Six Foot Five Productions combines the talents of Taylor Robinson and Jason Wallis. We had coffee recently at Urban Standard and they answered a few of my questions, as well as gave me a lot of laughs. They are really passionate about what they do and you can check out some of their work at http://www.sixfootfiveproductions.com.
Why Six Foot Five?
Taylor: “It took us forever to decide on the name of the company. I had a buddy that said ‘You should call it Six Foot Five Films, because it rolls off the tongue easily and it would be a cool logo.’ I didn’t really want to do it, and then I mentioned it to Jason and he liked it. At least he pretended to like it.”
Jason: “I didn’t really care what we called it. There are lots of successful companies who started off with what might have sounded like stupid names, like ‘Nike,’ but they have great products. I felt like no matter what our name was, what we do is going to make it great or not. I don’t feel like the name will make it great, but we will make it great. Hopefully that’s what we are going to do.”
Where do you draw inspiration?
Taylor: “I watch a lot of movies, but not a lot of TV. But I really draw a lot of inspiration from music, more so than movies. I can be inspired by the way a song makes me feel and then I can take that feeling and translate it into other things. For example, I am working on a video that’s happening in Atlanta in a couple of months. At the very beginning of the editing process, I sat down and said ‘What song do I want this video to be like?’. So I started listening to a lot of music. I really wanted to get a feeling… a song has a feeling, and I get a lot of inspiration from that. I also spend a lot of time absorbing other people’s work on the internet. I’ll watch videos and commercials from YouTube and Vimeo. If I have free time, I am doing that.”
Jason: “I am inspired when I see somebody that is passionate about what they do, has very good taste and immaculate attention to pushing something to its furthest limit. People that do things with excellence really inspire me. I’m so inspired when I am around people that do things excellently, those who are at the top of their game and do things the best of the best. That’s what I want to be. The dark side of that is that nothing is ever good enough.
“From a stills perspective, I subscribe to almost every magazine known to man. I don’t read half of the articles, but I just look and see who is doing what. When I find somebody in there who does something that makes me stop, I’ll go to their website and try to keep up with what they are doing. It’s not necessarily a celebrity or somebody that has a big name, but a lot of times it’s those people that end up getting my attention because they’re so good at what they do. People that are masters of their craft inspire me.”
Have you thought about getting into full-length feature films?
Taylor: “We’ve thought about it a lot. To be very general, what we want is to get to a place where people pay us to do what we want to do. That list is probably not as long as you would imagine, but on it would be feature-length films. We have personal projects that we already have in the works but none of them are feature-length just because we’re still a very young company (the company is just over a year and a half old). We need to take baby steps and not bite off more than we can chew. If somebody walked up to me with suitcases of $100 bills and the direction that we had to make a movie, I have no doubt that we could do it. So far, that hasn’t happened!”
What is your take on Commercial Kings? (Commercial Kings is a series done by “Rhett and Link” on IFC and it profiles their journey of making “Legendary Local Commercials.” The companies that they choose are often challenging from a marketing perspective: Taxidermy, Mobile Homes, Car Washes, etc.)
Taylor: “It’s a fantastic idea for a number of reasons. If you create something that gets passed around the Internet, it’s like catching lightning in a bottle. They have created a formula that is successful more often than it’s not for making a viral video, which is a feat in and of itself. Rhett and Link are actually helping these people. Some might think that they are making fun of the companies and people they are promoting, but those people know going in that the videos are going to be funny. It’s a great idea because it’s a new spin on how to promote a business.”
You guys are involved with Neverthirst, a ministry that brings clean and “living” water to the poor. How has that involvement impacted you?
Jason: “It gives me perspective on the things that really matter. It also really opens your eyes and helps you realize that this is the reality for much of the rest of the world. What we see in America is abnormal. We are among the wealthiest in the world. It also shows you just how easy it is to make a difference. I look for ways to get the most efficient return on my investment and when you put an American dollar in some of these third-world countries, that one dollar can make a significant impact on somebody’s life. A well in India costs about $2,500.00 but that impacts an entire village for 20 years. The village will now have clean water and the kids will stop getting diseases. They stop dying and people are healthy, can go to work and get educated. There’s a cycle of poverty and this can be one of the things that helps change that.”
Six Foot Five Productions
212 24th Street North
Birmingham, AL 35203
205.835.6484
