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

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1:20 Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. Hey folks. Jeff Berman here.

1:34 This week on the show, we hear extraordinary stories and insight from the legendary Frank Patterson. He's the CEO of Trilleth Studios, the beating heart of Georgia's growing film business. Just south of Atlanta, Trilleth spans hundreds of acres, boasts more than 30 studios, and is home to a growing number of incredible creators. Trillif is also home to some of Marvel's biggest films and takes an innovative approach to nurturing a new generation of filmmakers and creators.

2:10 That piece, the nurturing that next generation of filmmakers and creators is core to Frank. He's a professor in 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.

2:46 You gotta have incredible talent at every position. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. So I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. Oops. Working out of a free bedroom party. We haven't made it just how you do it. This Is masters of scale. Good evening, Atlanta.

3:27 You spend it. career um Telling stories and helping tell stories. And I'm curious.

3:36 What's your first memory of seeing a world built on a screen that Just took your breath away. Two thousand and one a space odyssey. My mom. Now I didn't know this at the time. She was trying to get away from my dad.

3:51 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.

4:05 of the ship going across the screen and the sort of feeling of the world that he was asking us to consider. I didn't qu obviously didn't understand it at eight, but it just a memory I'll never forget. Frank, at the risk of of getting too personal too early. Okay, we're among friends. We are among friends. Um when you say your mom was uh trying to get away from dad, what what do you mean by that? Uh 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.

4:32 Uh a lot of mental health problems. And so you know, my parents ended up not C your marriage didn't survive. You know, my mom was you know, an important person in my life. And uh

4:46 So You know, the things that I saw as sort of adventures, like Going to see you know two thousand and one space odyssey. you know, turned out to be really valuable for me. That

4:58 a 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 you're a storyteller. This is you know.

5:11 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. Yeah and I got a writing scholarship to school and I think Everything that I grew up in.

5:26 Well, 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 from there to where we are today?

5:36 I think it was very helpful that I was focused ear on. On how to tell a story. story 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 an a production accountant who's trying to understand why a director make 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 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.

6:12 But the bottom line is I think it was very helpful for me to to grow up as focus on story. Then as I learned the craft. I began to realise all these other parts of the industry. And 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

6:32 is recognizing talent. Right. Mainly just'cause I'm a good audience. I I love talent. When I began to realize wait a minute, I'm really more of a producer entrepreneur.

6:44 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 As an industry. That has a really incredible social impact. Yeah.

6:58 You're handling it the right way, right? And I think uh through several startups. Some failures, some wins. I uh met who was then the Pinewood team. James Vond movies, you've probably all heard of'em, formed uh 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.

7:23 Pinewood sold its stake and the facilities were rebranded as Trilleth Studios in twenty twenty. And it was a facilities organization. And when you say facilities organization, what does that mean? It's like renting hotel rooms, right? You you're just providing facilities to productions to execute on their production, right? And at the time. the studio was looking for its first leader. And I had given uh this

7:47 Keynote speech. At the innovation summit in Zurich, Dan just showed up in my office one day and said you know, you the way you're thinking about industry, you know, we're looking for a a leader and He invited me to come, Les and my wife Leslie and I to come visit. Um I met the Pinewood team. Which I thought was very nice, but I wasn't interested in running facilities. Why not?

8:08 I don't know that business. I'm a I'm a filmmaker and an entrepreneur and uh technologist. At that time I had uh just exited a technology company that was making digital humans and I wasn't really Focused on Running facilities. But You know, Dan said something kind of important to me in that first meeting. Think of this as a seven hundred acre campus that you can paint as an entrepreneur.

8:31 Mm. 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 let's just I just want to dial in real quick. When you say digital humans, you don't mean like literal. Robots walking around. So I was co-founder and uh Uh CEO of a

8:56 We call them hyperrealistic digital humans. Uh and um we created the Michael Jackson 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

9:15 life out of me'cause by the way in dress rehearsal that performance didn't work. Oh. So there were only eleven million people watching and ten thousand people live. Went wrong. It just didn't work. We were putting together a lot of technologies that 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.

9:37 So that was uh A very challenging time because it was a startup. We were emerging technology. We didn't have a product market fit. You didn't really like tell me where digital humans belong right now, right? Well then this is this is also ten years plus ago, so ten years ago, right? Yeah.

9:54 We don't product market fit. There was one night back in twenty fourteen. I was out of cash. So Thursday night for Friday payroll. Yep. Every entrepreneur who's been in this room I I'm not gonna ask for a raise of hand, but please hear a few here. And because we were doing animation at the highest levels, we were literally animating

10:14 One of the most famous faces in the world. And we were out of money. And there was that really awkward moment that I had to am I gonna 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 has agreed to leverage my house. I haven't told my wife about that yet, so I could lose my business. I can lose my business, my house, and my wife if this goes wrong. So, you know, but if I don't pull payroll.

10:44 This is a very high profile company because Six of our artists were some of the most famous animator artists in the industry. That's the only way we were able to pull off Michael Jackson. 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 means to say I pulled payroll. Yep.

11:02 And We got Through it. But it was a very, very much a startup business and We created some really wonderful tech.

11:10 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 ev a lot of people in this town know, Chick fil A is an amazing business, right? And Dan's an amazing leader. He was basically saying, look, just paint, brother, just

11:32 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 Start investing in content companies and technology companies, and let's build a place. That really is a a platform for storytellers. A place that You know, is really unique, I think. When you came here and you saw this canvas and you were able to envision it as a canvas.

12:01 What were you able to see that you could build here that made it worth moving cross country and and starting a new life here? It was basically if we made some bets. into some emerging content companies and Mets into some emerging tech companies. At this place that's twenty 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

12:26 Opportunity is. And so That's kinda where I felt like okay, let's do this. And fortunately at the time the the Pinewood CEO and the and and and investors at that time

12:39 Now they recapped. They wanted to focus on facilities and we ended up separating, you know, buying them out. But Ivan Dunley, he was a CEO of Pinewood at the time. Really like this idea of being entrepreneurial and

12:54 erecting this these other businesses and figuring out how to build this opportunity. So th this was in the in the twenty When the joke in Hollywood was you would uh show up at Sunset and Gower, walk in the door, and they'd say, Welcome to Netflix, you're greenlit. Uh the last few years have been a little bit different environment. Yeah. So how have you weathered that? What surprised you and what what are you doing differently in this post COVID, post strike? cut back on content spend world that we're now in. There were st things that did really surprise us all, which uh you just mentioned them, right? The pandemic, right.

13:35 The stuff that didn't surprise us. was You know, Hollywood has this habit of and and a lot of industries are guilty of this, but we in the film industry are are very guilty of this. Spending like drunken sailors. Waking up hungover. You know, it's like Oh guess what?

13:52 You gotta pay for this. And we had the good fortune at Trilleth. 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 gonna be a correction.

14:07 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 ten years in here. What is Trilliph today? It's this place.

14:25 That has everything great storytellers need to do anything they can imagine. And by the way Everything yet. I'd say that that's our vision.

14:38 But we have like seventy five percent of everything. We have some of the most amazing technology. We have some of the most amazing homes and a town. And that we figure if we can do that, wrap ourselves around the current and next generation of storytellers. And really. Ignite this uh 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 uh an up and coming filmmaker named Demetrius Wynn, who's in the audience, right?

15:17 Everywhere y you know that we want to be home. to those storytiers 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

15:42 Could actually Live there. Yeah. That's very hard to do today. Part of what I'm hearing is important about this is 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, our industry is tough on families.

16:02 Because we're traveling all the time. Right. Four months away for a movie show. 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 sixty-five thousand square foot wellness center that when a crew comes in, when you have fifty five hundred people on the lot working every day. Every crew member on that lot has a free membership to a world class wellness center.

16:27 We have all the technology and the cameras and lights and transp You know, we have I think sixty seven businesses at Trellith that range from the largest lighting and grip company to the best donut shop. You know in the world. Go have a donut a hero. It's unbelievable. And literally a kindergarten there, too. Not just a kindergarten, we have uh it's called a forest school.

16:50 And it's a K through twelve. And so yes, we have to think about where the kids are going to school, right? So I think the idea of Habing all of those resources is what makes it work and not simply great sound stages and great technology, right?

17:07 In just a minute, Frank and I are joined on stage by an actor, creator, and entrepreneur who calls Trilleth home. Wi Newsroom is known for award winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wired's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable?

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19:15 I hope to see you there. Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find the full video from this live event and much more on our YouTube channel. For the second half of our conversation with Frank Patterson, we asked Christina Wren to join us on stage. Christina is an actress, filmmaker, and entrepreneur who has made a home and is working in the Trillith community.

19:39 You 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 uh Christine about your experience here because you didn't grow up In Georgia. How did you end up here?

19:55 Frank really and um Kelly who is here in the audience, my husband's aunt. Uh we were in Los Angeles and um contemplating moving back to New York'cause our family's on the east coast. And Kelly. called up my husband and and she said, 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?

20:19 Um because he went to Florida State while Frank was the dean there and they were very close. So he text Frank and um 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 gotta we gotta 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've really enjoyed being down here. Christina, one of the things that I'm I'm struck by from Frank's narrative is as a 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 they have a spark and idea or they're technologists, whatever it might be, but 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

21:12 Uh twenty ten ish. And so uh you know, we make Films and streaming series and such, but we also do a lot of uh branded content for big uh 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

21:38 catch really big and run an office in Soho and then like run ourselves into the ground really quickly. Yeah. Um and that has been I think maybe our strongest suit and I think because we center story because you know If we can bring that to our clients and say story is how you're gonna 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 um information will land in a deeper way.

22:09 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, but when you were starting your production studio, that that wasn't there. So like I mean just really basics, like How did you learn how much to charge? How did you learn about production accounting? As a creative, it's not obvious that one would be great at doing that too. Yeah. So h 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, it so there were resources like that that we could just yeah, well. Um And uh

22:50 And I think honestly, we like were severely. undercharging for a very long time. I think it helped us win business as a young company. Um 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.

23:20 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 and so there is sort of I feel like I'm always just eavesdropping. I'm sort of like okay, what are what are you doing with your and what are we doing now? And you know, because I didn't go to business school, you know, I went to uh theater school. And so we are There is a a trial and error, but I think that's okay. Like 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. You know, maybe we can um See value in that.

24:00 What's been different for you about being in Georgia with Trilliff than it was being in Los Angeles. Quality of life here has shot through the roof. We have Much bigger, nicer home than we would have, you know. Honestly, we love our kids. B our kids are at the forest school at Trilleth. They're

24:21 Flourishing. They really like 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, you know, 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 like indie creative projects as well as our client work. I wanna bring us home with a few questions for each of you. So I'm 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 in your career?

24:56 I had a a very lucky moment um as an actor which is that Zach Snyder saw me in a hummus commercial and then wanted to work with me. So that, I mean, sort of uh launched me as an actor a little bit. In terms of my production company, we're in an interesting moment right now, which is exciting and 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 Um that we're working on. Actually, Lauren Petsky, uh, 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 gonna be directing, Demetrius is producing, and it's about a high school girls basketball team and based here in Atlanta in 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, you know, reach out to different types of people that uh we're aiming to work with and so

25:56 I feel like I'm in that moment right now. Amazing. 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.

26:12 And it was the first day of shooting and I don't know what I'm doing. I'm a complete impostor, right? Never made a movie. This is ridiculous. I'm gonna lose everybody's money and I start throwing up. So I 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. Mm.

26:31 It's funded. It's gonna get made. It's just on you how good it's gonna get made. You know. And it was just relief like Of course. This is gonna get made. I gotta wake up here.

26:44 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 and and so since then it's just been like I gotta believe in myself. Second question for each of you. One thing that has surprised you about the industry social media has really surprised me. It like When I was starting out, it was much more just people sharing funny photos at a bar and things like that. And now it really is such a huge tool that artists and filmmakers and businesses

27:19 really kind of have to learn how to use and use well. And so it's an amazing opportunity to be able to market for yourself in that way. That's just been a really neat and Surprising thing that has radically transformed the entertainment industry. And you know, building on that. I'm often just surprised at how boldly

27:39 You know, I I I love the young filmmakers or the young storytellers, the young entrepreneurs that like nope. Doesn't matter how it's done, I'm doing it. And that's Really important. We have uh a number of early stage founders in the room. Um, super grateful, by the way, to our partner Capital One Business that helps bring early stage founders to events like this. Um, brings them to our summit in October in San Francisco, by the way. The deadline for applications is coming up. And we have a lot of them in our audience because they're coming and looking for just that one

28:09 Not yet. That one bit of advice that is gonna get them over a hurdle, get them through a hard day, help them solve a problem that they have no earthly idea. So If there's a piece of advice that you can offer.

28:23 to those early stage founders who are who are with us. What's that advice? Jim Burney, are you here? Stand up for me if you don't mind. I'm sorry to put you on the spot. How old are you, Jim? Jim's fifty nine.

28:39 You're in the middle of a startup right now called what? Do you know how we're gonna be successful? You have it figured out. Okay. That guy has done more businesses

28:50 All right, so so just just so we kept twenty four watts. Twenty four watts, it's a kids company. By the way, twenty four watts is the amount of energy the human brain expends when you're feeling inspired. That is one of the smartest human beings in the world. He didn't know how he's gonna succeed. So No one knows. Just keep pivoting until you get that

29:09 product market fit or whatever it is that you're trying to do and it's always scary and there's really tough nights, but It's a club. He said writing is like driving at night. you can only see as far as the headlights show you, but somehow you make your way home. Yeah. Um so I I that sort of reminds me of that. Christina, one piece of advice. Really what is the most

29:38 specific the most distinct thing that you are passionate about that you bring to the table that your background offers you and focus in on that. Because there are so many creatives, so many startups, so many businesses. But when you can figure out where is the need and how you can fill it and just Keep iterating, keep honing that. Um rather than trying to Watch someone else's success and be like, Oh, that was cool. Let me you know. Yeah, like be as

30:04 As specific as you can and keep sharpening that. So we're gonna have to come back to Atlanta to to do this again with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um I want to thank you both for being with us tonight. Thank our in-person audience for being with us. Thank um the the incredible team that helps put this together. We can't do any of this without all of you, so grateful to to every single one of you. And um Thank you for coming by the way this is really great. We're so glad you're here. No, it's really our pleasure and it's our honor and um uh I'm gonna I'm gonna encourage people to to get down to Trillet to take a look because what you're building is is spectacular. Thank you all so much. And thank you. Frank's energy is infectious.

30:47 Seeing what he and the Trillith team are building in Georgia is an absolute inspiration, and it is no wonder people like Christina Wren are feeling the pull. to make Trilleth their creative home. Special thanks to our live events team, the incredible folks at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, and our wonderful partners at Capital One Business. To learn more about our upcoming Masters of Scale live event in Los Angeles on June 17th, go to mastersofscale.com/slash events. That's masters of scale.com.

31:19 Slash events. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening. Masters of Scales await what original. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our senior producer is Trisha Bobida.

31:45 The production team includes Masha Makutunina and Brandon Klein. Our senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastanelli and Brian Pew. Original music by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Le Tal Malad.

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