Film to Tech - Jason Torres Sips of Wisdom Interview

Jason Torres I grew tons of transferable skills in the film industry. You know, Ryan, because you're a creative person too, like if that was all just taken away from you for like a nine to five you died.

Ryan Burgess
Yes. Hi, I'm Ryan Burgess, and welcome to the front end Happy Hour podcast, sips of wisdom interviews in this series, this is where I sit down with professionals across the industry to deep dive into their careers and understand their journey and get some great insights. In this episode, I'm excited to sit down with Jason Torres, who made a pretty bold move in making a career change from the film industry to software developer, we talk about his 15 year career in film and what inspired him to make the change and become a software engineer. In our conversation, we also dive into some of the hottest topics, you guessed it, AI. Jason and I explore how AI is shaping the creative world and the fears that people are having and how it's actually enabling creative people to do more. If you're curious about career transitions, the impact of AI or how creativity flows between different industries, this is definitely an episode you won't want to miss. Hey, listeners, have you heard of Infinite Red? They're a powerhouse in the React Native world, and we're excited to have them as a sponsor of this episode. Since 2015 they've built over 75 apps for companies ranging from startups to global brands. Infinite Red's team of senior developers are the experts you need to build your next React Native app. They're not just about delivering amazing products. They also empower your team by working with your team to share their knowledge, plus they're deeply involved in the community, hosting the chain react conference to over 400 developers and producing the popular React Native radio podcast. If your company needs a React Native partner, look no further than Infinite Red. Check them out at Infinite.red/FrontEndHH, welcome to the podcast, Jason. Can you give us a brief introduction of who you are, what you do, and what your favorite Happy Hour beverages? Jason Torres Oh man, I wish I had one right now, truth be told, so I'm Jason Torres. I'm the host of the tech mute podcast. We also have a community online and on Discord at the tc.co you can find all the information. I came from the film industry. I spent 15 years doing production management there, and after covid, I decided I wanted to get into the software development industry. So I went from one impossibly complicated industry to get into to another one and and that's where I've met some amazing people in the community, such as Ryan, and we've had a lot of great conversations. I like to just like to help people, and I like to bring people together. I like to support good people and good products. And Ryan's, uh, always been an upstanding dude, and I've been excited to chat with him. I don't know about this sips of wisdom thing, I kind of sprung that one on me. Cut that. See, that's what I don't want to talk about.

Ryan Burgess
You're like, Don't make me say that. Don't put pressure on me that I have to deliver some like, good information to people that are listening. I can never Jason Torres guarantee that I can give information, but no one guarantees it's good. So it's,

Ryan Burgess
it's information. It just, is it valuable? Who knows it's, it's filling the time. So someone could be on their drive right now, and we're just, they're just killing time. So that's helping them. I Jason Torres am a great time killer. That is true. There we go. I'm gonna put that on my business card. Thanks. Thanks for the time

Ryan Burgess
killer. I love it. And then what's favorite Happy Hour beverage? Jason Torres Oof. So I'm, I'm a light beer guy for happy hour. Okay, I love draft beer. I live in Western New York, so we have a local brewery that's been around since the 1800s it's Genesee brewing. We have a couple really good koshes that they make seasonally. But as far as like a go to like grown up drink, I'm a big fan of just whiskey ginger. Nice,

Ryan Burgess
actually, Whiskey, whiskey with ginger is a nice it's a nice flavor. So I like that for Jason Torres sure. I actually just recently got into my wife bought me this barbecue whiskey, and I'll send you a link to it. It tastes just like Lay's potato barbecue Lay's chips. And on the surface, when I tell you that, you're like, Okay, that sounds weird. I don't know if I'm gonna like that, but as soon as you try, you're like, holy shit. So what I decided is I put that over ice with ginger beer, and it is out of this world. Good. Okay,

Ryan Burgess
I could see those two mixing. And you know what? At first I had the notion of like, Oh yeah, that sounds really weird to, like, mix with whiskey, but I've had, like, bacon infused whiskey quite a few times. And there's something with that. Like, you know, we like the smoky whiskeys, and it's like, smoked meat, bacon, all that kind of stuff. It's like, it does actually go really well. So no, I'm not hating on that drink. I think that's, yeah, that's a cool Jason Torres link to that. And. UK. All right, you can get it at most liquor stores nowadays, but it's very good, so, all right. I

Ryan Burgess
mean, I need to try it, even if it's the worst thing ever. I mean, I've tried Snoop dogs wine. It's no good, but I've, like, I gotta try it. Yeah. And then I remember posting that I, like, tried, this is maybe a year or two ago, and I remember a few people were like, oh, that's like, one of my favorite wines. And I was like, oh, okay, sorry, that's Jason Torres not barometer. Isn't that such a barometer of, like, people's taste sometimes, like, usually, I can tell if I'm gonna like someone just based on their five favorite movies. Like, I could tell you enough about yourself just based on your top five favorite films. I could give you a couple characteristics about you're like, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But I can also tell if I'm going to ever want to talk to you again based on that list. So

Ryan Burgess
that makes me, I'm never going to answer that question if you ask it, because, like, it might, like, all right, I need to maybe put a little more thought into it. Yeah. Anyways, Jason, like, let's go into your career. I love the the transition, like, let's start there is so you're doing video production, and what inspired you to be like, Hey, I'm just gonna switch and, like you said, move into this, like, hard industry. I'm in a hard industry. I need to move to a new one. Jason Torres I started, and I guess I'll give you a little background on my film career too. I started as a PA on a feature film that they were shooting locally. And I had always been in theater in high school. I did drama club stuff like that. I really felt fell in love with the process. I just I love being a part of something creative, and like watching all the cogs fall into place, and then there's this, this product at the end of it. So I got to PA on a on a set, and it was, you know, for an indie film a couple million dollars, like 20 years ago, is is significant. And I just, I absolutely was enamored with the whole process and trying to understand how all the departments worked and everything. So I grew from that worked in an associate producer position, which is a lot of just logistics on set. It's sort of an over glorified Production Manager liaison, because it's like the lowest tier of the above the line. So you're really managing a lot of the day to day stuff that the executive producers would want you to do. From there I went up to which actually is sort of a downgrade, depending on how you look at it, but you can have a lot of roles or titles credited to yourself on on sets. It's just really what people want. You know, you see a lot of actors that have executive producer credits. Typically, they're not actually executive producers. It's a vanity credit. Like they just give people vanity credits because that's part of their contract. So usually it's some sort of a percentage on the profits, or something like that. So I did the unit production manager stuff on feature film. I moved into TV and commercial work as well, which I started doing locally because I was really hating being on the road all the time. You know, I have two daughters. My oldest daughter is going to be 16 in a couple weeks, and Dang, yeah, my middle daughter is 14, and then my son's seven, which he might be making a couple guest appearances here any any minute now, he's downstairs. I can hear him. So I, I talked to my wife, and I just, I got burned out and like, I still carry a lot of regret missing a lot of time with my kids growing up. So we made the decision, I'm gonna essentially retire. I'm gonna try to find something else that suits my needs. But we had some savings, so we bought a house, and we were gonna live off that. And I walked off my last film set. It was like March 13 of 2020, it was the year covid hit. So, like, the next day, everything in New York State shut down. Literally everything shut Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
like, I was, I was doing the math on the dates, and I'm like, Whoa, he, he chose an interesting time, right? Jason Torres And it was, it was kind of weird, because it felt kind of like Kismet in the sense, like that chapter was closed, and, like, it literally everything was closed. So I felt like it was the right time and again, we had a savings. We didn't know what was going on, but, you know, no one's working. Nothing's happening. So that savings really kind of depleted pretty, pretty quick, especially with a new house. So I decided to get a job at a manufacturing facility. I make these cedar belts for John Deere, agricultural machines. And I hated it. I hate it. I still am there. Because, if anybody doesn't know, and you're looking for a developer advocate, Community Manager, your guy, but I'm still, I'm still doing that. And I I just It's, It's stifling. What my talents are, you know, I grew tons of transferable skills in the film industry. And I just, you know, Ryan, because you're a creative person too. Like, if that was all just taken away from you for like, a nine to five, you die inside. You literally die. Yes,

Ryan Burgess
I totally like feel that pain, just even in your voice and you see. At it. I'm like, oh, man, Jason Torres it does it, like, hits me every time I think about it, you know, I'm, like, wasting away. And I, you know, I told my wife, then she's like, well, we have to figure something out. So I have a neighbor that works for a company that makes, like, optical laser metrology systems, and they were hiring a bunch of, like, Python developers, like application engineers. And he's like, look, I mean, I don't know if you've ever looked into this, but I have a bunch of positions available. So I started kind of dipping my toe in Python, and got into Reddit and started on Free Code Camp, and like those first couple hello world moments, like building out those, even just passing the first couple assignments on the Odin project, like completely invigorated me again. Like brought me back to that creative process that I had missed, and that was it. I just, I hit the ground running. I got into 100 devs because I, I can't remember how I came across them, but I really liked the way Leon presents the information and teaches. So that really resonated with me, his teaching style, and I've I ran through that, and then kind of the rest is history. I got onto Twitter and started talking to everybody and networking, because that's one thing, especially in indie film, where you're responsible for everything on a film set, and making things just churn every day, and also having to front, raise funds sometimes, or just save $1 sometimes, you have to be able to talk and think fast and and network super hard. Networking is one of the biggest things that got me through the film industry. So I just, I ran with it, because it's like, I know my strengths, I'm going to use them. So I was able to meet a lot of people, and here we are, and I met you.

Ryan Burgess
That's, that's awesome. I mean, I think we've talked on front end happy hour episodes many times throughout our time of recording, and a lot of times it talks about networking. Like, we're always like, how how important networking is, whether it even just be getting on Twitter, going to conferences, whatever it is. But like, you meet a lot of people and learn, you learn things about, like, what's going on in the industry. You know, different practices that people are taking but it then it's just also meeting people and those open doors like they truly do. And you don't know, like, it like, there's times when I've hired people that I met like, two or three years prior, where I'm like, Hey, I have this opportunity at Netflix. I think you'd be great for it, and, like, invite them in the door. And it's like you just never know. Or like, I've had people reach out to me even now that I'm, like, taking a break, they're like, Hey, I have this role for you. It's like you just never know those networks are so powerful. So I love that you even saw that from coming from the film industry to even coming into development, it's like, yeah, I want to bring that forward. So very cool. I'm curious to, like, you said quite a few things that I'm just like, yeah, no, it's great. This is all, all things that were so good. I'm curious about, like, what were like, some of the challenges for you moving from film to now, moving into, like, the web of, you know, software development Jason Torres Well, I mean, as with anything that you've pretty much never done before, it's, it's the learning. You know, I spent a long time crafting skills in a different trade. So having to sort of reverse engineer all of that, and just doing it alone too. You know, it's, it's during covid, I'm learning this, everything's going on. There's no in person stuff, which I guess to my was to my benefit, because I did do a lot of networking online, which everybody was doing anyway. So it was already there. The infrastructure for that was already there. I would say it was the learning. It was like understanding stuff that I never touched before. And, you know, I'm, I'm 43 like, I'm not a plucky young student anymore. That's just, like, has this, this learning guy? I've learned a ton, and just like, kind of drove myself into habits and patterns of how I do things, and you have to make a conscious decision to sort of break those a little bit to understand these new like principles and systems that you have to learn. And that was that was hard. I've I've hit the wall multiple times where it's like, I just, I can't figure this out. Like, I don't, why can't I figure it out? And then I get frustrated. Because, you know, it's like, I, I was able to, in the film industry, get to a very high level, which for somebody from a town like I graduated with 70 people, um, small, small. That

Ryan Burgess
is small. I'm very, very familiar with the small town, so we can definitely get into that. Oh Jason Torres yeah, for sure, it's like, so for like me, that was a big accomplishment, and I spent a lot of time, like, honing that craft. So to just have to, like, take all of that out of my memory and just try to learn this other thing that, again, people spend 1520, years learning, and. Doing it's intimidating. I can't say that there isn't at least a couple times a week where the imposter syndrome and the questioning whether I'm making the right choice happens, you know. But how do you how do you like move past that? And it's for me, it's it's the wise, right? It's like the why always has to overpower or overcome the what? And that's for me. I'll always, no matter how frustrating it gets, I'll always just keep trying to get that goal. I think I've always been driven that way. So, yeah, it's, it's the learning for me. And

Ryan Burgess
is that your why? Then? Like, is your like, I enjoy the learning, or it's the challenge of the like, oh, what's the why for you? Yeah, my, my, Jason Torres why is my, my family. You know, it's, it's my kids. It's the opportunity to be able to, like, be here, my son, we homeschool him. He's, he's on the spectrum. So for me, it's being able to be more involved in even my, my two daughters lives more now than just having the freedom to be available and try to, I guess, for me, my Why is, like, making up for lost time. So

Ryan Burgess
I love that. I think the flexibility, I think a lot of us are looking for that, like, I definitely, I want to spend time with my kids. I want to just be there and enjoy like that. To me, is time you don't get back right? Like, it's like you said, like, even how you're like, my my daughter's 16. It's like, I look back and I miss some of these things and and to me, I think that is absolutely important. And so if you can find something that scratches that itch of creativity, and, you know, makes you happy, but you can still be there, that's huge, that that's amazing, yeah. So, Jason Torres you know, being able to work from home, like, that's that's a big thing for me, like, I want to be able to get up. Jack is very patterned, like he's into habits and routines and stuff, and he always asks if I'm going to be over in the school and this is also his school room in the morning, and it like, bums me out every time I have to tell him, No, you know? So the days I do get to be here in the morning and like he, I watch him on the camera over here, and I see him come across the hallway here to do like, oh man. You know, that's, that's parenting. You know, they're

Ryan Burgess
good interruptions. Like, there's times when I'm like, Oh, I don't want to be interrupted, but then when they do, you're kind of like, oh, okay, it's fine. It's great. So I love that the best. Why that is a great why I stand by that, why that's a good one. What's the overlap between film and software development? Like, I feel like there's some things where, like, I feel like you and I kind of were going opposite directions. I did all this, like, I did some video growing up, like skateboard videos and graffiti and all that kind of stuff. I was always filming things, but I never really did that, obviously, as a career, and I'm doing more video now as, like a fun hobby. And I see overlap, and I'm like, I want to talk to Jason. I feel like there is a lot of overlap. And you've probably thought about this even more deeply than I have. Jason Torres Yeah. I mean, one of the first things that I did when I kind of started getting into it was start to see a lot of the similarities and the two things I wrote a blog post about it actually just, you know, even the simple process of taking all of these people, all of these pieces, and then building something cohesively together that gets output as A medium for others. You know, we interact with these websites, but behind the scenes, behind the camera, you know, dozens of people in teams and time we're all put into that. You know, you have UX designers, that's your that's your art department. You know you've got your back end people like, that's your lighting or your dit department that handles all the tapes on set and stuff like that, or dailies, you've got your production managers, which, again, is basically just like a production manager on a set. So you know, all of the things have very similar roles. And when you put all of that together, all of those departments and all those teams together and outputs a product. It's it's mirror images, essentially, where, again, clicks or sales or views matter. It's not a tangible product. It's something that people are interacting with and engaging with. And again, the quality of the content is so important. A great movie does great a great website or a great, you know, company's site does great for those reasons. So, you know, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to find an area specifically where there might not be a similarity. It's, yeah, it's crazy. And that's, again, why I think it made sense for me, because once I got a taste of it and saw how like parallel it was that I was able to transition into it to a certain extent, once I understood the processes, you know, learning the actual framework so that the languages you know, takes time, but understanding the system or the infrastructure of the industry like. Already puts you at an advantage. So that's, that's where I'm at, yeah? No,

Ryan Burgess
I like that. And I think, like just being able to pattern match is is so powerful, too. You're like, I've built up these skills for 15 years. How do I leverage them? And you're like, wow, hey, wait, there's a lot of commonality, yeah. And honestly, you know, we talked about on an episode a few episodes ago, about, like, coming from a boot camp and a lot of people like some of the skills that they're missing, right? It's like you said, of like, frameworks, things like that. You got to learn that, like, how to write actual code. But I feel like those, those skills, you know, I've written so many different frameworks throughout my career, different languages. It's like, once you've done one or two, you kind of can, you know, start to learn the next. It's, you know, some are easier than others, some are harder, but you can do that, and it's a lot of pattern matching, and that makes sense. But a lot of the skills missing are some of the things that you just described, of just even understanding the process of how things get done, how you work to collaboratively with others. You're not just on your project by yourself, like, how do you fit in that? You know, big production to get something out the door. It's understanding that and understanding those pieces. There's a lot of skills in that that are actually just not taught in boot camps. And so then when someone goes to a job, they're missing a lot of so you've already built that up, and that's really awesome, too. And so then when you actually hit the ground running, you're like, Okay, I built up some technical skills now to fill in what I was missing, but I also have all these other skills that are transferable. Yeah, Jason Torres I you know, it's interesting that you bring that up too, and it's something I'm assuming you're referring to Shashi when you were talking about the skills, because this touches on that whole gridiron survivor project, which I'm fortunate to be a part of, de risking yourself as a as a new developer, or somebody that is coming out of a boot camp or is self taught, like they they don't. I mean, Shashi and I have talked about this at length, and one of the other members of the team, Chris Nowicki, and myself, did a talk at the Atlanta JavaScript pre render meetup, which is so in just a quick aside to that, like there was like 200 people that I've never spoke in front of a tech like in any sort of a tech conference or event type thing, and now I'm like, Oh my God, but it went really well. But that's what we talk about is, you know, understanding that there's still more to do as a self taught or boot camp person is trying to maybe figure out ways to take initiative to learn those other things like unit testing and debugging and even just code reviews, like basic things that all orgs are expecting of these people, and nobody is teaching it. It's like, where do you fill in these gaps? And that's why the opportunity Shashi presented to us is so great. But you know, you mentioned it too. It's like you might have learned a couple of frameworks or languages, and once you understand how they operate, You're quick to pick up other ones. And it's the same thing with, like, cameras or any sort of equipment or a department, or even understanding how, like, a day out of days works once you've done a couple, if you understand the process. So again, like the parallels to stuff that you could be doing in the film industry, like, I understand, and understanding those nuances and how it works just makes it that much easier to adapt. Yeah, it's it's crazy. And big shout out to Shashi for, like, putting that together, because that's something too. When you're on a film set, you're working on an indie film, and the budget's only, like, $50,000 you do play multiple roles, which is similar to, like, a startup or, yeah, or a self taught that has to just build all of their stuff, they don't do testing and stuff like that. So then, when you get to a feature film set, and there's like 20 departments, and there's 50 people in a department, and it's, it's in a Yahtzee job, so you got union guys and this and that, like, if you're a fish out of water, you have no fucking clue what you're doing. So it's you're gonna stand out. So it's like, if you have the opportunity to fill those deficiencies, fill the gaps, just to become that stronger person, you're gonna take yourself off that, like green newbie radar and be more. What's the word? Be the best you can be, as far as, like, filling the role for for the company or for the production. So,

Ryan Burgess
yeah, I think it's I like, no, no. I think it makes a lot of sense of, like, creating your own, like, small film by yourself, or whatever that is. Like you, you're like, I produced it. Like, I've put all the things together. You're like, I obviously would have had to cut corners, because, yeah, you're just not going to do some of those things, the same thing as, like, building your own app or building your own website, whatever that is, is there are things that you just don't do. I mean, you're not. Who do you code reviewing with? If it's your you know, by yourself, like that probably isn't happening. And something like a code review. Yeah, is a pretty daunting thing, right? Especially when you're new, it's like you're having someone else look at your code. I mean, I still, I actually, I've gotten over it. I was gonna say, I'm like, that still bothers me. I'm like, Nah, I just don't care anymore. I'm like, I know that I can always write something better and learn and things like that, and learn from others. So I think I've just learned to adapt on that. But I remember early days of that, like having someone else look at your code. It's like, it's scary, because you're like, I know it's not the best, because I've only been doing this for a little while, and I don't know all the things that there is to know. And yeah, it's it's scary. And so getting like, at least some of that practice, like in something that Shashi has put together, I think, is genius, maybe. Like, let's get into it. Well, you kind of, you met, you brought up this, and it's like a program that Shashi has put together to basically help people coming that are self taught, or coming from a boot camp, that it's basically putting you in a team, and that you're collaborating together to create a said product, and it's putting a lot of the testing, the Agile process, the code reviews, all those things in so you're getting a taste of that. I love it. I think it's a genius idea. What are your thoughts on it? Like, when you heard about the opportunity? Like, how did that even come about? Jason Torres Yeah, so I I've been following Shashi, and I have been connected via Twitter and LinkedIn or something for a while now. He had brought it up because I think I got into it at the end of last year, he was talking about it, and I was like, you know, this sounds kind of interesting, and I feel like because I had been in, uh, interviews for a role, and I got to the final and they went with the other person, like, I dude, this was like, the first one that I really thought I had, I got, I had somebody on the inside that had referred me, was giving me feedback through the whole process. So I'm like, you know, and not sound like full of myself or anything, but it was very positive. So I'm like, I got this, this, this hurt. Like, awesome. After one of the first interviews, one of the people on the team was like, Can we hire him now?

Ryan Burgess
Like, that's always a good sign, yes. This is great. Jason Torres And then it, it was, like a morning the phone number popped up. I'm like, Yes, like, this is exciting. And they're like, Yeah, we're gonna go with the other person. And I was like, heartbroken, dude. Like, I definitely, because I was at my other job too. So I'm thinking I ran down to the break room, took the call. I'm like, the sit. I could tell everybody to off, awesome to walk out of here with my middle finger, and I just, like, broke down. I'm like, I was devastated. But the reason I went with the other person is because she had already been had the experience. She was, like, a two year engineer already. She had worked with a couple of the other people, so they knew her experience, working on a team and stuff like that. So that was my gap. So when I saw the opportunity to kind of work in a simulated environment that works similar to a larger org with those type of systems in place, I was like, I want to do that, of course, because it just cost me a role at that time, though, Shashi was full, the team was full. So he's like, you know, I'll keep their name on my list, and then if we have any people drop out, because if anybody drops out, usually it's because they got a role, so he needs to refill that spot. And he reached out to me, said a couple of people were out if I was still interested. And I said, Absolutely. So from there, we just kind of ran with it, and I my roles evolved, because I think for what I've been looking for and trying to understand, like, what I think would be my best suited type of position, you know, I started on the front the functional engineering team. I worked in that a little bit and did a couple tickets. I was like, you know, I think at the end of the day, I don't think that I'm going to feel fulfilled as like a full time engineer. I think me as a person understanding that like, I like to talk to people, and I like to interact with the sides and sort of marry the the things and and talk about the products that I feel like my Soft Skills will be underutilized in that, and I feel right, long term, for me, I wouldn't stand a benefit. So I talked to Shashi about it, and moved to the TPM role. So I've been running the sprint reviews, building out all the project boards on our GitHub project. I do all the ticketing and stuff like that, which has been awesome because it's really, again, taught me a lot of these things that you show me one bootcamp that shows you that you know what I mean. Like nobody Well, I think

Ryan Burgess
too is, and I don't blame them for not doing that, per se, it's because, like, you have this short amount of time, and people are there to learn how to get the technical. Skills. That's what they're trying to get. But then it is those other pieces that they come with experience, and that's exactly what it is. Is like that person that got hired, she had two years of experience. It's an easier bet, too. When you're hiring, you got to think about, well, Jason seems great, but like there's a lot of things he just doesn't know, and so someone's got to teach him that, and we've got to put that time and effort in. Not a bad thing, but that's a cost, and you have to think about that. And are, is the team set up for that? That can be it too. Is like we could I would love to take this chance on Jay said he's gonna be great, but who's gonna help him? I don't know. And that can happen too. And so that sucks. So I love that you're like, I see this gap clearly. There's a gap because I missed out on this role, and so now filling it with that extra like, now building up that skill set, I think, is huge, because as a hiring manager too, like, I would look at that and go, Well, he has experience. You've done a lot of the things. And it's like, that's, that's a big difference than, hey, you've built a project by yourself, which is awesome. I like seeing that, but it's like, yeah, this is now you have more depth that you just wouldn't have had without it. Jason Torres Yeah. And, you know, at the end of the day, building a project by yourself doesn't mean much when you have to work on a team, like you have to be able to, you know, understand scope creep and ticketing and knowing, like, what your the expectations are of you in that team environment. And again, like one of the bigger things with being self taught is, again, doing everything by yourself. You have to break that habit. We had so many people, and I've as the TPM, I kind of had to remind a lot of people, like, you know, do what the ticket is. Like, that's it. You don't, you don't need to keep going on it, like, when you finish the ticket, come back with it if we need to iterate it, or do something else or fix something else, and it'll be ticketed another way we'll do, you know, but taking those extra steps, just it could be detrimental in the long run, and again, communication with the team, understanding that everybody has that role and is doing the tickets and stuff like that. You know, you don't think of that when you're just sitting in a chair by yourself, and you sit for nine hours building out your front end. So

Ryan Burgess
I mean, it's, it's true, and then it's also like, working with others too. Is everyone has these different experiences, right? Like, because that shared experience is so powerful too, is that someone on the team will be like, Oh, we can't build that component this way because of X, Y and Z, things that have happened in the past that will now, like, we don't want to introduce that. It's like those things you learn from too, right? Like, you learn from others that you're working with. So I love all that. One thing I've always curious on, especially when, you know, working at Netflix, it was kind of, it was cool in the sense that, like, we started to do a lot of our own films, which everyone obviously is aware of, and it's like, you start to take this tech industry, like a tech, you know, Netflix tech, and you marry it with some of the film industry. And there's, there's obviously, like you and I just talked about is there's a lot of similarities between the two, but then there's also a lot of differences. And one thing that I always recognized was like, man, there's a lot of tech that could help with some of those productions and and things like that. And I'm curious for you now, going into the tech side, what are things that you would if you went back to film, like, what are things that you would want to see or take with you from the technical side? Jason Torres That's that's a really good question. I as far as, like, actual Tech, I think that there's lots of places that things could be improved. And obviously the buzzword of AI,

Ryan Burgess
yeah, AI, everywhere it will solve it jumps in my Jason Torres head. But there's, there's ways that it could be used and used well, I mean, you see it a lot. I think Adobe's using it a lot in their products, as far as for like, post production applications, I think that there's a lot of benefit to that, especially when it comes to budgets. You know, that's that's probably one thing that in the tech industry we probably understand as well, because I would imagine in a larger organization, there's X amount of funds that are allocated to development of this one thing and so on and so forth. And it's the exact same of the movie. It's you get X amount to make the film. So if you can, you can optimize post production on two parts, two scenes that would have cost $200,000 now two people and an AI system can build out an entire scene with VFX, like, why wouldn't you do that? But I guess I see the conflict of interest, because that could also be people's incomes. And there's always that, you know, as far as from, like, the actual tech side of it, I guess I don't really know how i. Would answer that. What would be an example? Give me an example of what you're thinking? Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
no, I think you nailed it on the production side. I think there's a lot of optimizations and things like, you know, even just, we've seen it a lot with, like, being able to write subtitles, right? AI is pretty, pretty decent at it. It's not perfect. But like, if you could get most of it, like writing a transcript, say, like a podcast episode, like, I don't want to sit down and do that. Like that, that's that sounds so painful to me. And so having something like ai do that for you, that's a huge benefit. So yes, your subtitles could be but like, I think even some of that post production, if you're doing different languages, right, like, and so subbing and dubbing, if you can do things where it's like the mouth movement is a little bit more tied, like, if you can alter the someone's mouth movement to make it look a lot better than what we've seen in the past, that's a huge aspect. Another thing that I saw at Netflix that I thought was so cool was when we did something like the Bandersnatch movie, where it was interactive. There, it was really cool seeing engineering team up with the creators and say, like, Okay, well, how do we make, like, this arching story? And they built a tool that would allow for those things to change and adjust, so the creative person can make those adjustments. And then on the engineering side, they're ingesting, if it's like output to JSON or whatever, the different chapters and where they can jump around, they're just ingesting that. But you can make those changes. And so I think, like marrying the creative and tech side to enable creative is huge. I think, though a lot of times, especially with AI that gets brought up, is creators are worried about AI like, they're like, almost, or at least that's the sense I get, is that they're worried that it's going to take from their job. You touched on that as, like, people losing jobs or whatever. I don't know if I agree. I see AI like, yes, there's AI that can totally like, we've seen some of the videos legitimately generated from straight AI. I think it's going to get better and better and so that it will look realer and realer. But I think that there's still a missing piece that you're never going to want to get rid of that creative side, because there's just ideas that will come from an individual that nobody's thought of. So I think of AI as a tool to enable things. You're like, I can offload something like subtitles, or I can leverage AI to help me make a storyboard, right? Like, I can give it some input, and it's like, I don't want to have to redraw that. It's like, it will do that for me. And I think about that, it's where it's like, it is a tool to enable you to get your ideas out faster. But I'm curious your thoughts on it now, kind of being in both worlds. Jason Torres Yeah, no, that's, you know, at the end of the day, and you brought it up when you were talking about andersnatch. You guys, you have a lot of those, you know, click right for this option. It's, the Choose Your Own Adventure. But it totally is, yeah, those choose your own adventures. It's basically an if else, right? Like it still has predetermined routes, so it's not spontaneous. And I think really, where AI eventually could get is if somebody does, let's say something, you've got three paths, and somebody wants to choose a fourth, the AI would be able to generate a spontaneous fourth option. Like to be able to actually do that, because at the end of the day, we are, we're confined to what it's doing or has already done. So I could see where AI could be used to, like, do more things on the fly to give a more organic experience. But again, I don't think it's ever going to take anything. And I love that you brought up that it's supposed to be like a tool. When I was talking to PJ Metz, he works over at GitHub education. You know, he was explaining to me that GitHub branded theirs is co pilot, because their as co pilot, because it's supposed to help not fly the plane. Ah.

Ryan Burgess
I mean, that branding is genius. Like, I hadn't thought of it that way, but it makes sense. No, Jason Torres neither have I. So I see where it could definitely evolve into, like, niche stuff, but I don't think that it's ever going to take over, like, what humans can create, because we're we are spontaneous, like we do have the ability to change. We don't have to have those, like, predetermined options for ourselves. And I it's interesting too that you brought up, like, the the captioning and the subtitles and stuff, because I've been playing with a product, because they have an open role. So I'm trying to, like, shoot my shot called 11 labs, and they have, like, text to speech and AI voice generators. And you can, like, record a video and it will caption it, and put different voices and all that stuff. And it's, it's actually pretty cool. You can clone your own voice. Uh, stuff like that. It's, uh, pretty, which

Ryan Burgess
is creepy, but it's like, for post production that's so powerful is like, oh, that actor just didn't say that word correctly. Or, I need just a bit. It's some background noise, whatever. And if you're like, I can take the essence of their voice and tell, you know, say that again, that's huge, that that's so powerful. Like that saves a lot of time and money too. Does anybody really want to do that? Like, as the actor, do they want to go, oh, I have to reshoot that. Does the director want to reshoot? Does lighting anybody? They're they're like that. They don't want to do that. So offload that. Jason Torres Yeah, and that's the thing too, is, like, there's additional cost to that. Like, if you have to do pickups, which happens often, they have to reshoot entire scenes. It costs, depending on the size of the film, that's 1000s to millions of dollars of cost. Like that is a huge cost. ADR, which, again, is like, if they flub lines, and they have to come back in and they have to DO RE recording of lines so they watch themselves and they try to like time it. I can guarantee you that you've seen videos or films or TV shows where you can tell when there's been ADR or voiceovers and stuff that yes, quality is so obvious. Yes, it's terrible. It's terrible. So if there's ways to alleviate that or prevent that that, again, isn't at a cost to the production. I don't see why that would be disadvantageous. So I definitely see where it could work and be a benefit. But as far as it like actually taking whole jobs away in the big, like panic, that was a big thing, like a year or two ago, that Devin, Devin, What? What? You know, the mass hysteria of these things sometimes, I think, always exceeds what it ends up being. So I

Ryan Burgess
think to going back to like, the creative person in it too, is, I think that even AI like, I think people think of it as, Oh, my God, AI is just going to be able to generate everything, and there's no need for anyone anymore. I don't see that obviously, like just in our conversation, it's more of a tool. But to that point is that I think AI or things that are created, it just opens the door for more people, so that they don't have to go deep into learning how to do video production or doing all the little details that are there, they can still create their idea and get it out the door, but also you still need taste right? Like AI is not going to have the taste and the quality and the things that you need to do. And so I think that that's still important. Someone who creates a song, I'm not good at that. That's not something I can do. So I don't think going to AI that can generate music. It will be better than I could have done on my own, but it's still not going to be at the level of someone who truly understands and knows how to create something amazing the taste that's there. They still have that, and they're just leveraging AI as that tool. I think that's where I'm like, my head is completely at it's like, it's just gonna open the door for more people to create things, which I think is cool, that's awesome, but at the end of the day, it's like, you still need that taste for it to be great. And then it also sparks more ideas. Like, if you're if I'm seeing more content from more people and more ideas, I get inspired, and that could create something that nobody's even thought of. So I think it's all in all. There's pros and cons on it, but I'm, I don't know if I buy the whole like it's going to take everyone's job. It will take some it will absolutely cut some of those jobs, sure. But hopefully what it does is cuts the things that people don't enjoy doing so they can apply their brain to something else. Yeah, Jason Torres I agree. I think that those real, real entry level, or even maybe the high, high level, because people can, people can probably get an engineer that's comfortable using an AI tool at a little bit less, that can do the functions as far as like, producing the same amount, I don't know that'll be interesting. But, like I said, you said, I don't think it's going to take all the jobs. I just think it's impossible. Taste is, is super important. You know, you you could never replace even, even just CGI visual effects. You know, we've taken what is it? When did the When did Terminator two come out? Was that 9219

Ryan Burgess
92 it sounds about right? I was going to say like early 90s. 9192 so Jason Torres 3030, some odd years ago. And if you look at how special effects or visual effects have changed, you can still tell when something's CGI, yeah. So in 30 years of technology innovating in that, just that thread of visual effects, you can, like, I just, I saw Wolverine and Deadpool, and some of the visual effects were so bad,

Ryan Burgess
like, because they're all CGI, right? Like, it's noticeably, yeah, Jason Torres yeah. So there's no way. That you're going to be able to just one for one mirror what humans are capable of doing, regardless of what it is, and most people won't be working in 30 years. So it's like, if the technology gets that far, like I'm hoping I'm not working. But you know, nobody can, nobody can replicate with a computer what a human can do like that. That's I always love practical effects on film sets, sure some of them might be a little more dangerous, but always have respect for Tom Cruise, for doing all his own stunts. And like wanting to be able to do that because he understands like that visual medium has to be told that way, doing it with computers, does not give you that feeling. And I think that'll be a big thing for AI too. Like you said, the talent and the value that the human element brings to it can't be replicated.

Ryan Burgess
So no, it's, yeah, it becomes that tool again. So before we wrap up, I'm curious what's a piece of advice that you would leave someone who's like, I'm not enjoying my job, and I think I should try something different, Jason Torres all right, so somebody doesn't like their job, I would say, Get out as fast as you can. Because if you don't, you won't, it's

Ryan Burgess
not going to change, is what you're saying? No, Jason Torres it's, it's, it won't, you have to make it like, that's, I don't know. That's just something in life. I think a lot of people grin and bear it. Is that the saying, you know, yeah, they're, they're miserable, but yeah, things are okay. It's make a paycheck. Everything seems all right, but they're miserable. You know? They end up drinking their lives away to, like, cope with it or whatever, and it's like you could do better. You could find something that you're really passionate about. There's things out there just don't, don't settle into it, figure out a way to get out and get out before you can so

Ryan Burgess
I love that so well said, Jason, thanks so much for joining me. I can't, man, this is awesome. Yeah, this is so much fun. I feel like we could keep going and talking. Where can people get in touch with you? Yeah, Jason Torres Twitter. Twitter's my big one at Jason jores, I tried to get Jason Torres, but this guy basically told me to f off because I messaged him. I was like, Look, man, you haven't used this account in years. What it looks like. I was like, Can we give his a couple bucks or something? And then he blocked me. So I'm actually blocked by myself on which is interesting. Yeah, it's like, dang, okay, but yeah, taste and Joris, I'm on LinkedIn and stuff I don't, I don't use that as much, so Twitter definitely the place to go. Awesome.

Ryan Burgess
Well, thank you so much for joining us and sharing, you know, just insights into your career journey. And yeah, thank you. You.