Why great storytellers thrive in business

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JEFF BERMAN: Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. This week on the show we hear extraordinary stories and insight from the legendary Frank Patterson. He’s the CEO of Trilith Studios, the beating heart of Georgia’s growing film business.

Just south of Atlanta, Trilith spans hundreds of acres, boasts more than 30 studios, and is home to a growing number of incredible creators. Trilith is also home to some of Marvel’s biggest films and takes an innovative approach to nurturing a new generation of filmmakers and creators. That piece, the nurturing that next generation of filmmakers and creators, is core to Frank. He’s a professor and Dean Emeritus at Florida State’s film school and has mentored hundreds, if not thousands, of young people who are changing the face of the entertainment industry. Frank joined us live on stage in Atlanta at the Historic Fox Theater. It’s the latest in our Masters of Scale live series presented by Capital One Business.

[THEME MUSIC]

Copy LinkFrank’s early storytelling roots

BERMAN: Good evening, Atlanta. You’ve spent a career telling stories and helping tell stories, and part of our theme tonight is about world building, and I’m curious, what’s your first memory of seeing a world built on a screen that just took your breath away?

FRANK PATTERSON: 2001: A Space Odyssey. My mom — now, I didn’t know this at the time — she was trying to get away from my dad. So we went to a theater, and we watched that film. I think I was eight, and I’ll never forget it. I mean, it’s easy to say Kubrick, but that one shot of the ship going across the screen and the sort of feeling of the world that he was asking us to consider, I obviously didn’t understand it at eight, but it’s just a memory I’ll never forget.

BERMAN: Frank, at the risk of getting too personal too early.

PATTERSON: Hey, we’re among friends here.

BERMAN: We are among friends. When you say your mom was trying to get away from your dad, what do you mean by that?

PATTERSON: Well, as an adult, looking back, my dad’s no longer with us. I learned that he struggled with a lot of sickness, a lot of mental health problems, and so my parents ended up not certain their marriage didn’t survive. My mom was an important person in my life, and so the things that I saw as sort of adventures, like going to see the 2001: A Space Odyssey turned out to be really valuable for me. That world that I grew up in where there was all this tension, and I had an English teacher in high school pulled me aside. I grew up in a little town in Texas. He said, “You’re a storyteller.” Thank goodness for an English teacher to come in and say, “You’re a storyteller. Get out of this town. Do not grow up here.” And I got a writing scholarship to school, and I think everything that I grew up in was, as an adult looking back, it was a gift.

BERMAN: How do you end up running a massive studio? How do you get from there to where we are today?

PATTERSON: I think it was very helpful that I was focused early on on how to tell a story. Story was important to me because no matter where you end up in this industry, the real currency is the ability to tell a story. And whether you’re a production accountant who’s trying to understand why a director make a decision to purchase something or you’re a writer-director, it is everything. It’s everything that we breathe and live. And we haven’t been doing a great job of it lately as an industry, but some young people are doing some very cool things. But the bottom line is I think it was very helpful for me to grow up as a focus on story. Then as I learned the craft, I began to realize all these other parts of the industry. And to be honest with you, I was never the best person.

I was not a good athlete, but I was always on the team, and I knew how to pull good teams together. So I began to realize that kind of my talent is recognizing talent, mainly just because I’m a good audience. I love talent. When I began to realize, wait a minute, I’m really more of a producer-entrepreneur then I started a couple of production businesses and realized, wait a minute, I should do more than one film at a time. And I began to think of the industry as an industry that has a really incredible social impact if you’re handling it the right way. And I think through several start-ups, some failures, some wins, I met who was then the Pinewood team, James Bond movies, you’ve probably all heard of them. Formed here a partnership with Dan Cathy here in Atlanta.

Copy LinkBecoming the CEO of Trilith Studios

BERMAN: Pinewood is an iconic British film studio that partnered in the creation of the Georgia location. Pinewood sold at stake, and the facilities were rebranded as Trilith Studios in 2020.

PATTERSON: And it was a facilities organization and —

BERMAN: When you say facilities organization, what does that mean?

PATTERSON: It’s like renting hotel rooms, right? You’re just providing facilities to productions to execute on their production. And at the time, the studio was looking for its first leader, and I had given this keynote speech at the Innovation Summit in Zurich. Dan just showed up in my office one day and said, “The way you’re thinking about industry, we’re looking for a leader.” And he invited me to come, my wife Leslie and I to come visit. And I met the Pinewood team, which I thought was very nice, but I wasn’t interested in running facilities.

BERMAN: Why not?

PATTERSON: I don’t know that business. I’m a filmmaker and an entrepreneur and a technologist. At that time, I had just exited a technology company that was making digital humans, and I wasn’t really focused on running facilities, but Dan said something kind of important to me in that first meeting, “Think of this as a 700-acre campus that you can paint as an entrepreneur.” I thought, okay, now that’s interesting. He even said, “Why don’t you grab your team from San Francisco and have a move here and build digital humans here?” And I thought, okay, he’s being serious about this. We should think about this.

BERMAN: I just want to dial in real quick. When you say digital humans, you don’t mean literal robots walking around?

PATTERSON: Oh, no. Okay. So I was co-founder and CEO of a company that we call them hyperrealistic digital humans, and we created the Michael Jackson that appeared at the Billboard Music Awards in 2014. That was nine years after Michael’s death. It was an original song. It was an original performance. And so we did that. It scared the life out of me because by the way, in dress rehearsal, that performance didn’t work.

BERMAN: Oh. What-

PATTERSON: So there were only 11 million people watching it, and 10,000 people live.

BERMAN: What went wrong?

PATTERSON: It just didn’t work.

BERMAN: It just didn’t.

PATTERSON: We were putting together a lot of technologies that didn’t want to play nice with each other.

BERMAN: Yeah, an unstable stack.

PATTERSON: A very unstable stack, and it just didn’t work at dress rehearsal. So that was a very challenging time because it was a start-up. We were emerging technology. We didn’t have a product-market fit. Tell me where digital humans belong right now. Right?

BERMAN: Well, then this is also 10 years plus ago.

PATTERSON: 10 years ago. Right. Yeah. So we did have product-market fit. There was one night back in 2014, I was out of cash. It’s a Thursday night for Friday payroll. Every entrepreneur who’s been in this room, I know you—

BERMAN: We’re not going to ask for a raise of hands, but I’m imagining there are a few here.

PATTERSON: And because we were doing animation at the highest levels, we were literally animating one of the most famous faces in the world, and we were out of money. And there was that really awkward moment that I had: Am I going to pull payroll? Which is by the way, going to hit the bank account on Monday, and I don’t have the finances to cover. I do have a hard lender who has agreed to leverage my house. I haven’t told my wife about that yet. So I could lose my business.

BERMAN: Breaking news, Leslie.

PATTERSON: Yeah, I could lose my business, my house, and my wife if this goes wrong. But if I don’t pull payroll, this is a very high-profile company because six of our artists were some of the most famous animator artists in the industry. That’s the only way we were able to pull off Michael Jackson at that time. So if I don’t pull payroll, it’s going to be in the trades in the morning, and my business is over. So needless to say, I pulled payroll and we got through it, but it was a very, very much a start-up business. We created some really wonderful tech. By the way, in the end, it worked out. We had a nice exit out of it. But imagine coming off the heels of that and saying, ‘Let’s run facilities.” But that’s not the plan.

I think what was exciting about my partnership with Dan was Dan — as a lot of people in this town know — Chick-fil-A is an amazing business, and Dan’s an amazing leader. He was basically saying, “Look, just paint brother. Just paint.” Because he didn’t come from the film industry, right?

BERMAN: Yeah.

PATTERSON: But he loves it. He loves storytelling. And so I think the good fortune for me was to have that platform to say, “Okay, now let’s start investing in content companies and technology companies, and let’s build a place that really is a platform for storytellers that what’s ultimately become a city for storytellers, a place that is really unique, I think.”

BERMAN: When you came here and you saw this canvas and you were able to envision it as a canvas, what were you able to see that you could build here that made it worth moving cross-country and starting a new life here?

PATTERSON: It was basically, if we made some bets into some emerging content companies and bets into some emerging tech companies at this place that’s 20 minutes from the most traveled airport in the world, that has a great culture and a history of innovation, I bet we could go where opportunity is. And so that’s kind of where I felt like, okay, let’s do this. And fortunately at the time, the Pinewood CEO and investors at that time was excited about it. Now they recapped. They wanted to focus on facilities, and we ended up separating, buying them out. But Ivan Dunleavy was the CEO of Pinewood at the time, really liked this idea of being entrepreneurial and erecting these other businesses and figuring out how to build this opportunity.

BERMAN: So this was in the 20-teens.

PATTERSON: 2016, I think. Yeah.

BERMAN: When the joke in Hollywood was you would show up at Sunset and Gower, walk in the door, and they’d say, “Welcome to Netflix. You’re green-lit.”

PATTERSON: Right. That’s right.

BERMAN: Everything was getting made.

PATTERSON: Right. That’s right.

BERMAN: The last few years have been a little—

PATTERSON: It’s a different environment.

Copy LinkTrilith’s competitive advantage

BERMAN: Yeah. So how have you weathered that? What surprised you, and what are you doing differently in this post-COVID, post-strike cut back on content spend world that we’re now in?

PATTERSON: There were things that did really surprise us all, which you just mentioned them, right? The pandemic, right? The stuff that didn’t surprise us was Hollywood has this habit of, and a lot of industries are guilty of this, but we in the film industry are very guilty of this, spending like drunken sailors, waking up hungover. It’s like, oh, guess what? You got to pay for this. And we had the good fortune at Trilith of being home to some of the biggest movies in the industry, a lot of Marvel product as I think everybody here knows. But we knew that there was going to be a correction. And we have recently really widened the aperture of storytellers and businesses that we focused on to support now.

BERMAN: Let’s build off of that nearly 10 years in here. What is Trilith today?

PATTERSON: It’s this place that has everything great storytellers need to do anything they can imagine. And by the way, a little exaggeration, because we don’t have everything yet. I’d say that’s our vision. But we have like 75% of everything. We have some of the most amazing technology. We have some of the most amazing homes and a town, and that we figure if we can do that, wrap ourselves around the current and next generation of storytellers and really ignite this creative market ecosystem that we have. What are the businesses and the brains that you put into this place that together provide everything that a great storyteller needs to do, anything they can imagine? So on one hand, we have James Gunn. I can’t wait for you to see his take on Superman. And we have an upcoming filmmaker named Demetrius Wren who’s in the audience. And we have everywhere that we want to be home to those storytellers.

And when I first moved to Hollywood, the sound stages were two blocks away. There was a camera house four blocks away. Post was just over the hill in Burbank. Basically everything you needed was there. And it was a time and a place in Hollywood where a kid who was poor, broke from Texas, could actually live there. That’s very hard to do today.

BERMAN: Part of what I’m hearing is important about this is the physical proximity made a difference.

PATTERSON: Absolutely. Place is important. When we talk about everything, someone needs to do anything they can imagine, you also have to think about how people live, where they live. Our industry is tough on families because we’re traveling all the time.

BERMAN: So four months away for a movie shoot.

PATTERSON: Oh, it’s brutal. Right?

BERMAN: Yeah.

PATTERSON: But we have a town come visit you all. If you all hadn’t seen it, we think about where they live, where their kids go to school, what they eat. We have a 65,000 square foot wellness center that when a crew comes in, when you have 5,500 people on the lot working every day, every crew member on that lot has a free membership to a world-class wellness center. We have all the technology and the cameras and lights and transpo and everything. We have, I think 67 businesses at Trilith that range from the largest lighting and grip company to the best donut shop in the world. Go have a donut, a hero. It’s unbelievable.

BERMAN: And literally a kindergarten there too.

PATTERSON: Not just a kindergarten. We have, it’s called a Forest School, and it’s a K-12. And so yes, we have to think about where the kids are going to school. So I think the idea of having all of those resources is what makes it work and not simply great sound stages and great technology.

BERMAN: In just a minute, Frank and I are joined on stage by an actor, creator and entrepreneur who calls Trilith home.

[AD BREAK]

Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find the full video from this live event and much more on our YouTube channel.

For the second half of our conversation with Frank Patterson, we asked Christina Wren to join us on stage. Christina is an actress, filmmaker, and entrepreneur who has made a home and is working in the Trilith community. You may have seen her in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel or on ABC’s Will Trent. She also runs a start-up, a production company with her husband.

Copy LinkChristina Wren’s journey to Trilith

Tell us, Christina, about your experience here because you didn’t grow up in Georgia. How did you end up here?

CHRISTINA WREN: Frank, really, and Kelly, who is here in the audience, my husband’s aunt, we were in Los Angeles and contemplating moving back to New York because our family’s on the East Coast. And Kelly called up my husband and she says, “You have to look at what they’re doing in Atlanta. Look at what they’re doing down in Fayetteville.” And he looks it up, and he goes, “Frank is running this?” Because he went to Florida State while Frank was the dean there, and they were very close.

So he texts Frank, who I had enjoyed also getting to know over the years. And you said, “Come on down.” And showed him around. And immediately he came home and said, “We got to move there. It’s amazing what they’re doing.” And he pitched me and sold me. And so it’s been almost three years, and we really enjoyed being down here.

Copy LinkTrial and error in scaling a production company

BERMAN: Christina, one of the things that I’m struck by from Frank’s narrative is, as a creator, as a storyteller, then having to actually learn the business side of it. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, they have a spark in an idea or they’re a technologist, whatever it might be, but then all of a sudden the reality of actually having to build and run a business comes along. What’s it been like going on that part of the journey for you?

WREN: So we have a production company, Two Kids with a Camera, that we started 2010-ish. And so we make films and streaming series and such, but we also do a lot of branded content for big corporate clients. So we have something for American Express right now, and Lowe’s, Cisco, et cetera. We started very small. And so I think for us, it’s been a natural build over time, and that has been very successful. We didn’t pitch really big and run an office in SoHo and then run ourselves into the ground really quickly. And that has been, I think, maybe our strongest suit. And I think because we center story, because of our backgrounds, we can bring that to our clients and say, “Story is how you’re going to connect with people, whether it’s at your live event or as you’re trying to share the information that you guys have been researching, you will connect and your information will land in a deeper way.”

BERMAN: There’s so much that we, as entrepreneurs, have to figure out. And here we are in 2025 and we can go on ChatGPT or Claude and ask a whole bunch of questions and get really smart really quickly. But when you were starting your production studio, that wasn’t there. So I mean, just really basics. How’d you learn how much to charge? How did you learn about production accounting? How did you actually build the… As a creative, it’s not obvious that one would be great at doing that too. So how did that play out for you?

WREN: I mean, it was a lot of trial and error. We started our company with LegalZoom, so there were resources like that that we could just—

BERMAN: Shout out, LegalZoom.

WREN: Shout out to LegalZoom. And I think honestly, we were severely under-charging for a very long time. I think it helped us win business as a young company but we were scrambling, so we had to learn. I think that was one of the biggest things because as an artist, and I think anyone who’s passionate about their ideas, sometimes you’re just so excited to do it that you’re like, “Whatever, I’ll just do it for you.” And then really when we started working, I think maybe the first job we had that our eyes were kind of open to that was for Google up in Mountain View and just recognizing if you want to make a living and you’re working with companies like that, you need to think bigger.

I think also markets change. And so there is sort of, I feel like I’m always just eavesdropping. I’m sort of like, okay, what are we doing now? I didn’t go to business school. I went to theater school. And so there is a trial and error, but I think that’s okay. And I think that is part of learning the value of your product. You have to kind of test and say, okay, this budget everyone’s saying yes to without negotiating, maybe we could go a little higher, maybe we can see value in that.

BERMAN: What’s been different for you about being in Georgia with Trilith than it was being in Los Angeles?

WREN: Quality of life here has shot through the roof. We have a much bigger, nicer home than we would have. Honestly, we love our kids. Our kids are at The Forest School at Trilith. They are flourishing. They’re just like brilliant little dudes, and we really appreciate what’s going on there. So it really is a special place. The southern hospitality is very real. It’s very friendly. It’s very collaborative. And so that’s just been really incredible to get some of our projects off the ground, both some of our indie creative projects as well as our client work.

Copy LinkTipping points in Christina and Frank’s careers

BERMAN: I want to bring us home with a few questions for each of you. So I’m curious, as you reflect on your careers, each of you, what’s a moment that stood out that was one moment that was a real tipping point in your career?

WREN: I had a very lucky moment as an actor, which is that Zack Snyder saw me in a hummus commercial and then wanted to work with me. So that, I mean, sort of launched me as an actor a little bit. In terms of my production company, we’re in an interesting moment right now, which is exciting and hopefully kind of will be one of those moments where we are just thinking bigger and starting to pitch bigger for our next films. And so we have a feature right now that we’re working on.

Actually, Lauren Petzke, one of the teachers at the Trilith Institute, she’s a local television director, and I met her through my work with Women of Color Filmmakers. She came on as an instructor for us, and she’s going to be directing, Demetrius is producing, and it’s about a high school girl’s basketball team and based here in Atlanta and Georgia. And so this is a big moment, I’d say for me as a producer to come in and say, “Okay, I’m going to be brave. I’m going to think bigger. I’m going to reach out to different types of people that we’re aiming to work with.” And so I feel like I’m in that moment right now.

BERMAN: Amazing. Frank, one moment for you.

PATTERSON: I was younger, much younger — on my first film. I had raised money, and I had investors, and I went to go make the movie, and I had one of those moments where you realize, I shouldn’t be doing this. I don’t know what I’m doing. And it was the first day of shooting, and I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m a complete imposter. I’ve never made a movie. This is ridiculous. I’m going to lose everybody’s money. And I started throwing up. So every morning I would throw up. I began to realize my fear was, what if this movie stops? What if it stops? And Julie Corman said to me, “You’re thinking about it all wrong. It’s funded. It’s going to get made. It’s just on you how good it’s going to get made.”

And it was just relief. Of course, this is going to get made. I got to wake up here. And then one of the investors, Mr. Winter said, “I didn’t invest in you so you could throw up. I invested in you because I believe in what you can do. Embrace the opportunity.” And so since then, it’s just been like I got to believe in myself.

Copy LinkSurprising elements of the film industry

BERMAN: Second question for each of you. One thing that has surprised you about the industry.

WREN: Social media has really surprised me. When I was starting out, it was much more just people sharing funny photos at a bar and things like that. And now it really is such a huge tool that artists and filmmakers and businesses really kind of have to learn how to use and use well. And so it’s an amazing opportunity to be able to market for yourself in that way. That’s just been a really neat and surprising thing that has radically transformed the entertainment industry.

PATTERSON: And building on that, I’m often just surprised at how boldly I love the young filmmakers or the young storytellers, the young entrepreneurs that like, “Nope, doesn’t matter how it’s done, I’m doing it.” And that’s really important.

Copy LinkAdvice for early-stage founders

BERMAN: We have a number of early-stage founders in the room, super grateful, by the way, to our partner, Capital One Business that helps bring early-stage founders to events like this.

PATTERSON: Cool. Wow.

BERMAN: Brings them to our summit in October and San Francisco. By the way, the deadline for applications is coming up, and we have a lot of them in our audience because they’re coming and looking for just that one nugget, that one bit of advice that is going to get them over a hurdle, get them through a hard day, help them solve a problem that they have no earthly idea how they’re going to solve it. So if there’s a piece of advice that you can offer to those early stage founders who are with us, what’s that advice?

PATTERSON: Jim Berney, are you here? Stand up for me if you don’t mind. I’m sorry to put you on the spot.

WREN: Yay, Jim.

PATTERSON: How old are you, Jim?

BERMAN: Jim’s 59.

PATTERSON: 59. You’re in the middle of a start-up right now called what? Do you know how we’re going to be successful? You have it figured out? Okay. That guy has done more businesses…

BERMAN: All right, so just so we capture it: 24Watts.

PATTERSON: 24Watts. It’s a kid’s company. By the way, 24 watts is the amount of energy the human brain expends when you’re feeling inspired. That is one of the smartest human beings in the world. He didn’t know how he’s going to succeed. So no one knows. Just keep pivoting until you get that product-market fit or whatever it’s that you’re trying to do. And it’s always scary, and there’s really tough nights, but it’s a club.

BERMAN: The great author, E.L. Doctorow, had a line that I’m going to paraphrase because I won’t nail it. He said “Writing is like driving at night. You can only see as far as the headlights show you, but somehow you make your way home.”

PATTERSON: Somehow you make your way home.

BERMAN: So that sort of reminds me of that. Christina, one piece of advice.

WREN: Mine is fairly similar, but I think figuring out really what is the most specific, the most distinct thing that you are passionate about, that you bring to the table, that your background offers you, and focus in on that. Because there are so many creatives, so many start-ups, so many businesses, but when you can figure out: Where is the need, and how you can fill it and just keep iterating, keep honing that, rather than trying to watch someone else’s success and be like, “Oh, that was cool. Let me make that.”

PATTERSON: Don’t try to copy.

WREN: Or whatever. Be as specific as you can and keep sharpening that.

BERMAN: So we’re going to have to come back to Atlanta to do this again with you.

PATTERSON: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

BERMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us tonight, thank our in-person audience for being with us, thank the incredible team that helps put this together. We can’t do any of this without all of you. So grateful to every single one of you, and—

PATTERSON: Thank you for coming, by the way. It’s really great. We’re so glad you’re here.

BERMAN: No, it’s really our pleasure, and it’s our honor, and I’m going to encourage people to get down to Trilith to take a look.

PATTERSON: Please.

BERMAN: Because what you’re building is spectacular. Thank you all so much.

PATTERSON: Thank you.

BERMAN: Thank you.

WREN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Frank’s energy is infectious. Seeing what he and the Trilith team are building in Georgia is an absolute inspiration. And it is no wonder people like Christina Wren are feeling the pull to make Trilith their creative home. Special thanks to our live events team, the incredible folks at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, and our wonderful partners at Capital One Business. To learn more about our upcoming Masters of Scale live event in Los Angeles on June 17th, go to mastersofscale.com/events. That’s mastersofscale.com/events. I’m Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening.