Scott Lee and Justin Herman sat down in the middle of the night after hours of studying and working on college homework to get down to the nitty gritty of their own comedy show Barton Police and company, Barton Ct. Productions Inc. Following a recent conversation that Scott had with Stephen Wolfe, writer/director of Barton Police and co-founder of Barton Ct. Productions about possibly leaving the company in the distant future, Scott pitched some ideas on how to better improve the existing work flow of Barton Police and beyond.
“It’s actually a really good idea,” Justin Herman began explaining to other cast members at a small lunch at the local Wings ‘N’ More. “Scott can focus on the business end while Stephen can focus on the creative end.”
“Essentially we came up with a plan to build and expand the company to work in designated teams, where each person is more specialized toward a specific job. It was also critical, we figured out, to come up with some kind of a training system for new people entering the company and to focus a lot more on product promotion and advertising,” Scott Lee explains.
Currently, the work is divided up into two different piles, mostly taken care of by Stephen Wolfe and Scott Lee. Stephen Wolfe has done everything from concept art to scriptwriting to directing to editing to photography to some aspects of marketing while Scott has served as producer, actor, company administrator, marketer, audio production specialist, music composer, and web administrator.
So why not teams? Scott has for a long time intended on taking the company a different direction in terms of business and gearing up the entire process to be akin to earning a profit while Stephen Wolfe has been attempting furiously to come up with a product that is wholly unique and likely to win critical or audience acclaim. With the recent influx of new members being interested in helping in company projects, these volunteers can be given training to assist with the designated teams that are likely to be formed in the near future.
How might these work teams be structured?
Finance and Accounting - Company investments outside of its own products and services including checking, savings, money markets, stocks, properties, and so on will be supervised by some sort of small group that can be the mediator in company decisions. Can we afford new cameras? Should we greenlight a specific project? For the first time in Barton Ct.’s history the people associated with the company are beginning to see a growing need for organizing a specific team dedicated to this purpose.
Marketing - Who has done public relations? Justin Herman remarked, “Scott got us on the municipal access channel, and then the TAS Variety internet show, but he was only able to do that when he was out promoting and networking.” Cody Gist, a newer trainee to Barton Ct. who began by being a production assistant has since begun to be trained in aspects of interpersonal communications and better promotion methods using marketing materials.
“Training a good marketing and promotion team shouldn’t be that hard to do something simple that we know is effective,” Scott explains. “All we have to do is give a street team the right instructions and materials and they can go to work, bringing in an objectively measurable result.”
Production and Development - Stephen Wolfe will no doubt head the core of the creative team for a long time to come, developing new projects and enabling the company to continue traveling in a specific creative direction for its video medium. Over the years, Stephen has continually developed a number of high quality intellectual properties including his Doomsday, Howloween, and Barton Police universes. Each one of these vast worlds can be expanded upon, altered, improved, and worked within. Viewership for each potential franchise or property can be built upon collectively over time without having to ’start all over’ on the marketing process.
Company Administration and Legalities - While Barton Ct. Productions Inc. was incorporated in 2006, the company itself has been in existence since 1999. Since that year, the same core members have always been associated with the company’s projects. This has created a very distinct and specific company culture that, needless to say, does not likely feel a whole lot like a “company.” Still, even with a very friendly, open communication sort of work group that Barton Ct. is, it still requires the same legal protections and financially oriented direction that all other legal entities do.
Barton Ct. still has to arrange contracts, make proposals, strike deals, manage costs, scale productions properly, and receive legal counsel the same way any other company would. In the entertainment industry, it is especially important to know the limits of intellectual property law as well as how to best benefit artists and actors with good financial management between two parties.
In the future, it will also be necessary to manage Barton Ct. staffing and front line employees by figuring out how to best manage the new influx of labor and knowledge that the company will have to accommodate.
“I think that’s a great idea,” Stephen repeats the mantra that began to permeate much of the Barton gang at the Wings ‘N’ More. “And that would allow Scott to sort of do what he really feels he’s better suited for to have more of an impact and would allow us to do more of what we’re suited for.”
“Everybody wins,” Justin Herman affirms. In addition to the company reorganization strategy pitched by the group, new ideas began to spring up for further improving the current project of Barton Ct., Barton Police, and what is to become of the feature length documentary, I’m Not Gonna Lie. While the current plans for the long term future of Barton Police cannot yet be revealed, I’m Not Gonna Lie will still receive a brand new cut and content to become a more distinctive product. Future documentaries may be produced in the long term that will allow I’m Not Gonna Lie to be more fully marketable as well as projects that may be similar in tone but be more geared toward specific niche audiences and topics.
Plans exist for the future of Barton Police that could put the show onto a whole new level, speaking in terms of both financial and critical success, though these plans will have to wait to be publicly unveiled. In the mean time, Barton Ct. Productions Inc. appears to be increasingly dedicated to obtaining its own measurable results and improving its methods toward becoming an entirely sustainable entertainment entity.
Scott’s Voice Blog on Reorganization:
