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The Factory Floor is hosted by the three co-founders of Conversion Factory, the marketing agency at the forefront of SaaS growth, marketing, and tech trends. Episodes are released on Twitter one day early, @coreyhainesco.
Every other week Corey, Zach, and Nick break down what’s working right now in SaaS marketing, share real-world lessons from the field, and give you the strategies you need to outpace the competition.
You can also find us on YouTube, X, and everywhere you listen to podcasts!
Don't fall behind. Subscribe. Like. Drop a comment. Or not. The ball is in your court.
Nick Loudon (00:00)
All right, everyone. Welcome to the factory floor. I am joined by my beautiful Vanna White style compatriots. ⁓ We have Corey.
Jonathan Franklin Haines Corey, how are you today?
Corey Haines (00:20)
I'm doing well. Thank you.
Nick Loudon (00:22)
Okay, sweet. Pretty lackluster pregame interview, by the way. You're supposed to be like hyped about it, yeah.
Corey Haines (00:28)
Me?
I think I just used all my energy talking about my ⁓ travel horror story.
Nick Loudon (00:36)
Yeah, our warm up discussion. Got it. Okay, we'll move on. And then we also have, course, Zach Stevens. Zachary, how are you? Are you ready for the game today?
Zach Stevens (00:47)
You know, I'm just stoked to be here. Our team is going to play great. I'm going to give it 110%. And you know, whoever's on the other side of me better watch out because I'm playing for keeps and I'm not leaving anything on the table. There's nothing that's going to be left out for this. I'm just kind of upset or I'm not upset. Actually. I'm really glad that I don't have as many middle names as Corey does because you actually missed a couple, you know, you had Franklin, but you missed Bartholomew. Um, know, Reginald, you know, Ulysses. Yeah.
Nick Loudon (00:57)
You
Yeah.
Yeah.
Corey Haines (01:14)
releases.
Nick Loudon (01:15)
He, you get
one after every podcast. So every single one, you're going to have like that many middle names. Well, I appreciate you, Zach. Sounds like you've been in the lab, just cooking, getting ready for the game.
Corey Haines (01:19)
Hmm.
Zach Stevens (01:22)
Yes, well, and-
You actually left out his title as well, it's Esquire. The third. Don't forget the third. Of course.
Nick Loudon (01:31)
Yeah, that's right. I forgot you're a lawyer, you know, Esquire is for lawyers, right?
Okay, I didn't know that I a friend that became a lawyer. anyway, okay, we are going to keep this podcast a little short and sweet. ⁓ But yeah, it's gonna be great this week, or this episode ⁓ was the topic of discussion was selected by our very own Zach Stevens.
⁓ And I don't know much about it. So I'm gonna let him take over basically the the one phrase is that creative direction is the last moat my Assumption is this is in regards to AI But I don't know so I'm gonna let Zach ⁓ tell us what's up
Zach Stevens (02:13)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. So this is a, ⁓ the starting point for this was a post by Mr. RJ Abbott. he's the founder of neighborhood cult and a creative polymath who I am not connected with on LinkedIn, but maybe I will be after this. Anyway, someone I know liked his post and it was a PSA to tech founders and VCs saying that the creative director is now the most underrated hire in tech. And the reason for that is because.
Everything with respect to creativity, building a brand, emotional loyalty is all being outsourced now to AI, if not being expedited and commoditized at a rate that we've never seen before. So the only thing that is standing between you and being a commoditized offer that now has to is avoiding a race to the bottom with your pricing and committing premium offers is that creative director.
And that person who is able to establish an emotional connection and steward all of the creative assets that make people love your brand, not just see it as something valuable, but love it and appreciate it and want to stick around and see it as more valuable than maybe even you do. Is that a good starting point?
Nick Loudon (03:31)
I think so. Yeah, I have an immediate question. ⁓ Okay, so I don't come from the creative world. I would consider myself a non creative. ⁓ In my head, okay, don't take offense to this. The creative director is a little ethereal, a little like loosy goosy It's kind like a musician, right? Like, are they going to show up for rehearsal on time? What are they going to say? Is what they say going to feel like?
Zach Stevens (03:35)
please.
Nick Loudon (04:00)
What, what did you say? What are we trying to do? That in my mind is a creative director. And oftentimes when I think like, if I met someone and they were like, hey, my name's, know, Frederick and I'm a creative director. I'd be like, you don't have a job. That would be my first thought. And the reason for that is because it's a very like, it's not a in stone feeling title. ⁓ Can you either help me see the light or?
Zach Stevens (04:04)
Yeah.
Corey Haines (04:17)
haha
Zach Stevens (04:17)
Man.
Nick Loudon (04:29)
Confirm some of the thoughts I have and like show me the other side of the coin maybe
Zach Stevens (04:34)
Yeah, well, I think that it depends on, you have to understand what this person's job is and actually when they do a good, when they do a good job at it, what does that look like? ⁓ my, best way that I can characterize it is it's stewardship over the words and visuals that tell the story of your brand and keep that story consistent. So you don't have these veering tangential plot lines within your user journey or just like the
progression of your brand as it evolves and taps into new markets, et cetera. It is their job to maintain the personality and essentially the brand. that is their job is to maintain that loyalty and the emotional connection. And then also understanding, where can we flex? What strategic decisions do we make? Because everything that they would oversee has trickle down effect throughout an organization. Creative touches the product.
Creative touches the marketing, creative touches sales, creative touches. I mean, you can even like this brand and positioning tie into each other at the foundational root of your marketing strategy. And they don't, it's not like one comes after the other. They are both at the bottom working to not only venture into new arenas and markets within your vertical or your market, but then also make sure that it's gonna be okay to do that.
a push pull, you know, like a yin and yang at the base of your, marketing efforts. And when the, when you have a creative director that doesn't understand positioning, that doesn't understand business, that's when you run into problems. So their job is to steward all of that and do so in the context of we're still growing a business. It's not just expression and art, but I'm doing this in an effort to maintain the human humanity of a, especially in our realm of a digital product.
Nick Loudon (06:09)
you
Corey, did you, when I say like, or when I was making my claim about the creative director, right? Like, do you, you're also like a non-creative, right? Like, Zach is the creative one, we're the like, the other guys. Do you have like the same thing that go, okay, yeah, but not like you. Did you have like the same thought? Okay.
Zach Stevens (06:44)
Corey is super creative.
Corey Haines (06:50)
no, I, I had the same thought. Yeah.
A hundred percent. It's like anytime I've met a art director or a creative director specifically at like an agency, they're usually, ⁓ you know, they're wearing a denim jacket. They have really nice hair. They sort of speak in a different language. Yeah. They have circular metal, thin rimmed glasses. ⁓ you know, they're sort of like speaking a different language where you're like, Whoa,
Nick Loudon (07:07)
circular glasses
Corey Haines (07:17)
I don't really know what you're saying, but it sounds cool. And it's hard to like grasp what they do. I think I've come to appreciate it more because then I started working with agencies and then I started learning more about, you know, brands and branding and the whole process and ⁓ gobbledygook that goes into it. so actually, you know, even when I read the title of what Zach proposed, I was like, huh, I wonder what that means. But then as soon as he said like, you need a creative,
director to be the steward of all these things. It immediately clicked because it's true. Like you need someone with really, really good taste so that everything, everything doesn't just like go off the rails or become super stale or mediocre.
Nick Loudon (08:01)
Yeah... Go ahead.
Zach Stevens (08:02)
Yeah.
Well, I guess it's, they're also really good, like a good creative director. The person who I always think of is, is not the person in like a denim jacket or, you know, with colored hair or, know, that is a little bit more faddish with the way that they present themselves. The person I think of is Don Draper from Mad Men. Like that is when I think of creative director.
Corey Haines (08:26)
⁓
Zach Stevens (08:29)
That's who I think of and the reason I think of him is because he's a perfect example. ⁓ one of my favorite things about that show is he's a very good orator, ⁓ of telling really good stories, but he always ties it back into like, well, you're number four in your, your vertical and you are going to reject the things that I'm saying in an effort to keep being that way. And that's not something I'm interested in. If you want to be number one, then we should continue talking.
So not only for his dealings with clients, but ⁓ his respect for business and art as a joint effort to make business better. And I think to make art better, actually, like my favorite art is design stuff for, for business. Like this website is beautiful and it conveys a message and makes you want to buy this product is beautiful and it is delightful to use. That's art and business working together. And when creative does its job really well.
Then it speak like it adds a tremendous amount of value because it's delight on top of Utilitarianism and functionality so I think of him because he is a He's not as aloof or you know crazy. He's very Methodical and pragmatic. He's actually also the only person if you watch the entire series Everyone else in that agency changes with the trends at the time. I think it
starts in the sixties and then ends in the late seventies and there's a lot of fashion trends or maybe it's late fifties up until the early seventies and there's a lot of fashion trends that emerge like some of the guys in the in the agency like start getting sideburns and you know, like keep up with like the seventies haircuts. You see the women change in their clothing styles. He's actually the only one who doesn't change at all. Like his suits don't change. His hairstyle doesn't change. He's consistent all the way through. So I think that it
Nick Loudon (10:03)
you
Hmm.
Zach Stevens (10:23)
Another side of him that I think I respect and why I think of him when I think of creative direction is his system, systemization and authenticity. Like I'm not deviating to follow a fad. I am sticking true to what I know is timeless and it's gonna work.
Nick Loudon (10:41)
that given that Corey and I both like have the same person in our brain, it's obvious that creative directors need to rebrand. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, when you were talking, Corey had me thinking like, about maybe a better way to think about this person, and less of like, the person that we were picturing in our head is like,
Corey Haines (10:50)
They need a new creative direction.
Zach Stevens (10:50)
Yeah.
Nick Loudon (11:11)
A video game like a video game director like you know, you're the new say you're a director of you know, this project of building this game and there's a you have yeah Let's go with something that I might understand better like ⁓ let's say Call of Duty Okay, and we have you have a team that works on the campaign you have a team that works on The multiplayer you have a team that works on like the horde mode whatever that is ⁓
Corey Haines (11:20)
new Elder Scrolls.
Nick Loudon (11:40)
But your job is, cause those teams don't really touch one another. They don't like interact in the same way. They're just focused on their project, but you see from the top and your job is to make sure that there's a through line through all of it, that all of it connects correctly, that all of the weapons or the loadouts or whatever are all balanced and makes sense based on each of the other ones in the context that they don't all have and that the visuals all match.
They're kind of like seeing everything and watching the teams make sure that it all lines up together. Is that a better understanding maybe of what this person does?
Zach Stevens (12:19)
You're such a fucking nerd.
Nick Loudon (12:21)
God let's go dude
he said elder scrolls I feel like college and he's a much more every man than elder scrolls
Corey Haines (12:24)
Yeah
Zach Stevens (12:26)
It's more like,
it's, it's more of the way that you described it. You're like, the loadouts have to be this way. And like, ⁓ like, I, I, okay. You got me, but I'm like the, the filter by which you had to communicate this was through call duty. I love you. I love you for it. And you're right. That is the key. It's the through line. Can the narrator.
Nick Loudon (12:32)
Okay, A show of hands, who's played Call of Duty?
There we go. Got you.
Yeah, dude, that's the only thing I understand.
Zach Stevens (12:55)
the person who is going to keep the story going the way that it's supposed to make sure that doesn't deviate or if it does deviate, it's going to be a surprise in a good way. Not a why did we do that? It's not going to be a season seven of Game of Thrones where all of a sudden you're like, none of this makes sense. This is all wrong. ⁓ I mean, I think that there's, there's a major correlation between
Nick Loudon (13:08)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Zach Stevens (13:24)
deviation from story that you see like with Hollywood or in a book and what happens with brands it's like you if you deviate from who people expect you to be or in a way that is disappointing then they will never forgive you for it and It will burn Burn like no forest fire you've ever seen
Corey Haines (13:38)
Mm.
Yeah,
I have two follow-up questions for Zach. ⁓ Kind of unrelated, but maybe related, more related than I think. One is, ⁓ what are the practical bits of stewarding brand in creative direction? How would that show up for a SaaS founder, for example, or just anyone who's working in the SaaS business? And that's kind of like part two of my question is, who is the de facto creative director?
Do you need a creative director or can you be a creative director as the CEO or CMO or CTO or C, you know, chief design officer? Yeah, CPO, so on and so forth.
Zach Stevens (14:14)
Hmm.
Hmm.
CPO or anything like that. Yeah.
Okay. So first question is what goes into it? I think that their job is to first just assess the story because no founder like seldom do they think about the story in the context of how it relates to their users and then the totality of their journey. Like are you planning on acquiring other companies? If so, how do they relate to your brand portfolio and your architecture? Do they tell help tell the story better? Do they add to it or are they?
a really like a substantial departure because we need to think about that like and I could create direct those things too but should they be different movies like or just different different like tangential stories that don't really connect in a specific way so their job is to set up the systems in place like the foundational elements give us the lego pieces to work with as far as voice and tone give us the identity that we can work with and flex let us know when it's okay to flex let us know when
were off the rails. That's not necessarily something that I think that you can create. Like you can create style guides for them, but style guides, in my opinion, become, they're a little bit harder to follow simply because there's so many different mediums that you have to approach and things change. You know, a style guide that was made 10 years ago is not going to be as relevant anymore because the media landscape has just changed. So I think it's their job to communicate what that story is and then to know and tell people
know you're deviating from the story. So nuts or bits and pieces, it's laying the foundational pieces around visuals, around voice, and then making sure that those are implemented in a tasteful way that honors the brand and makes it engaging.
Is that sufficient or have I left any holes?
Nick Loudon (16:16)
Insufficient.
Corey Haines (16:18)
No, no, no. Yeah, I think mostly sufficient, but I think, ⁓ for example, let's just take me for example, I'm working on a SaaS product, right? ⁓ And I am putting together a website ⁓ I'm gonna have to like come up with not only just like, you know, the typography and the kind of color scheme and color palette, but also like,
the graphics and is it more like whimsical or is it more serious? Is it like, does it look very futuristic? Those are the types of things, You're thinking of, and then how that translates to the product use of animations. I'm trying to think like, what are all the things that you might have to account for? don't know if that's relevant, but.
Zach Stevens (16:49)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Loudon (16:51)
you
Zach Stevens (17:03)
No, well, I think it is. I mean, anything that-
This is the great part about creative directions. I don't think there's anything that doesn't touch like there between marketing. What is marketing? It's words and visuals. Primarily all of that has to at least be directionally aligned with the emotional value that you're bringing something like a, you forgot your password email. Are you going to spend a lot of time on that creatively? You could, if you have the time and capacity and it'd be really nice to.
Corey Haines (17:12)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Zach Stevens (17:37)
has something fun to circumvent a, or at least to pair with an annoying thing. Like I forgot my password, but you're probably not going to, uh, but essentially anything that you can put your eyes on or that your ears interact with even smells like depending on if you have an office, well, what, like, what kind of aromas do you have in your, what kind of music are you playing? If you want to have like a through and through brand, like all of that is going to get touched because it's all part of telling the story. Like it's the setting.
Um, for, for all of it. it will touch the product. will touch marketing. will touch sales. will touch nuts or nuts and bolts of retention emails and your series and your social posts and your ads. And I mean, there's just nothing it doesn't touch your packaging. If it's a, I'm imagine if you had to actually download a software or like install it the way we used to it, it would touch the packaging as well.
Nick Loudon (18:14)
you
It seems like... Sorry, did have something? Did I cut you off?
Zach Stevens (18:35)
Well, I was just
gonna, I was just gonna answer part two of Corey's question, is who is then responsible for it if like comes into play, but you can ask your question first. Cause I, I don't want you to forget it.
Nick Loudon (18:38)
I'm sorry.
My thought is this. It seems like a really big lift to convince tech founders that their creative director hire is more important than their CTO or, you know, the head of product like that, that the creative director is more important than or that that person is going to play a more foundational role than the
person in charge of like the product, for example, like, is that to me seems like a big ask, they'll probably be like, it doesn't matter if the product sucks. So that product has like that person's definitely more important. ⁓ That's what my brain goes to. Do you think that people think that way? Does it like we need to convince them? Like, where do you stand on it?
Zach Stevens (19:37)
Well, that's not the question. The question is it's the creative direction is the moat. It's the final thing that is going to make your brand different from everybody else. Because the problem with all the AI stuff, particularly in the realm of like a technical founder is that that is going to become way more commoditized than a creative director.
The amount of people now who are going to know how to code or like get to the point where they could help ship a product, even if they're a prompt engineer or really good at using AI developer tools. That is programmatic stuff where you have it. It's what's the phrase that you use, Corey deterministic. Yeah. Yeah. It's deterministic where you should have very clear outputs for very clear inputs.
Nick Loudon (20:11)
you
Corey Haines (20:23)
Deterministic.
Zach Stevens (20:31)
at least as far as functionality goes, having all that work together and then making it beautiful on top of that. think that that would fall under the rule. that's something a creative director would handle. ⁓ and it's just harder to find like someone who has tastes, but then also a sense of business strategy and can marry those two together. I think that that's going to become rare, especially because, well, even with like just attention deficits in the
newer generations who are going to be dependent on all this AI stuff. It's like, where's the person who doesn't just throw in prompts, willy nilly, like pretend like they're going to create, like create a hodgepodge of random stuff that doesn't cohere. You need somebody who's able to refine and cohere everything.
Nick Loudon (21:17)
Huh.
Okay, because that was my,
I guess my follow up is like the, the person that we're describing as like the ideal creative director is a rare person. Like you, for example, there aren't that many creative people that are like you. Like you have a ton of, just, you have a ton of creative ability, but you are incredibly administrative. You are very business savvy. You're focused on like the, ⁓ like.
Zach Stevens (21:39)
What?
Nick Loudon (21:51)
Okay, you you have your lane, but you like you care about the other lanes How are the other lanes like performing and working? I know a lot of creative people Not very many of them are like you I think I have maybe one or two more friends who are incredibly creative but also Like very administrative out of you if I know like 50 creative people, maybe three of them are the way you are so how Like this seems like a rare person to find which I think is probably
biggest issue in the discussion? Like how do people find those people? Get lucky. ⁓ that's a that's an even better question.
Zach Stevens (22:24)
Yeah.
Corey Haines (22:28)
Or how do you become more that person?
Zach Stevens (22:28)
⁓
What's that?
Corey Haines (22:33)
Is that, or how do you become
Zach Stevens (22:33)
Or how could they become?
Corey Haines (22:34)
more of that person?
Nick Loudon (22:35)
How do
you, how'd you do it?
Zach Stevens (22:37)
Well, I guess this could tie into Corey's question of who would it then be a de facto two.
Well, I think it comes down to it's a learned skill taste. Um, and I feel like you get it by just a lot of trial and error. There's this video from Ira Glass, who is a, podcast host of this American life. It's called the gap. And I think Corey, you've seen it. Yeah. So the whole premise of the gap is that there's, you can identify.
Corey Haines (23:12)
Yeah, once or twice.
Zach Stevens (23:18)
Like what is really good work? Like your taste, like your taste is killer. That's the thing that gets you into the game. But you know that you're not there yet. Like you can tell that there's a difference between your work and your output and the output that you want to be at. And the only way to get through that gap is to just do a shit ton of work. Like, ⁓ and practice, you know, and that might be something that's like just endless prompting until you get it to the point where it's like,
⁓ now I understand what go what I need to say to go into this and to do so in an effect in an effective way. ⁓ it's like, it's easier for someone who comes from the design realm, I think, because there's more like art history involved and technical terminology for making things look the way you want them to. ⁓ or like when I talked to a web team, I can say
things like, no, no, the padding isn't right on this, or this should be an absolute position. This should be a flex box. This should like, have that technical terminology to communicate things and help change and alter them. ⁓ but it is a skill. And the key thing is you just have to understand that maybe you're not as good as you want to be now, but if you can point out what is really good work and then point out why it's better, that's what the difference is. The last thing, which I think is more of a personal. ⁓
a personal take is appreciation for story, which I think is highly underrated and undervalued. If you are somebody who sits through a garbage movie for the full two hours and doesn't like want to claw your eyes out by the end of it and think, my God, why did I just waste so much time doing this? I never want to do it again. Like I did, where I took a vow and said, I'm never going to watch anything that doesn't capture my attention after.
15 minutes, I'm just gonna turn it off because it's a waste of time. Having that kind of reverence for a story is really important because then you will understand and appreciate the biggest thing for humanity, which is telling stories. And then you'll be able to understand what makes a good story, what makes a bad story. And that story and knowledge of how to work it is what's gonna make you a really good creative director.
Nick Loudon (25:36)
Put it on a poster, dude. Okay, the very last question is, what movie made you make that vow?
Corey Haines (25:39)
hers.
Zach Stevens (25:46)
It was Kong vs. Godzilla. The new one.
Nick Loudon (25:50)
Dude,
Corey Haines (25:51)
interesting.
Nick Loudon (25:51)
come on, the story of our time. What are you talking about? I'm just kidding. Yeah, I haven't seen it.
Zach Stevens (25:55)
It was horrible. It was so,
so here's, here's why the, the last movie that I saw before COVID was 1917, the world war one movie, which is absolutely fantastic blow away. Cinemat, cinematically, the story's fantastic through and through a fantastic movie. And then COVID hits. don't go see movies for like a year, actually in the theater. So, um,
Nick Loudon (26:03)
great movie. Yeah, so good.
Zach Stevens (26:24)
Like summer 2021 rolls around and I'm like, dude, I'm just freaking itching to like, want to go watch. I want to go eat popcorn and watch a movie all the way through. And so nothing really good was out of the time. A couple of buddies of mine went to go see Kong versus Godzilla and like half an hour and it was like, this kind of sucks. Like it's not a good movie. And then we, we get to, I'm waiting for it to get better and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. And I am still waiting cause it never got better.
Nick Loudon (26:32)
Mm-hmm.
You
Zach Stevens (26:54)
And then I realized when we got when we got out of the theater, it's like I just spent two hours two and a half hours watching a horrible horrible movie and I feel really bad about it So I'm never gonna do that again ⁓ And this actually I tell you I have walked out of movie theaters and stopped movies like my wife and I went to go see Napoleon the movie
Nick Loudon (26:55)
you
Buyers remorse.
Zach Stevens (27:23)
Ridley Scott movie with Joaquin Phoenix and we walked out. It's like this isn't good. It's got a bad story and a horrible dialogue. It's a if you're trying to compare it to Gladiator don't because you'll be very disappointed.
Nick Loudon (27:23)
huh.
Haven't seen it, so.
Corey Haines (27:36)
Oh,
not even. Yeah. Not even close at all. There's one more fun thought is I just thought that there was a, maybe an interesting connection in parallel to Hollywood because it feels like the last like 10 to 15 years, people have really lost the excitement of a lot of movies and they're really visually flashy. But like you said, they're missing the story element. And I wonder if a lot of that was
Nick Loudon (27:38)
I won't do that.
Corey Haines (28:05)
kind of tied to the breakthroughs in CGI and just being able to use computer generated graphics and effects in movies. And then that sort of like took the show. We had movies like Transformers where it was sort of like mind blowing the first time that you saw it. And then everyone starts to like overemphasize just the use of effects and sort of making every movie into an action movie.
Zach Stevens (28:12)
Mm-hmm.
Nick Loudon (28:16)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Zach Stevens (28:33)
Mm-hmm.
Corey Haines (28:33)
And I wonder if AI has a similar kind of life cycle where it'll be like, ⁓ now I can make all these things or like all these things can be generated quickly and like decently well. But then people start to feel burned over time because they're like, but this doesn't really work that well. This isn't really a good product. This doesn't really solve my needs. Yeah. Like I don't really have an affinity for this product.
Zach Stevens (28:39)
Mmm.
Nick Loudon (28:54)
or I don't connect with it because the story isn't there.
Zach Stevens (28:57)
Yeah, exactly.
Music too, you music kind of went through this is going through the same kind of cycle where there's a overproduction I think would be the the best way of characterizing it and lack of taste so it's a ⁓ bad combo of the ability to out like your output is just a lot more volumous, but the taste and care isn't so That's unfortunate. I mean the best movie ever or according to IMDB at least last time I checked is still the Shawshank Redemption which
Corey Haines (29:07)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Stevens (29:31)
is like zero special effects whatsoever. Phenomenal story.
Nick Loudon (29:36)
I if there is any, I'm
like, there any special effects in that movie? I don't think so. It'd be funny if we found something.
Zach Stevens (29:40)
No, well, unless you
can, unless not, not CGI. ⁓
Nick Loudon (29:45)
Mm-hmm. Right, right, right. Yeah, just like practical effects. Yeah, yeah.
Zach Stevens (29:47)
There's
no, there's zero CGI in that movie. I will bet on that, that there's zero CGI in that movie. Or, or like, or there's things like Jurassic Park where there's a limited amount of CGI. And I think that's like, you know, you hit that, ⁓ like the perfect medium of like, we're going to use CGI, but do it very, very sparingly and focus on the story. Lord of the Rings is another really good example, particularly the, ⁓
Nick Loudon (29:53)
I gotta watch it. I'll be like glued to the TV. I love that movie, but
Zach Stevens (30:17)
like just the main trilogy and you look at that compared to the Hobbit, the Hobbit has shit tons of CGI and it's, it doesn't hold up. Like the Uruk-Kai in Fellowship of the Ring are way more intimidating than any CGI work, like hands down. But it's because like, and it, well, and I'm and I'm sure it was annoying, like having to get into makeup and do all that stuff, but it made.
Nick Loudon (30:22)
I hate it.
Corey Haines (30:22)
Yeah, way too much.
Mm-hmm.
Nick Loudon (30:34)
it drives me crazy. I can't watch The Hobbit because of it. ⁓
Zach Stevens (30:46)
Like it kept the story alive. Like it made the story worth it.
Nick Loudon (30:46)
paid off.
Wow, we can probably talk for a lot longer about this, but anyway, we're gonna wrap it up. Appreciate you guys, great discussion, very interesting, and ⁓ we will see you all on the next one. Bye bye.