How to Adapt and Thrive in a changing marketplace after pivoting his business.

Episode Transcription

Den Lennie (1s):
Hey guys, welcome to this episode of the, how to scale a video business podcast. I’m your host, Den Lennie. And thank you for joining me on this week’s show today’s guest is Tom Middleton from lush films in the UK. And Tom has an incredible story of how he started to get his business really cooking on gas in January and February of 2020, and an coronavirus hit and basically kicked him in the guts. Now, Tom is one of my coaching clients and what we did was we inspired Tom to come up with he product for something that he was doing really well with online. And I’m thrilled to have Tom on the shore to tell you the story of how that came about, and also tell you a bit more about this course he’s just created.

Den Lennie (46s):
So I really hope you enjoy the show. And please remember to like the show and rate the show on iTunes or whatever platform you’re on. Really helps us get the message out there. Anyway guys enjoy the show. Tom, it’s nice to see you. How’s the weather in the UK today?

Tom Middleton (1m 2s):
It’s pouring with rain, typical English, August weather. Unbelievable, but we’re just praying. It’s going to stop pretty soon cause you’ve got a big commercial Aero shoot tomorrow. So we’re hoping it’s going to stop soon and dry off for us.

Den Lennie (1m 12s):
Well, I hope so too. And it’s such great news that you’re back out filming after what’s been a pretty challenging tick, doesn’t it?

Tom Middleton (1m 20s):
It has been a very strange and turbulent kind of time in the UK and obviously for the rest of the world, but it’s, it’s getting back to where it was and it’s slowly, we’re getting more and more requests for work in. So it’s really nice to get back out and start filming again.

Den Lennie (1m 34s):
So for full disclosure, for everyone listening or watching, Tom is a client of mine and we started working together. I think December last year, Tom, just, just bring us up to speed from December to March and, and how things were shaping up for you before coronavirus came along and kicked you in the guts.

Tom Middleton (1m 51s):
Yeah, of course. Well, it’s give you a bit of background. Our business SMN film has been operating in the UK instruction, rural England for the past six or seven years. And throughout the middle of last year, we realized we needed a bit more guidance in terms of development and business. And that’s when I came across your good self and we joined your program in December. I think it was late November, early December and over the first period of the, almost the first month of working with you, we’d already hit the target with set for that first month of the new year. So we on track to have an amazing great year and we were real excited and so pleased that we’ve got systems and structures in place that you’ve been implementing and teaching us about.

Tom Middleton (2m 30s):
And then the dreaded coronavirus hammered the country and we had a whole year’s worth of filming planned out. We had five different international trips booked to go and film in other countries. All of those were canceled. So everything grant or hope and even, sorry. I know I didn’t even started working on a country farm, did my first episode for Countryfile or BBC the week before lockdown hit. And then so obviously that will quiet down and everything stopped. So it was a bit of a shock to the system.

Den Lennie (2m 58s):
Yeah. And I think what was interesting, you know, you guys were on such a kind of journey. I mean, I think February was your busiest month you’d ever had, and then it all grown to a hole because everything just stopped and everyone knows that. And, but I think it’s what’s happened next that I think was interesting because you guys went through a pretty dark time, didn’t it? It was pretty, it was pretty frustrating for you guys to say the least

Tom Middleton (3m 20s):
It was. Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting because we had such, like you say, we had such a busy January, February and February had been our most successful month ever in the whole business. So we were absolutely really hitting our targets in terms of the planning for the year ahead and then everything ground to a halt, everything stops. And we kind of didn’t really know what to do with ourselves. We had a ton of work to get through in terms of editing. So we had lots of work to finish, but we knew that that was only going to reach us so far. So in terms of new business and new clients and continually worked throughout the year, we had nothing booked and everything dried up. So we were really kind of panicking about what was going to happen as soon as we finished that wave of work and what we’re going to do next.

Den Lennie (3m 58s):
But what was interesting was we were on one of the video business accelerator calls that we have every week, every, every Monday and in the U S and every Tuesday in the UK and then Australia. And, and we weren’t, we were kind of in the group working out, you know, figure out almost finding the feet, but, but what, what was it that happened on that call that that’s sparked an idea of the seedling of an idea?

Tom Middleton (4m 22s):
Well, one thing that we’ve always been really, I think quite good at quite had lots of feedback is posting aerial clips on LinkedIn. And that’s one thing we’ve always tried to maintain all throughout kind of promoting ourselves as a, as a business. And it’s always been a thing that’s had the most popularity, the most engagement. And that was the one thing that the group has always picked up on is the fact that we get such great feedback and such great engagement on our LinkedIn aerial clips. And so just one of the bits of feedback that we got from some of the members in the group on a Tuesday call was why don’t we try and turn some of those clips into a tutorial basis and actually develop an online course for drone pilots, looking to improve their cinematography skills and actually filming out in the field.

Tom Middleton (5m 2s):
And so that kind of sparked a discussion between you could self and us about how to develop an entire online course for drone pilots, trying to improve their skills.

Den Lennie (5m 12s):
And so for the last probably four and a half months, tell us what you’ve been doing.

Tom Middleton (5m 19s):
It’s been a really, sorry, whilst in lockdown, whilst they’re locked down there. Well, that was one of the main reasons why we decided to do the course because we had no incoming business and no new business books for the rest of the year. And the only way that we could see actually of making new business, we’re trying to sell existing content that we already had done. So it was just a case of trying to plan a curriculum if you like, or a series of modules that develop skills for pilots ranging from the very basic kind of general safety and the spatial awareness, right up to doing much more complicated maneuvers and trying to get those tricky shots that people have always wanted to do, but not quite sure how to get there. So we spent, I’d say probably about a good six weeks to two months developing the kind of course modules and the outline and the structure.

Tom Middleton (6m 3s):
And we developed three films for each module across 10 modules. So there was a really detailed kind of structure of what we were trying to teach people, but we wanted it to be a really simple and easy to understand process that doesn’t, over-complicate the details of what pilots need to do. It was all about getting people out immediately and trying to film from the very first module. So it was trying to get learned by experience rather than learning by research. And I think that’s one of the biggest things which differentiates us from other kind of online courses is that practical element is really, really heavy in our course. And that seems to be a slightly bit missing from other courses we’ve seen.

Den Lennie (6m 41s):
Well, I think also, you know, I mean, there’s obviously an enormous amount of content on, on, on YouTube. And I think sometimes people go, well, I’ll just, I’ll just learn it on YouTube, but trouble with that is that you have to troll through so much stuff. And I think there’s a lot of armchair drone pilots. And I include myself in that. So I bought the Mavic and I bought four batches and like, I would have loads of flying time and I got it and I flew it and I went up and I went down, they went left and they went right. And then I went, we brave and go up higher. And then, and then I was like, Oh, I can’t see it now. I’m like, I’m really nervous or I’ll bring it back.

Den Lennie (7m 21s):
And I’m like, right. So once I get up and get it down, and then I kind of pan and do this awful shots of panning and I’m like, I actually don’t know what to do next. I, I, and I, I’m somebody who’s been filming for 26 years. So any other camera on the ground I can work with, but I find myself being the perfect student for your course. Tell me more about that because I can’t be the only one who kind of buys a drawer and flies out and then it goes and sits on the shelf.

Tom Middleton (7m 50s):
Well, that’s very true. I think that’s a not, I don’t want to say mistake, but it’s a common thing that a lot of drone pilots do is they set it up as high as it can go. I just film it either straight ahead or straight down. And it’s kind of, you get this formula for pilots getting the same shots over and over again, which are not particularly inspiring and not particularly cinematic. And that’s something that I think from the very first time you had one of our first drones, we always wanted to try to tell stories in a single shot. And I think that’s the biggest difference between what we’re trying to teach people. And the difference between a ground-based gimbal cameras and drones is they should act in the same way. You should try and treat drones the same way you treat ground Gimbels and having a sense of reveal in shots and trying to tell a story.

Tom Middleton (8m 31s):
So it has a beginning, middle and end, and viewers will really get captivated by what they’re seeing and what to watch the whole clip. And that’s something which we see a lot of online is other drone pilots posting this big montages of 10 or 15 shots of the same subject when they could quite easily be cut into single shots and actually be much more impactful as a viewer for actually watching that shot.

Den Lennie (8m 51s):
Well, I mean, I had a very fortunate front row seat of the entire process. And so, you know, rather selfishly I’ve learned a lot more about how to become a great drone pilot, but, but tell me about that kind of break down of how you’ve gone about and created this program. Because one of the things that have been very insightful for me was the kind of the simplicity of the stats, but not to kind of underestimate how powerful that simplicity is. Can you talk me through this, the, the whole concept of a three step system, because I know as a lighting camera man, as a DP, I have a system when I, when I light an interview.

Den Lennie (9m 31s):
And is it the same for drone filming that you basically have a system that you use on virtually every job? Can you explain a bit more about that for us?

Tom Middleton (9m 39s):
Well, yeah, that’s something which we kind of learned throughout making this course is that everything becomes so much simpler. If you have a system in place and you have easy steps to follow, and that follows for the same with any kind of filming is if you have a system that you use every time you go to filming, it makes everything from planning, the shoot, going to doing it and editing it and much, much more straightforward. And you know what to expect. You don’t get flustered on the shoot or you don’t get surprised by things you don’t need to do. So we tried to make it, every module has three steps. And if you go through these three steps, you’ll be able to achieve everything we’re trying to teach you in each module. And that makes it much more easy to consume, much more easy to understand. And then it’s a case of just practicing those shots and actually going and doing them again and again, until you develop those skills and actually it becomes natural.

Tom Middleton (10m 19s):
You don’t need to think about that process.

Den Lennie (10m 22s):
I love the idea of the system. And one of the things that I found just saw interesting was that their idea of, and I don’t want to give the game away, but actually I don’t mind sharing because it blew my mind was you were doing these, these spatial awareness shorts and these reveals, and you, weren’t looking down at the, the screen on the controls. And that was like such an amazing discovery for me. And, and can you tell me more about that? Because that, that, that, that blew my mind is like what’s the drawn, not the screen. Cause there could, the shot will figure itself out.

Tom Middleton (10m 59s):
This is one of the biggest things, which is so counter intuitive for filmmakers because when I did my first ever drone training course, when I had to get certified by the civil aviation authority, the biggest thing they said was always watched the drone, never watched the screen. And as a filmmaker, the only thing you want to do is see what the camera’s seeing and actually watch how the shots progressing, because you’re purely obsessed by what you’re filming rather than actually thinking about the movement of the camera. So while we were training through this, so while we were developing this course, the biggest, most important thing for safety in terms of spatial awareness is actually knowing how to control the drone and keeping it in a safe environment while you’re filming. So the very first module is about understanding spatial awareness and actually what your limitations are in terms of being able to film at a distance from the drone and understand what’s beyond the drone or what’s near the drone.

Tom Middleton (11m 48s):
So there’s two steps in the first module that tests people’s spatial awareness. And that’s a really good grounding for actually skills beyond that, because you can fly through smaller gaps. And if you look at the drone, not necessarily the camera view, you can judge distances between the drone and things around it, much, much better. And you don’t have to think about what you’re looking at on the screen.

Den Lennie (12m 9s):
And the problem, the problem is

Tom Middleton (12m 11s):
Looking at this, sorry, the problem with looking at the screen is things appear a lot closer than they actually are. So if, for instance, you fly past a tree trunk and you’re looking at the camera, it will look much, much closer than if you look at the drone and you can judge the distances between the drone and the tree yourself.

Den Lennie (12m 27s):
I remember many, many years ago, learning a steady cam with Howard Smith who had a company called MTV and he shot on, he actually shot the matrix. He did the steady cover in the matrix. And I remember going to Manchester and I spent a thousand pounds for one day with him. And this was probably in 2002. And I drove up to Manchester and I, and I, he, he was, we were in the back of a, of a, of a rental house and he went right. Here’s the reg, here’s the vast here’s the arm and put it on and put a camera on it. He said, right. And unlike this, this guy’s shot the matrix. I’m going to do these cool moves. And he went right. And we drew it. He put some gaffer tape on the floor in a straight line.

Den Lennie (13m 9s):
He went right for the first three hours. We’re going to walk up and down the straight line. I was like, this is crazy. This, like, I’ve spent a thousand pounds, this guy’s getting me to walk back and forward. We went forward, we went back, we went forward, we went back and then we went forward. Then we went round and then we went back and then after lunch, we extended it to a square. We went forward, left, back left, right. And, and at the end of the day he went right. You’ve got it now. And I was like, what have I got? I’ve just learned these really stupid, simple moves. And he went, okay, follow me mid shot Gore. And we walked through the warehouse through pallets up some stairs into a room and turned around and came back down.

Den Lennie (13m 51s):
They go out and set, you went and see, you’ve learned everything you need to learn. And I think that that example reminded me of the spatial awareness module where just like, you don’t know what you don’t know. Right. And you buy this Jordan DGI, make it so easy to put this thing in the air and fly and got all these controls. For example, at a great point of talking about this, you know, these, these auto modes modes of like following and tracking, I I’ve, I’ve always found that to be really buggy. Is it just me? Or, I mean, is, is there a better way?

Tom Middleton (14m 27s):
Well, I would, throughout the whole course, we’ve really tried to advocate using manual controls, both for the camera and for the control of the cut of the drone in the air. Because once you, like you said, once you get the very basics of the camera movement, you will develop a much better piloting skill when you’re trying to follow something. And rather than relying on automatic functions, like follow all those tracking modes, which are very easy to lose the tracking. And the is, if you’re out with a commercial client and you’re flying after a car over the top of some Hills, for example, and it loses that tracking, you’re going to have to reset the car back to the same position. It started in reset the drone, losing battery power. And it makes you look a bit unprofessional if you can’t do it manually.

Tom Middleton (15m 7s):
So learning these very basic maneuvers from the very beginning will make you become a much better pilot later on and actually make you more professional and more experienced as a drone pilot.

Den Lennie (15m 17s):
Yeah. So you basically, you’re teaching how to think like a drone pilot, a professional drone pilot, and it isn’t just for professionals. I mean, I think this is a great program for, you know, filmmakers who have a drum. Who’ve never done any training on a drawing because, and in just over two hours, you will learn those core maneuvers. But I think also if you’re a beginner, someone who’s an enthusiast, this is also a great program. Isn’t it

Tom Middleton (15m 46s):
For me? Yeah. We specifically try to not aim this at beginner drone pilots, because we think there’s something in this course for pilots of every level. And even though it begins with some very basic maneuvers, which had to do with spatial awareness, those are the absolute core skills that every drone pilot needs. And if you start from that basis, everything else then becomes easier. So if you are already an experienced pilot and you want to jump in after module five, which goes to the muscle slightly more complex maneuvers, then that’s absolutely fine, but it just means that people can dip in and out where they want to and choose the bits, which will suit them the best. But we’d always recommend starting from the beginning, because that will give you the grounding building blocks to then develop those skills later on, which will become easier if you’ve done the beginning modules.

Den Lennie (16m 27s):
Absolutely. And, and I think what I want to really emphasize here, because, because you are such a skilled pilot, is that the stuff you’re talking about is very simple to you, but actually every single module is, is, is very concisely designed to help you learn a specific skill or a specific aspect. And so, I mean, it is really is the kind of eight is out of what you need to know to think and fly like a pro. And, and that to me was awesome. The other thing that blew me away was, you know, how to shoot buildings or how to shoot moving objects, how to shoot a sunrise, had a sunset. These things are all different. I mean, shooting sunrises and sunsets, I just assumed they were the same.

Den Lennie (17m 7s):
They’re they’re not, are they? They’re, they’re very

Tom Middleton (17m 11s):
Different approaches.

Den Lennie (17m 11s):
When you see a sunrise, you get up in the dark, you can’t think,

Tom Middleton (17m 15s):
Yeah. That’s, there is a very big difference between sunsets and sunrises. Exactly. Like you say, so for a sun rise, you’re going to have to get in position before the sun actually comes up over the horizon. And that means you can’t necessarily test your camera settings until the sun is in the air. So it’s always a good idea to get in position, practice and maneuver you want to do. And then as soon as the sun rises, you can check your exposure levels, get your camera settings. Correct. But you’ve already practiced that movement. So the second part is easy, but the sunset is the opposite because you’ve already got the sun in the air. It’s going to get darker. The later you leave it. But then again, the colors in the sky going to change, and you may get a lovely kind of golden hue. And these red flares, you after the sun actually goes down. So the biggest difference is to continue shooting a sunset as the sun goes down.

Tom Middleton (17m 56s):
And even after it’s gone, because the light is going to change. And so I think there’s very different ways of looking at those two examples, but people just assume they’re the same kind of thing, because in a photograph they could look very similar, but actually for filming, it’s a very different set of processes. You have to go through to capture each one

Den Lennie (18m 11s):
And you have some beautiful examples. I think it’s flown, just follow you’re talking. Yeah. You’re actually doing a reveal at sunrise and, and what, what, what I found so fascinating was you designed a shot one week and then during that process realized it would work a better way. Can you talk me through the kinds of things that happen on a regular basis? Cause I think that was a great example of the idea, the shot didn’t work and you’re very, he changed it.

Tom Middleton (18m 39s):
That’s one of our kind of methods that we always trying to do with when you’re using the sun in a shot is to begin with the sun, sorry, the drone facing the sun. It gives you a focal point. So if you ever lose your orientation in the sky, spin it around to face the sun and you know exactly what your drone is going to be facing. So it’s a lot easier to bring back to yourself. And in the example, which you’re talking about with your sunrise, it flounders folly, this is a small series we’re doing called the anatomy of the shot, where I’m kind of trying to deconstruct certain shots we’ve done and then show the process of how we arrived at the final shots. So showing any kind of thought processes or changes we’ve made on set or in location, and then how we got to the final shot. And the example that we’re talking about here is we hyped up this big health, this wonderful tower in the middle of Shropshire.

Tom Middleton (19m 20s):
And it was a wonderful kind of winter morning with very low sun, but it was a very kind of Misty light. So it was quite difficult kind of sky to be able to expose where you had this white kind of hazy look to the sun. And there wasn’t an obvious golden glow that you would get usually in a sunrise and a clear sky. So the shot I wanted to do was to fly backwards over the tower to reveal the tower in the landscape. So it was a kind of reveal of the actual building, but because the sun wasn’t so obvious, you just had a kind of bleached out white sky and it wasn’t actually looking very good because there wasn’t enough light on the Hills and the landscape behind the tower. So we did the shot once. And then I realized that actually, if I spun the drone around the tower and look to where the sun was hitting the Hills behind the tub behind me, you could actually see a much better color to the landscape and the shadows that are leaching across the fields of the trees.

Tom Middleton (20m 9s):
So I brought the drone back towards the same tower again, did the same shot, but facing the opposite direction. So I wasn’t actually looking at the sun. I was going the other way. So it was kind of going towards the sun backwards and that way I had the light hitting the tower. So I had a lot more contrast between the tower and the fields behind it. And then throughout the shot, I spun around the tower. So by the end of the shot, it was silhouetting the tower against the sun. And it actually had a nice sense of reveal throughout that shot. So it was a much different kind of shot than I had planned in my head, but it was a much better end result. And it was a really interesting process to try and explain that to you and actually say how I arrived at that shot when I was thinking as I was doing it.

Den Lennie (20m 46s):
Yeah. And that, that’s what, you know, as someone shot a lot of stuff on the ground, I found it so interesting cause that, cause I, I think as a professional, you know, I, we love to learn. We always were hungry for more knowledge, we’re hungry to learn more and we very rarely get an opportunity to watch another peer operate. And, and I, and I love how you explain so much. I mean, there are so many highlights for me, simple exercises, like practicing flying the drone over a gate. And I almost kind of playing chicken with it and like going lower and lower and lower. And it’s like, that was it. But the other thing is, is shocking and moving subject, you know, there’s a shot of mesh walking up a mountain, but there’s, there’s some people in a, in a Landrover going across the landscape for commercial project, you did it.

Den Lennie (21m 36s):
It’s, it’s, it’s learning that mindset of how to develop a shot where, you know, I’ve always struggled with like, where does the shot start? What do I do with the camera? Where does it end? I’ve got all these access I can fly with and do things with, do I go lower? Do you go, do I go high? And, and you help us understand that because you explain and I’m thinking particularly of, of the land of a shot going across this beautiful kind of countryside. Can you talk a bit about that?

Tom Middleton (22m 5s):
Yeah, sure. So this was for a commercial job we were doing, which was a tourism project for Hereford as a County. And we were right down on the Welsh borders of the Hills. And there was this wonderful area which had this cutout old Landrover full of this gang of friends. And they just wanted a shot of the, the Landrover driving across the Hills, showing the Hills behind it and the rest of the County. And I wanted to, to have a sensor of real in the shot, which kind of started almost like a ground gimbal based shot. So you’re right next to the car in a profile. And then actually as it’s driving along, come further, further back from the car, but driving at the same speed. So that’s going sideways the drone, but then actually moving the drone around the front of the car to reveal the Hills behind the journey and actually expanse the landscape and take the key that’s quite difficult shot to do because you’ve got lots of different axes that you’re trying to move in a smooth motion and doing that in manual is actually quite tricky to do so.

Tom Middleton (22m 56s):
There’s lots of things you need to prepare in terms of thinking about how to do that. Cause sort of shot on the biggest thing that is hard to plan for is what else may be an obstruction along that route. So they might be trees, they might be pylons. They might be things that go in the way along the route and also not getting yourself in the shop. And that’s something in all of the modules, which I’ve tried to highlight if I’ve ever done a shot and I’m not happy with it. I showed that as a demonstration, put a little circle around myself to say, here I am in the shot. And I wasn’t quite happy with that. So I tried it a different way. And the second result is actually a better version of that, but it just so happened that the one with the Landover, we were so far away by the time that the kind of camera came around the front of the land Rover, you couldn’t see us in the background anyway.

Tom Middleton (23m 36s):
So it worked really, really nicely as a shot. And it was really happy with himself.

Den Lennie (23m 41s):
One of my apps, I mean, there’s lots of favorites in it for me. And, and it sounds like I’m biased cause we’re involved in it, but it’s like, I, it, I’m talking to you as a viewer. There’s a shot you’re in Scotland and you’re following a photographer or someone upper mountain. And then you do the shot that just dips down through some trees into a Valley and it’s a sunrise and that shot is breathtaking, but, but it wasn’t. The shot you went for is again, that was a kind of a happy accident.

Tom Middleton (24m 11s):
It was a happy accident. We knew that we were going to hike up this Hill to, to film the sunrise. And I was with a couple of photographers who was doing a filmmaking workshop with, so I took the drone up there cause I knew it was going to be a lovely sunrise. And it’s typical Scottish Hills covered in these lovely fare trees. And the mist was down at the bottom of the Valley. So we were climbing up above the mist as the sun was coming up. And so I was filming the guys, walking up the Hill, set them up to do their filming just while we were there. I thought I’d get a few shots with the drone just to kind of capture this amazing, incredible landscape. And so I was in the, on the top of a hillside in on a Rocky outcrop with furries trees lining either side and there was a very small gap I could fly through to come out of the forest into this lovely landscape.

Tom Middleton (24m 54s):
But I know I knew that the, the mist was below where I was. So I kind of, I pointed the camera forward, but as it kind of came out to the trees, I tilted down and flew down into this mist. And actually, so by the end of the shot, it’s almost whited out with the mess. It kind of blows into nothingness. And actually what I did with the shot was I reversed the shot. So it starts in this white mist climbs out of the mystery, reveal the landscape. And then by the end of the show, it kind of floods into this Woodland. So you have these trees appearing into the side of the frame and actually reversing the shot makes a much, much better impactful result because you’re revealing more and more throughout the shot.

Den Lennie (25m 30s):
And, and the other thing that I loved about this was it, we’re not just up in the air, there’s actually a whole post production section where you break down music, choice, logos, graphics, reverting shots, slowing down shots, that kind of thing. What, what was your, what was your favorite part about producing all this content? What w what was the part that you’ve really enjoyed the most?

Tom Middleton (25m 52s):
I think the post production one was a really interesting module because throughout the whole course, we tried to maintain a three part process. So there’s an introduction, there’s the main kind of development, a film in the middle. And then there’s a review section at the end, which is the checklist for kind of getting people to understand what they need to do to go out and practice the material themselves. But the post production module, we started with three and I filmed a sequence where I was doing a live edit of a clip on a computer with final cut pro and putting bits and bobs together. And then after we reviewed the film, which ended up being quite long, we decided that actually there’s so much more detail and there’s so many more steps to post production that are probably a much more easy to digest.

Tom Middleton (26m 32s):
If you break them down into simple steps of one at a time, like you say, just adding music, trying to find the crescendo of the music to match the crescendo, the footage, and actually elevate the emotion of that shot. And so we extended the postproduction into 10 films rather than three. And that way it’s, it’s so much more easy to digest. And I think that taught me a huge amount about how to, how to explain the process, but make it really easy to digest and really easy to understand. And it’s, it’s taught me a great deal about how much I’ve underestimated my own ability and taken for granted what I actually know, but it’s been really enjoyable to kind of put that into a process. That’s hopefully simple for people to get and simple for me to understand, and therefore they can go and do it themselves.

Den Lennie (27m 14s):
And just to add, before we wrap up, you, you kind of shop all of this on a, on a Mavic, didn’t you? I mean, that’s the thing that blows me away is, is yes, you do shoot on bigger drones occasionally. But with the most part, everything you’re doing is on a small draw, which is really accessible to everyone.

Tom Middleton (27m 31s):
Well, that was the kind of point we wanted to make with the module for the course, is that it doesn’t really matter what John you’re filming with, because it could be a big inspire, like we use for our commercial jobs, or it could be a magic mini, which is fits in your back pocket almost because the controls for all of the DJI drones, exactly the same in terms of how you move the joysticks and how you pick the camera and the settings and the interface on the screen. So we want it to make it a really quick and easy process for people to do so using a Maverick, as an example, is so quick to get out of the box coconut, to fold the arms up, put on the ground and you can be up and going within a couple of minutes. So it’s just a much quicker process for people to do. And it also means that you can also fit through a lot smaller caps, and it’s a lot kind of less risky for people to think about.

Tom Middleton (28m 16s):
Whereas a Maverick mini could cost a few hundred pounds almost compared to the thousands of an inspire, but it’s just that process of understanding the basics and getting the confidence. So once you get the confidence with a smaller drone, there’s no reason why you can’t apply those same skillsets to a bigger drone and get the better quality footage out to a bigger drone, but using the same principles that you’ve learned throughout the course

Den Lennie (28m 36s):
Love it. I love it. Well, guys, you can go and watch an amazing intro film, and there’s a free [email protected]. And Tom, I wonder if we might be able to do something for the listeners of the show as a kind of thank you for listening to the show kind of offers you might be able to going to do for these guys.

Tom Middleton (28m 60s):
Absolutely. I think because we’re part of the podcast series, we love all the podcasts you do, and we love the kind of community of filmmakers you’ve got in your, in the VBA group. So we’d love to offer a discount of a hundred dollars off the retail price for anyone who’s listening to the podcast and who wants to buy the product, buy the course through listening to this podcast. So if we give a, give you a discount of a hundred dollars off the retail price, and then we can, if you put some code, perhaps den den as the code for the discount, we can then give them that discount and the checkout. Yeah,

Den Lennie (29m 27s):
Yeah. We’ll link to that below. And just one more thing, it’s, it’s not as the course, is it because there’s actually a Facebook community, the pilot’s lounge where you’re gonna be doing regular lives and an ongoing kind of coaching and support. So this is more than just a course, isn’t it? You’re actually going to be involved. Cause, cause you, you, you love drones. Everything about drones.

Tom Middleton (29m 46s):
Yeah. I loved it. Yeah. So I think that’s one element we really want to help people with because we didn’t want to just let people access the modules and then never speak to them again. So we want it to have a live element where we’re going to have regular, regular presentations by myself, where I can either deconstruct a project we’re working on how we arrived at certain results. And also have a, an opportunity for members of the course in the pilot’s lounge to ask questions. If they want to do the shots themselves, if they’re having any problems, even technical things, they want to ask about certain types of drones and we can try and help them and use that community to build up a people together, working and helping each other with their own shots as well. So we can, we can post our shots in there and you can give us feedback. That’s amazing. Absolutely. Yeah. We’re going to try and help filmmakers and help drone pilots develop the best they can.

Tom Middleton (30m 29s):
And if, whether that’s me showing them how to do things, helping them, but also other drone pilots in the community and pilots lounge might be able to help each other as well. So hopefully we can all be a big group of pilots together. I love it. Alright guys. Well, listen, Tom, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure. I speak to you a lot anyway, since we’re a team small here, but I think for anyone listening to this can check it out, you know, do that course.com. There is a great PR great promo video. There’s a full module that you can watch if he’s, does he do nothing else go and watch it and kind of check it out and give us some feedback. That’d be great. Great stuff. Thanks Den.

Den Lennie (31m 3s):
Hey guys. Thanks for watching. I hope you got a huge amount of value from that episode. If you’re looking for additional support or resources to support your business journey, then head over to denlennie.com, where you can get a whole heap of other resources, free downloads and access all the other episodes in the series. Be sure to subscribe and I’ll see you next time.