The Color Timer: Live Interactive Remote Workflows With Louper.io

Welcome to the Colour Time podcast.

I am your host, Vincent Taylor.

This is the podcast where

we speak with professionals

who work with colour.

Today we are speaking to Mr. Alex Williams.

Alex is the founder, CEO,

and all around nice fella from Louper.

Louper's a remote, I don't know what you call it,

viewing system, we'll ask

him, we'll ask him what it is,

but it's used for remote workflows

and things like that for grading.

So I'm really looking

forward to having a chat with him.

So let's go.

Take your seats because the

hourglass is about to turn.

We are entering the world of the micro podcast.

Explore the craft, creativity, and science

of professionals who use colour to tell stories.

Welcome to the Colour Timer with Vincent Taylor.

- Alex, thank you for joining me.

- Thanks for having me,

it's nice to be here, Vincent.

- Yeah, man, I appreciate you taking time out.

I so often forget to start my little sand timer,

so let's do that first so the game show can begin.

So boom, oh, I'm being so well behaved

for remembering these things.

And all the construction sounds

seem to have stopped all around me,

seem to have stopped all around me,

so that's good as well.

- What countdown thing going on there?

Is that intentional behind your screen?

Is that intentional behind your screen?

- That's just, it should

just be the recording, I hope.

- Yeah, cool.

- Oh yeah, there's the

hourglass thing, cool, nice.

- We'll see if it works.

It's all kind of stuck together with Band-aids.

Let's jump straight in.

This is a big, broad question

and it can go in a zillion different directions,

but you have a company called Louper.

Tell me about Louper.

What do you do and what service does that offer?

- Yeah, so it's a little startup.

It's a cloud-based live collaboration platform

for filmmakers, so

for filmmakers, so

predominantly used in post-production,

so across editorial,

colorists, VFX artists, sound designers.

Also used a little bit in production.

And it really is in four words,

it's Zoom for video professionals.

So it's a kind of a meeting

live collaboration platform

you can do live over the shoulder.

It's an edit or sound for color sessions remotely,

and the idea is that it's very focused

towards artists and creatives

working with their colleagues and clients.

So really trying to recreate the experience

of sitting in an edit suite or

cutting room or grading suite,

but trying to do that online remotely

with stakeholders from all over town

or all over the world.

So yeah, we're a small company.

We started sort of 2022.

We're growing, we raised a

bit of venture capital funding,

and we're having a lot of fun.

- So how long has it been going then?

How long has Louper been going?

- It's officially two years in April

since we've kind of launched publicly.

But I started as a side project.

I really wanted a way to achieve remote working

with directors.

I was an editor for a long time.

That's the world I came from.

I don't come from a technical background at all.

I was an editor for close to

15 years across commercials

and music videos and feature films,

and really built Louper because I needed

a really easy, simple to use platform

that would allow me to work with directors

and ad agencies from anywhere,

and to do it in a way that kind of recreated

as much as possible the

experience of working in person

with these people.

I came up through the ranks working in edit suites

and cutting rooms and building and maintaining

relationships with clients

and directors and producers,

and found that it was really

difficult to do that online

with just an asynchronous

sending links back and forth

kind of platform like your

frame.io's and media silos.

Really was gonna try and do it in a way that

preserved that in-person

collaboration feeling and benefits.

So yeah, that's my long answer to how long

we've been going for.

I started at a totally as a side project,

I didn't intend for it to

become a fully fledged company,

but yeah, here we are.

- What's the reaction been

from clients and people to Louper?

- Yeah, it's been interesting.

It's largely positive, which is good.

Like from the, in terms of the user base,

maybe that will help contextualize it.

We started going after freelancers and independence

and really small boutique

post facilities and post houses,

and actually really freelancers initially.

That was the world I came from,

and that sort of from a product perspective

wanted to build a product

that would suit their needs,

both from a product perspective

and also from a budget perspective,

and really use that as our

testing ground, if you will,

to sort of get product market fit,

to figure out what customers wanted,

who they were, how they were using it.

So the reaction on that front was really good,

and what happened was that

companies started using it,

and post facilities started using it,

and pretty big companies

started getting interested in it.

So we kind of built out the platform

to suit their needs as well.

And now we're at the point

where we've got sort of this 50-50 customer base

where half our customers and users are freelance,

individual freelancers,

and half are larger post

facilities and studios and so on.

- And is it predominantly US or is it worldwide?

- It is, it's worldwide,

but it is predominantly US,

not by design or by intention,

just that's how it's happened.

We put the product out there.

We don't really do much

outbound sales and marketing.

Really it's all mostly

product-led growth and inbound stuff,

so people discover us and get referred

by their friends or

colleagues, and they come to find us.

So there hasn't been this design campaign

to attract US customers,

that's just kind of what's happened.

I'd say it's about 80% US and 20%,

the remaining 20% is UK, Europe, and Australia.

- Yeah, I mean, that was

definitely the case with me.

Louper was recommended to me

when I kind of started freelancing

and I was looking at different options

and there was a big loud, "you just use Louper"

just like from most of the

colleagues I was working with,

everyone seems really, really

happy with it, which is great.

You said it kind of kicked

off a couple of years ago.

Is that a coincidence with the pandemic,

with the way things happen,

or was that part of the motivation?

- It was part of the motivation.

I actually started playing

around with this kind of workflow

and the source of product in 2019, so pre-pandemic.

And I actually had come through it

through another platform that

required proprietary hardware,

it was pretty tricky to use,

but the end result was great.

It was, I was working in an

edit suite in Soho in London

with a director who lived in LA.

We worked in person for a while,

he had to go back to LA and we still wanted to do

like a week's worth of changes.

And so we ran the session and it worked great,

but the whole setup was incredibly convoluted,

required a big proprietary hardware box

and I thought there are kids streaming on Twitch,

there's gotta be an easy way to do this.

It's not that easy.

But yeah, that was where it initially started

and then I didn't really do anything about it

until I was bored and sitting at home

during lockdown in 2020.

- So it was either gonna be make lots of bread

or build Louper.

- Yeah, and actually I started with the bread

and then switched over to Louper.

- I do like, one of the things

that kind of instantly sold me

with Louper was from a client perspective,

how bloody easy it is.

You just click on it, open it up and away you go.

I was finding that with some of the other options,

they had to go through too

many hoops to make that work

and people just, they can't be bothered,

they don't wanna deal with that.

They just wanna get the picture

and get on with doing the job.

- Yeah, I mean, I experienced that having come from

mostly working in

advertising and ad land and agencies

and people just, it just has to be one click join.

They're not very technically savvy,

they don't want to be,

they just want it to be as simple as possible.

So we really, yeah, I took a lot of that experience

from having worked in

editorial advertising for a long time

and infused it into the product

and to try to make something as simple as possible.

But at the same time, the

product does keep expanding

and we keep adding features

and listening to user feedback.

So we're kind of--

- Well, that's a perfect segue actually Alex,

because I was gonna ask you,

because in the short time that I've been using it,

relatively short time I've been using it,

I've seen it evolving.

So I'm wondering, and you

might not be able to talk about

this, but what's coming up or

is this gonna be an NAB reveal

that we can't talk about or?

- Yeah, so there's no particular NAB reveal,

there are multiple things going on.

There's a lot we're working on.

We try to be pretty open with customers,

we're pretty communicative on new updates

and stuff coming out.

We're always improving the platform.

And one thing we're trying to do,

which I think probably

separates us a little bit from

some of the other solutions

out there is we are trying

as hard as we can to really make it

a complete collaboration solution.

So for example, we added a year ago

and people are using it more and more now

and some people are only using that feature

with the ability to upload video files,

have collaborative watch

passes of those video files,

in addition to doing a

typical live streaming session.

And so a lot of the focus

this year is on building out

that side of the product, doing timestamp comments,

all that kind of stuff.

That really should be ultimately a platform

that serves both the needs of live streaming,

real time sessions, but also the ability

to do timestamp comments and review links.

And really building out.

Yeah, so as opposed to having to have two or three

different solutions to cater your needs,

we really want to try and build it out into

kind of a platform that answers all your needs

from a collaboration and working with clients

and colleagues point of view

in terms of reviewing content.

- Yeah, I mean, straight away, I'm going,

"Oh my God, that would be fantastic."

Is nothing better than doing a live session

in person remotely, it's always gonna be better

because you're getting that feedback straight away

and you're getting emotional reactions

to when people watch it.

But it's really handy if people can just also

scribble down some notes.

So when you go back and you go,

"Oh shit, I missed that thing about the close up

of about the guy's face."

And yeah, that's great.

- Yeah, for me, it's like the ultimate thing

should be probably

something that is synchronous live.

First with a graceful fall back to async

or allow people to do both.

That's where I think we're headed.

I won't go down a rabbit hole

because it would take much longer than 15 minutes

about generative AI and all that kind of stuff.

I think what we're trying to do is to be

sort of a meetings collaboration platform

where you can collaborate

synchronously and asynchronously

in one cohesive way.

What's interesting as well is that some customers

are using Looper for production as well.

So they're doing sort of like remote

or virtual video village.

And then running that same show through post.

So they'd be using Louper

for video village initially

and then for grade and sound mix

and color sessions during post.

- And just so I understand that.

So it would be a situation where

certain people couldn't be on set obviously.

And so they can just send

what's happening real time.

- Exactly.

- As if people are sitting in that video village.

- Exactly, yeah.

So you'd send out the production camera feed.

Some people do both where they send a -

like stream out a witness camera,

like a GoPro, whatever, a wide angle witness camera

and the production camera feed.

So you can kind of get both.

You can get the witness camera for context,

the production camera feed as the video monitor.

And it's exactly useful that it's used

in cases where producers or

stakeholders cannot be on set.

Which is an interesting use case.

It was one that we didn't really push very hard

but people are just starting to use.

- Yeah, that's really, really interesting.

This next question is a

little bit of crystal ball gazing.

But I mean, do you think that working remotely

is here to stay?

- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I saw it coming kind of a

while before the pandemic,

I think, you know, stuff was,

and I certainly, just as a freelance editor,

was starting to do,

I was starting to do more and more stuff remotely

around 2018, I would say.

And I think things were

heading in that direction anyway.

I think the pandemic only accelerated it.

I do, I'm not fooling anyone.

I still think that working in person,

if you can be in person with someone,

at some point in the project, that's great.

That, do it, right?

That's first prize.

You know, that's how I came up with ranks.

That's how I learned.

That's how I, you know, through osmosis,

being in cutting rooms with directors and editors.

And having that

camaraderie, I think doing stuff live,

... online remotely is great

and will always be here

and will probably become a predominant way

that people work.

But I don't think it should

completely eradicate in person,

if you can do it in person.

- It's interesting to use the word camaraderie

because it is that.

There is something nice

about that energy in a room.

But I mean, another version

of that is the hybrid thing

where, you know, you get a

couple of people in the room,

but there's a couple of people who can't be there.

And so you end up using, you

know, Louper for that situation

and which I've done a couple of times

and that's been great.

That's worked really well.

- For sure.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So yeah, I hear use cases like that all the time

and that's happening more and more,

especially with, you know, important people,

not, you know, moving out of cities,

but still having a say.

You can do hybrid sessions.

You know, we had a customer a few months ago say

that they were planning on renting space.

They were working on an indie film,

planning on renting an office space in LA

to work together with the director and editor,

ran a session on Louper as a test

and liked it so much they decided

against renting office space

and just decided to, you know, use Looper all day,

which was awesome.

- Which is fantastic, right?

Actually, is there a limit to the time

Actually, is there a limit to the time

that you can have a Louper session going?

- There are, depends on the tier.

So free tier is pretty limited.

Plus is, I think, two hours straight.

Pro is eight hours straight, so all day

and then the studio tier is like 24 hours.

- Gotcha.

- And then there's no limit to how many times

you can have a session, so

you can restart and go again.

- And that's why I will

never get the top, top, top tier

because I don't wanna grade for 24 hours straight.

That would be awful.

(laughing)

- Yeah, yeah.

- It's really for ...

for customers who don't wanna think about it.

- No, that's it.

You've been doing more and more interviews

and I quite like, I've just

started doing this recently,

but I quite like it, where I ask you, you know,

is there something that you

wish somebody would ask you

about your product that people don't ask you?

And you can say no, you can say no.

Everyone asks me everything, but you know,

but I'm curious.

(laughing) Or something that you would like to kind of--

- I mean, it's the one thing I kind of already,

I think it's the one thing

I already kind of answered,

which was, or spoke about at least,

which was I think people

make the mistake of viewing us

and what we're trying to do

is just as a passing service

or something small and

what we're really trying to do

is build something big,

both in scope of the product

of what it does, both in

scope of who we're serving.

You know, I think that's the next,

the next five, six, seven, eight years

is gonna be heavily focused on live synchronous

collaboration tools in the cloud.

- Yeah.

- And we wanna try and be at the front of that.

- Yeah.

I have never done this before where we've actually

finished our series of questions exactly

when the color time has finished.

That's genius.

That means you're wonderfully succinct.

- I timed that pretty well.

I mean, I was watching it.

- You did!

(laughing)

- I was keeping an eye on it.

That thing on the screen

was particularly useful, yeah.

- Alex, it's been a delight and I'm really grateful

that you took time out and I mean,

I for one am gonna absolutely keep using Louper

and I was thinking about it this morning.

I went, I don't want it to

turn into a fanboy infomercial,

but at the same time, I wanted it to people

to get a bit more of an education about it.

If someone decides they wanna jump into the world

and use Louper, I mean, all the information's there

on the website of how to

set up and all the rest of it?

- Yeah, exactly.

So we have, yeah, we've

got super decent setup guides

and onboarding stuff.

We've got a wealth of

information when you sign up as well.

So yeah, Louper.io is the

website, LOUPER.IO

- Yeah, I'll put that in the

show notes for everyone as well.

- Yeah, and then we also have, you know,

we've got onboarding capabilities.

We're happy to jump on calls as people.

Yeah, we're pretty open and accessible.

- Awesome.

Well, Alex, thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

- Thank you very much, Vincent.

Great to talk to you. - Cheers.

- Thanks.

- Alex, thank you so much for taking time out

to be on The Color Timer.

It was really, really good to speak with you.

There was a couple of things

we chatted about afterwards,

which I went, oh, we should have included that,

but we were good.

We were really well-behaved.

We kept it to 15 minutes, which was excellent.

Thank you to my executive

producer, MixingLight.com.

If you are watching this or listening to this

on the Mixing Light website,

you already know what they are or what they do.

If you don't, then check them out, MixingLIght.com.

They can help you with everything color-related

and more, actually, and

they're a really fantastic asset.

Thank you, the listener or watcher or both,

for taking time out to listen to the podcast.

Like and subscribe to all that kind of stuff.

I know I keep saying it,

but it really, really does make a difference.

It really does help and look after yourself.

I'll see you next time.

Cheers.

- The Color Timer, a micro-podcast experience.