RELEASE DATE: May 20, 2021
Mt. Freelance Podcast - Episode 106
David Cress
TV & Movie Producer
David Cress started his own production company and went on to produce films for Gus Van Sant and shows like Portlandia, Shrill and Documentary Now. And he’s done it all far from Hollywood here in Portland, Oregon. In our sixth episode he shares his story and his philosophy on how he’s put the work before the money, sought out people doing meaningful projects and found ways to be invaluable to them.
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39 Min
Episode Recap
In our fifth episode Aaron James and Andrew Dickson welcome freelance producer David Cress to the Mt. Freelance podcast.
David got interested in film and enrolled in Mt. Hood Community College, which offered him the chance to learn every aspect of filmmaking, from the expected like production and editing to the intangibles that most film schools neglect but are vital for actually making a film, like how to find funding.
He started his career in infomercials but quickly formed an alliance with director Vance Malone and started Food Chain Films. Whereas most Portland production companies at the time represented a single director, they borrowed from the Los Angeles model and signed a roster, eventually making local but also National and even Super Bowl commercial work.
David moved on to the feature world, producing a number on independent films including Paranoid Park for Gus Van Sant, and Matt McCormack’s Some Days are Better than Others, which starred Carrie Brownstein. When she had a pilot for new show picked up David got the call and line produced it for free. Which lead to 7 seasons of the iconic show Portlandia. David has since produced the shows Chad, Shrill and several episodes of Documentary Now.
David has always been an advocate for filmmakers and regional filmmaking here in the Northwest. In our episode he shares his story and how he’s always put doing great work first and found ways to become invaluable to people doing interesting projects. It’s a must listen for aspiring filmmakers, producers and anyone looking to build up their creative community.
David Cress
Episode 106
Intro:
This podcast is brought to you by Digital One. Tell your story, connect with your audience and build your brand with an engaging podcast. Learn more at D-I-G-O-N-E.com.
(Theme Song)
Andrew Dickson:
The song does not lie, you are listening to the Mt. Freelance podcast. I am Andrew Dickson and with me is my good friend-
Aaron James:
Aaron James, that's my name.
Andrew Dickson:
You notice how I set you up there.
Aaron James:
Thank you.
Andrew Dickson:
It was like a volleyball lob.
Aaron James:
Yeah.
Andrew Dickson:
And you spiked it.
Aaron James:
I don't know if that one was in or not, but thank you for the set up. So Andrew, what is this podcast all about. We've been working on it and it's kind of our thing, so what are we doing?
Andrew Dickson:
Well, we started that online course and member community for freelancers and we realized that there are a lot of really experienced creative freelancers that have these awesome stories to tell and this great advice, so we thought we would maybe invite them on the podcast.
Aaron James:
That sounds good. I think we've been doing this long enough where we've been fortunate enough to brush shoulders with some really interesting folks, and this is kind of a platform for them to share their stories, share their insights, their hacks. Let’s dig in!
(Transition)
Andrew Dickson:
Aaron, how long have you known our next quest?
Aaron James:
I met David in 2002.
Andrew Dickson:
I have you beat by five years, because I worked for David Cress as a production assistant when he was running Food Chain Films. And then he moved onto producing films for Gus Van Sant and then Portlandia and Chad and Shrill and he's just, he's such an advocate I think, for sort of the Portland film community.
Aaron James:
Yeah, and the creative community. I remember he actually gave myself and my friend Jason Pollock free office space while we were trying to start an agency. Technically, I guess we started, we just never finished.
Andrew Dickson:
You showed up for three days and got another freelance job. Well, we're so excited to have David Cress here with us here today.
Andrew Dickson:
All right. Aaron, how excited are you for this episode?
Aaron James:
I'm very excited.
Andrew Dickson:
Why is that?
Aaron James:
I think that David Cress actually introduced you and I. Is that possible?
Andrew Dickson:
It is possible. You would have no memory of that would you David?
David Cress:
No. Mostly not much of a memory of anything.
Andrew Dickson:
Well, welcome David Cress. Thank you so much for being on The Mt. Freelance podcast. Maybe just to start, you're at a cocktail party, and I know now we're going back several months, there haven't been a whole lot of cocktail parties lately, but when someone asks you what do you do, what do you tell them, David?
David Cress:
Well, it's an answer that's a little loaded, because I live in Portland, Oregon and one of the shows that I produced was Portlandia, and there's decidedly mixed feelings about that show in town. So I find if I'm at the bank or if I don't want to have a lot of interactions with people, I just say media producer, and that's what I feel like I am. But sometimes I know that that leaves a lot of people with more questions than answers, so sometimes I'll say television producer or film producer or something else.
Andrew Dickson:
Yes. Media producer sounds like you're in the CD-Rom games. Educational software.
David Cress:
Did a little work with AOL back in the day.
Andrew Dickson:
Yeah. Do you consider yourself a freelancer?
David Cress:
Yeah, very much. Or at least I have been one enough. I mean, I think I might be defined by the IRS as self-employed. But that is true of most freelance people, right? And the minute my job stops I'm unemployed, so that's a freelancer. But I have been increasingly, since my career trajectory got intertwined with streaming television, these projects are longer than the projects I was used to as a freelancer working in film primarily doing television commercials and music videos.
Aaron James:
When I met you, you had started Food Chain Productions, which was primarily TV commercials, branded content and music videos. What were some of those first steps before Food Chain Films? How did you get started as a film maker?
David Cress:
I knew I wanted to make film from an early age. I went to high school in Eugene, Oregon and Portland, Oregon. I, as a lot of latchkey kids in the 70s, I had to entertain myself and films were the way and I'd watch the matinee movie on the UHF channel or I'd watch the cable channel and I'd watch American Movie Classics. And even as I got older and I could sort of choose things to do on my own, film was really the thing I spent as much time as I could doing. But, when I graduated from high school, film didn't seem like that good an option. There was a few notable films that had been produced in Oregon. It took a little while. I had a few roadblocks even though I knew I had a passion for that. But, I went to college and studied economics and then held a lot of jobs that you might get with an economics degree. Most of those occupations didn't really call me and I had a real, a serious fear that I just didn't like to work.
Andrew Dickson:
I had that too in my 20s. Coincidence.
David Cress:
This was pre-internet, so I went to the reference library, looked for schools that were geographically in the neighborhood and then there was Mt. Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon. They had a television production degree, so that seemed like a wise idea to me, because I didn't want any more student debt, so I could go to community college, work part-time. That was my training was television production. But it was taught by a guy who was very smart, who had his degree was in film and he taught that. He was teaching people to make activist TV, so you'd have to learn the whole bit, like where to get the funds for it, then how to shoot it. Then how to post it, then how to get it out into the world to be viewed.
Andrew Dickson:
It sounds like almost producing school, versus, I went to a very expensive fancy film school and all they teach you is directing, but they don't give you any sense of how to put up a light or how to get anyone to actually watch your film.
David Cress:
Yeah, it turned out the combination of studies actually was a little bit useful in a real round about way. Like, the cable and community television degree and the television degree, made me I think a more attuned production assistant. I knew what a BNC cable was. So I was a little bit able to sort of seem more like I knew what I was doing quicker than maybe some of my other entry level fellow freelancers at the time.
Aaron James:
And I know that Andrew also got his start as a production assistant and I think as a lot of people in production do, that's their first entrée into the industry.
Andrew Dickson:
It's really just a fancy terms for getting coffee for the rest of the crew and charging walkie talkies.
Aaron James:
Right.
Andrew Dickson:
You were a production assistant, and I'm guessing, you like many of us dabbled in ... Well, maybe you didn't dabble in any of the other departments. It sounds like you had your sight set on producing.
David Cress:
You know the film business that was here was scarce. The profession that paid here was marketing. So I chased that work, because that was the work that was in town. And I did as much of it as I could in as many ways as I could, because I was scrapping to make rent. I had applied at Tyee to work for free for them, the infomercial company. And they'd given me an interview. By the way, the person who interviewed me still works in film here in town now, she's at AD. But she said, "How many hours a week would you work?" I had my stock line ready, but that wasn't the question I got it. It was how many hours for free would I work a week. And I didn't want to seem too ... even though I had expected to work full-time, I didn't want to seem to eager, so at that moment I answered 30.
David Cress:
And then, I didn't get that job, but they did call me. She called me and said, "Hey, you were really good. You were our second choice. The reason I'm calling is I just wanted to say keep trying. Keep in touch with us. We think you might be good." I had the weird aggressive position to say, "Well, do you mind telling me why I didn't get it?" And she said, "Well, the other guy said 40 hours a week."
Andrew Dickson:
As long as it takes. For our listeners, as long as it takes.
David Cress:
41.
Andrew Dickson:
I think back when I met you, which I started as a production assistant and Food Chain was the big production company in Portland. I mean you were doing local jobs, but you were doing Super Bowl commercials and I remember of course Vance Malone being one of your directors. Talk a little bit about what you learned from that experience of starting and running a production company.
David Cress:
Vance and I, we were working a lot. We'd worked our way from being just begging for work and taking as many jobs as we could to being the people who if you were a big production company in L.A. and you had to do a job in Portland, you'd call your peers and they'd say, "Have you ever been to Portland? Have done a job there." And they'd say, "Yeah, call Cress or call Malone." We were on that list and we sort of understood what the difference between local production companies at the time were offering advertising agencies in Portland and what the national advertising, or what national production companies were offering their clients who were national.
David Cress:
So we noticed that and when we set up our company, we set it up to mimic those bigger companies. So we picked a variety of directors. Not one director, had his own house, which was common in Portland at the time. We sort of fell into a good time and a good space here when there was an appetite for the market to mature, and we were there at the right place.
Aaron James:
If you were to create the family tree of the film community in Oregon, I think almost everything comes back to you having some connection to it, whether it's the animation or the growth of really of the creative industry, not just production here. And I always think you've been a champion of that. What motivates that for you?
David Cress:
Well, I don't know, Andrew, probably most people would disagree with the kindness premise, right?
Andrew Dickson:
I was just thinking, I made my no-budget film, made for a couple of dollars on 16 millimeter and you were just like, "Anything you need." And I remember one day, I think you just showed up to PA and I think you ended up running out and getting us lunch or something, because we were understaffed. I've seen you on set. If someone pulls a boneheaded move, you let them know. But I do, I would agree with Aaron, that you have been such a benefactor and sort of a cheerleader, a hype man if you will for Portland film for so long.
David Cress:
I would say that I probably, especially early on in my career, was probably one of the worst bosses many people say they ever had. I mean, it's a very stressful occupation. I handle stress terribly. I still do handle it really badly. It used to be if someone worked for me or worked a lot with me and they said, "Hey, good news, I just got a mortgage on my house." I would look at them and say, "Oh, that's great." But then I'd go into the restroom and go, "Oh, now one more person whose mortgage I have to worry about getting enough jobs to pay for." It really was a crazy time to live here and work here. But it was also a great time.
David Cress:
And I still think one of the truisms is a piece of advice I got a long time ago, which is if you do good work the money follows. If you foster other people's creativity, they'll do good work, which will create more work, which will make more work for everybody in the whole community. So, I think there's a lot of these kinds of truisms that have at least in my life, turned out to be very much the case.
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Andrew Dickson:
[End Advertisement]
Andrew Dickson:
When you worked at Food Chain you were a part owner, and I'm assume you were on some kind of payroll, although maybe it felt like you were freelance at some point, because you were always hustling for work. But, talk a little bit about then leaving that and the security, or maybe it didn't feel like a whole lot of security, but really going freelance again to go work and do really great work with film makers like Gus Van Sant.
David Cress:
Well, we'd grown a lot. We had built a partnership. After about 10 years we'd built a partnership, so I was pretty strictly freelance for about six years, besides my three month that turned into a year internship as a PA at Odyssey. When the boss that had hired me there, the woman who was an employee there, she took a director and went off and created her own company. So I kept working at Odyssey for about another three months, but their work was ... they were doing noticeably less work. So at that point I said, "Hey, I have some opportunities to go freelance if it doesn't feel right to have me working here full-time, let me know, because it's a good time for me." And I think he appreciated that and said, "Yeah, it is a good time for you to go from our standpoint too."
David Cress:
So I was picking up every PA job I could. I'd started doing some location scouting. I had done some street casting. It was a real eyeopening experience to me, because when they prep and when they wrap, before the production assistant comes on, that's when a lot of the producing work gets done. The accounting work for it that gets done. The planing work that gets done. So I started to AD a lot and I was ADing a lot in then these young directors would say, "Why don't you just come produce my job or why don't you AD my job?" About that same time, I had done a music video with Gus Van Sant and it had worked out well and then he had Paranoid Park and he called me one day and said, "Do you want to produce this film for me?" And of course I said yes, because opportunity of a lifetime.
David Cress:
So that's when I left commercials and started working in film. And I did some more films with Gus and I did a movie with Matt McCormick that stared Carrie Brownstein. Little did I know when we were making that movie with Matt, she was also cooking up this weird web series with Fred Armisen. And so when they decided that that could be a television show and sold it as a television show, she recommended that we shoot it up here and we shoot it with some of the people she knew here and I was one of the names that came up. So it's been a weird securitas path to TV, which is now kind of the all consuming thing that I do. But that's how that happened.
Andrew Dickson:
I love the sort of doing good work begets doing good work, because I mean, if you hadn't left Food Chain and you hadn't left Ben to work with Gus, you probably wouldn't have ended up doing Matt's film and meeting Carrie and doing Portlandia and now doing Shrill.
David Cress:
Ben's film was basically not budget, that Carrie was in, and also the pilot for Portlandia was no budget. When they called me and said, "Will you do this show?" I said, "Sure." And then we started talking about the amount of money they had to make the show. I'm not a liberty to say what it was, but it was really a crazy small amount of money. And also, that Fred and Carrie and John Krisel, the real three creative geniuses behind making that show, they wanted to of course do a lot and they had very little, and I said, "Okay, well there's a way to do it, but you have to do it very Indie film style." And that's how we did the show.
David Cress:
So the person that, Lorne Michael's company, who originally conceived it as a television show, Andrew Singer, said to me early on, "We need to talk about your compensation." And I said, "You barely have enough money to make this, let alone pay me to make it. You really can't pay my rate and make the show." So we hit on a gentleman's agreement that if there was any money left at the end that he'd come up with some kind of rate to pay me. Then that turned into an eight season series, so it was one of those places where just doing the work first, worrying less about where the money would come to make you whole for it, it was another place where that rule has sort of paid dividends for me.
Aaron James:
So with just the explosion of streaming content that's out there in channels, and platforms being created, what are some of the secrets to getting a show, or creating a show? I think there's a lot of us that have thought through like, "Oh gosh, this could be really great." But obviously you've got to take it beyond that step. What are some of the things you see that are hallmarks of successful entrees into that world?
David Cress:
Yeah, it's still, even though there's more demand for content than there ever has been, it's still really hard to get something made. It's really hard to get even your idea in front of the people who can get something made. It's still an insular world that's hard to penetrate and you have to find a way to do it. But, there's a lot of getting that agent, getting that writer's agent, is really hard. Getting that agent as an actor is really hard. And you just have to keep swinging at it until you get it and then that takes one gate keeper away and you have more chances to approach people with your ideas, with your projects. And then, as you keep moving through the creative universe of television, more and more of those opportunities become available.
Andrew Dickson:
One of the things that I'm thinking about is that so many of the people that you've worked with just went ahead and made something. And even thinking about when I was making films and performing, there's something about being here in Portland where there's no one here to sell to, so you have to make something. I went to L.A. for two years and all I did was try to sell, and I got the agent and I got the manager and I got the lawyer. And we just took meetings and meetings. But I didn't make anything. For two years, I made a lot of meetings. I made sure to leave my apartment really early and not get stuck in traffic.
David Cress:
No, and you can make your whole career about having those meetings, and it's exhausting. So I agree that making something really makes sense, because that same energy put into making something is as likely to open the door for you as is much strategic research and market research and analyzing trends and figuring out what it is that people want to be making. In my mind, you're better off from a mental health standpoint, making something that you believe in and then trying to birth it into the world. But I will say that as I've continued through my career journey, there are more and more people who have made something and then what they have to show for it is that thing that they've made. Early on it seemed like left and right things were popping, but I think it's because it was a different perspective, but you always have that thing that you made.
Andrew Dickson:
Yeah. I remember too when you were making Portlandia, we would have one coffee at the end of the season. And catch up, and what impressed me is that you were always, you had this sort of off season when Fred was back on SNL and whatever, and you were always hustling to make a film or two. And I mean, I think that's another hallmark of yours is just sort of this hustle. Is that something that you can teach? Can you take a PA and sort of teach them that or is that something that you're sort of you either have or you don't?
David Cress:
There's this all these creative people who come through doors and shops that I work at and the ones who show a little energy or a little spark, if you can help them out, if you can help foster that thing, that idea that they have, then they may come back to you and say, "I have this idea, here's where I'm stuck." Maybe you can get them unstuck, and then you can be a partner in that process. I think, I have a few sort of ideas or truths that I feel like have maintained their validity through that whole 30 year career and one of them is do good work and the money follows. Another one is just keep working, because work begets more work.
David Cress:
And the other one is this some advice that I got and I think it was at community college where one of the professors was telling one of the other kids, or one of the other instructors was telling one of the kids who seemed very lost and didn't have any idea about what he wanted to do, and he said, "Go find somebody who's doing something good and figure out some way to be valuable to that person." And I was sitting a few seats away kind of spinning on my own, but being better at covering it than this other poor kid was, and I thought to myself, "That's pretty good advice, I should do that."
David Cress:
And I do think no matter what you're doing, whatever organization you're a part of, whatever, even whatever you do for a living, if you go seek out the people doing the best work at that place and you can figure out some way to be valuable to them, maybe it's coming in that extra day for free, maybe it's getting them coffee, maybe it's bringing in that really bright kid who's making ... this wild eyed crazy ... maybe it's bringing him lunch, because that's the only thing you can, beyond what other skills you have, that's the only skill you have that's valuable to him that day and you do that. You're aligning yourself with creative people who are moving in the right direction and you can be part of what they're doing if you're lucky. And that's I think part of that whole central thesis of keeping moving and keeping involved and staying active, hustling.
Andrew Dickson:
That's what the Mt. Freelance podcast is about. Thank you David. That's awesome.
[Begin Advertisement]
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Andrew Dickson:
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[End Advertisement]
Aaron James:
You've been a part of shooting and creating eight seasons of Portlandia and now you're midway through shooting the third season of Shrill on Hulu. How do you personally define success as you shoot a season of a TV show like this?
David Cress:
Well, I feel like this is my personal definition of success. If I'm at my high school reunion and I'm willing to say what the show was that I made, then you probably made a successful show. One thing that I learned from advertising was that there's so many cooks in the kitchen. It's so amazing that anything gets made well. So my personal philosophy of producing is that once I've said, "Yes, I'll take the job," I kind of don't get any more creative input on it. I will ask when I'm making it. Before I say yes I'll ask a lot of questions that are creative in nature, and if I'm satisfied then I just say, "Yes, I'm on and I'm here to help you make your vision." And my favorite TV is Ator TV. Like if you look at Fleabag or you look at Shrill or you look at Catastrophe or you look at Portlandia, those people are writing it, directing it, performing in it. They're really those people's visions, and so I'm lucky and happy to be able to work on those kinds of projects, and I seek them out when I can.
Andrew Dickson:
But what sort of advice would you have for someone who wants to be a producer?
David Cress:
That's one of the other things that makes the whole, when people ask you what you do, and you're a producer, it makes the whole thing kind of hard to say, because it means different things in different genres. But it's different in TV. It's different in film. It's different in television commercials. It's different in music videos. So the role I mostly play in television is that of the line producer. When you give me a script, I can kind of tell you how much it's going to cost, and sometimes very precisely and sometimes less precisely. And I can put together a mean crew for you, who's going to hell or high water they're going to make your project. We're going to get to that finish line. We're going to finish on time and on budget. But I can't really tell you if one network is trying to appeal to a younger demographic, I can't really tell whether this show would work better than this show.
David Cress:
I remember reading Documentary Now when it was initially proposed and I remember thinking, "This is the best show on television, but why isn't anyone making it?" Because it really appealed to me a middle aged white guy who loved movies. Like why are you putting that on TV? It turned out that the talent involved made that show have much broader appeal and it is a tremendous show. But, on most of the shows I work on, there's generally dozens of producers. So there's other people who do that work and I do the work of when it comes time of roll the camera, a little bit before that you want to bring me in and then you want to get me to set the team up and get it all in a can or on a drive now and send it to the editorial department.
Andrew Dickson:
What advice would you give for someone listening who is maybe in film school, or maybe is at an agency and is looking to move into film? I mean, you and I both started as production assistants. That's one way to get the lay of the land. But then, you're sort of starting at the very bottom and moving up, because it makes sense to just go out there and make something. Obviously showing up a day early, that's an amazing piece of advice that everyone should listen to hard. I'm wondering if people are still doing stuff like that. But yeah, what advice would you give them?
David Cress:
Well, there's the other kind of entry level work is you can intern at a production company in Los Angeles or at a talent agency in Los Angeles and you can get in on the ground floor. And another way to do it is if for instance you could intern at Broadway Video or Brownstone and they have a slate of shows that they're working on you get to see all the things involved in them birthing those shows and those shows coming to fruition. So there are other entry level ways, but I do think one idea is to make something and to get together with people and make things. And it doesn't really matter if you're making a music video or you're making a television show or a web series or a movie, the mechanics, the project moves in similar ways.
David Cress:
And each of those experiences will start to equip you with the necessary soft skills, working together with teams, being able to meet and find and foster talented people to do those specific jobs like the director of photography, the camera operator, even the focus puller. All of that sea of names when you're in the movie theater that many, if not all of those people are very specifically skilled and talented. And the more of them you get to know and get to know very well, the better you're able to put together a team that meshes really well, that has great chemistry, because the days are long, the work is hard, and there's nothing more miserable than working a long hard day with someone who's not happy about being there.
Andrew Dickson:
That's a great answer. It makes me think, Hollywood has had its me too moment. It's historically very male dominated, sexist industry, but it is changing, and I'm wondering if you could talk about that, especially using Shrill kind of as a blueprint for new ways to approach production.
David Cress:
Yeah, I mean, it is. As a person who grew up loving films, it is kind of amazing that we've ignored a huge portion of the population when we've been telling these stories. I think there was a real hunger for a portion of America to see themselves on television and have stories told for them. And where correcting that quickly, last year I think there were as many women directing episodic television series for the first time in the history of television, as there were men. But that doesn't mean that we're there, we still have a long ways to go. And there's still problems with even the people who are behind the camera. There needs to be greater representation and we need to foster more diversity, because even the props guy has an impact on the show that you tell. They just do. So if you have a diverse workforce, they'll make a better contribution.
Aaron James:
One of the things we talk about with Mt. Freelance and Andrew and I have learned this just through working, is that when you freelance, you have more control over the money you make and you also have more control over your time. You can say, no. That type of thing. Do you see that the flexibility of freelance opening up those two things in your industry?
David Cress:
I think you've got to set up boundaries for yourself. You've got to say, "I'm going to take off X number of days a year." And you have to make that time for yourself and if that means you have to hustle a little harder on those other days, I mean, you need to prioritize how to make that happen for you. To be happy to be freelancing, you have to take control. And doing that kind of deep analytical thinking about yourself and what you want, and then also keeping track and projecting forward, those things are necessary and those kinds of ... If once you can find a way to get ahold of that, you can I think have a happy life. I'm not a good example of that, so this is more of a do as I say than do as I do advice point. But I do think it's absolutely necessary.
Andrew Dickson:
For you, what's been the hardest or maybe most stressful thing about freelance? Is it that uncertainty?
David Cress:
If I'm putting all my cards on the table for you guys, this moment that I'm in now of television shows that are sort of stacked up back to back to work on, it's a little less interesting than the old scarcity model. I miss that time, because that variety and those different qualities to those different collaborators, it helps you keep perspective, to be able to work in multiple genres. When you have lots of work that's all the same, it can start to feel very repetitive. I don't know, in your mind, I think it's harder to focus on why you're there and the hours are long, the work is hard. It's a lot of personalities to juggle and that can be really hard. So I think that in some ways TV is a more reliable living, but it's not really going to be the high point of my career. That might have happened already, and it probably was in those time spans when I would be doing a lot of different types of genres or projects. That was probably the best.
Andrew Dickson:
Do you still have, so is there a dream project out there? That one thing that you haven't gotten to do or try?
David Cress:
Well, I always wanted to be part of a team that made that movie that really had cultural significance. But then I got to be part of Portlandia and now with Shrill, I feel like even though I didn't get to make the sort of great American movie about living in the Northwest at a certain time and place, old Portland, that we're all so nostalgic for, the body of stuff I've worked on has documented that old Portland pretty well. So I feel pretty good about that. Maybe I'm just justifying it to myself as I'm riding off into the sunset of my career, I don't know.
Andrew Dickson:
David, it was such a pleasure to have you on the show and have fun tomorrow on set.
David Cress:
Thank you. I mean, I don't want to go because it's so nice to see you and to see other people. I don't want to leave. Eric, can stay your studio forever?
(Transition)
Aaron James:
All right. We have the exciting part of the show where we get some questions from some of the great folks that listen to this podcast.
Andrew Dickson:
I can't wait.
Anonymous Freelancer:
Could you guys talk a little bit about the relative pros and cons you might have experienced with incorporating as a business in some way? I'd be curious to know if you are working as an LLC or as a sole proprietorship or any of that stuff. Right now I'm just myself with none of those things and I haven't dug too far into the costs and then benefits of them. So if you have, it'd be great to hear about that.
Aaron James:
Okay, that's a great question. Disadvantages, there's a little bit of additional cost. Setting up an LLC costs a little bit of money and then every year, there's probably a fee or something to keep your business license kind of fresh with your state. But, other than that, I don't really see any disadvantage. LLC creates a little bit of a liability buffer between you and your other assets. It also allows you to do business with agencies that would not just hire you as a sole proprietor, but they are able to hire LLCs as business entities. And I will say, I should have caveated all of this, this is just from experience, we're not accountants, but building a team is a great way to make those headaches go away and you can easily earn the money to pay for those extra team mates that you have onboard.
Andrew Dickson:
Yeah. Hire an accountant.
Aaron James:
Do it.
Andrew Dickson:
They're also, they're going to be able to look at what you're making and very quickly tell you if or how much you would save in taxes by incorporating.
Outro:
The Mt. Freelance podcast is handcrafted by the producers, mixers and sound designers of Digital One, Portland, Oregon. Executive producer, Eric Stolberg. Post producer, Kelsey Woods. Assistant engineer, Tristan Schmunk, who also created the theme song and incidental music. To learn more about Aaron, Andrew and Mt. Freelance visit M-T-freelance.com. Thanks for listening, and may your day rate be high and your vacations long.
Outro:
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