“We Need That Giraffe”: Leveling Up Your Shoot Day, with Room 1041

Hey guys, for this month’s Upload Club we have something special: a guest interview! Read on for some expert advice to guide us through Part Three of our series, 

ANATOMY OF AN UPLOAD

A Five-Part Guide to Better Posting

In this series, we’ve covered the Idea Generation and Pre-Production phases of content creation. Now it’s time for Step Three: The Shoot Day, when lights meet camera meet action.

Production is one of the few steps of the content process Upload Club doesn’t handle in-house. As content strategists, we guide creators through the process—including connecting them with exceptional producers like today’s guests. Joining us to up-level our Shoot Day skills are Jesse Dueck and Stro Galang To, co founders of the production house and content studio Room 1041. 

For the past eight years, Room 1041 has been producing viral creator content for some of the biggest names in the game, from AdamW to Topper Guild. Working first with creators, and later adding brands, these guys have gotten the production process down to a science. (Or, better yet, a science-y kind of magic.) Read on to hear their incredible origin story, their advice for improving shoot day outcomes, and what keeps their creative edge sharp.

Note, the interview excerpts below have been edited for length and clarity. 

“It Was Absolute Chaos”

Upload Club: Could you explain a bit about Room 1041 and how you got your start?

Jesse: Stro and I both ended up in Hollywood around the same time in 2015, 2016. Stro was in town already as a busy director doing music videos, and I had just moved to LA as an editor for Cameron Dallas, a big YouTuber at the time. We found ourselves both living in this building called 1600 Vine Street, which was, for whatever reason, the place where every Viner and early YouTuber moved to. It felt like college for social media, because all the early creators were living there. All of us kept doors unlocked and were in and out of each other's rooms and making videos. It was really a fun time. 

But, I had also been a production assistant on a few different music video sets. And there, I saw this traditional production world that was just so well-structured. Producers had roles, there were functions for everybody. There was a very clear infrastructure for the way that traditional Hollywood made what they made. Seeing that, it became super clear that the world we were experiencing within 1600 Vine Street with all our creator friends was absolute chaos. So the idea was: ‘Hey, can we help creators build and operate the right kinds of content teams to run that efficiently?’... So, this apartment, Room 1041, became the hub for everything we were doing. In those days, we would set up editing bays literally in Stro's kitchen. We had another editing bay in Stro's literal bedroom. 

Stro: Yeah, it was two editing bays in my bedroom. Creators would be in and out, ideating scripts or editing with editors or even shooting there sometimes. Because it's, like, a living room. So everyone needs to shoot in the living room.  

Jesse: We should someday do the math on this, but we're talking billions of views generated from that one backdrop. 

Upload Club: How difficult was it to instill a structure in the creator universe you were in? 

Jesse: Creators then (and still largely today) are going week to week where they're like, ‘Ok, what video are we shooting today? What video are we shooting tomorrow, what video are we shooting this week?’ And our philosophy was like, Nothing can be run efficiently unless we have a content slate. A creator needs to be able to create a content calendar, because if they’re not thinking about creative until the day before, they’re never going to be able to run their channel in an efficient enough way to sustain the level of output that they need in order to grow. 

Stro: Some creators are going week to week if they're lucky. Someone like AdamW, he'll think of the idea the day before, wake up at 8 a.m., have his people do runs, shoot it, and then upload it by noon.

“On-Set Chemistry Sparks Ideas” 

Upload Club: What I'm always trying to find with clients is that balance of doing pre-production and planning, but then also leaving room for magic, Day-Of. And I think that there's a bit of an art there of trying to balance those two. Thoughts? 

Jesse: I think the name of just production in general is: You have to be ready for problems, because they always happen; ready for change, because it always happens. This isn't just social media. This is all production. It's being prepared to iterate and change. It’s even more a theme within our social media context because we're going to figure out how to make the best idea happen at all costs, even if that's a scramble or last-minute. 

And then I do think that there's something about onset chemistry that just sparks ideas. Yes, sometimes you wish you had that little idea a little bit sooner.  But I mean, we send people out on runs grabbing random last-minute stuff all the time because for whatever reason, there's some kind of chemistry that happens when you're on set. You've set up the world, what your concept is, the beats. That's all predetermined, and you write those. But there's something that happens when you're working it out that oftentimes you'll find these last little tweaks to concepts that just better them. And you have to totally be open to that.

Stro: It's so important. When we're on set, sometimes this little thing could make or break the video. If we need, let's say, a giraffe in a video, like: we need that giraffe. We know that's the difference between that 1 million to 1 billion views. And we've gotten a giraffe before. 

It could be really small, too. It could be something as small as a kettle. ‘This silver one isn't going to work. We need this red one, because it [draws the eye].’ It's so specific. 

“Someone to Share Weight’”

Upload Club: When a creator is starting out, they’re doing everything themselves… If they can only invest in one production upgrade, what upgrade would you recommend? 

Jesse: They would just need [to hire] a generalist that can kind of do it all. You just need somebody that’s not you that can start wearing a bunch of hats. As you grow, roles get more and more specific, more and more qualified. But at the very beginning, it’s just someone that can share weight. Somebody that’s just super-hungry and can help do everything from props to hold the camera to edit a video.

Stro: Jesse is absolutely right. This person will eventually become your producer, because they’re going to know you inside out, and that’s a super-valuable thing to have for sure. [They’re] going to ask you, ‘Hey, we're going to need audio, we're going to need camera. Here's the website for locations. Here's websites for actors.’ So, that's going to be a big resource for you. Hire a really solid producer just for one shoot, so you kind of learn the rhythm of what it's like to elevate your video. And then from there, take that knowledge and dissect, ‘OK, what do I need from day to day?’

Upload Club: And for creators who are beyond that..? 

Jesse: [Once you have a bigger team,] I think getting a physical space is super helpful. One, for shooting. But beyond that, just having a place where team culture can happen. It just goes a long way. The creators that I've seen do that create such great team culture, and the band typically sticks together longer and things get more efficient, because you're always around each other, and you're sharing ideas and it's just more collaborative.

“This is How We Got The Sauce”

Upload Club: Are there certain storytelling formulas or visual cues that you embrace that keep things engaging? 

Stro: What keeps it engaging is just learning from every new generation. As Jesse said, we've been tapped into every new generation that's been on social media, from Vine, to Jake Paul's Team 10, to the Hype House with Charli D'Amelio and that whole squad. And now, the newer generation, which isn't like a “squad generation,” everyone's mostly lone-wolfing? But just learning from these new [creators]. We're teaching them, but they're teaching us too.

Jesse: It's being a student of the formats that dominate the times. I give Stro crap for this all the time, but… Stro consumes so much content. It makes me mad sometimes, but every time I call him out on it, Stro's like, "this is how we got the sauce. This is how we learn.” 

Stro: It’s true. And these kids that are posting online, we're not even working with them. I'm just scrolling. I'm like, "Wow, that was a really creative edit." I'm impressed. I’m impressed all the time.

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WATCH MORE FROM OUR INTERVIEW:

OK! That’s it for this time. Thanks to Jesse & Stro - find their incredible work at Room1041.com. Next month, get excited for Part Four of “Anatomy of an Upload…” Editing! See you then! 

- Hayley