Turn your brand into a show people follow.
We build documentary YouTube channels for founder-led outdoor brands. Written and directed by people with network television credits. One new episode every month.
You already know YouTube is the move. That's not the hard part.
YETI and Patagonia still run ads. What sets them apart is that the ads aren't the point: their audience comes for the films, the athletes and the places, and the product rides along. What they have isn't a bigger camera budget. It's a story department, and that's the part almost nobody sells to brands your size.
You've probably tried a version of it already. Here's where each route breaks:
A production company
Builds what you asked for, in higher resolution. Nobody there is asking whether a stranger keeps watching at minute three.
A creator or boutique studio
Genuinely good at capture, no story architecture. Nothing about episode four makes you want episode five, so the channel bumps and then flatlines with the novelty.
A premium documentary studio
$50,000 and up for an event where you needed a cadence. Next month the upload schedule is empty and the budget is spent.
In-house
One producer, no crew, no story department. Six months in they're making product videos too, because that's what gets asked for in the Monday meeting.
Every one fails at the same point. Not the camera. The story.
Here's what waiting actually costs you.
Acquisition gets more expensive. Ad costs rise, attention gets harder to rent, and you pay more each year for the same borrowed audience.
Someone in your category is building an audience they own. When their cost per click doubles it won't matter, because 40,000 people already chose to hear from them.
That's how long ago the outdoor brands with real channels started. There's still room, because most of the category is still posting product videos. Everyone in this industry can feel that turning.
The uncomfortable part isn't the money. It's that in three years this will either be the thing you started, or the thing you kept meaning to.
The Cinematic Culture System
One documentary a month, written and directed by people who learned story where it's enforced, then engineered into a full month of channel content: published, optimised, and measured against targets we set with you before we shoot anything.
It starts with one pilot film. Six months if the film earns it. Story first, always.
Book a discovery call →We're a story company. The cameras are incidental.
In television
Seven episodes written and directed. One Dish One Spoon, produced with Big Soul Productions for APTN, Canada's national Indigenous broadcaster. Deadlines that don't move, and a story department that catches you when the middle sags.
On YouTube
Fook Fast Food, created, written, directed and hosted by our founder. Eighteen documentary episodes. No ad spend, ever.
Nobody clicks an ad at that rate. Nobody subscribes to one.
In brand work
The crew we assemble has shot commercial work for San Pellegrino, Heineken, Specsavers, Shea Moisture, DoorDash and Hotel X Toronto. That's the craft half: lighting, camera, finish, and a standard of polish large brands sign off on.
Then there's Foodpreneur Lab. Three cohorts. 120 Black food entrepreneurs, each with a business and a reason they started it, each needing to be told properly in a few minutes. That's the other half, and it's the hard one.
Commercial polish is table stakes now. The reason to hire us is what happens after the lighting is good.
Sean's instinctive approach to storytelling and character driven work proved invaluable on One Dish One Spoon Season 2. A rare ability to connect with people on and off camera, and a tremendous asset to any creative team.
Executive Producer, Big Soul Productions
Three steps. Sixty minutes of your time to start.
Alignment, week one.
Sixty minutes with you becomes the Brand Bible and the story for your first film.
First shoot within 21 days of your sign-off.
Once you approve the story, we're on location inside three weeks. Locations, permits, talent, travel and weather contingency are ours to organise.
Publish, measure, repeat.
Episode goes live built to get found, then three reels and a cutdown package. The Impact Brief follows monthly, against targets agreed in week one.
The Pilot Film
We haven't made a documentary for an outdoor brand yet. The craft is identical, but you'd be taking that on faith, and faith is a lot to ask before you've seen a frame.
So we're not asking for it. We'll make your first episode at our cost. Eight to twelve minutes, written and directed by our founder, with the story development behind it. You cover travel and hard production costs, like clearances or talent, against a ceiling you approve in writing before we shoot.
You see the cut before anyone else does. If you don't love it, it doesn't go live.
What we ask in return: you publish the film on your channel within an agreed window and share its analytics with us. We get the right to use it as a case study. You give us a filmed testimonial once results are worth talking about, your availability on camera when the story needs you, and three introductions to founders you respect.
This is available to one brand. Not one at a time. One.
"If, after watching your pilot film, you don't believe it's the best piece of content your brand has ever published, we keep working until it is, at no charge. If we can't get there, it never goes live."
After the pilot: if the film earns it, the Cinematic Culture System starts from episode two. If it doesn't, you've spent a few days of your team's time and nothing on our fees.
Everything you'd ask on a call, answered before it.
Why would you make it at your cost?
Because right now we need the proof more than we need the fee. We've made documentaries for television and for our own channel. We haven't made one for an outdoor brand, and no sensible founder pays to be first. So we go first. You get a film. We get a case study we can stand behind. That's the whole trade.
How do I justify this to my CFO?
The pilot costs nothing in our fees, and your hard costs only up to a ceiling you set. Past the pilot: a baseline captured before we start, targets agreed in writing in week one, and a monthly two-page brief measured against them. It's written to be forwarded, and it's honest about the months that go the wrong way. Most video spend can't be defended because nobody defined success first.
You've never worked with an outdoor brand.
Correct, and we won't dress it up. We've made documentaries for television and our own channel, and the crew we work with has shot commercial work for large consumer brands. What we haven't got is a credit in your category. That's exactly why the first film is on us, why you approve it before it goes live, and why our founder is on every shoot and in every cut.
Six months is a long commitment.
It's the shortest honest answer, and you don't make it until you've seen the pilot. YouTube spends about 90 days and a dozen videos working out what your channel is before it will promote you properly. Three episodes tells you nothing. Six lets you see a retention curve improve and browse traffic start arriving on its own. If we could do it in three we'd sell three.
How will we know it's working?
First 30 days: click-through rate and retention at 30 seconds. Our target is 4 to 5% and 60% or better. Days 30 to 90: subscriber conversion per 1,000 views and returning viewers. Days 90 to 180: branded search, YouTube-referred sessions, signups. What we won't promise is attributable revenue inside a quarter. That's not how brand content behaves, and anyone quoting you that number is guessing.
We already have someone in-house.
Good. They get more valuable, not less. They know your brand, product and calendar in ways we won't for months. We bring the story department and the crew they don't have.
What does it cost after the pilot, and who owns it?
One fixed monthly retainer covering everything above. It doesn't move mid-engagement or get re-scoped after you sign, and we'll give you the number on the call once we know what your channel needs. Production expenses are separate and capped: you approve a written ceiling before each episode, and if something changes on the ground we come to you before we spend. You own every final deliverable, on your channel, forever.
Our founder doesn't want to be on camera.
Then they don't. Your makers, repair techs, athletes, guides and customers all carry the story. Some of the best brand documentaries never show the founder once.
In three years your brand will either have an audience or a bigger ad bill. The difference is a decision somebody makes this month.
One pilot film. One conversation.
Thirty minutes. No deck, no presenting. I'll ask about your brand, what you've tried, and what film I'd make for you first. If it's not a fit I'll tell you on the call.