising work that we’ve got stuff booked in for June and July. We’re looking at other projects for June, July and August, but beyond that, the kind of the piece is empty. Whereas with our scripted work, we’ve got stuff shooting, we wrapped something last week, we’ve got something starting on Tuesday, but actually we’re having conversations with…

Orlando Wood (11:53)

Yeah.

Mike Day (12:04)

with our production partners that stretch way into 2026. So that’s interesting. You get a kind of a longer horizon on the script and the out scripted work, those big kind of tent pole entertainment. Let’s also look at next year as well. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (12:08)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, you mentioned

Love Island in there. I mean, I could I could have the rest of this this this episode be entirely about Love Island. I won’t I won’t do that to you. But what I what I love about it is, you know, the first season I watched it, I actually really enjoyed watching it from a production standpoint. You know, when you did that, it was a very new format. It was kind of Big Brother meets Beach Blanket Babylon. What were the kind of unique challenges when they came to you with that? I mean, obviously you’ve got.

So many different cameras, you have at least got a sort of a very sort of defined location where everything is happening. You’ve got everybody kind of lav’d up. know, what are you know, from you getting that kind of brief, what are the what were the the new production challenges? mean, I think that you guys kind of created a new production paradigm that loads of people from Too Hot to Handle and loads of these kind of beach reality series have kind of followed now. Yeah, what were the unique challenges there and what did you guys learn from it?

Mike Day (13:14)

Yeah, thanks. We love Love Island and we’ve been collaborating with Lifted Entertainment ITV studios for well over a decade now and I have to firmly give them the credit for the creation. We’re just very much passengers on that journey but we love this. It’s a repeatable series that comes back every year, bar one, during COVID but we welcome them back every year.

And it’s a significant operation. You know, obviously there’s the villa in question, but literally around that, there’s such a of constellation of logistics and technology that’s extraordinary. know, so literally we create a little kind of mini town. That’s it.

Orlando Wood (13:53)

Yeah. Well, you do the mini

town and then as well each week, if people go out on dates, now you’ve got personnel and crew kind of following them. You then do these like little interstitial cuts that are, you know, people arriving and, you know, shot in slow motion with, you know, high gloss, everybody kind of, you know, dripping with oil and the sun hitting them just right. You know, it’s it’s it’s a lot of different filming styles as well being applied, you know, on a weekly basis, you know, and and

Mike Day (14:18)

But yeah, but

no, the team at ITB Studios who produced this, I mean, they are, yeah, they’re first rate and they really know their stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Orlando Wood (14:26)

You’ve also got after sun, you know, and those those things when the people are coming out, all

of that supported down there. Sorry. The more the more we talk about it, the more things are popping up that you guys do so well.

Mike Day (14:36)

Yeah, no, they have a fascinating job. And what they often do, you often find that the team that come here to kind of Northern Hemisphere summer, they’ll spend some months with us filming Love Island. then often the same team will be off to Australia for, I’m a celebrity for the kind of the Australian summer. So they’re kind of rotating through Spain and Australia almost on a kind of a permanent basis.

Orlando Wood (14:59)

Yeah,

so they’re just constantly sweating just year after year. And what do you I mean in terms of something like that, you know the obviously you know if you’re looking at as a lay person you probably look at it and go well, they’ve got that format. It’s all done. You know from season one onwards when you start looking at it from a production standpoint, you realize each season kind of does develop and grow. Do you you know, do you guys do a lot of work to?

Mike Day (15:02)

Yeah, basically, yeah. That’s it.

Orlando Wood (15:24)

constantly be looking at what you can optimize and what you can, you know, you can be doing to produce it better or more efficiently or deliver better experiences to the production team that’s coming from ITV.

Mike Day (15:37)

That’s a great question Orlando. Yeah, absolutely. know, each year, and we’ve been doing this for many years with ITV studios, there are learnings. And you know, there are certainly efficiencies that you recognise that you carry forward into the following year, whether that’s in terms of how you’re structuring your crew, how you’re setting the site.

you know, the technologies that you’re using, the facilities that you’re using. Yeah, no, it’s a constant kind of, you know, reiteration of how you structure the show.

Orlando Wood (16:06)

Right. And so, mean, you you get sent all of these different projects. What’s your kind of your favorite kind of brief to get sent? What is what is it about a brief, whether it comes from an agency or it comes from a Hollywood studio doing something scripted, whether it comes, you know, from print and digital, you know, what’s the the thing in the center of it that you go that that’s what we’re what we you know, those are the briefs we.

come here to get and that’s what we’re here for and that’s what we love to see.

Mike Day (16:35)

Well, selfishly personally, I like the ones that make me a little bit fearful. You know, in terms of you kind of read the script, how are they going to do that? How are they going to are they going to shut Madrid for three days? How are they going to, you know, how are they going to, you know, capture those sequences, the ones that the ones that get you scratching your head? And unfortunately, I’ve kind of

Orlando Wood (16:42)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Day (16:57)

I’m surrounded by an amazing team here at Palma Pictures and the freelancers that we collaborate with. it tends to be their efforts in terms of finding solutions with controlling for myself on occasion, perhaps. yeah, it’s the scripts that get your pulse racing that excite you.

Orlando Wood (17:16)

that’s probably, having seen so much, that’s probably a good indication that it’s unlikely to have been done before. It’s probably reaching just beyond the capability horizon of all of the technologies and all of the production infrastructure that you’re faced with on a daily basis. It’s a good indicator. That fear is a good indicator that you’re reaching a little bit and that the creatives who have written it, whether the writers or whatever else are, sort of…

down for something exciting and different and they know that the challenges are coming.

Mike Day (17:48)

Yeah,

I think it’s question of constantly being respectful of other people’s creative process. And what I mean by that is, know, when a project comes, you know, to our door, a lot of stakeholders have been working on that, whatever it is, know, whether it’s a TVC campaign or a print campaign or, you know,

an entertainment format or a movie. A lot of people have been giving their kind of, know, blood, sweat and tears typically to that for, you know, months or years. And they’re deeply vested in it. And part of our responsibility is to, you know, is to kind of help and comfort them and, you know, help them execute it, you know, enable them to execute it.

Orlando Wood (18:30)

Mm-hmm.

I mean, it occurs to me the places like Barcelona are quite similar to Los Angeles in a lot of ways. the, were two reasons that production settled in Los One was getting ahead patent rights of the film camera. But the other one was the fact that LA you have a city infrastructure, you have deserts, you have mountains, you have the ocean.

Barcelona, you know, especially kind of ticks off a lot of that. It’s a major metropolitan city sitting right on a coastline. You’re very close to the mountains. You’re very close to sort of desert environments. And I think that that’s what makes Spain very similar to Los Angeles and California in that respect. But we were just talking to a lady named Pamala who’s running an advocacy group called Stay in LA. And obviously production in LA has really faltered in the last few years.

A lot of that’s to do with, with sort of tax incentives and things like that. What role did tax incentives and local crew infrastructure play in winning international projects and, how do you stay ahead of that and make sure that new incentives and things don’t come out that, that make people turn their heads to another location? Are you, are you that forward thinking in, ensuring that

Spain remains competitive, not just Palma Pictures remaining competitive.

Mike Day (19:45)

No, it’s a really good question. think that… So the tax… In Spain, there’s a tax rebate and there’s a tax credit under Spanish law for scripted work, documentary, those kind of things. doesn’t, obviously, it doesn’t support advertising work or unscripted work. But…

it came into being. actually Spain was a little late to the party in terms of global incentives. And the first incentive was launched in Spain in 2015, so 10 years ago now. And since then it’s had several kind of positive iterations and enhancements. So it kind of packs a greater punch now than it did 10 years ago.

in terms of the percentages, in terms of the caps. And so it’s a much more beneficial incentive now to production partners than it was 10 years ago. But it is important. It is important. we, if, for example, a UK production house or US studio or whoever it might be is looking at Spain,

they’ll be looking at a variety of kind of decision points, won’t they? One will be, does it creatively work? Another would be, know, crew infrastructure and suppliers and safety and joy of being there. But rebate is a big deal. You rebate has a significant budgetary impact. And…

Orlando Wood (21:05)

I imagine

especially for the studios.

Mike Day (21:07)

Yeah, very much so. you know, so geographically one could argue Spain is quite a close cousin to Italy in terms of the landscapes and some of the architecture and stuff like that. know, Italy has a strong rebate structure. mean, you know, nowadays most typically visited or regularly visited global film destinations have some form of rebate or another.

And so to a certain extent, there’s always a little bit of an arms race as to who has the more attractive. And it certainly does capture production partners thinking and, know, it has a significant impact on their budget for the better or for the worse. And so, yeah, no, is important, you know, in a conversation I have with producers.

It tends to be creatively led, and then often it’s followed by logistics and operational capability on our part. Rebates and budget obviously is a very closely followed conversation.

Orlando Wood (22:04)

Right. how is the role of the production service company evolved in the light, you know, since covid have you seen a change? Is it it kind of business as usual and sort of the way it was before covid or you know, or has that changed, you know, your relationship either to work coming in or the jobs that you’re doing?

Mike Day (22:23)

Actually, no, no, I’d say that, you know, if one, you know, looks kind of before COVID and then kind of present day, I’d say things have largely normalised with that aspect, with that aspect.

Orlando Wood (22:34)

And so what sort of projects are you seeing? Like, are you seeing any trends in like what projects are growing and what ones are kind of shrinking at all?

Mike Day (22:43)

No, not really. I’d say that we’ve noticed that perhaps green light decisions take a little taking a little longer. You know, for those for those big projects, perhaps there’s fraction, more risk aversion to pulling the trigger on those on those big kind of tent pole productions. Budgets are, you know.

Orlando Wood (23:02)

Right.

Mike Day (23:04)

constrained to a certain extent.

Orlando Wood (23:08)

Is there more bidding

with with less follow through? I mean, is there kind of do you find that people are kind of scoping out so many more places that that green light decision making? Because obviously you do a lot of work before the green light comes. You know, you kind of get called up as people are like, we don’t know. mean, we’re pretty, you know, we’re pretty sure it’s Spain, but it might be Budapest. And you’re like, how you’re you’re deciding between Spain and Budapest, really? And, you know, I mean, what, you know, and and

You end up doing a lot of scouting work and searching your archives and putting together decks and bids and, things like that. Is there, you know, it does that reticence come with more of you pitching on jobs that don’t confirm.

Mike Day (23:47)

Yeah, that’s another good question. think that, you know, ultimately, I think that projects tend to find their natural home in terms of their shoot destination, you know, because the people working on them, the producers and the creatives and the studios behind them, you know, they’re working very hard on research and analysis and making the right decisions. And so, yeah, it’s fair to say that

we’re approached by a considerable number of folks whose projects then don’t necessarily come and shoot in Spain or perhaps they don’t even get green lit or come to fruition. But I always think that if a producer approaches us and they’ve chosen to have a conversation with us, because we tend to be in receive mode in that way, know, someone said, I want to speak to you about X, Y or Z.

if they’ve chosen to speak to Palma Pictures and they’ve chosen to speak to Palma Pictures kind of within Spain, they’ve already made some decisions there. And so, you know, to kind of feed back to them, I think is something that we should, you know, embrace in that way. And if we can be a good foil for them, enable their decision-making, be a good sounding board.

Orlando Wood (24:40)

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Day (24:56)

a good creative resource, then I think that helps them in their decision. And at the very least, hopefully, if we acquit ourselves well in those interactions and that process, they’ll carry that forward into future conversations. I mean, the amount of times actually that I’ve been contacted or we’ve been contacted by producers.

Orlando Wood (24:59)

Mm-hmm.

Mike Day (25:22)

who have been recommended to us by colleagues of theirs who we were engaged with on a conversation that actually never then moved into production is countless. And I think it’s just because we treat those conversations with respect and diligence and try and provide the best advice we can. yeah, think it’s just, you know, you’re ultimately dealing with fellow producers and if you can be supportive of them, I think that kind of, you know, that does pay a dividend over time.

Orlando Wood (25:26)

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think, you know, if the old adage of writing is that, you know, writing is rewriting. I think that, you know, so much of production is bidding. You’re right. The way you act when, you know, when a job doesn’t confirm and you put your time into it and you’ve, you know, you’ve you’ve delivered a really good standard of scoping. think that’s just a kind of, know, that’s a huge A, it’s a mark in your favor. And I think the people, you know, appreciate it. But I think it’s also

the standard professional courtesy. I had somebody who just kind of became a producer not too long ago. very early on in their career and they were like, Oh, I don’t know how to do this. And I was like, listen, call up a producer, you know, ask their opinion that, know, it’s, is a, the standard professional courtesy that one producer, whether you know somebody or not, will very often go happy to give you this person’s contact details, happy to, you know, to, you know, give you what I’ve learned through what I’ve done. It’s a, it’s,

a remarkably supportive group of people, know, that kind of once you’re a producer, kind of have this sort of, you know, everybody realizes that calling up people you don’t know is a huge part of the job.

Mike Day (26:54)

Yeah, exactly. And it’s hard sometimes, you you put in a lot of, you know, lot of legwork, kind of, you know, emotion into trying to win a big project and resource and ultimately, know, capital, know, lots of people working on it and you’re not necessarily charging for that kind of research periods.

Orlando Wood (27:08)

Hmm.

Mike Day (27:13)

then you get that phone call, so, you know, listen, it’s been great, but yeah, we really feel that Morocco’s speaking to the material better. And of course you, you gnash, you bite your knuckle and that’s absolutely fine. problem. Good luck. Hope it goes well. But no, I mean, typically people are, as I say, you know, it’s painful cause you always want to, you would, yeah, you want to shoot these great projects, but you know, after a few seconds, one gets over oneself and you think actually.

Orlando Wood (27:21)

Yeah.

Yeah, good luck. Click.

Mike Day (27:39)

probably right. I understand why you’ve made that decision. for 95 % of the time you actually concur with those choices that they make, which makes it less painful.

Orlando Wood (27:40)

Yeah.

Yeah, it was actually written for Morocco, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah.

Who do you pitch against most? mean, just in terms of production infrastructure, crews, similar locations, is it South Africa?

Mike Day (28:02)

It’s literally, it’s the world, literally. Southern hemisphere certainly, so Australia, South Africa, typically, it tends to be less.

Orlando Wood (28:04)

Right.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you stop getting

those lush summer written jobs in January and they go southern hemisphere.

Mike Day (28:16)

Yeah, so it depends what, again,

it depends what kind of, you know, media segment you’re talking about for advertising, certainly, you know, it’s, it’s much more seasonal. You know, in our kind of quarter four, you know, because I could, yeah, so let’s say quarter four into quarter one. So November, December, January. You know, it’s all about, it’s all about Southern Hemisphere, of course. We still shoot stuff though, because it’s that much further away and people

Orlando Wood (28:21)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mike Day (28:43)

know, days, especially for our European production partners, thinking about sustainability and their footprint of travel and stuff like that. For scripted, it really is the world over, you know, it really depends on the material really depends on the the the rebate, what the how the production designer sees the, the kind of the tone and texture of the of the piece.

Orlando Wood (28:45)

Mm-hmm.

Mike Day (29:04)

Italy, Malta, Croatia. I mean, sometimes in the States, we’ll be looking at US stuff and they might go to New Mexico, might go up to Canada. So it really is, it’s very kind of globally competitive. That also makes it interesting though, because you’re able to stay tuned to what’s all over the place.

Orlando Wood (29:12)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think one of the things I think people also don’t understand and a lot of producers make this mistake is, okay, it’s great. Go to Malta. Malta has an incredible 40 % cash rebate back in your account within 90 days post wrap. That’s pretty unique. That’s very attractive. But you also need to understand the amount of job shooting there at the time, because if there are two big jobs shooting right when your window is

The depth of crew talent is not, well, I don’t want to be pejorative, but it gets a little ropey past two very big projects or one big project and two smaller projects. Whereas Spain and places like Spain, South Africa, Australia, places that have…

well-worn, you know, production service communities have a real depth of talent and it means that you can staff up many more jobs, you know, going on in the country at the same time.

Mike Day (30:22)

Yeah, no, that’s a fair point. But, you know, I shouldn’t say this, I should be flying the Spanish flag. But in kind of defense of our Maltese kind of production colleagues, I guess it’s the same, isn’t it? Because probably, well, certainly Spain will host over the course of a year, many more productions than Malta. And, you know, the crew base in Spain is certainly

larger and deeper than in Malta. But I guess those two things come in ratio, don’t they? you know, I mean, it’s always a it’s always a challenging question, you know, we so as I mentioned, we have quite a long horizon into into the following year. So, you know, I’ll be asked, okay, in, you know, what’s your calendar looking like in, I don’t know, spring quarter to 2026. And at the moment, it’s looking fine, you know,

Orlando Wood (30:52)

Right.

Mike Day (31:13)

But we can never be sure. We know what we know. And we know what we’re hearing through the trades and through the grapevine. And obviously we’re a connected company. But we’re never entirely sure what’s gonna be coming down the pipe later this year for a similar.

Orlando Wood (31:24)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Day (31:34)

timeframe, a similar kind of shooting window. you know, I always kind of equate it to, you know, we’ve got, you know, right now, for example, you know, we have we have considerable amount of planes kind of circling, but not, you know, but obviously a much smaller percentage are actually in a kind of a glide path to land, you know, kind of soft prep or prep or kind of green.

Orlando Wood (31:45)

⁓ Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mike Day (31:57)

We never, because the decisions are upstream of us, we’re not in a commissioning chair. And so we’re never quite sure at what point any of those plates will be called into land. it’s always a hard one to judge, but we just try and be candid and frank with our production partners. So when we hear things, we’ll share with them. It’s our responsibility to, again, be the kind of the sound advisor to them.

Orlando Wood (32:05)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

What is what is service companies like you like your see before the rest of us do? Like what are the trends or shifts or red flags? Is there a canary in the coal mine that you’ve noticed you go like, I don’t like it when we see this kind of stuff or, you know, do you do you see, you know, do you see technological, you know, uptake of things like drones and things like that earlier than than the rest of us do? What what what what is your unique position? What perspective does that give you on trends within the industry?

Mike Day (32:47)

Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I wouldn’t necessarily say that we see things earlier than others because we’re not creators in that way. know, something has had to be typically created or developed to a certain extent before we have eyes on it, before people approach us. But I think if I look at it from a Palma Pictures perspective,

Because our production partners, our client base is very international. I think we see differences emanating from different areas. you know, we’ll be, from an advertising perspective, we’ll notice kind of, let’s say, marked trends that are happening in the Nordics versus in North America versus in Asia.

shifting slightly in terms of how one goes about, yeah, mean, obviously technology and capturing, but also in terms of, you know, kind of budget size or pivoting away from television commercials to digital or social or whatever it might be. You so we’ll certainly see trends because we have a radar that’s tuned to quite a, I’m not trying to overstate this, but kind of quite a

global perspective in that way. And we have lots of conversations on a daily basis with lots of different stakeholders across the business, across the industry. So I think that that helps kind of frame our own thinking and kind of try and set up our direction of travel in the right way. You can we get it right more times than we get it wrong?

Orlando Wood (34:13)

do you wish? mean, what do you miss more clients or prospective clients understood about, you know, your job or the work that you guys do?

Mike Day (34:22)

Well, one thing I often notice and actually with advertising work is that often when credits are given and credit where credit is due, right, you’ll have the client and the agency and the production company and the production designer, cinematographer and editor, all of these people often get a note, but it’s often the foot soldiers of production.

service that don’t get kind of any recognition, which I think is a shame. Because, you know, when and this isn’t a Spanish thing, this is a kind of, know, would be the same for in the production service business in Costa Rica or Mexico or Canada. I think it’s true in all corners. I think that

Orlando Wood (34:54)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Day (35:12)

there could be more recognition of the kind of the creative logistical financial input that production service companies give to the process. So I think that that could be recognized. It’s just some of the, some of the, obviously you can’t list all of the crew. It’s not a movie credit role, but I think some of the local.

Orlando Wood (35:22)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Day (35:34)

the local folks have kind of moved mountains to get the action made could be recognized.

Orlando Wood (35:37)

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s funny because you guys are always operating at peak pressure. know, that basically everything always comes down to this on the shoot. you know, so for everybody else is flying in and they have had moments of pressure throughout the production cycle, throughout from selling it to pitching it to, you know, getting it all done and doing all the prep. And there are these moments. But then obviously everything comes together at a moment of peak pressure.

Mike Day (36:01)

you

Orlando Wood (36:07)

at the shoot. And so they’re all super dialed in and you guys are incredibly dialed in, but you’re having to deal with all of that, you know, emotional stress as well of people constantly coming in. And this is your day to day. The moment you get out of that job of peak pressure, you drop immediately into the next job of peak pressure. And that that’s a very unique place to be. And I, you know, I always kind of feel like crews and service companies kind of have

a map of the world painted on their face. mean, it’s, it’s you people who are good at it, you know, they know production, there is nothing they haven’t seen. There’s nothing they haven’t done. And so, you know, they’re able to, to handle a lot of that pressure so much better than, most. but yeah, there isn’t really a question there. It’s just a, a, you know, a thing I notice is, is the, the service company personnel is

always, you know, I always feel like it’s like they’re the Sherpas, you know, like everybody’s like, Edmund Hillary is just, you know, mounted, mounted, been the first person to Mount Everest. And it’s like, no, there were hundreds of Sherpas who went up there for breakfast.

Mike Day (37:10)

That is a very good adage. I’m going to steal that one from you, buddy. That’s entirely

accurate. mean, also, teams here, and I’m speaking for our team here, and the same would be true of others, they’re pretty battle-hardened, you know, because as you say, they go from one project to another to another. So actually, their shoot time, or their kind of on the hook, or in the pressure cooker time is significant.

Orlando Wood (37:17)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Day (37:35)

And so they have significant experience of dealing with the curve balls that get thrown on a daily hourly basis. And also to your point, you’re kind of always on the hook for something. I mean, generally my phone tends to ring. I’m not getting a phone call on a Friday evening just from someone just to say how well everything’s going.

Orlando Wood (37:35)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mike Day (38:00)

I just step away from set and just call you just say thanks a lot. ⁓ Sometimes that does happen and it’s always but it’s normally like this has gone disastrously wrong how are going to fix it? And of course it’s always on a Sunday or a bank holiday or three o’clock in the morning when everyone’s asleep or everything’s shut or…

Orlando Wood (38:04)

Hahaha!

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I was, what’s funny to me about, know, having been the one who very often had to make those calls, you know, what always, what I always loved was you’re getting a lot of crap from everybody and that something is existentially gone wrong with, with the project and needs to change and whatever else. And I would call somebody like you or somebody like the line producer or even potentially talking to a head of department. And they’d be like, you know, you get this kind of.

I mean, yeah, you know, it’s like, you know, that’s not the way it should have happened. You know, in that sigh is contained all of this information. It’s not the way it should have happened. Not the first time I’m hearing of it. You know, I’m not unable to do it. You know, we had a plan, but I guess that’s not happening now. And yeah, I mean, we’ll do it. And it’s all of that wisdom is contained in a single sigh, I find.

Mike Day (39:07)

Yeah, normally you have to you get the often the one or often the several phone calls with everyone just venting the disaster that’s all befallen all of us. And the first thing you’re having to do is just kind of, know, just listen. Because obviously, know, nine times out of ten.

Orlando Wood (39:17)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And for people in our

position, our defensible thing is the the shake of the head being like, I know, I know this is not the way.

Mike Day (39:31)

Yeah, yeah, totally agree. That really is not good. Yeah,

yeah, it’s no way to paint it. That is really bad. But then it’s a question of how you solve it, right? And that’s all you do is you have to pick it apart and work the problem and try and come up with a set of solutions, you know, quickly and that work for the budget, for the timing. mean, there’s so many moving pieces, aren’t there? You know, yeah.

Orlando Wood (39:39)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

so I just have two questions and then I’ll let you go. You’ve been so generous with your time and but what’s something you’ve learned as a leader? know, I mean, Palma picture is is undeniably a leader in, service company work around the globe. You’ve been running it for ever. What’s something you’ve learned as a leader of a kind of creative company that that no one tells you about running a company at this scale?

And of course you’ve run it at multiple scales. mean, you’ve been running it so long that, you know, it’s, it’s the company itself has changed. mean, you know, what are some of the lessons you’ve learned there?

Mike Day (40:26)

Well, I think the obvious one is, and it is really obvious, but it’s harder to execute. It’s just really try and have the best, best people join your team. Really try and attract and retain talent and allow those individuals authority and autonomy. Try and find people who are the right cultural fit.

Orlando Wood (40:41)

Mm-hmm.

Mike Day (40:51)

and support them as much as you can. I mean, in a way, I don’t really have a job. My job is just to try and assist and enable other people and be a sounding board for folks that need it. mean, as I say, we’re in a machine here, if you like, of so different things going on, even today. We’re wrapping shoots, setting up shoots, shooting in all corners of

Orlando Wood (40:53)

Mm.

Yeah.

Mm.

Mm.

Mike Day (41:13)

of Iberia, so I can’t, you know, I can’t, I don’t necessarily have a have a an immediate personal influence on all of those different cogs, but you just need to make sure that you have the right team, you know, in place and you’re enabling them as much as possible. And also you’re there to try and help them when they get those phone calls they’re talking about.

Orlando Wood (41:19)

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it’s, mean, it’s an embarrassment of riches, isn’t it? I think that the wonderful thing about production, I think globally is I always say this, you only have to try to remodel a kitchen to realize that the production community is a well self-regulating group of people with integrity who very, who most of the time come in on time and on budget, try to do that in any other community across the globe.

And it’s a very, very difficult thing to do.

Mike Day (42:04)

Oh, and it’s entirely Darwinian, isn’t it? I mean, you exist almost entirely on your reputation. And as we talk, there’s a lot of things that can break in the realization and execution of a project, and it’s how you deal with them. And if you behave in a kind of non-transparent or, you

Orlando Wood (42:11)

Mmm.

Mike Day (42:26)

less than honest way or you know you’re ripping people off or you’re taking advantage of people you your time as a business will come to a very abrupt end so you’ve got to really set yourself, set your stall out of how you want to

Orlando Wood (42:30)

Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah.

when I was running a production company, I always kind of said to producers, I would I would very often hear conversations happen where, let’s say, a producer was being very bullish about our position and making sure that an overage was signed or or that the agency felt really bad about this change or whatever else. And I kind of said, listen, you know, is it worth this five grand to be fundamentally making them have a bad experience because they sit in an entire production department?

There is a group of 10 other producers sitting around them. And if they get off the phone and go, well, I’ll tell you what, I’m never working with that company again. You know, it’s just not worth the five grand. You know, it’s, it’s, you know, you, you need to judge where that bite point is, but you can never forget that, you know, you need them to call you next month. This job ends this month and you need to figure out what your next month or next two months job is.

Mike Day (43:17)

Yeah.

Yay.

Orlando Wood (43:36)

And those are the people who are going to call you or not. don’t make decisions, that are going to sully that reputation. Because it’s, like you say, it’s all you have. Even if they’re justified decisions sometimes.

Mike Day (43:44)

Yeah, absolutely. And actually, you know,

yeah, and actually, I find that out of the many, many folks that we deal with on, who qualifies our clients.

the vast, vast, vast majority of those folks work hard, behave well, have integrity, with rarity, you come across some bad apples, and we do come across some bad apples who who behave in a pretty skullduggerous way. you certainly mark the card and you think, okay, I’m not, I’m not gonna do business with you. Yeah, exactly. But that’s

Orlando Wood (44:00)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, not doing that again. Not worth it. Yeah.

Mike Day (44:15)

very small.

Orlando Wood (44:15)

so, okay. So one question I’ve been asking everybody is that the, the late great Dan Wieden had a quote that I always loved that was, you know, you’re useless to me until you failed big at least twice. And so I’ve been asking everybody is, is there, is there a time that you’ve kind of failed and would you be willing to admit a time you’ve failed? and what you learned from it.

Mike Day (44:36)

that’s a good question. think that…

you know, I mean, in a leadership position, in a management position, you’re making multiple decisions, you know, on a daily basis, aren’t you? Some of them small, some of them significant. Is it reasonable to say that the majority of those decisions kind of stand the test of time? I’d hope so. I should probably have another job, but certainly a percentage of those, how high into the double digits? I don’t know.

What are the wrong decisions that there’d certainly be a clutch? I guess, you know, we’re still still here as a business. So none of those decisions have necessarily been utterly calamitous. I mean, you know, I, you know, good example of perhaps a poor decision or poor timing is we bought the business in a management buyout from from the founder and

Orlando Wood (45:03)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Day (45:26)

little did we know and you know we became it as a management team we bought the business in at the end of 2007. I remember my wife saying to me you know I have house I sold my house to buy shares and stuff she’s saying sure it’s a good idea sure it’s a good idea so yeah I got this you know really yeah cocky arrogant not arrogant but cock sure you know I’ve got this flying and and then about 20 minutes later the global financial meltdown.

Orlando Wood (45:30)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah

Right.

Mike Day (45:53)

Well, just a bad idea. So I would say the timing of that decision was pretty, was borderline calamitous. But, you know, and necessity of the mother of all invention, isn’t it? But we really suffered as a business. so that, you know, hindsight, that was a really poor decision in terms of timing.

Orlando Wood (45:54)

Yeah.

Right.

Mmm.

Mike Day (46:13)

But then that spurned us because advertising work was so massively impacted, particularly advertising work, that it really spurned us to diversify, spurred us to diversify. And so, we really made a concerted effort over the following periods to shift our operational footprint away. We were just Majorca at the time. So really drive into…

Orlando Wood (46:17)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike Day (46:36)

being comfortable and operational across the whole of Spain and the Canary Islands and then further into Portugal that was different. We had a much broader palette of locations and price points and options to showcase to our production partners. And we were still advertising related, so we drove into scripted, into unscripted as well. And also we looked to diversify our

Orlando Wood (46:39)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike Day (47:00)

our kind of client base. were more UK Scandinavian focused at that point. And nowadays we get a lot more work out of North America, a lot more work out of places like France and places like India. We love Bollywood. We’ve done a range of Bollywood films. So I think that that kind of calamitous decision or semi-calamitous decision actually caused you to, because it was kind of an extinction moment.

Orlando Wood (47:09)

Mm-hmm.

Right. Great.

Mike Day (47:26)

And you think, what are we going to do about this? And so we were forced to.

Orlando Wood (47:26)

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it sort of helped

create the four engines that you say is one of the key benefits now. Yeah.

Mike Day (47:33)

No,

And perhaps without that, we would have just carried on kind of coasting along as usual. So I always like to think that there’s, you know, a silver lining on the edge of that very, very dark and impenetrable storm

Orlando Wood (47:46)

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, listen, that’s fascinating. And that was a, that was a really good one actually. you know, cause I also think, I think the companies that survive a recession are sort of future-proofed in many different ways. And I think that, you know, that comes out of the learnings, but, Mike, thank you so much. mean, as, as I always say, when I see you, you, you have one of my favorite jobs. I, I, I envy it deeply as, as well. You getting to do it from, like I said, paradise.

Mike Day (48:12)

Well you have to come visit Orlando, obviously.

Orlando Wood (48:13)

So, you I would love

to, will be over in Europe in the fall and so I’ll give you a buzz. I love Mallorcan wine. I get laughed out of every wine shop I ever go to. go, do you have any Mallorcan wine? Cause it’s so good. They go, ha, peasant wine. I’m like, delicious peasant wine. Thank you very much. It is delicious. ⁓ They should export it more. would be, I would be, certainly be a buyer.

Mike Day (48:18)

Amazing. Come see it. There you go.

It is delicious.

yeah, no, it’s hard. I

I think where I live, think within a, you know, within a 20 minute drive from my house, there are probably 12 bodegas, all very small outputs, you know, but delicious, really delicious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s a deal. In the fall we’ll crack open a bottle. ⁓

Orlando Wood (48:47)

Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. ⁓ well, I envy you. Envy you before I envy you even more now.

Amazing, Mike. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you giving us the time.

Mike Day (49:04)

very nice to speak. Thanks a lot. Bye.

Orlando Wood (49:06)

Absolutely, take care.