Kacy Andrews: Building an Industry

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>> Vince Thompson: Hi! Welcome to Dog & Pony. I'm Vince Thompson. Hiring a quality workforce in any industry can be difficult. In the entertainment industry, it can mean a difference between a blockbuster and a flop. Well, what if you could build a business and build a training facility all in one. Hollywood is turning its head as Kacy Andrews, CEO of Bigfoot Entertainment is literally building industry from the ground up on the island of Mactan in the Philippines. Kacy, tell us about Bigfoot Entertainment, what makes it unique?

>> Kacy Andrews: I think what's really unique about is that we have a training facility which is an international film school there. So, we have the synergies of training students and then being able to hire them for productions that we do whether it's a film or a television show or just, you know, other corporate type videos that we might do in house.

>> Vince Thompson: And types of projects are you producing?

>> Kacy Andrews: Feature films. We've done about 10 films in the past couple of years. We've done a documentary. We've done some reality TV shows. But mostly, it's the feature films that we focus on.

>> Vince Thompson: Very cool. And you're producing these projects per multiple markets and multiple languages.

>> Kacy Andrews: We just toyed with the idea a couple of years ago where we took one film that we shot in Hong Kong and we had two versions of it with two different sets of casts. We shot one in English and the other one in Mandarin. And so, you know, by doing that, we were able to get theatrical distribution in China, Mainland China which is pretty rare for US companies to do. And then we also have the English version which we're able to sell in all the English-speaking territories.

>> Vince Thompson: So you have the whole set. You light thing. You bring in the English actors.

>> Kacy Andrews: Yeah.

>> Vince Thompson: You bring in the Chines actors.

>> Kacy Andrews: Exactly.

>> Vince Thompson: Now, what's the original vision for this, was it to produce movies less expensive, was it to build a school, or was it to start an industry?

>> Kacy Andrews: The original vision was to build a film school. And from there when I was doing the business plan, you know, I realized that to attract international students and international productions, we would need to build something, you know, worth coming to. So we setup, set out about building the facilities. We have six sound stages now and post facilities with Dolby Mix Theater. And we wanted to, you know, attract the students to come over, and in doing that, we can also attract productions. So we have really two revenue streams.

>> Vince Thompson: What have you learned most about building an international business?

>> Kacy Andrews: I think the most challenging thing is hiring. You know, honestly, just finding good people and keeping, you know, retaining them. Because of where we're based, you know, a lot of people don't wanna stay there long term. You know, some people will say, "Oh, we'll come over for, you know, project or six months or a year", but it's tough to get people to wanna live on an island in the Philippines for any length of time. So, you know, our turnover rate has been somewhat high and so, it's just really trying to find the people that wanna, you know, stay there longer and, you know, just finding good reliable talent.

>> Vince Thompson: Your history is production executive and a producer. How have you taken those skills and applied them to running a startup?

>> Kacy Andrews: It's very similar actually and I -- at first was a little nervous because I thought, you know, I've never start a business. I, you know, I've made movies but that's different. And, you know, as I got into it, it's pretty much the same thing. It's a lot of, you know, preplanning and, you know, making sure you build the right team and hiring the right people. It's the same thing only it goes on, it doesn't stop.

>> Vince Thompson: So Kacy, what's your favorite thing about running this business?

>> Kacy Andrews: I really enjoy working with all the different people from around the globe, you know, just the different cultures and constantly learning something new and being challenged in new ways by learning new ways of doing things. I think that's really exciting and I enjoyed the traveling, you know, even though it's a long flight back and forth, it still, you know, fun to be able to be in LA and then the next day be in Asia and, you know, just a whole different kind of world and that's been very fun.

>> Vince Thompson: Kacy Andrews, CEO of Bigfoot Entertainment. Thank you so much for being with us. As always, if you have questions, ideas, maybe you like to suggest a guess. We'd love to hear from you. Send us an e-mail, an info at dog&pony.com. I'm Vince Thompson. Thanks so much for watching.

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