Video effects add magic to motion pictures. Whether it’s a full-length feature film, music video, or commercial – the addition of visual artistry and special effects enhances the visual appeal for audiences and takes creativity to a whole new level.

This wouldn’t be possible without the right technology, created by people with the right know-how. With this in mind, allow me to introduce Steven Liszka, founder of the Hollywood-based company BIGFILMS.

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So, who are you and what’s your business?

Hey! My name is Steven Liszka, I’m from Paris, France, and I’m the founder of the Hollywood-based company BIGFILMS.

I started BIGFILMS as a side project in 2015. At that time, I was desperately looking for a way to fund my short film ASTRONAUT.

Today, BIGFILMS has become one of the largest platforms for action and blockbuster effects for filmmakers. You can see our effects everywhere: in short films, music videos, commercials, and even Hollywood blockbuster movies.

What is your backstory and what inspired you to come up with / pursue this idea?

OK, this story is really interesting! It involves traveling to Hollywood and flying to space. Or kind of.

It all started in 2016 when I was 27. I was working as a filmmaker, and I was writing the big blockbuster short film I always dreamt to direct. It was about space. With the money I had in my pocket, I hired an engineer, and together we created a gear capable of taking our cameras up to the stratosphere to get our own real shots from space.

The space launch was a great success!

The project quickly caught the attention of film producers, which was exactly what I expected. I flew from Paris to Hollywood, met some very inspiring people from the film industry, but at the end of the day, no one wanted to take the risk of investing in a short film.

And having no one willing to put money into my project was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

Back in Paris, I decided to put all my time and effort into creating a business that could fund my short film. Working as a filmmaker didn’t leave me enough time to work on my own projects. So I had to find a clever way to earn money without working day after day for other clients. Selling a digital product came to me as the best option.

The hardest part about creating this kind of business is finding what to sell. If you ever struggle with finding an idea, here’s a quick tip: think about what you’re already good at. Something that sets you apart from others. For me, it was special effects. Then see if there’s a gap in this market and find a way to turn your knowledge into a service or a product.

That’s how BIGFILMS was born, somewhere between Earth and space!

Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product or service- what was that like?

Creating my first product was a whole new adventure for me. As special effects artists, we always rely on digital assets. But as a filmmaker, you have no choice but to hire a special effects artist to help you bring your ideas to life. I felt that I could create some sort of shortcut here.

The idea for my Blockbuster Starter Pack came from watching Marvel movies. I remember saying to myself: what if I could take all the special effects out of these films and turn them into a product?

I watched tons of movies and screenshotted every scene featuring an interesting effect that would speak to my targeted customers (that was the fun part).

Once I was happy with my selection, I hired a couple of special effects artists that I used to work with to help me create all the effects.

Working on our first product cost me all my savings. At a certain point, I even had to borrow some money from my family to pay everyone’s salaries. It was a big risk then, but I really believed in the project’s potential.

It took me four months, hundreds of hours of computer calculations, and $10K of personal investment to finally bring our first product out on the market. I had literally no money left, but I was finally ready to put my first product in front of everyone’s eyes.

Describe launching the company… Where did you start?

Chapter 1: how I failed.

The hard lesson that I quickly learned when launching my business was that creating a product is only the very beginning of the process. It has to be good, really good, it takes you 200% of your energy, and yet, you’ve only reached level one in the business game. You just found the magic sword in the cave, but you’re not yet a warrior. Not even close.

I knew nothing about marketing a product or building a brand’s identity. And as you can expect, the first two months were hard with almost no sales.

Chapter 2: how I succeeded.

I was at a point where I wanted to quit. When something fails, you always convince yourself that there’s no way to make it work. That there is no room for your business, no audience for your product.

Times were hard, but deep inside me, I knew this product had potential. I had to rethink my approach entirely. I closed my website and started all the work from scratch.

Everything had to be redesigned. The website, the product’s images, and the video ads. I had only one single guideline, one idea in mind: what would I want to see on the website if I was the customer? What sales funnel would I expect to go through if I had to invest $99 in this product?

I quickly learned that selling a product is way harder than building it. It took me about a month to eventually launch a brand-new website.

Now the main challenge was to bring traffic to my store. I didn’t have an audience yet. No YouTube channel, no Instagram page. At that point, my only option was to reach out to those who already had a community. And this is how I discovered affiliate marketing.

As the product was great, it was quite easy to get to filmmakers with big YouTube communities. In exchange for reviews and tutorials, I offered them 20% to 30% of every sale made thanks to their affiliate link. A fair deal.

Suddenly, sales started to take off. I was relieved!

Chapter 3: how my revenues skyrocketed.

BIGFILMS was providing me with a steady stream of income for three years. It was a monthly $2K complementary source of revenue that I was fully injecting into the budget of my short film project ASTRONAUT.

I had no idea how to scale the business. Actually, I wasn’t even thinking about it. Affiliate marketing only gives you so little room to grow.

At the beginning of 2019, revenues slowly started to decrease. I had to try something new.

Paid advertising has always been a struggle for me. During these three years, I tried a couple of times to put my feet into Facebook ads, but none of my targeted campaigns were profitable. At the end of the day, I constantly lost money, so I decided to turn it off.

The time had come to roll up my sleeves and dig into the data. I launched a new campaign with a $10 daily budget and a broad audience, and I decided to let it run until I gathered enough data to understand who my real buyers were. It took me 10 days to realize my greatest mistake: I was targeting the wrong age range.

As my product was made for beginners, I mainly targeted a young audience. My intuition was right: young filmmakers click the most on my ads. But at the same time, they convert less. All my budget was spent to put my product in front of the wrong eyes.

Instead of targeting the 15-25 age range, I focused on the 24-44. And suddenly, my ads started to be profitable. Really profitable.

The more precise my targeting was (I was refining the demographics and the interests every week), the higher the return on investment. My ads quickly jumped from a 2x ROI to a 3x ROI.

At this point, I knew that all my effort had to go into paid advertising. I started to refine all my video ads.

I quickly saw one formula that performs extremely well:

– 30 seconds of video (most people will watch only 10 seconds, so put all the impressive stuff at the beginning)
– the 5 first seconds have to be super exciting
– focus on showing the result, not the product

Your ads are not here to sell your product. Your ads are here to make people click on your link. Bring people in front of your door.

Once I had a constant source of traffic, I started to focus on creating new products and new video ads.

This entire process made my revenues grow every month. Today, I spend about $800 daily on advertising, which results in a monthly $60K to $100K income.

What has worked to attract & retain customers so far?

BIGILMS’ main traffic source comes from paid advertising. I noticed a huge boost in sales when I started to refine my video ads.

People react extremely positively to videos. We live in a world where video media is everywhere. Our generation was born with television, and our kids communicate through TikTok.

If there is one piece of advice I would give every business owner, it would be this one: learn how to make exciting videos. They don’t have to look professional (videos shot with an iPhone sometimes outperform big-budget video ads), but they must entertain your audience.

I try to come up with new video ads every month or so. What’s great about videos on social media is that people tend to share them if they like them. And each time someone shares your video content, it’s free advertising for your product.

Take the time to grow your social media pages. We now have a social media manager who interacts with our followers and creates new content every week. This allowed us to quickly gain 100K followers on TikTok, and almost 40K followers on Instagram.

What books, podcasts, or people have been the most influential on your journey?

I’ve never been a big fan of books dealing with entrepreneurship. Don’t get me wrong. I believe that we all have a lot to learn from entrepreneurs like Robert Kiyosaki or Timothy Ferriss. But selling courses or books on how to be successful only proves that you know how to sell a book.

When I need to learn specific skills on a certain subject, I usually try to learn a general approach from Google or YouTube searches, and I quickly start digging into it by myself. I like learning by trying rather than following a step-by-step guide. What works for someone else won’t necessarily work for you.

How are things going today and what does the future look like?

Things are going very well today. Our revenues are growing each year, and we even receive offers from investors and buyers regularly.

We have one major project which we will focus on for the next few years. We’re currently building an amazing subscription-based platform that will come with a brand-new concept. Something that you have never seen on a subscription platform before.

I can’t say much about it now, as we haven’t launched the platform yet, but this project is big!

Any advice for others who are just starting out?

1/ Create your product with a marketing strategy in mind.

This one is probably one of the best pieces of advice that I can give you: before even creating your product, think about its video ad.

Everything starts from here: your ad will lead customers to your website, your website will put them in front of your product, and, hopefully, your product will make them buy.

The more appealing your ad is, the more sales you will get. Try to picture yourself as a customer watching the most exciting video ad ever made, then design your product according to what got you excited in your imagination.

2/ Don’t be easy to ignore.

When you work on a product, you always make some bold statements about how your business is going to be different and unique. But somehow in the process, you lose that energy. At the end of the day, your product page looks the same as your competitors.

If that happens, remember what got you excited in the first place. Don’t play it safe. Say it loud and clear: your product is different. It’s better, smarter, and greater. You’re here to disrupt the market.

3/ Don’t try to copy millionaire entrepreneurs.

Their stories are great, but their struggles are not yours. They won’t teach you anything useful for your business at that stage.

Reach out to entrepreneurs that are just a step ahead of you. Listening to Elon Musk is more entertaining than talking to your local business owner, but you have so much more to learn from someone dealing with similar issues.

What’s the best way for people to connect and follow you? Website, Social Profiles, Etc…

Website: https://bigfilms.shop/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makebigfilms/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@makebigfilms
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@makebigfilms/featured