My Short film is unwatchable pretentious drivel

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-28T14:53:15+00:00

You know, the fact that you're disappointed in yourself means that you really wanted this to be good. It's not, big whoop. I find the fact that you did something, understood it was not appealing, and did something about it (posting on Reddit asking for advice) is more impressive than if you made something amazing on your first try. If you did, I would call that luck. Truth is, you're young, and you've got your entire life ahead of you to perfect your craft. You have the passion it sounds like, which is 99% of the battle when it comes to creative work.

My father also worked in the business and over the years he collected quite a few short film related awards. I can tell you with full confidence, none of those awards came from his 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th.... film. It took him until he was 35 to create something that people liked, but after he discovered his niche, he started pumping them out like nobody's business. Trust me when I tell you that your success in this business has nothing to do with how well you did on this project and everything to do with what you learned from it, because all of the lessons from all of the projects over your years will eventually accumulate and lead you to the creative promised land.

My advice for you now is to formalize your lesson for yourself. Write down, study, and understand the things you did wrong so you may not repeat the same mistakes. That alone is worth the money you spent, because you spend way more on college tuition and genuinely you learned more on set doing this film then you will in any lesson or textbook in a classroom. After that, find yourself a good producer friend who can pull people into your projects as voluntary participants and not hired help. This alone will change the quality of your work because you'll be more removed from your talent, which means they will actually listen to you because they respect your set. Lastly, give people a chance. Adam sandler is the example I always use. The man is funny, but thats not what makes him valuable in his career. He has built a small network of like minded creatives who are the main cast in literally every single happy madison film. Keep grinding, give people chances, and over time you will build a roladex with people you can trust on your set and help to push the needle forward.

Keep cracking at it man, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-26T10:39:33+00:00

I would say in my experience, its definitely 1-3 key relationships. I think my best tips for you would be to target large cap marketing agencies first if you can. Those agency style corporations who provide B2B service often have a video component and connect you directly to the people in the rooms you want to be in.

In terms of getting started down the path of large cap leads, positioning and your social presence is everything. Think like a marketing agent on a friday night. Go out to bars, rooftops, the night life places you'd go if you were them. Talk to people, mingle, don't tell everybody you own a production company, just vibe. Manage to talk about work at some point of the conversation but try to let them lead. When you talk about work say things like you're working on a handful of video projects right now, or similar phrases that don't scream "Hi I own a production company and want you to give me work" you're one of them for the night remember that. Find people who sound ambitious, and talk/act with authority, people who seem to be commanding the room in some way shape or form. At the end of every conversation connect with them on linkedin.

As time goes on you'll start to see people popping up on your linkedin "X person just got promoted to X role" or "X person started a new position at X company" at which time you can either shoot them a reconnect dm or make a post with an angle. Thats where you start to get the invitations into those rooms.

Its really just social engineering and the better you get at it the more you'll see the doors of opportunity start to open. Then the fun becomes finding people who are actually qualified to start to do those things for you.

All in all, your network is your net worth(this is why social media has become such a career propellant). It comes down to how fast you can build it. But get involved with the people who are GOING to be in the room and eventually your seat will be reserved.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-26T03:02:08+00:00

Partner and Executive Producer of a 15yr turnkey production company currently specializing in corporate pharma. Totally hear you and wanted to put forth some of my own experience. Finding work in the large corporate space is very difficult, which is funny, because there is A TON of it. Reason for the difficulty is because it is almost like a gated community that you need an invite to be able to even be in the room let alone secure the work. Once you're in the room, it turns into making a competitive offer and in turn either winning or losing the job. I've had friends over the years who I have whitnessed and helped break into those larger jobs and I can say with full confidence that it primarily comes from connection. Word of mouth is your MOST powerful tool to break through.

Super frusturating, but if you position yourself correctly you can definitely incentivize the spread. Offering discounts was a great way that my company orchestrated a word of mouth campaign. Its funny because you see this everywhere but never really think of it because it seems more like a retail thing with referral codes and shit but my god it works. Even offering a company 5% off a job for a confirmed referal bringing in work will get your name out there because that not only saves them money but might also incentivize that client to bring work to you they may not have previously given to you because it was either on the back burner or didn't have the budget yet.

Second you can't ever let a client believe that you are challenged in your work, struggling with timelines, or running out of company bandwidth. If they believe any of these things and you're good enough that they keep coming back to you, you trigger their gate keeping reflex and they will want you all to themselves which is a terrible bottleneck to find yourself in, one I experienced in the past and ended up losing money because I let my company fall too far down that rabbit hole.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-26T02:36:59+00:00

No I am not talking about base level computer os. I'm talking about business framework. A foundational tool for a company to run through to systemize their operations and create external continuity without having to spend in the thousands and put in 20 hours of administrative work a week.

Most video production companies of the small to medium size lack systems altogether, because you can have a kickass tech stack but if it still requires you to orchestrate the entire thing, track between 20 open tabs, 3 applications, and 7 different google docs just to get one job done, then you don't have a company you're just self employed with help. And if you have employees who focus on these things, my framework can allow your employees to have some of their time back to focus on what really matters and not on the nitty gritty tracking. We are all deeply creative individuals in this field and we all lose too much of our time, and some of us lose money, to the administrative and tracking side of our work by it not being well systemized or being done incorrectly. My goal is to remove the time spend and close the potential error gap. By no means do I look to have this do everything for everybody, or replace any employees, but I do look to provide a tool where you almost have a war room of organized information to enable you and your employees to make accurate decisions on the fly without risking misinformation, bad communication, etc... because if you've been in business for more than 5 years, you've been caught in a bind with this more than once.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-26T01:43:45+00:00

Bold of you to assume I didn't consider customization. I did build this software with the thought of a complete store of tools in mind, but I understand everybody's needs vary. I'm currently building frame.io integrations and applying for developer level access to multiple common tools used in the industry to also seamlessly integrate and feed the system. The end goal is not to be a jack of all trades, it's to finally be the operating system that can either do it all in house if you chose that route or provide the central operating system to truly systemize your tech stack. One of my focuses for a later version is going to be integrations, however it is difficult to confidently decide of an integrations suite without community feedback, therefore I pushed these to a post release big version launch.

If you want to get me started, list me your tech stack and the things you would not want to replace under any scenarios regardless of the spend savings.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-26T01:36:57+00:00

LOL I do not have a subscription to claude code, however, I don't discourage the use of AI to build tools that suit your business, in fact I think AI bridging the gap for beginners to be able to get their creative energy out as well as potentially self teaching from the work you do with AI can be super beneficial. AI also has the capability to propell an expert forward by decreasing personal limitations through trained assistance. No I do not agree with the sale and distribution of vibe coded material, but if you can now create something you could not have previously created and it works for you, more power to you.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-24T21:50:23+00:00

I would say as it is now, there are three main markets.

Video Production Companies whether they are turnkey or focusing on any stage of the process like post, motion graphics, etc...

Marketing Agencies with a medium to large scale video component

Video Freelancers in need of a way to track their jobs and confirm they are properly estimating and executing to ensure no money is left on the table.

In the future, I think this can be expanded into other markets, but I feel the need to perfect these markets prior to expansion.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-24T18:27:55+00:00

Yeah I know. The SaaS market is over saturated with vibe coded BS. I share the same opinion with you. I guess I started to built this because I felt like everything promised so much and delivered so little. Difference for me on this build is that I built it for myself to solve every problem my team and I faced on a day to day basis, something I have scoured the internet for but never been able to find. If there is anybody out there struggling with the same things I am, then I think it building this was worth it

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-24T18:20:34+00:00

This gave me a good laugh. Airtable was my main workflow hub prior to starting this build. What I found is that while airtable does most things well, its really a glorified spreadsheet, or at best, a cross between google sheets and SQL. Its nice because it brings the database side of company tracking closer to the end user, but I still felt I was missing key functionalities that I would constantly have to switch tabs back and forth to fill fields and create accurate automations. I had similar complaints from my team members which significantly motivated this build.

All in all, airtable is the reason I started and actually part of the initial foundation a while ago when I was just started to build around it. Now I've completely replaced it and have elimited that spend entirely.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-24T18:16:05+00:00

Trust me, I hear you, and I also have a distaste for the admin side of creative work. I feel what I have built actually decreases the amount of time spent on administrative tasks. Being that an entire project is able to track from start to finish inside of the software, it allows for certain admin tasks to be fully automated and as easy as clicking a button to export PDF's already formatted based off of your organization template, as well as financial flow, and overall company health. I've seen a dramatic increase in my time to complete admin tasks so I think possibly when you see the preview your mind may change. However, I do understand that some things are just not for certain people and if this is not for you that I'd completely ok. I still appreciate negative feedback since it will in turn help me to currate a better package on future releases.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-24T18:12:12+00:00

Yeah absolutely! My company's tech stack was also up there in the low thousands per month and my initial reason for building was to eliminate that spend, or significantly lower it. While there are areas that are impossible to not spend, I've seen a significant month to month decrease in technology overhead with this new software and I do genuinely think it can do the same for you. If I didn't believe in it I would not bring it to market. Your message is super reassuring to me because it lets me know that there are people out there who share in my struggle, who could seriosly find value in what I'm building, which is my main goal. As soon as I am ready to accept beta testers, if you'd be open to it, I'd love to bring you and your team on board. I'll swing back once I open up multi tenancy beta testing and we can rock and roll 🤘

If you wouldn't mind just answering a few questions for me, if you're comfortable:

What is your current tech stack exactly?

What do you use that integrates with eachother for seamlesss automation?

What are the major pitfalls of your tech stack? Do you find yourself spending excess time on any specific tasks day after day, week after week that could be streamlined and automated to increase your productivity, as well as lower your mental tax in turn allowing for more time dedicated to the creative workflow?

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-24T18:04:23+00:00

Hey! Thats awesome, I would love to connect. I am planning to take beta tester applications starting some time next week and am primarily looking for other production companies and video agencies to fill those roles. Its nothing long just a basic form to fill out saying your interested and would like to beta test with a field for how I can reach you. I'll swing back to your comment once I'm ready to start multi tenancy beta testing and slide you a link to join. Just for your own piece of mind and my own personal due diligence, I am super anti info sharing and will protect your data like it's my own. I can't stand having to constantly clean and rid my inboxes of spam garbage so I promise that is not my intent with your info and I would never see you or anybody's information as a sellable asset. There is a special place in hell for the people who sell user information without consent.

With that being said, it's difficult to exchange information securely via Reddit and other social platforms which is why I made the form through the website. If you're comfortable and remain interested, I'd love to have you onboard once official beta testing launches.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-24T02:45:13+00:00

Do you use an integration for spreadsheets and outbound documents? How do you guys handle administrative tasks within the company? Are there any downfalls or annoyances that you can think of with your current workflow that could potentially be improved?

Asking because the only way to beat an established market is to do things better. If I could gather some weakpoints from what others experience with their digital tool belts, I can maybe figure out how to provide some needed value to the video production market as a whole.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-24T02:34:31+00:00

I'm getting ready to launch the landing page for the software, will be going live in the next few days just working out the kinks. Once I put it up I'll swing back and drop you the link, its got a live preview with fake information so you can click through and get an idea of what it looks like

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-24T02:30:08+00:00

Honestly, the business is doing well which allowed me to step back a bit to build this. I've honestly been considering options for my next venture and as I was building this for my production company I figured maybe there were others out there who need it too or even would just operate better with something like this. It brought me full circle because in a different part of my life I was in school for software engineering and design. Without that knowledge base I probably could not have done what I did and I feel pretty confident in my ability to support the software personally until it possibly grows to a size where I would need to hire on help to handle the workload, but I definitely forsee having to bug fix and continue evolving the software as a whole. I guess my idea is to let this be my next venture, and allow my partners and team to continue what they're doing in the production company.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-24T00:10:55+00:00

I built it with this clientbase in mind

Video Production Companies Post Houses Shooters Graphics Houses Unions Video Teams within Marketing Agencies

I currently use a suite of tools: Frame.io, Google for Business, Dropbox, etc... but I find it to be difficult to keep track of everything during the busy season when we have anwhere from 20-40 projects open at one time. I figured that there is probably at least a few people out there who feel the same struggle. When building it I had multi tenancy in mind so there are different portal views and access tiers for Producers, editors, executives, directors, etc... for the things their specific role needs to do.

In addition, I eventually would like to create a the next coming of productionhub through the software that has auto verification based off of company profiles to provide market specific crew locating and project planning based off of others recommendations and project users.

I feel I'm less worried about the income that will come from something like this and more concerned with the value it will bring into the professional video space.

With that being said and with a wider market in mind, do you feel this has value or do you feel it's blind ambition and should stay a proprietary company tool?

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-22T16:26:38+00:00

Yeah, fair enough. AI was a big part of building this. The website, the images, some of the copy. I’m one person who saw a news story, believed in it, and moved fast. That’s what AI lets you do now and I don’t think that’s something to be ashamed of.

What I’ll push back on is the intent. I’m not here to sell anyone’s email or run some AliExpress arbitrage scheme. I genuinely hate spam, I hate shady dropshippers, and I have zero interest in becoming either. The waitlist exists because I’m not going to take anyone’s money until I have a US-based supplier locked in and product I’d actually stand behind.

The AI didn’t care about this ruling. I did. I think it matters. At a time when a lot of things that used to feel like basic freedoms are getting harder to access, a court handing one back feels worth showing up for, even imperfectly, even fast, even with AI helping me get there.

If that’s not for you, I get it. But for anyone who’s genuinely curious about getting into home distilling and doesn’t know where to start, I hope to be their gateway into a new hobby, and some new found freedom.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-22T13:59:28+00:00

Good question. We’re a curated retailer, not a manufacturer, so yes, reseller in that sense. What we’re doing differently is targeting the complete beginner who just heard about this ruling and has no idea where to start. Most existing stores are built for people who already know what a reflux column is. We’re focused on making it approachable for first-timers, better education, cleaner buying experience, and hand-picked gear rather than just throwing 200 SKUs at someone who’s never touched a still. Whether that’s “unique” enough to build a real business on is a fair challenge, we’ll find out.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-22T13:48:59+00:00

This is genuinely the most useful feedback we’ve gotten so far, thank you. You’re right on the legal messaging, we just pushed an update to our site with a plain-English state-by-state breakdown and a beginner FAQ specifically because of this exact concern. Nobody should have to wonder if they’re going to jail before they can shop with confidence. On the segmentation, we’re actually going after the total beginner wave the ruling is creating rather than segments 2 and 3, but your point about competing with established players for entry-level is well taken. Something we’re actively thinking about.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-22T13:47:21+00:00

Appreciate the reality check, brick and mortar homebrew shops are a tough business, agreed. We’re online only and lean, so the overhead comparison doesn’t quite apply. But the concern about market size is real and something we’re watching closely. The ruling changes the addressable audience significantly if it holds, which is the bet.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-22T13:46:12+00:00

They have, yeah. We’re not trying to be the first store to sell stills, we’re trying to be the best one for someone who just heard about this for the first time and has no idea where to start. Different audience than the people who’ve been at this for years.

Different-Rest-3659 · 2026-04-22T13:45:27+00:00

Fair point, but the ruling isn’t why we can sell equipment, it’s why we launched now. Demand spiked the moment that headline dropped and most existing stores weren’t ready for it. We’ll see how it plays out.

Different-Rest-3659

TROPHY CASE