Why great storytellers thrive in business, with Trilith Studios CEO Frank Patterson

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1:30He's the CEO of Trillith Studios, the beating heart of Georgia's growing film business. Just south of Atlanta, Trillith spans hundreds of acres, boasts more than 30 studios, and is home to a growing number of incredible creators. Trillith is also home to some of Marvel's biggest films and takes an innovative approach to nurturing a new generation of filmmakers and creators. That piece, the nurturing that next generation of filmmakers and creators, is core to Frank.

2:10He's a professor and dean emeritus at Florida State's Film School and has mentored hundreds, if not thousands, of young people who are changing the face of the entertainment industry. Frank joined us live on stage in Atlanta at the historic Fox Theater. It's the latest in our Masters of Scale live series, presented by Capital One Business. You've got to have incredible talent at every position. It's like this huge push. There are fires burning when you're going home. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to, this is totally going to be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do.

2:49Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working as a three-bedroom apartment. Stuff that just seems absolutely nut balls. Ten years later, we're like, well, that's just how you do it. We haven't made it just how you do it. This is Masters of Scale.

3:12Good evening, Atlanta. You've spent a career telling stories and helping tell stories. And part of our theme tonight is about world building. And I'm curious, what's your first memory of seeing a world built on a screen that just took your breath away? 2001, A Space Odyssey. My mom, now I didn't know this at the time. She was trying to get away from my dad. So we went to a theater and we watched that film. I think I was eight. And I'll never forget it. I mean, it's easy to say Kubrick, but that one shot of the ship going across the screen and the sort of feeling of the world that he was asking us to consider.

3:59I didn't obviously didn't understand it at eight, but it's just a memory I'll never forget. Frank, at the risk of getting too personal too early. We're among friends. We are among friends. When you say your mom was trying to get away from your dad, what do you mean by that? Well, you know, as an adult looking back, my dad's no longer with us. I learned that he struggled with a lot of sickness, a lot of mental health problems. And so, you know, my parents ended up not, their marriage didn't survive. You know, my mom was, you know, an important person in my life. And so, you know, the things that I saw as sort of adventures, like going to see, you know, 2001 Space Odyssey, you know, turned out to be really valuable for me.

4:46that world that I grew up in where there was all this tension. And I had an English teacher in high school pulled me aside. I grew up in a little town in Texas. He said, you know, you're a storyteller. This is, you know, thank goodness for an English teacher to come in and say, you are a storyteller. Get out of this town. Do not grow up here. And I got a writing scholarship to school. And I think everything that I grew up in was, you know, as an adult looking back, it was a gift. How do you end up running a massive studio? How do you get from there to where we are today? I think it was very helpful that I was focused early on how to tell a story.

5:31Story was important to me because no matter where you end up in this industry, the real currency is the ability to tell a story and whether you're a production accountant who's trying to understand why a director made a decision to purchase something or you're you know you're a writer director it is everything it's everything that we breathe and leave and we haven't been doing a great job of it lately as industry but we are have some young people that are doing some very cool things but the bottom line is I think it was very helpful for me to to grow up as focused on story Then as I learned the craft, I began to realize all these other parts of the industry.

6:10And to be honest with you, I was never the best person. I was not a good athlete, but I was always on the team. And I knew how to pull good teams together. So I began to realize that kind of my talent is recognizing talent, right? Mainly just because I'm a good audience. I love talent. When I began to realize, wait a minute, I'm really more of a producer entrepreneur. Then I started a couple of production businesses and realized, wait a minute, I should do more than one film at a time. And I began to think of the industry as an industry that has a really incredible social impact if you're handling it the right way, right?

6:48And I think through several startups, some failures, some wins, I met who was then the Pinewood team. James Bond movies, you've probably all heard of them, formed here a partnership with Dan Cathy here in Atlanta. Pinewood is an iconic British film studio that partnered in the creation of the Georgia location. Pinewood sold its stake and the facilities were rebranded as Trillith Studios in 2020. And it was a facilities organization. And when you say facilities organization, what does that mean? It's like renting hotel rooms, right? You're just providing facilities to productions to execute on their production, right?

7:28And at the time, the studio was looking for its first leader. And I had given this keynote speech at the Innovation Summit in Zurich. Dan just showed up in my office one day and said, you know, the way you're thinking about industry, you know, we're looking for a leader. And he invited me to come, and my wife Leslie and I to come visit. and I met the Pinewood team, which I thought was very nice, but I wasn't interested in running facilities. Why not? I don't know that business. I'm a filmmaker and an entrepreneur and a technologist. At that time, I had just exited a technology company that was making digital humans and I wasn't really focused on running facilities.

8:11But, you know, Dan said something kind of important to me in that first meeting. Think of this as a 700 acre campus that you can paint as an entrepreneur. Okay, now that's interesting. He even said, why don't you grab your team from San Francisco and have a move here and build digital humans here. And I thought, okay, he's being serious about this. Like we should think about this. So I just want to dial in real quick. When you say digital humans, you don't mean like literal robots walking around. Oh, no. Okay. So I was co-founder and CEO of a company that we called them hyper-realistic digital humans.

8:50and we created the Michael Jackson that appeared at the Billboard Music Awards in 2014. You know, that was nine years after Michael's death. It was an original song. It was an original performance. And so we did that. It scared the life out of me because by the way, in dress rehearsal, that performance didn't work. Oh. Yeah. So there were only 11 million people watching and 10 ,000 people live. What went wrong? It just didn't work. It just didn't work. We were putting together a lot of technologies that didn't want to play nice with each other. Yeah, an unstable stack. A very unstable stack. And it just didn't work at dress rehearsal.

9:25So that was a very challenging time because it was a startup. We were emerging technology. We didn't have a product market fit. We didn't really, like, tell me where digital humans belong right now, right? Well, then this is also 10 years plus ago. It's 10 years ago, right? Yeah, so we didn't have product market fit. There was one night back in 2014, I was out of cash. It's a Thursday night for Friday payroll. Every entrepreneur who's been in this room. We're not going to ask for a raise of hands, but I'm imagining there are few here. And because we were doing animation at the highest levels, we were literally animating one of the most famous faces in the world.

10:04And we were out of money. And there was that really awkward moment that I had to, am I going to pull payroll, which is by the way, going to hit the bank account on Monday and I don't have the finances to cover. I do have a hard lender who's agreed to leverage my house. I haven't told my wife about that yet. So I could lose my business. Breaking news, Leslie. Yeah. I could lose my business, my house, and my wife if this goes wrong. So, you know, but if I don't pull payroll, this is a very high profile company because six of our artists were some of the most famous animator artists in the industry.

10:38That's the only way we were able to pull off Michael Jackson at that time. So if I don't pull payroll, it's going to be in the trades in the morning and my business is over. Right? So, needless to say, I pulled payroll. Yep. And we got through it. But it was very, very much a startup business. And we created some really wonderful tech. And by the way, in the end, it worked out. We had a nice exit out of it. But imagine coming off the heels of that and saying, let's run facilities. Right. Like, that's not the plan. And so I think what was exciting about my partnership with Dan was Dan, as a lot of people in this town know, Chick-fil-A is an amazing business, right?

11:15And Dan's an amazing leader. He was basically saying, look, just paint, brother, just paint. Because he didn't come from the film industry, right? But he loves it. He loves storytelling. And so that's, I think, the good fortune for me was to have that platform to say, okay, now let's start investing in content companies and technology companies. and let's build a place that really is a platform for storytellers. That's ultimately become a city for storytellers, a place that is really unique, I think. When you came here and you saw this canvas and you were able to envision it as a canvas, what were you able to see that you could build here that made it worth moving cross-country and starting a new life here?

11:55It was basically, if we made some bets into some emerging content companies and bets into some emerging tech companies, at this place that's 20 minutes from the most traveled airport in the world that has a great culture and a history of innovation, I bet we could go where opportunity is. And so that's kind of where I felt like, okay, let's do this. And fortunately at the time, the Pinewood CEO and investors at that time, you know, were excited about it. Now they recapped, they wanted to focus on facilities and we ended up separating, you know, buying them out. But Ivan Dunleavy, he was the CEO of Pinewood at the time, really liked this idea of being entrepreneurial and erecting this, these other businesses and figuring out how to build this opportunity.

12:45So this was in the, in the 20 teens, 2016, I think. Yeah. When the joke in Hollywood was, you would show up at sunset and Gower, walk in the door and they'd say, welcome to Netflix, you're greenlit. Everything was getting made. The last few years have been a little... It's a different environment. Yeah. So how have you weathered that? What surprised you? And what are you doing differently in this post-COVID, post-strike, cut back on content spend world that we're now in? There was things that did really surprise us all, which you just mentioned them, right? the pandemic, right? The stuff that didn't surprise us was, you know, Hollywood has this habit of, and a lot of industries are guilty of this, but we in the film industry are very guilty of this, spending like drunken sailors, waking up hungover, you know, it's like, oh, guess what?

13:40You got to pay for this. And we had the good fortune at Trillith of being home to some of the biggest movies in the industry, a lot of Marvel product, as I think everybody here knows. But we knew that there was going to be a correction. And we have recently really widened the aperture of kind of storytellers and businesses that we focused on to support now. Let's build off of that nearly 10 years in here. What is Trillith today? It's this place that has everything great storytellers need to do anything they can imagine. And by the way, a little exaggeration because we don't have everything yet.

14:22I'd say that that's our vision, but we have like 75 % of everything. We have some of the most amazing technology. We have some of the most amazing homes and a town. And we figure if we can do that, wrap ourselves around the current and next generation of storytellers and really ignite this creative market ecosystem that we have? You know, what are the businesses and the brains that you put into this place that together provide everything that a great storyteller needs to do anything they can imagine? So on one hand, we have James Gunn. I can't wait for you to see his take on Superman. And we have an up-and-coming filmmaker named Demetrius Wynn, who's in the audience, right?

15:04And we have everywhere, you know, that we want to be home to those storytellers. And, you know, when I first moved to Hollywood, the sound stages were two blocks away. There was a camera house four blocks away. Post was just over the hill in Burbank. Basically everything you needed was there. And it was a time and a place in Hollywood where a kid who was poor, broke from Texas, could actually live there. That's very hard to do today. Part of what I'm hearing is important about this is the physical proximity made a difference. Place is important. When we talk about everything someone needs to do, anything they can imagine, you also have to think about how people live, where they live.

15:47Our industry is tough on families because we're traveling all the time. Right. Four months away for a movie shoot. Oh, it's brutal. Yeah. Right. But we have a town. Come visit y 'all if y 'all hadn't seen it. We think about where they live, where their kids go to school, what they eat. We have a 65 ,000 square foot wellness center that when a crew comes in, when you have 5 ,500 people on the lot working every day, every crew member on that lot has a free membership to a world-class wellness center. We have all the technology and the cameras and lights and transpo and everything. You know, we have, I think, 67 businesses at Trillith that range from the largest lighting and grip company to the best donut shop, you know, in the world.

16:30Go have a donut of Hero. It's unbelievable. And literally a kindergarten there too. Not just a kindergarten. We have, it's called a forest school and it's a K through 12. And so, yes, we have to think about where the kids are going to school, right? So I think the idea of having all of those resources is what makes it work and not simply great sound stages and great technology, right? In just a minute, Frank and I are joined on stage by an actor, creator, and entrepreneur who calls Trillith home.

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18:48So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash mos and get up to three months free.

19:21You may have seen her in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel or in ABC's Will Trent. She also runs a startup, a production company with her husband. Tell us, Christine, about your experience here, because you didn't grow up in Georgia. How did you end up here? Frank, really. And Kelly, who is here in the audience, my husband's aunt, we were in Los Angeles and contemplating moving back to New York because our family's on the East Coast. and Kelly called up my husband and she says, you have to look at what they're doing in Atlanta. Look at what they're doing down in Fayetteville. And he looks it up and he goes, Frank is running this?

20:01Because he went to Florida State while Frank was the dean there and they were very close. So he texts Frank and who I had enjoyed also getting to know over the years. And you said, come on down and showed him around. And he immediately, he came home and said, we got to move there. It's amazing what they're doing. And he pitched me and sold me. And so it's been almost three years and we really enjoyed being down here. Christina, one of the things that I'm struck by from Frank's narrative is as a creator, as a storyteller, then having to actually learn the business side of it. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, they have a spark in my idea or they're a technologist, whatever it might be.

20:41But then all of a sudden, the reality of actually having to build and run a business comes along. What's it been like going on that part of the journey for you? Yeah. So we have a production company, Two Kids with a Camera, that we started 2010-ish. And so, you know, we make films and streaming series and such, but we also do a lot of branded content for big corporate clients. So we have something for American Express right now and Lowe's, Cisco, et cetera. We started very small. And so I think for us, it's been a natural build over time and that has been very successful. We didn't pitch really big and rent an office in Soho and then like run ourselves into the ground really quickly.

21:26And that has been, I think, maybe our strongest suit. And I think because we center story, because, you know, of our backgrounds, we can bring that to our clients and say, story is how you're going to connect with people, whether it's at your live event or as you're trying to share the information that you guys have been researching, you will connect and your information will land in a deeper way. There's so much that we as entrepreneurs have to figure out. And here we are in 2025 and, you know, we can go on ChatGPT or Claude and ask a whole bunch of questions and get really smart really quickly.

22:02But when you were starting your production studio, that wasn't there. So, I mean, just really basics, like how'd you learn how much to charge? How did you learn about production accounting. How did you actually build the information? As a creative, it's not obvious that one would be great at doing that too. So how did that play out for you? I mean, it was a lot of trial and error. Like we started our company with LegalZoom, you know, so there were resources like that, that we could just, yeah, well. Shout out LegalZoom. Shout out to LegalZoom. And I think honestly, we like were severely undercharging for a very long time.

22:38I think it helped us win business as a young company. So, but we were scrambling. So we had to learn. I think that was one of the biggest things because as an artist, and I think anyone who's passionate about their ideas, sometimes you're just so excited to do it that you're like, whatever, I'll just do it for you. And then really when we started working, I think maybe the first job we had that our eyes were kind of open to that was for Google up in, you know, Mountain View and just recognizing if you want to make a living and you're working with companies like that, you need to think bigger. I think also markets change.

23:11And so there is sort of, I feel like I'm always just eavesdropping. I'm sort of like, okay, what are you doing with yours and what are we doing now? And, you know, because I didn't go to business school, you know, I went to theater school. And so we are, there is a trial and error, but I think that's okay. And I think that is part of learning the value of your product. You have to kind of test and say, okay, this budget, everyone's saying yes to without negotiating. Maybe we could go a little higher. Maybe we can see value in that. What's been different for you about being in Georgia with Trillith than it was being in Los Angeles?

23:50Quality of life here has shot through the roof. We have a much bigger, nicer home than we would have. Honestly, we love our kids. Our kids are at the Forest School at Trillith. They're flourishing. They're just like brilliant little dudes, and we really appreciate what's going on there. So it really is a special place. The Southern hospitality is very real. It's very friendly. It's very collaborative. And so that's just been really incredible to get some of our projects off the ground, both some of our indie creative projects as well as our client work. I want to bring us home with a few questions for each of you.

24:27So I'm curious, as you reflect on your careers, each of you, what's a moment that stood out that was one moment, that was a real tipping point in your career? I had a very lucky moment as an actor, which is that Zack Snyder saw me in a hummus commercial and then wanted to work with me. So that, I mean, sort of launched me as an actor a little bit. But in terms of my production company, we're in an interesting moment right now, which is exciting and hopefully kind of will be one of those moments where we are just thinking bigger and starting to pitch bigger for our next films. And so we have a feature right now that we're working on.

25:07Actually, Lauren Petsky, one of the teachers at the Trillith Institute, she's a local television director. And I met her through my work with women of color filmmakers. She came on as an instructor for us. And she's going to be directing. Demetrius is producing. and it's about a high school girls basketball team and based here in Atlanta and Georgia. And so this is a big moment, I'd say for me as a producer to come in and say, okay, I'm gonna be brave. I'm gonna think bigger. I'm gonna reach out to different types of people that we're aiming to work with. And so I feel like I'm in that moment right now.

25:39Amazing. Frank, one moment for you. I was younger, much younger. On my first film, I had raised money and I had investors and I went to go make the movie and I had one of those moments where you realize I shouldn't be doing this. I don't know what I'm doing. And it was the first day of shooting and I don't know what I'm doing. I'm a complete imposter, right? Never made a movie. This is ridiculous. I'm gonna lose everybody's money. And I started throwing up. So every morning I would throw up. I began to realize my fear was, what if this movie stops? What if it stops? And Julie Corman said to me, you're thinking about it all wrong.

26:13It's funded. It's gonna get made. It's just on you how good it's gonna get made. It was just relief, like, of course, this is going to get made. I got to wake up here. And then one of the investors, Mr. Winter, said, I didn't invest in you so you could throw up. I invested in you because I believe in what you can do. Embrace the opportunity. And so since then, it's just been like, I got to believe in myself. Second question for each of you. One thing that has surprised you about the industry. Social media has really surprised me. Like when I was starting out, it was much more just people sharing funny photos at a bar and things like that.