Cliff's Edge

Q: Introduce us to yourself and your company.
My name is Josh Morse, and I produce stuff for Cliff Freeman and Partners in NYC.

Q: Interactive Producers come from all walks of life, they are a hybrid of talents, tell us about your background and how you got interested in digital production?
I kind of fell into it to be honest. Its a really long story, but the short version is I wanted to draw comic books but then I had to pay rent. I like digital because its the most modern media out there. Its a media that incorporates all other media that came before it. That being said, I don’t just do digital production. Cliff is a small boutique-ie shop, so production there is truly integrated, because it has to be. For instance, I just produced a three TV spots shoot in Africa, and now I’m making an iphone app and an adobe air app. Its always something different, and that’s why its fun.

Q: How do you stay on top of emerging technologies and keep your team informed and motivated?
Friends. I have lots of really smart friends all over the place doing all sorts of different things. We like to talk about work. Reading stuff helps too. There’s this thing, the interweb, its pretty good for research.

Q: What does your ideal client/project look like?
Anything that is staffed up from the client side to the vendor side with fun intelligent people who really care about the work, not their egos.

Q: How do you educate your clients and set realistic expectations for a project?
I write some pretty detailed pre-bid books about how I’m spending their money and why I’m spending it that way. Then I personally present it before I actually spend it. Sometimes they don’t read them, but I try to make sure they understand the choices being made and the potential compromises involved well before production begins. That being said, I also make it a policy to never say “No.” I’ll say “I dunno, let me find out,” or “if we do that, then we can’t do this,” but never just plain “no.” I’m a producer. If I’m here to say “no,” then I’m not producing anything.

Q: What was the best project you have ever worked on?
I did a TV shoot in Buenos Aires for Snapple where we covered entire city blocks in bubble wrap. That was pretty fucking fun, and I’ll always remember that, but it wasn’t the best end result necessarily. Cliff Bot is prolly a better example, its why you are interviewing me now, after all. Cliff Bot was really easy for me, all the heavy lifting was done by really smart people who were very much excited by the idea and wanted to execute it to its fullest. Mike and Corey at Welikesmall, Joel Jeffords, Zack Holliday, and Jason Hoff deserve a lot of credit for Cliff Bot. But I’m a big believer that you are only as good as the last thing you did, so that means the best project ever better be whatever I’m working on right now.

Q: How many projects are you comfortable producing at one given time?
I don’t really have a choice about this so who really cares. But seriously, you have to know how much you can do, and how much your company can do. And then try to do a lil more then that, but not too much more that it makes the final product suffer.

Q: What does your dream production team look like?
I dunno, but it involves a fancy machine that can stop time.

Q: How do you ensure that your client's best interests are met?
All I can do is treat their money like my money, do my best to explain everything to them, and hope they understand it all.

Q: What is your vision of what the next phase of our industry is going to look like?
I’m pretty sure there will be less money to spend on the same amount of stuff. Therefore, everything is going to be scrappier, and you’d better really love what you are doing or you shouldn’t be doing it.

Q: Please share a snippet of wisdom that you would like to impart on our readers.
Be nice to people, and respect them, cause they will appreciate that.