Joel Benge: So I’ll start it just so we can get some levels. It looks good.

Joel Loukus: Is there music? Is it like boom-chittia-ta-boomp? 

Joel Benge: A little bit like a It starts out, it goes, “Hi, I’m Joel, and I’m a recovering nerd.” Pow! Ba dum, ba dum. Not very Seinfeld, though. It’s Is that 

Joel Loukus: No, you want some funk? 

Joel Benge: I need some, I need some original music, actually, but I need, but but I didn’t have the time, so I rushed it.

Joel Loukus: We have a, uh, a new art director, who is really into Bostonian thrash metal. Maybe he could do your music. 

Joel Benge: I’d love it! Hell yeah! Set it up!

 My name is Joel and I’m a recovering nerd. I’ve spent the last 25 years bouncing between creative jobs and technical teams. I worked at places like Nickelodeon to NASA and a few other places that started with different letters.

I was one of the first couple hundred people podcasting back in the early aughts until I accidentally became an IT analyst. Thankfully, someone in the government said, “Hey, you’re a nerd that talks good.” And that spun me off into the world of startups, branding, and marketing, for the same sort of researchers and startup founders that I used to hang out with. 

Today, I help technical people learn how to get noticed, get remembered, and get results.

On Nerds That Talk Good, I want to help you do the same. I talk with some of the greatest technical communicators, facilitators, and thinkers that I know who are behind the big brands and the tech talk that just works. 

Today’s guest nerd is a former colleague of mine, Joel Loukus, who is the Motion Director for ADG Creative, the very first creative and branding studio that I ever worked at. He’s just an absolute wizard telling stories, 

And that’s what we’re going to dig into today.

Joel Loukus, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on Nerds That Talk Good, officially now the 10th interview however, sad news, you are the second “Other Joel.” I’ve already interviewed another Joel. 

Joel Loukus: Really? 

Joel Benge: Yeah. 

Joel Loukus: There can be only one.

Joel Benge: I know Joel Klettke, paging Joel Klettke, you’re needed at ADG… 

Joel Loukus: For a deathmatch. 

Joel Benge: Yeah, so anyway to introduce you just a little bit, we worked together for several years at ADG Creative and for most of that time, The the Motion Director, I guess was the title, but, I really saw you as the wizard of visual storytelling.

The stuff that you and ADG put out are the technical explainer videos that I hold all other explainer videos up to.

Joel Loukus: Thank you.

Joel Benge: Yeah, so I wanted to just talk and jam a little bit about video and storytelling, the visual medium. But, get a little bit deeper because, this Podcasts is really helping technical people tell their stories which is something that I think you and the team at ADG do amazingly well.

I always make a joke that you are the only person I know that is actually taking people through the entire Joseph Campbell hero’s journey… 

Joel Loukus: Every time

Joel Benge: …in a 30-second explainer video. It’s dude, we’re just trying to show them how to click on buttons and your’e like, “yeah. They don’t know…

Joel Loukus: The temptress

Joel Benge: …they don’t know the button.

We have to introduce them to the button.” So I’d love to get into that, but let’s open up just with your nerd origin story. How did you get here? Some of your background, and then what puts you in this position? 

Joel Loukus: Wow. Yeah. Let’s go way back. Let’s go deep. Let’s get Freudian.

I always loved narrative. And from a young age, my parents were very they were not huge media consumers. We had a VCR, we would get stuff from Blockbuster, that kind of thing, when I was a kid, but it wasn’t a huge part of my household upbringing.

But we had a friend, and it was a huge part of theirs. Right? They had the really nice VCR and a huge 30 inch screen. And I would have sleepovers over at their house because they had a son that was the same age as me. My, My dad knew his dad, they were both like firefighters in the Coast Guard, and they were both like nerds into computers, back in the 80s, which was a little more niche, right?

So I would go over to to their house, and I would play things like Prince of Persia on their Apple Quadra. 

 They were into that kind of entertainment, and then they had a nice television setup and home theater setup, such as could exist in 19, the late 1980s.

Joel Benge: LaserDisc. 

Joel Loukus: Yeah, they probably would have, but that was already failing at the time, I think. But I watched a lot of the Star Trek movies and Star Wars.

Obviously everybody was in the late 80s. And yeah. And Indiana Jones probably way earlier than I should have.

I’m like six years old watching the end of Raiders with the heads exploding and that was scarring and inspiring. 

Joel Benge: First, first rated our film was it not? Not Raiders, but the, 

Joel Loukus: I think I think you’re referring to Temple. Temple, yeah. Invented the PG 13 rating. 

Joel Benge: That’s right. It was we’re not quite ready for the R yet, but man, those hearts exploding in people’s hands.

Joel Loukus: It would probably be R now. 

Joel Benge: I think, yeah. 

Joel Loukus: Which is odd, to think that we’re maybe a little more censorious now in some of those ways than then, but it’s true. Anyway um, so I, I got a lot of exposure to that era of pop culture at that household.

 My parents appreciated Star Wars too, I saw it at home too. But I got so much exposure to it there and Star Wars was something that I gravitated to a lot of people of almost any generation, right? 

What I’ve always said is that what Star Wars gave me was a love of narrative and myth.

And and that spiraled out into real myth, like mythology; Greek mythology, Norse mythology. I grew up reading a lot of that. And in the early 90s Jurassic Park came out. Same kind of crowd going to see that kind of movie. And my dad, who’s very autodidactic, it’s that, and that’s something that he gave me.

He wants to be well read on everything. 

After Jurassic Park came out, he was, he had a brief fascination with the 3D artistry of that. And he went and got this big coffee table volume that was the making of Jurassic Park. And he flipped through it, he like sped read it in a week and then he gave it to me because I, I was like a nine year old boy and I love dinosaurs.

So I wound up reading this and I still have it. It’s all eaten up and dog eared and where Star Wars gave me a love of myth and narrative. That Jurassic Park making of book gave me a love of film making. I think from that time my destiny was set. And I grew up playing with Legos.

I did some stop motion, in my in my younger teens. Put together some terrible backyard cinema in my later teens. Yeah. And then had, a very confusing, transition into adulthood like everybody does. And, but emerged from that with that compass bearing of I want to use media to tell really cool, meaningful, deep, mythic narratives.

And so I started making my own work and that became a portfolio and then it became a career. 

Joel Benge: And you found your way to ADG Creative, which was was that your first step in in the creative agency? Was this the break, or did you dabble before that? Yeah, 

Joel Loukus: I, I started doing freelance work, and the nature of that’s very technical and doing that kind of work for yourself you get like a technical rigor, and I think that’s part of being able to do effective creative work is like how it weaves with the technical.

Like something I often say is that like any fool can make an opus in 20 years, right? But it takes the genius is in the craftsmanship, the throughput. Doing freelance work that has that Technical rigor is a good playground for developing the skills that you need to be really good creative.

Joel Benge: Yeah. 

Joel Loukus: And the portfolio stopped being just lightsaber battles and in the backyard, and started to have more commercial substance to it as a result of that. So I went from that into an industrial communication shop. That’s a lot of doing the quarterly prospectus for some company and we’re going to set up like a little mini studio and shoot live to, to tape.

And I’m interacting with lighting directors there. But it’s still very technical, right?

It’s ” cutting the camera left, camera two, standby, go.” there’s a lot of that kind of stuff. And and then also like we’re doing a safety video for, and an asphalt plant. 

Joel Benge: Ooh, pathos.

Joel Loukus: But, it’s like you’re in a, you’re in a setting, there’s expectations put on you and constraints and all of that’s valuable. For the creative. And so I was there for about a year doing industrial communications and , from there, I went to a startup that what’s interesting about this is, that industrial communication shop, it’s I’m just old enough to have been, like, in the rooms with dozens of triplicators doing VHS copies, and and then also converting people’s reel to digital media, and it’s it’s this weird overlap point in time there, where it’s we still had all this legacy, Like I went and did a shoot where we had like a Betamax that was like plugged into a DV cam deck so that we could still use that old, the old camera for something.

Joel Benge: Yeah. 

Joel Loukus: So I say that it, cause it’s like that company had these deep roots that went back, decades. And they had processes and attitudes about it. Whereas when I went to that startup that’s the emerging. It’s, it’s a Final Cut Pro shop and the whole attitude was a little more software driven rather than hardware driven.

And it was the other end of the spectrum in that sense. It was like the new kids, right? And uh, that was a much more creative position. That was like, we’re doing ads for businesses. And they’re selling the airtime, because they have a media buy license.

So it’s ” we’ll throw in the media production for free. If you’re buying the ad time from us, or with us.” And so ” here kid, you got a day to make the coolest ad you can.”

So you get like all of these, like for six months…

Joel Benge: Just make sure you get the phone number in there six times. And mention the product…” 

Joel Loukus: Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Benge: … and hold the can awkwardly so that you can…” They never print labels so that you can hold them on film naturally, right? 

Joel Loukus: Yeah, so it’s, it was it was like doing a 48 hour film festival every day. You show up for work, “what ad are we making today?”

It’s ” okay, what, who can we, what talent can we pull from our sister company that’s like across the street on their lunch break to perform in this thing? ” So we did stuff for car dealerships and like we buy gold kind of places. We did some for, wait, we did a real dramatic one that was around, self defense, like accoutrement, stun guns and things.

Joel Benge: A lot of late night…

Joel Loukus: yeah, digital cable. 

 But that was such… the pace of that was so rigorous. And I walked away from that position that I only had for about a year. With an enormous reel.

And like Ira Glass famously said this on another podcast at some point.

That that throughput is so essential to creatives when we look at their work. I don’t want to butcher his his statement, but it’s essentially that if you want to become a great creative rather than somebody who’s just somewhat creative, that the craftsmanship has to be developed through that throughput, producing an enormous amount of work.

And that setting certainly gave me that. 

It was a start up. A lot of start ups fail, and I could see there, like, where everything was headed. And, I started actively looking for another position, and and that reel material, and, putting myself out there, I wound up connecting with ADG Creative, and I’ve been here for quite a long time now.

It’s been a great gig. 

Joel Benge: Yeah, you’re one of the long timers. 

And just for background, ADG Creative is a creative studio but does a lot of very technical lot of stuff for governments and stuff that you never sees public, right? It’s not as commercial. It’s definitely not commercial.

Joel Loukus: Yeah, more limited audience, more directed audience.

Joel Benge: Yeah, more directed audience for pretty technical customers and clients. And so you’ve had to learn how to balance that, that eye and that desire that you have to do really great art, and I will say that, I, at least, this is, being conservative, 80 percent of everything that we do is art.

Sometimes you just gotta put the thing out, right? But balancing that, wanting to do the creative product in partnership with technical stakeholders is really, at least when I was here, something that I learned and really came to appreciate. 

Joel Loukus: Yeah, and I would say that it’s more than just technical stakeholders.

In, highly regulated fields that, tend to have this technical edge, you’ve got, 20 different types of people that all have their say in what the product is and and being a director in that context means, before you’re doing anything cool that you’ve pitched, you’ve done the Don Draper pitch and like silver tongued an enormous different number of people to all come together and agree that like a thing is what you’re trying to do before it’s realized.

Joel Benge: Yeah. 

Joel Loukus: And that’s, that is probably the most challenging aspect of it because in a lot of ways it’s like When you’re working with good people, good artists, and you’ve hired good people, it’s like you’re going to make stuff that can look pretty. That’s the easy part. It’s finding inspiration and all that, but conveying that inspiration to 20 different personality types at once and getting them all nod in, in accord… 

Joel Benge: And legal and regulatory… Whatnot.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I really came to appreciate working with you on script work and actually telling a lot of these technical stories, even if it’s something like an animated explainer. It is the this isn’t just a bullet list. We’re just not, we’re not reading flat.

And, there’s a lot of work out there and teams that, like you said, do visually technically good work. But there’s something missing. And I always appreciated your book of circles and, I think most people are familiar with the Joseph Campbell arc.

But you introduced me to just so many other ones that come out of filmmaking and narrative storytelling that I’ve been able to bring into a lot of my technical work. What, besides Campbell, which I, personal opinion I think is abused, or overused, misunderstood. It’s great when it’s done well.

Not always the best to use when you’re doing something technical, right? When you’re trying to convince somebody. What are some of the other stories or archetypes or frameworks that you like to dip into for technical? 

Joel Loukus: Yeah. I’d like to talk first, . Yeah. I can direct a little . 

Joel Benge: Absolutely. It’s your show, man.

Joel Loukus: I because one, one thing that you’ve pointed out, I I’ve reflected on a lot the abuse of, maybe abuse is a really stark term for it. Misunderstanding though. Definitely. Because Joseph Campbell uses archetypal language. It’s the language of myth when he says there’s this temptress to be in the middle, right?

And and some people that are more, maybe more literal or less maybe architectural in their mindset about what does it mean that there’s a temptress there? Because a lot of people, they’ll hear that and they’ll think that means there’s a witch and she’s got the candy. 

 What the hell does that have to do with our cybersecurity tool?

And I but I think it even happens in creative fields. Or like purely in creative or fictional work. I I had an interaction with some people that proclaim themselves to be experts in Campbell. And they were speaking in a purely fictional context. And I think most people are familiar with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

And, The Turkish Delight, right? And it’s really easy to try to say ” we’re going to map the story of the Chronicles of Narnia, of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe around the hero’s journey, around the circle, and what lines up with it? What, where are the beats represented?”

And it’s really easy to look at that and say, “oh the Temptress beat happens very early. It happens right here at the end of the first act because that’s where the Turkish Delight is.” Because that’s where the literal temptation of candy is. Because it’s an archetypal solution to that sort of beat.

However, that’s not the temptation beat. That’s like a catalyst beat, right? And the fact that there’s a literal temptation In the first act doesn’t mean that they moved that archetypal beat to it. It’s like you’re, it’s like they’re too focused on the literal aspects of the whole thing. The temptation beat, as an aside, you know, in that narrative, it’s almost always towards the midpoint.

So it’s way closer to consequence of that Turkish delight, where it’s like the witch says that she has a claim. to Edmund’s blood. That he’s her like lawful victim. And that Aslan can’t do anything about it. That’s the temptation beat because everyone’s tempted to presume that she’s more powerful than Aslan.

That’s the temptation at play. But there’s no literal like, you know, like, uh, apple or, or candy or…

Joel Benge: Nothing’s being offered at that point. To be a temptation.

Joel Loukus: But from a metaphysical standpoint, If you look at the themes, it lines right up with the concept in Campbell. 

So it’s just like a little example of how it can be so easily misapplied when you’re just too focused on the archetypes.

And good or bad, Campbell uses all of that language because he’s just trying to illustrate by example, the belly of the whale. You can still have a whale belly in the first act. And it doesn’t change anything. What was the second part of your question after that? 

Joel Benge: What are some of the, the other story structures or things that are useful.

Because I think in technology we fall into the, done very poorly. We fall into the, “Hi, we’re this product and technology is the hero and we’re the hero.” And, the one thing that I learned is, you are never, you, company, storyteller, never the hero when it’s a sales proposition.

You want your audience to be the hero. You want to place them in that position.

Joel Loukus: Yeah, you introduced me to that idea. Yeah. 

Joel Benge: Got that from the Story Brand books, which is very centered on almost exclusively Campbell. But realizing that there are other stories that can be used. Yeah. Not every technical story or technical offer has to leverage a hero dynamic or a hero’s journey.

And there are other stories and narratives that I think are being underutilized.

Joel Loukus: Sure. Yeah I mean, I would say that, In the case of Campbell even that name for the circle is, by example, the Hero’s Journey, right? Or, if you say the Odyssey, or, it’s these are all things that it’s like the Darmok, they’re, the Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra in Star Trek, it’s, these are just shorthand.

And so on some level I would say, I don’t know that there is another one. What there are, are different illustrations of it. And some of them are less literal, and some of them are more analytic, maybe, is a way that you could say it, where it’s like because you can say something like, “catalyst,” or you can say, “catastrophe” and it’s like these have different implications a little bit. Or even like climax as a concept is, can vary, like the things that we’re trying to get at behind the words are the same which is, if you’re to put more analytical language on something like climax, It’s something like transformation which is not necessarily a great word to use because it’s been a little overused in that corporate context.

But the point is that there’s an underlying meaning behind these things, that whether it’s in the corporate language or The epic language. It’s essentially the same. Sid Field has a great illustration in his screenwriting book. Can’t rattle tle off the name off the top of my head, but in his opening chapters, one of the things that he says is that if you think of story like a table, and it’s like you could have a lot of different kinds of tables you could look at thousands of tables that all look very distinct or evoke different responses or aesthetics, but you can describe a table pretty essentially as a thing that has surfaces and legs.

There might be a different number of legs, they might be at different heights, but the table maybe this is going to get into the Platonic ideals here a little bit, like there’s a function that it serves. 

Joel Benge: If it no longer has a surface, it stops being a table.

Joel Loukus: Yeah.

So taco probably is a sandwich. 

Joel Benge: Oh. I, no, a taco is a hot dog until the shell breaks. At least a a hard corn. 

Joel Loukus: And then it’s a salad. 

Joel Benge: Hard corn. And then it becomes a, yeah. Yep. 

Joel Loukus: Heh heh. 

Joel Benge: Well, a salad is a soup. Anyway.

Soup N@zi: “No soup for you!”

Joel Loukus: Yeah so there’s an essential quality to narrative underneath whether you’re gonna call it the hero’s journey or Sid Field’s table approach or if you’re gonna talk about, basic three acts or even like a nine act television structure, like all of these conventions,

Sid Field’s contention there is that they’re all describing different tables and the essential quality between all of them is the same. And the most universal that you can get about it because the further you get in some of these these structural theories like if I keep dropping names, right? like Whether it’s Vogler or Campbell or Blake Snyder like Save the Cat is like super popular for the last couple decades or Dan Harmon, his 8 beat structure is super popular right now for good reason All of those, they have when you come out with less resolution, less prescribed characterization.

They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And you can’t get away from that in linear. that. It’s always going to have that. And I think as an extension of that, you can maybe say these are the legs. You have definition between those three things. That if you can’t define where the beginning and the middle, are kind of separated, because there’s like a turn or a division of some sort between them. Between those two parts and the latter two parts, those are the most essential, most bare bones way to describe what a story necessarily and essentially is in all cases. But it’s, bringing it all the way back to a corporate or or technical content interface, it’s pretty easy to make a body of content that doesn’t have a beginning, middle, and end.

 It will, but it may not communicate or present those things in such a way that it’s easy for the audience to consume those and understand that about it. 

Joel Benge: I think it’s funny that it’s beginning, middle, and end, which are three elements.

The number three shows up just, I think universally, just as we are human beings. Three is inbaked in us so much, especially government, we love 3 letter acronyms, we love sentences with 3 …

Joel Loukus: bump, bump, bump.,

Joel Benge: Love the 3’s, Nerd talks good. Um, so, so there is something to that.

 When you’re working with a stakeholder, where someone brings a story to you, what are the first steps that you do to start sketching out, or at least identifying, what could be regardless of the structure you’re using, because you have to figure it out. Sometimes you back into the structure, sometimes the structure emerges from the components that you want to tell, but someone comes to you and they’re just like, “we need to make a five minute video about this technical project that we did.”

And you need to draw more from that stakeholder. What are some of the techniques or what are some of the the process that you go by to get that so that you can then frame it as you need to put it in story. Cause it, cause the list of requirements does not a story make. 

Joel Loukus: That’s the real trick, isn’t it?

 That’ll cost you extra. Yeah. There’s a lot of factors in a situation like that. And it’s like you’re describing it and I’m like, I’m just having all these flashbacks and I’m like, man, I’ve had a lot of conversations like that. 

Joel Benge: I’m remembering sitting in this room with the whiteboard and …

Joel Loukus: Yeah. And, I feel like I’ve done it so much that it’s, it starts to become, it’s like you can either have intuition at the beginning where it’s something that you’re born with or it’s something you develop, through craft. Where it’s like you, you got it down to such a science and then you stop thinking about it and it becomes intuition again.

I would say that that video or like a linear narrative, it’s presented visually. You can call that a movie or film or video or whatever. There’s something conversational about it. And part of a leg up that you have in an interchange like that is that you can not approach it.

Like you, you should have a rigid structure inside your head about what you have to accomplish. But the person you’re interacting with should I have come to believe should probably never have a notion about it. 

Right? 

Like they, they should feel like they’re just being talked with and listened to.

And meanwhile, you’re populating all that structure, because it’s not their job to detangle it for you. And if you do it well, it, you can state it back to them, as a paragraph that’s been structured and they’ll nod and say, you got it, right? But I don’t, I, I think that and I’ve done it before, right?

In the past where it’s ” let me explain to you all of the structural exercise that I’m going to walk you through. And here’s what, this is what a first act means and I’m going to have you talk to me, what do you think of good for…” Cause they don’t think that way. They’re not paid to think that way.

They’re paying you to think that way. So I think I’ve shifted, over the last 12 years or so where I’ve been a little more client facing to be less prone. Like at some level you want to educate them, right?

Joel Benge: You can explain that kind of on the back. “Wow, how does that work so well?” ” This is what I’m doing here.”

Joel Loukus: Yeah. 

Joel Benge: But if you, it’s almost if you explain the trick before you do the trick then it loses a bit. And they’re paying attention to the structure. They’re paying attention to the checklist and not the narrative. 

Joel Loukus: And I, I would say where that gets really complicated is when you’re.

When you’re working with a prime, like somebody who you’re collaborating with as you know in a work share situation. Maybe somebody from another institution, like somebody who’s like subbing, like that particular part of the work to you is what I mean when I say prime. That’s that’s where it gets tricky because you’re.

It’s like you’ve got your sausage factory, and you know how it works, and then like, how much do you let this guy that is selling your sausage, like how much does he need to understand it in order to sell it? 

Joel Benge: And how much influence do you want to give them over changing it because you have something that works.

Joel Loukus: And maybe they have an appetite to. 

Joel Benge: Yeah. 

Joel Loukus: On top of that. Right. They want, the guy who’s selling the sausage wants to come and like tell you how to make it. 

Joel Benge: And then you become a short order cook. 

Joel Loukus: And you’ve got to like. So there’s situations like that are realities in the field where ideally when you’re interacting with a client you want that to feel organic and that you’ve got your structure here behind the curtain, so to speak, and they’re out there and you can put on the show, right?

But then you have these people that are like backstage with you. And and they need to be read in on it. Right or wrong, in their attitude about it, they need to have some sort of an accord with you on it. And I’d say that’s more complicated than the client relationship. But I guess speaking more to that client relationship it’s you want to maintain that conversational tone.

You want, never want to make them feel it, there’s a delicate line here. It’s you’re going to ask them some hard questions and they’re going to be framed in a way that they’ve never thought of before. Uh, Like I was in a meeting a while ago with a client of this sort. And I said something like, the “customers who would use your solution, what do you think they need to know that they don’t know about.”

And from somebody who’s like developing like engineering, over here, it’s like that level of audience empathy presents questions that have never been before their mind. And they’ve got to sit there and think about it. And in this delicate balance, interacting with people in that situation where it’s like you want to help give them the language without prescribing it.

So you gotta let them speak first and you gotta make them feel comfortable that they can say something half baked. And that requires like a looseness of tonally to the whole meeting. And like, the room that you have it in can affect that tone. So it’s like having client empathy, like ,in that case. Where it’s like we’re providing the environment for them to say the things that that they don’t realize articulate things emotively, because they’ll get it out eventually. And being adept at creating the environment so that comes out sooner rather than later, that’s really the task.

Joel Benge: I’ll get back to my conversation with Joel in just a second, but, uh, this is Joel. I just wanted to stop in and thank you for listening. It’s been three months of this podcast. We’ve surpassed 2,000 downloads. It’s not supported or sponsored by anybody except for me. Um, and so it means a whole lot that you’re listening.

If you could do me a favor, if you’re listening on Apple, Spotify, or any of the big catchers, could you comment, like, uh, do whatever the engagement is. Uh, that’ll really help with the visibility and shoot me an email [email protected].

I’m gonna to start including some surveys and some places for you to comment on the episode pages. And if anybody wants to come on, whether you think you’re a nerd that talks good or you need a little bit of message therapy, I’m happy to have you on.. Anyway, thanks again to ADG for letting me chat with Joel.

It was a blast, and we’ll get right back into it here.

Within what you can share, what are some of your favorite projects that you’ve presented an option or you’ve presented something creatively, that did I don’t want to say break the client’s mind, you had, they had to trust you on it that worked out really well?

Joel Loukus: Yeah. I think there’s one I can be fairly public about. We’ve supported some science and technology conferences in the past. And there was a particular director of an organization that hosts one of these conferences. They were well known for putting on a show before we ever did any work with them.

We came in and we were like, How can we cater to that appetite for showmanship through graphics and animation and sound? And just bring a lot of technical finesse to that desire that the client already has.

So we were real excited, that somebody wants to put on the show. And is in like a government, academia, context. So, you know, it’s a lot of PowerPoints, it’s a lot of death by PowerPoints. If you’ve ever seen like the quads, it’s like we have four, because there’s like an arbitrary limit set on the slides.

It’s that kind of context. But they put on a pretty big conference and and it’s like a really nice venue. Lots of light control in the room and so there were a lot of, there was a lot of potential. And what we sold them on was we had a large central screen. It was about a 25 foot L.E.D. array .

That was about the same size as the stage and towers over the people there. And that was the main canvas for everybody at this conference that was going to be speaking on the stage to present content. And part of our task was to create a keynote address that would kick off this conference.

And it’s a lot of like science and technology and innovation, that sort of thing. And what we pitched was let’s set up projectors that would line up with the, that central screen and create graphics that would start on the screen in the middle and then be able to fly off of that screen into the surrounding environment. 

Joel Benge: Bleed into the room.

Joel Loukus: Yeah like disruption disruptive technology as a positive, like having negative examples and positive examples was a big theme of this keynote address. So we were able to do all of these really fun, abstracted animations. We were talking about technology like Uber upsetting, taxi drivers, and just the models of behavior.

Where, we showed some structural discipline. Where the first half of this address, it’s all conventional, right? It’s all like right there in the middle. And then around that midpoint, you start breaking out of the box. And the graphics start flying off the screen. And it’s surprising at that point because you’ve acclimated the audience to something they thought was a rule.

The box. The screen. Everybody knows that. The graphics stay on the screen. But then it’s like a magic trick. And we have this stuff flying off and it’s and it’s so unconventional in that context. And to the degree where, we had to have like lots of like long patient conversations with so many people.

Joel Benge: Yeah. 

Joel Loukus: To be like, explain what this was happening, what was going on with this thing. And one thing, it wasn’t even on the client side, this is one of my favorite parts of the story is that, the A. V. company that was like just on the technical side. 

Joel Benge: Yeah, you’re renting the stuff.

Joel Loukus: Like supporting the conference center.

They called us like really worried. Like late in this process.

Joel Benge: “We’ve never done this before.”

Joel Loukus: They’re like, “somebody screwed up. There’s only curtains there, there’s no screens. It’s not going to look good at all”. And we had to explain to them, “actually we’re relying on that, on it to be unexpected.”

Because they wanted to, they were like, “somebody screwed up, and we’ll give you, we’ll give you the screens for the side that can sit, so it’s one large thing from side to side.” And we had to explain to them, “no, that would ruin everything.” 

And that being like, deliberate, and from a technical standpoint, there’s all kinds of reasons why that’s sensible where it’s like yeah, I mean your contrast ratio is going to be much better if you have those up there, and any text will be way more legible, and we need to explain that, we understand, and none of that matters to us.

Once you understand all the rules, you can break them all. And that’s the whole point. And that, that was one where we felt like we got, we were given a lot of leash. And a lot of rope, right?

Joel Benge: I remember that. I was, I wasn’t on that project, but I was here when you did that.

I think that case study is linked up on the website. So I’ll add that to the show notes. 

Joel Loukus: Cool.

Joel Benge: What it, here’s one of the things that I always. I don’t know if it was something I had a problem with or something that I struggled with. It was being motivated to do your best work when you know a very limited audience is going to see it.

So for example, I’m thinking about a particular project where we did a recruiting video. You know the one I’m thinking of. “The Interview.”

Joel Loukus: Yes.

Joel Benge: Which is, I would say, probably one of the best projects I’ve ever been a part of. Partially because we had a lot of fun, but we also pushed the boundaries.

For an extremely limited audience. We were not agency of record on that, so it’s not something that we can even share. How do you feel about that? Do you, is it just the job? Do you put your personal pride on the on the line for a project like that?

Or is that just, that’s just the gig? 

And I did the best I could.

Joel Loukus: That’s such an interesting question. I think for me, cause I was not say conventionally educated. I didn’t start my media production journey with a class of peers that I was like producing the work for. And so at some level, my early work had an audience of one and it was me.

And getting an audience of two or three or five or, I think my first big premiere of a film that I made, I like had a little event and we, I made popcorn and had like the actors and actresses show up. It’s 50 people, the film was terrible. 

Joel Benge: We won’t link to that one. 

Joel Loukus: . It’s, I still look at that room and think that, for that level of work that I produced at the time, it’s maybe I wish there were fewer people. 

But it’s like, I think with my background, it’s like, I would be happy and just as confident to produce work for that audience of one. And it’s like, well, how important is that one person? Because sometimes when you’re talking in a corporate sense, sometimes the audience is small because it’s exclusive, right? 

Where it’s this is an explainer video and it’s going to go in front of like, a Senate committee, you know, and like, um, and that’s, and it’s like 12 people.

Joel Benge: Yeah. 

Joel Loukus: And they’re going to make a very important decision based on it. And it and it’s it’s, is it better to get a thousand views, like on a platform like YouTube or a hundred thousand or a million views of like clicks that you’ve essentially paid for because it’s it’s pre roll on something.

Is that a more significant audience than the 12 captive people that have to watch and make decisions based on it? And it’s I don’t really see audience size as a really big impact to my attitude about the work. 

 This is a little bit tangential, but if you’ve seen Chef, the Jon Favreau film, it’s a beautiful, charming little movie, right?

And I was shocked to find that people didn’t realize that it was about media production the whole time. It’s all an abstraction for filmmaking and audience and relationship with audience. And, they talk about um, You know, he’s got this successful restaurant, in that first act, and he’s and Dustin Hoffman, the manager character, he’s like, “play your hits.”

And he feels like he’s in creative rut. That’s the language that he uses. And then later, he’s got a taco truck. He’s just feeding a couple people. And they’re feeding just the people that help them load the stove onto the truck right? They barely have any interaction with them.

They don’t even speak the same language, and they’re making them free sandwiches. They’re not paying for it. That’s their audience, right? Is like the guys that were in the work yard. And and they burn one of the sandwiches and the kid’s cause the son’s learning from the father how to cook, and he’s like, “uh, yeah, this one’s burnt, but we’ll give it to him,” and the father’s like, “okay, we gotta slow down, we gotta talk about this,” and he explains that if you’re gonna love preparing food for somebody, this is the kind of thing that doesn’t fly and just out of the pure love of the craft, is where you should find your meaning, right?

If it’s a number of people that are going to consume it, or whether or not, or whether, it doesn’t have to be good, because it’s only one guy that’s going to watch this, or five people that are going to watch this, then I would say that you’re probably in the wrong field. Maybe try a taco truck.

 But it’s you have to have that joy, no matter the size of the audience, to not burn the food. 

Joel Benge: That’s awesome. I was gonna ask wrapping up, what do you do personally to keep creative, obviously you still have that love of film, you still do side projects and whatnot, and if you want to send me some links to where people can watch those, I’m happy to share those, but how do you get your head out of the stuff that you do every day so that you can do the stuff that you love, even if it’s within the same You’re doing the same thing but for different reasons.

Do you find that’s a challenge to step back and forth? 

Joel Loukus: Well, It’s been more of a challenge having lots of kids these days. But I still, we did a, I did a big independent film shoot for myself. I’m also presently a chairman at Dallas Makerspace, for their digital media department.

And so I shot a film there. And in that case, it was a little different than every other film that I’ve done because it had a little bit of tutelage to it, right? It was a little bit imparting knowledge or passion down to a younger generation that’s coming and helping me on set.

So that’s cool, like that mentorship. I’m getting to that age where it’s like some of that inspiration comes from seeing other people excited about doing their own work. But I’d say I still feel it for myself. 

And there’s Joss Whedon, love him or hate him.

He talks about filling the tanks, the creative tanks. And, you’ve gotta still love it. As a consumer. I am a little bit at the point where as a filmmaker, like, when I was a kid, I would hear an interview with George Lucas or Ron Howard or somebody like that, and somebody would ask them if they saw a movie that was like, in the popular culture.

And they would be like, “no.” 

 I was like, “how can they be like that?” And now I know.

 Because, you watch stuff like that, you see what was strong about a, in a field of creativity and you see it pass away. And that can be a little frustrating. Because You might feel isolated, by time or whatever. And I think that’s a normal stage for the creative as they age.

That it’s like, “don’t you see that this stuff over here is not, no good. And that stuff was great.” 

Joel Benge: Let’s get back to that Betamax. 

Joel Loukus: Right. And I think, there’s some validity to like the new wave, always. And obviously there’s going to be crass, the vulgar, the stuff that, and I mean that in their Latin senses, right?

That what the common spirit’s going towards, that maybe is of lower quality. And I think that’s a normal stage for a creative person to go through the pass through, where the thread of what has endured creatively from a past generation has been lost. 

And I think like, Uh, as you, as you mature as a creative, you’ll feel that loss.

And I have, at times, felt sad, about that. But then I remind myself that that is then just an opportunity to find those threads and pull them back together in a new way and try to communicate them to the new audience. It presents an opportunity. And I think it’s almost like you, the thing that you were excited about as a consumer initially has finally matured into a real set of values that you have.

And at that point, your excitement has to be about revitalizing them. 

Joel Benge: So profound every time. man, every time you give me things to take away, to think, to, to think about. This is, this has been awesome. It’s been an absolute pleasure hanging out and chatting again.

Joel Loukus: Yeah, it’s been a while. 

Joel Benge: Yeah. It’s been too long.

And I only live three miles from here, but you’ve up and ran away to the wilds of Texas. So we do miss you in the area. For people who want to learn a little bit more about ADG I’ll put some links out. I’d love to see if you’ve updated the sizzle reel. 

Joel Loukus: I think might still be in it.

Joel Benge: Then I’ll put that up and maybe people will get that glimpse of that one project. We should just redact the client out of that project and just release it on the dark web. I would just love to do that. But yeah, where else can people catch up with you? 

Joel Loukus: Yeah, so I have a YouTube channel where I put my short film work.

Not enough to go pro. But we’ve got a following. So that’s at Apsis Motion Pictures. 

And check out adgcreative.net, if you’re interested in more of the commercial side work we’ve got a lot of case studies, including the one that we discussed.

And yeah, I’d encourage people to check it out and people, if you, if, and if you’re worth talking to you, reach out to me directly on LinkedIn. 

Joel Benge: I’ll put Joel’s LinkedIn up. And again, you are the third Joel to grace the program. But here at ADG, on these grounds, you will always be Joel and I will always be “The Other Joel.” 

Joel Loukus: Joel Prime. 

Joel Benge: Thanks for joining me. 

Thanks.

Joel: If you want links to the resources mentioned on the show, head on over to the episode page. And for information on booking a message therapy workshop, getting your hands on the MessageDeck, to check out my upcoming book, or just buy me a coffee, go to nerdthattalksgood.com/podcast. 

 Until next time, happy messaging.

 Remember, you don’t have to speak well, you only gotta learn how to talk good.