Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Cut the Tide podcast. Hello, I'm your host, thomas Helfrich, and I'm on a mission to help you cut the tide of whatever it is holding you back from success. Now you've got to define that success on your own terms. Otherwise you are chasing someone else's dream and it will be a bit hollow and empty if you ever achieve that success that you've defined. So today I'm joined by Eric Archer. Eric, how are you?

Speaker 2: 0:20

I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me Now. Is Archer series made after you or not? No, although a lot of people thought so back in the day.

Speaker 1: 0:30

You look like the bearded version of that guy and I didn't have a beard, so it was even more so. We'll see if you got the vibe or not. We'll see. Take a moment, Introduce yourself where you're from, what it is you do.

Speaker 2: 0:45

Thank you. I'm a television producer based out of Massachusetts. I've been in the television industry now for over 20 years and I bounced around from. I started in New York City doing a lot of sports and music and reality TV, then went out to LA and did some bigger studio and ad agency work and then came home and the last 12 years I've been running a small non-profit community television station and the last couple of years just got sort of completely obsessed with generative AI and now I spend all my free time tinkering with AI tools and making generative AI videos and even doing a little teaching and consulting and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Just if you think you've reached the bottom of the internet, you're like, oh yeah, I checked it, is it? Yeah, you know, I I do love and I haven't given the bandwidth, probably intentionally, because I know me, I would never come out of this rabbit hole are the baby podcasts? Yeah, and, oh my god, they're so good. I'm like I, I end up watching theo von, do them. It's funny, right, it's like so good. It's like it takes yeah, it takes the your judgments of the human out and just creates this innocence. And then you take every word, come out with, like that lens. Yes, I find I'm sure people find it creepy, but I find it so funny I think it's exciting.

Speaker 2: 2:02

I think that new space of stuff we haven't seen before. That's sort of between the traditional and the digital. It's exciting, I think, that new space of stuff we haven't seen before, that sort of between the traditional and the digital. It's like we can do stuff like that. That's what I love about it is. It's just this really fun exploratory space.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Before we get into your journey and stuff, I always give people the proper ADHD ability to stalk you and look at things while you talk. So where would you like someone to go and who should be going there?

Speaker 2: 2:26

Sure, Thank you. Anyone interested in generative AI can find me at cgacreativecom. That's my portfolio AI site, cgacreativecom, and I'm on LinkedIn, Eric E-R-I-C-H Archer. I'm there a lot engaging about AI topics as well.

Speaker 1: 2:43

Yeah, that's great. In the future, do you really think they're going to need actors?

Speaker 2: 2:50

Not really, honestly. I mean, I think they'll exist and it'll be a hybrid. A theater will be wonderful with humans, and hopefully there are still movies being made and television being made with humans, because it's also excellent. But uh, I mean I was looking at a new platform today that the emotional intelligence was so much more developed and the lip syncing was so much more developed and the consistency across shots was more developed. So it's like you can really see it's going in the direction of full control over avatars that fool people completely.

Speaker 1: 3:29

I believe it actually 100% goes away for a few reasons.

Speaker 1: 3:32

One and I'm not from your space, so I'm taking this from not inside the forest view that the production costs are going to be way less, way less and the distribution rights of who's going to make money is going to be 100% studio made, unless the software models change and people are like, well, if you're using my AI, you got to pay me, but then that won't even, but the money being made is going to be there. I think theaters become a Kmart because, like, I can watch it on just as big of a TV in my you know, or bigger with a VR set, and if I just want to watch it without something in my eyes, it's easier at home. And then I think, when you start integrating video games of you watch this movie and your experience of that actual movie that you're watching is relative to where you are in the game and how many times you could watch that movie. But the it's, it's gone. I do believe theater and anything live will have a massive surge back because people will create it.

Speaker 2: 4:24

Yeah, I could totally see that. I could absolutely see that being having a resurgence and yeah, it's definitely. It's going to be really, really interesting to see the shift of power and revenue and all of that.

Speaker 1: 4:35

I love it up, you know, before we kind of get in your journey, how do you currently define success?

Speaker 2: 4:50

success, uh, these days mainly on the level of creative work I get to be in control of. I think I haven't really thought about that too much, but that seemed to be top of mind just because I'm, I didn't even really think it was attainable anymore. To be honest with you, you know I went to school to study film and aspired to do that and, like went to New York and LA and all that. But, as I said, I've been back home in the hyper local market for over a decade 15 years really. So, like I I was not thinking I was going to be making zombie films anytime soon, and generative AI has brought that back into my life and like allowed me to work on some really innovative new projects with cutting edge tools and being super creative in the space that I've been in the whole time, but haven't needed to access that level of creativity necessarily for a lot of the nuts and bolts production that we do.

Speaker 1: 5:38

so, um, yeah, uh, I guess I lost my train of thought there, but Well, I mean, yeah, it's just, it's your definition of success has changed and it sounds maybe I'm reading into it, but it sounds like you found a new spark. Yeah, it's something and, and and I know this feeling for as a former athlete and some other things that when you find it, you'll, you're not letting go of it again. Uh, because in life things get buried for work and jobs, what you're supposed to be. Then, all of a sudden, you kind of fold this plateaued and you're like I got a spark again.

Speaker 1: 6:14

Is that a fair?

Speaker 2: 6:14

way to. Yeah, yeah, the athlete analogy is interesting because my first love was a sport, was soccer. You know, I went, played that four years of college and and it took a while, like, fortunately, I loved video production a lot and so my career was something that I loved a lot and always have. So I've had a version. Feels like soccer again to me, it feels like I'm lit up in that, that new kind of way and like it's training toward a, toward a game day of sorts. Not really, but like everything is sort of it's like going to the gym, I can do reps with this, these tools and technology and get better.

Speaker 1: 7:03

You know it's so yeah, yeah, it's a similar type of a thing, I mean if this extend your acknowledgement of the gym, you can legally inject steroids all you, any muscle you want, and get a giant forming muscle and then train it in the same day to do what you want. It's that powerful, uh, now give him the shade of your beard and light up like light. Uh, salting on the pepper there. Uh, you're a Gen Xer, yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:28

Uh, I think I might be the oldest millennial I'm 44. What year? 81.

Speaker 1: 7:34

Oh no, you're Gen. I'm going to give you Gen X status. My wife is 1980 and she will not go millennial as a thing. Yeah, I'll be right. Okay, I'm on the fence there, I'll take whatever. Now you want to go dead. Actually, you don't even millennial, it's much cooler. Uh, restore. If someone wrongs your life, you punch them or do you yell at them? Oh, your instincts like I want to lay this dude out because that's yeah I'm.

Speaker 2: 7:55

I'm more than punch him okay, so you're an axer.

Speaker 1: 7:57

For sure there's a question about it. Almost sure that's like I'm gonna grab my gun and then sue him. Nah, that's a millennial thing. We're like we're gonna punch each other and maybe we'll have a beer later yeah, yeah, I almost did that recently.

Speaker 2: 8:08

I wouldn't normally say that beer or punch by the way, I'm in ge, georgia.

Speaker 1: 8:15

You don't punch anyone, you will get shot, yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:17

Well, that's what we're on. No, you can't play around anywhere anymore. That's a bad idea.

Speaker 1: 8:23

I'm going to give you a small tangent, just because we're on it. I was in San Francisco with my wife and we got in an Uber and the Uber took off and then within a few seconds, somebody outside the car was like hey, man, watch where you're going. There's people in the streets. Now I didn't see anybody. It was kind of a busy area. It didn't look anything like. The guy wasn't driving aggressively. And the guy, our driver, stopped. We're like dude, no go. And he rolls down and he's like what? And he's like yeah, you A couple other words, maybe an M-bomb. By the way, neither guy, neither one should have been sending these things. My guy parks the car, our driver gets a gun out and gets out of the car. We run. And I said to my wife later I said you know what? This doesn't happen in Georgia, because in Georgia the guy would never come up to the car because that's an aggressive mood and Castle Law basically says your fault. So I do, yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:12

No, it's, it's not. I was running around.

Speaker 1: 9:15

Graph your story. All right, so you have a definite success. You found a spark around that. And I'm not manipulating your definite success, but I think when you were talking about it, the definite success is keeping that spark and that creative energy and that love for it and from sport and anything else like that's where you drove it and you think you found it again and that has become a success measure for you today.

Speaker 2: 9:36

A thousand percent. A thousand percent and you know it's become an incredibly important thing, right up there with, like, the ability to financially provide. You know, obviously that's the top right.

Speaker 1: 9:48

That is, and at times you look like, but I actually like doing this better, even if it didn't, I'm not giving it out.

Speaker 2: 9:53

Well, I'm gonna find a way to make one do the other.

Speaker 1: 9:56

You know, that's just look where there's a, there's a problem where people will pay for it. Just comes down to focusing it and, um, that's, uh, this is the work I do at my other company, so we'll take that offline. Um, all right, here you got. You got your passion and you got the purpose. Talk about a little bit on this journey. You mentioned soccer. Um, you've got to refine it, that that spark. So talk about maybe a one of the metaphoric ties, so to speak, that you've had to cut along the way to get there. Like some, you know what have you been through.

Speaker 2: 10:22

And talk about your journey a bit uh well, I mean, I think if, if you want to actually draw it to soccer, I think that there's the, the fluid nature of the game feels similar to the fluid nature of the technology. Now, I've thought about that a lot. It's like sort of like a center midfielder mentality of seeing the entire field and being able to make plays, um. But moving on from that, I have like a very bit traditional business parent and an artist parent, and so I've always been kind of in the middle of that space and I've been in television and been able to be creative and learn from really, really talented people. But also the journey that my career took led me into management. So I've been running a small business for 12 years and so I've learned a lot about just like I've had to. It's the. You know it's a four personperson company and so you have to learn the marketing and the hr and everything right, and so that's all that. Experience is coming into play now and the privilege of being creative for the last 20 years is certainly coming into play, and all of the, the, the having to always learn new technology, because I'm in the video space, is helping, and so I've just got a lot of these things that are sort of converging, to make me feel very comfortable with all of this.

Speaker 2: 11:41

And then I had a couple pushes that were sort of circumstantial pushes that made me get started. You know, they they put a. So I got admitted into this month-long fellowship program just a small program, but you got some AI mentorship from this woman, rachel Woods, who's like an AI influencer. And so you had to make a personal project and I wanted to make this custom GPT ecosystem that I did later go build. But they were not impressed by that, and so I had to go figure out, like, all right, what am I going to do now? And I was like I better just stay in my lane and make a video. And so that was the push that I probably would not have done myself, or at least not at that time to like buckle down and make an end to end generative AI video. Buckle down and make an end-to-end generative AI video.

Speaker 2: 12:39

And I knew in the back of my mind, from what I had learned about it, that I could do it, because I already knew how to make videos, what I do, I know how to edit, know how to shoot, I know how to tell a story and all that stuff. And so when I realized that I could make really cinematic images with these new tools and scripting and voiceover and effects and stuff like that, I was like, of course I can make a little short, like I already know how to do it, so it's just a matter of the time it takes to make the assets and then do the editing. But that program was like the okay, you have a reason to go do this, there's a deadline involved, you have milestones that you have to show people and talk about it. And once that was done, I got a lot of attention, went a little bit viral on LinkedIn and really reinforced to me that when I apply my subject matter expertise with AI, I can do well. And so I've kind of just been like, okay, let's do more of that.

Speaker 2: 13:31

And two years later, I've made more projects in the last 18 months than I would make in the last 10 years. It's crazy Like end-to-end projects all by myself, permissionless. And so that's what I've been about is really just trying to push the state of the art, see where the edge of these tools capabilities are, make stories I've always thought about making, or that other companies want to pay me to make um and exploring all this yeah, uh, do you so in the thing about ai, right?

Speaker 1: 14:07

so you know, I was an early adopter, chappy gpt, and we and I started my company to build upon that. And I quickly realized, as soon as new releases came out, it was just sucking in everything everyone was doing and at some point all these AIs will have some kind of group you know, skynet, whatever you want to call it. But are you, are you concerned that all your, everything you're doing, in three, four years, ai would just do based on someone entering a few things?

Speaker 2: 14:38

well, I think what I mean by a few contextual things like so, uh, someone's like, hey, just enter in what you're trying to do and just goes I saw a great neil degrasse tyson podcast recently where he was like that's basically the case with scientific discovery, where, like, if you don't discover it, someone else will. But it's not the case with art that because of our unique a cocktail of experiences and references and points of view and values and the things that make your stories and your artistic lens, and all of that, um, that no two people are going to make the same thing or or that that type of argument, and that's maybe a little disconnected from making money from it, but I lean on that a little bit. Like I can know there's nobody can make what I can make. They just aren't. They aren't me, they're not the collection of things.

Speaker 1: 15:29

And I'm not being a question of it on that, just because I think what people should realize and they're all worried about AI is coming from my job. Sure, if you're in a non-creative repetitive, anybody can do it. We just need you to go do it. Yeah, you're, you're at risk, for sure.

Speaker 1: 15:48

I believe the resurgence of theater and and creativity, which has been it's been in the dark ages, for reward for those who are gifted with it and, to be clear, like my son, he starts singing at a level that you can't train to. He's you know, when he was like six, five, six, you could hear it. And then he sings now and you're like, wow, and he's not in training, he starts there. That is a gift. He's got the all that together and and and so so, and the creativity like my, my one daughter, can create these crazy things in a day, hand drawing and I absolutely love like this art and she's like, oh, it's just fun, it's not by doing. I'm bored, I'm like you don't even know what you have. And I mean, if you have a creative idea and and this is the era coming where you will get paid for it, because ai can't do that, it can repeat and replicate. It can come up with some things, but it truly can't do that. It can repeat and replicate, it can come up with some things, but it truly can't create yet. That's right. That's right, but for a long time.

Speaker 1: 16:34

And I think where your money being made is not. Not that I'm trying to solution with it. We haven't talked really at all after this, but the point is the consultancy of taking other people's ideas to go create is where the money is at. Is is like that. Other people's ideas to go create is where the money is at. Is is like that's great, we could do it ourselves, but that doesn't matter. I need you to guide it and run it and have your teams do it, because that fine product will be better, because someone who understands creativity at a core and can take a vision. There should be a shit ton of money that's being made. But, um, and I can even think your marketing plan to get it very quickly because you can do it for free so quickly. Anyway, you should have no problem making money with this like none at all. On the consumption side.

Speaker 2: 17:13

Yeah, it seems like there's a huge demand and, sorry, my two-year-old might be banging down the door.

Speaker 1: 17:19

Well, two-year-olds are welcome on the show. I'm not going to stay in the other room. They'll reach me and exist.

Speaker 2: 17:29

Yeah, she doesn't follow rules or reasoning on the AI topic.

Speaker 1: 17:31

Sorry that was distracting I apologize, I got it off topic, anyway and I love this journey because I think it's so relevant to any entrepreneur out there that you really have to evaluate what you're building and doing. Is it going to be around or how are you going to evolve with it? Right? And so where we used to be a lot of content, we've evolved to just become the consultancy to say, hey, here's the framework for lead generation that you need to put in, which involves technology, automation, people. The reason is because it moves so fast, people are confused, and that's when the money's made is by unconfusing people.

Speaker 2: 18:15

And if you can execute behind it, then you really got both edges of that kind of sword done right and you can cut both sides anyway, we'll keep moving forward here. Um, maybe just shift, shift a little bit here. What are you most grateful for in this moment? Oh, I mean the opportunity that this new technology is providing me.

Speaker 2: 18:22

Uh, I am eternally grateful for, you know, I'm a dad of four, I live in an expensive state, single income, and so the opportunity to make a little extra money because I can do it from home with my kids around, from my laptop, as opposed to production that always happens somewhere else. You know, um, right down to like, I came up as a shooter, but now I'm getting older, I have a bad back. I don't want to carry a bunch of heavy shit around, know, I mean, like there's that part of it, uh, and I can just work on these creative projects that I really hadn't. I didn't even think about them coming back around. I just felt grateful to be in a creative industry at all, in production at all, home for dinner great, you know, making a living. I've got health benefits, I'm happy, you know, but then this kind of brought new york and la and the rest of the world back to me, right right here on my couch.

Speaker 1: 19:18

It's, that's an amazing thing yeah, the opportunity being in not only financial reward but also time with those time.

Speaker 2: 19:25

Yeah, and the creative flex I mean I I kind of lost sight that I was not using. I had a lot of latent creativity in me and I just didn't have the ability to exercise it yeah, now I do the alter ego.

Speaker 1: 19:43

Uh, I'm not autobiography, but I don't know what you mean. I I love doing comedy of some sorts and I have a whole other channel that I do that on. Yes, cool, I can say that way. The reason is because I like it.

Speaker 2: 19:56

I don't care if anyone else finds it funny yeah, and that's what excites me about all this too, is that that that's going to happen for a lot of people, especially a lot of young creatives. Like you used to have to have proximity to big markets and companies and stuff and other people for this kind of thing, and if you didn't, you really had no opportunity to make money doing it, or at least not I mean, that's not true, but it was just harder. And I think this is going to allow a lot of people to make films and and content that they would have loved to have been a part of but couldn't have, or at least in some way I got an insight one time in the creative world of uh, you hear a little example.

Speaker 1: 20:36

So you hear bands and they have their sound and they sing and you know who they are and you like them or don't like them. So for a long time I didn't like post malone, didn't really care about adam levine or anything like that. And then on two separate occasions I heard like Post Malone do a cover with an acoustic and I was like damn, that guy is actually quite talented. And then I whatever, and like all right, so I started liking Post Malone a little bit, cause I like. Then I went back and listened to his music, liked it. Then I heard like an Levine cover and he sounded like Eddie Vedder singing Muffin man on Jimmy Fallon one night and I was like okay, that's funny and I didn't realize that guy could do that either. And then you realize that they are.

Speaker 1: 21:12

And this is where I think a lot of artists fail, is they found a way just to make money with the talent. It may not actually be what they wanted to go create. And there's very few that get both. And this is where you see bands break up or people kind of go crazy or like you see Will Ferrell do a serious movie, you're like what do you mean? He's like he was a trained theater actor. He wanted to do that but had this thing for comedy that pays the bills. And you get bugged when you see him do what he wants.

Speaker 1: 21:36

Creative, sometimes you got to go make money using your talent and applying a way that it's commercialized which is my point and then you, when you have the money, go do the hell you want. Like what? And you're not chasing me if you ever dreamed any corporate person, because they're doing stuff that they can do to make money, but the truth is they want to go to a podcast or whatever you know. I? I think that's the piece that's missing by creatives is, and then also the maybe at the core a lot of the, a lot of you guys are, I'd rather be right than happy, um I I just I think that's really true.

Speaker 2: 22:06

I think you see a lot of like hit new shows pop up when a former show breaks apart and the writer was so burnt on that they finally made their passion project and that blew up, or like they're like really good, but they don't care before then, right yeah, or I don't know.

Speaker 2: 22:20

I just think there's so many things have to align for you to, in the past, to have exercised a creative vision of your own, like it was almost impossible in in a lot of ways. If you ever aspired to make films like like what is, what are the percentages? They're law, you know, um, and even if you did, then you have to be an extrovert, you have to find money, you have to be someone who can convince other people and communicate well and like all these things. It's just you don't. If you now, if you're an introvert with computer skills, you can participate in these things in ways that you might have been too scared to and that might've been your big limiter, just like you're an introvert, you don't want to go try to voice your creative opinion in a writer's room or something like that. I don't know.

Speaker 1: 23:13

If you could go back in your timeline at any point, when would you go and what would you do differently?

Speaker 2: 23:18

Oh, interesting question. Um, I don't know. I feel I really feel I don't have a lot of regrets about my trajectory. I mapped it out pretty well in the beginning. I kind of knew I wanted the New York LA experience. Obviously, you know, it was a lot of ups and downs but it all got me here. I don't know.

Speaker 1: 23:43

Yeah, I knew one part of it. So some people are like nothing. I just I wish I would have worn white instead of black today. That's an easy answer too, when you're meeting new people in your industry. What's maybe the one I say book, but like what's the one resource they should read, interact with to understand the industry of filmmaking?

Speaker 2: 24:03

Oh, interesting, Understand the industry of film. You know, the most satisfying thing I consumed toward that, and recently, was Ken Burns' Masterclass on Masterclass. Um, it's such a such a dense. It's like insight, it's like a stack of insights from one end to the next. It is the most incredibly inspiring, educational, fundamental education in filmmaking at this, very, really incredible for sort of foundational layer of it all. You know it's very basic but great storytelling, really thoughtful, uh, moviemaking and uh, super enjoyable watch I found so yeah, that's good Cause I those masterclass ones are good.

Speaker 1: 24:56

I'm a chess player. I've watched Gary Kasparov's and I all I realize is I don't have the brain capacity to do anywhere close to what this guy does. You remember? 50 moves in? You're fine, all right, great, you're stupid. I'm canceling this membership. I probably could ask you a million things.

Speaker 2: 25:18

What's one thing I should have asked you, though, and I didn't today Maybe advice for people about, like, where to start and all that. I'm feeling a lot of empathy for people right now, just about all the disruption and concern about all of this, and and I think I always want to try to just help people find their entry point if they haven't really accessed this stuff yet like, just you know, get chat, gpt and think about a problem that is challenging you and tell it all about that problem that you're challenged by, and go from there, and I think you'll just, from doing that, see that it's not scary, it's actually really helpful and powerful and you can use it for whatever you want, and you really should not be stiff-arming AI. You should be figuring out how it can help you.

Speaker 1: 26:10

You could stiff-arm AI. If you have enough money in the bank where you actually don't need to make any more money, farm out of it, half-farm or bat. Well said, at that point you can stiff-arm. If you're trying to make a living, you better get that shit integrated in the way, otherwise you're going to get eaten up by it. That goes for everyone, from filmmakers, comics, business process people, people working at McDonald's, I don't care. You got to understand it because it's coming. It would. Yeah, now what? Do you have money? Definitely stiff arm it. Put the phone away. Really, nature, that's. That's the part we're all missing. Yeah, by the way, eric fixer coming on today, I appreciate it. Uh, once again, once you, where should people go? Who do you want? Who do you want to get ahold of you?

Speaker 2: 26:50

thank you, um, certainly anyone interested in generative ai video work. I would love it. I love to talk to you, uh, and again, you can reach me on my website, cgacreativecom, or on linkedin, eric archer. Erich archer, uh, you can find me there. Thanks, eric, come on today, it's been great. Thank, gacreativecom. Or on LinkedIn, eric Archer E-R-I-C-H Archer. You can find me there.

Speaker 1: 27:07

Thanks, Eric, for coming on today. It's been great.

Speaker 2: 27:09

Thank you, it's my pleasure.

Speaker 1: 27:10

And listen everyone who's listening. Thank you for still being with us, and if today was your first day, I do hope it's the first time you come back. Get out there, go, cut a tie at whatever's holding you back in life, but make.