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Go Ahead, Call It Cisco TV by Joanne Butcher
One of the entrances to Cisco's San Jose facility. photo: courtesy Cisco
FOR THE MOST PART, IN STUDIES SUCH
as the Milken Institute’s “Film Flight: Lost Production and Its Economic Impact on California” (2010), the focus is on the economic impact of driving away film production and issues of permitting, taxation and incentives.
Corporate communications, however, is a branch of the business that falls outside the permitting process and is never included such analysis. Hence, I was intrigued to learn that there were major changes in thinking at one of the leaders in corporate video production in the country: Cisco Systems.
Based right here in San Jose, Cisco is now operating two major production entities: Broadcast and Script-to-Screen. The Broadcast side handles the live television production, special events, meetings, presentations and training, and Script-to-Screen everything else, which requires a creative team of writers, producers and editors.
All of which adds up to a massive amount of work at this top Fortune 500 company (Ranked #60 in 2013). To discover how they operated, I met with some of the leadership at Cisco TV.
“I got interested in TV in high school, then did an internship at a local TV station, and studied film and television at De Anza College," Scot Southworth, the Script-to-Screen Global Teamleader told me.
"I started working as a freelancer for several years in corporate TV—Apple, HP, Intel, and finally, full-time at Cisco, now for 7 years.
Also present at my visit were Bob Dennis, a Director who is in charge of Cisco TV Global Production and started with Cisco Broadcast 15 years ago, and Luke Paddington, a Senior Producer for Script-to-Screen, a fascinating guy from a Trinidad and Tobago film dynasty whom we interviewed in last month's CS.
CineSource: Why did you make the decision to bring creative in-house?
Scot Southworth: First, to cut costs for the company. And secondly to try to help bring consistency to the content and brand. Cisco has been trying to streamline and simplify its brand and message.
Bob Dennis: When it comes to the content and asset management, if you’re doing 100 videos a year, you don’t want three or four of them shooting the same thing.
Luke Paddington, who works in his family business, filmmaking and festivals, back home in Trinidad, is now is a Script-to-Screen producer at Cisco. photo: courtesy L. Paddington
Luke Paddington: I might be writing a script that can work for multiple projects and I can tell my clients that. Most teams don’t speak to each other, but Script-to-Screen speaks to all the teams.
What are the circumstances in which you still find yourself using outside vendors?
Scot: We have outside vendors when we need to scale, and when we need to outsource a specialty service—motion graphics, a scriptwriter, a particular DP with a particular look.
Luke: We needed a helicopter shot, so we used the people in Half Moon Bay who shoot Mavericks every year.
Scot: One reason we stay in house is that we need to stay global and we can much more easily shoot tomorrow in London through our office there. We have resources in UK, Bangalore, North Carolina, Atlanta, Singapore and Tokyo.
And that saves us even more money. On just one job we’re talking $100,000 vs. $50,000. And we work a whole lot faster. AND we transmit a whole lot faster. We have big fat pipes!
Scot: Cisco has ALWAYS focused on video. Back in the day we used to make training videos on CD Rom.
Bob: Used it for training and presentation. I worked for HP and they were really big into customer testimonials and marketing. These days, Cisco is really growing that. But I would say that Cisco has been a leader in getting into video online. We’re probably the leader in corporate America.
What would you say is the volume is that you are producing?
Bob: I’m responsible for both the broadcast side as well as production. Typically 100—150 meetings per month of two hours each—and all are recorded and added to the network. A lot of that is training.
If we have a department meeting, a lot of people work from home and interact through Cisco TV. For some people it’s three am in the morning. For us training can be classroom-based, customer training, partner training, product introductions.
In Script-to-Screen we have four producers. But they do a lot more than producers do on regular sets. They are line producers, executive producers, directors and accountants. They’re creative producers. People who have to have ALL the skills. Plus one other producer in each of the global locations.
Filming an interview with full production values at Cisco's San Jose facility. photo: courtesy Cisco
Luke: I have at least ten projects going at any one time and they’re all in different stages. One is in pre-production now and I’m shooting next week. Some projects are completed in three days and some drag on for three months.
Some get cancelled. Just like the film world. Some are graphics heavy. (We have amazing in-house graphics and an in-house editor.) Projects tend to range from three seconds to five minutes, seldom longer.
We make huge use of Cisco technology: Webex, Jabber, Telepresence. Once I have an Internet connection I have access to all that.
We have about 25-30 Script-to-Screen projects a month. Now we’re really getting going! We didn’t have the editing capabilities. Scot had the foresight to build extra editing rooms that are all now in operation: An audio room. 4 studios. Telepresence everywhere.
Telepresence is great. You don’t need any expertise to operate it and you really feel as though you are in the room with the other people.
[Luke takes me on a walk through Cisco TV, introducing me to the receptionist, editors, graphics editor, and the rest of the team. It was like walking through an extremely large television station. In the end, he introduces me to Michelle Nelson, a Program Producer, working in Bangalore]
Global Cisco TV
Luke: We take care of the US, London takes care of Europe, but Bangalore takes care of Asia.
Michelle Nelson: We’re responsible for a lot of broadcast and also Script-to-Screen. We have a small team and work all over Asia. There are major cultural differences when working in India from in China, for example.
In the U.S., everything is to the T, but not in Asia. In India, for example, vendors don’t come with formal training; it’s all hands-on experience.
Even communication…. In China they would prefer someone who speaks Mandarin, and in India, there are so many languages. I don’t speak Mandarin very fluently even though I am Chinese-born in Bangalore.
In Bangalore, we eat a lot of spicy food. My engineer is a complete vegetarian and it is such a challenge. The Chinese food in India is not exactly Chinese!
What are some examples of other cultural differences you’ve had to work through?>
Luke: We were working on a project in Riyadh. In this case, the client, Shahd Attar, was an activist who worked on the connected city project: Smart Plus Connected Communities. She is a leading women’s rights activist in Saudi Arabia, extremely brilliant and well-known. Cisco was involved because a part of Riyadh has become the largest connected city in the world.
My visa was almost denied because you can’t be invited to Riyadh by a woman under 50 (his client). So I had to be invited by a male Cisco employee.
Shahd wore the hijab over in Dubai. If I went out to dinner with her, her husband had to go too, or we would be subject to scrutiny by the Moral Police. One evening I had touched her lightly on the shoulder, and she had to take me to one side and explain to me that I couldn’t do that. Men cannot touch women they are not married to.
In Riyadh, you are not allowed to shoot video, and once I got pulled over. However you can shoot photographs. So I shot from car windows and from inside buildings and pretended I was a photographer.
In many ways it was a great project. We were in the King Abdullah Financial District. Part of the connected cities is that people who live there pay a single bill that includes their rent, water, phone, heating, everything. You live across the street from where you work.
For outsiders who go there to work, it’s perfect for a year, but it’s hard to do longer than that as there’s a real delineation between outsiders and locals.
Conclusion
And so concluded my afternoon at Cisco. What were my impressions? The team at Cisco TV works incredibly hard. The pace feels like a TV station or a film set. Fast, faster, fastest.
It seemed like a fun place to work and it was certainly great to meet such a committed group of talented and generous people.
Joanne Butcher is a teacher, film festival organizer and writer of English and Trinidadian descent who now lives in the Bay Area. Posted on Dec 04, 2013 - 07:39 PM