What Is a Micro Studio?

Over the last two years, we’ve been quietly building toward a different kind of filmmaking model. This model is designed for small teams, owned IP, and direct connection to audiences.

I’ve seen a lot of similar conversations and manifestos on FilmStack and the NonDe space lately, so I wanted to share the framework we’ve been developing and see if it resonates.

So, this week I wanna talk about THE MICRO STUDIO.

Core Thesis

• A Micro Studio is a creator-owned, audience-facing media business.
  
  

  • Traditional Hollywood is built on a B2B system. One business owns the rights. Another business makes the movie. Another company markets it. Another business distributes it to the masses. With a bunch of percentage claims for various middlemen along the way.
    
    

  • A Micro Studios is built as a B2C (direct-to-consumer) business. Whose only job is to make badass stories people love and then make it easy for them to find.
    
    

  • This model is designed for small teams (1–10 people) who want to own their IP, work long-term, and build sustainable creative businesses — not for one-off films chasing weekend recoupment.

For Context: As we test this theory and fine-tune this strategy, we’re building a 3D/AI animation hybrid pipeline. Our team is made up of 2 people, a $5k budget, and gear we’ve gathered over the years. We’re both production generalists with producing, writing, cinematography, editing, and vfx backgrounds. Not sure how this would work for on-location specialist teams. But in theory… I think the same principles could be applied to any project.

General Ideas So Far

• Sustain a small team. Where Hollywood studios have huge expense sheets, a small team that owns its own IP does not require as much cash flow to stay afloat. The aim should be to build our own business doing what we love.
  
  

  • Teams of 1 - 10: Contributors would need to bring multiple skills to the table. I suspect generalists will benefit from this model more than specialists.
    
    

  • Equal Equity: This is optional, obviously. But we’re choosing the path where small teams share equal equity in the business & Intellectual property. For larger budget projects, this may require limiting equity among core contributors, with structure depending on the project.
    
    

    • For us, each member holds an equal stake and vote in how those IP’s expand into the zeitgeist. In theory, this could build long-term income over time.
      
      

    • Right now, we’re testing the theory with a 2-person LLC. Ideally, an A-Corp might work better - but until that rolls out, we’re makin’ it work.
      
      

Financial Goal: The financial goal of a Micro Studio is simple: keep a core team of 1–10 people meaningfully employed by the stories they create, across multiple IPs, over multiple decades. Exact numbers of subjective to your team’s needs.

• Money is generated through a mix of direct sales, AdSense, merchandise, live events, and selective licensing. We’re not building one-off hits or platform dependency. We’re building tangible IP for an audience.|
  
  

• Sustaining a small creative team requires far less revenue than operating a traditional studio with massive overhead. Think mom-and-pop scale economics, applied to filmmaking.
  
  

• This model works by limiting percentage cuts to middlemen wherever possible, keeping more of the upside distributed among the creators actually doing the work.
  
  

• No Capital? Expect sweat equity. This is a side-hustle-with-a-plan, not a gig-for-a-paycheck. The long-term goal is to pay salaries to the core team, with profit participation layered on top — like any sustainable company.
  
  

• Note: Right now, we’re testing how lean this can be. Our 2-person team is operating on sweat equity, supported by outside work, with the goal of proving a version of this model that can realistically support a small team over the next five years.
  
  

• Creator Economy Ethos: While many filmmakers stick their nose up at creators and influencers, let’s not forget that creators and influencers are actively working, own their work, and can scale as big or as little as they desire. This model adds strategy to the wannabe influencer model and aims to build audiences for stories vs personality.
  
  

  • Instead of posting blindly and hoping for “viral videos,” each video, blog, story, reel, post, ad, etc is strategic in nature. Iterating on what works and doesn’t work on each individual platform is key to understanding what the product needs, the audience wants, and what you like doing. Each post is a test that should improve the craft of the next post.
    
    

  • The goal is to build stories, characters, and worlds. While identifying the best formats that allow an audience to find, engage, and expand in their preferred spaces.
    
    

  • Audience building is key to this model. If we’re not going to sell our films/ideas to studios with an audience anymore, we have to build our own audiences.
    
    
    

• Distribute Wide. Micro Studios are their own Media companies. Meaning they need to leverage their own IP to sell directly to Audiences in various formats. Taking the playbook out of the “indie author” distribution strategy, we should aim to publish wide on every IP we build.
  
  Make the story, characters, and worlds available across many different retailers, formats, and platforms.
  
  

  • Books - Create a tangible product that your audience can hold, collect, and love. Books also open up opportunities to copyright and build source material if building projects in public.
    
    

  • Films as Webseries - Produce films in a way that allows for multiple 10-20min webseries episode drops. Similar to the Netflix format of eight 1hr episodes for an 8hr movie. Do twelve 10min webisodes for a 2hr movie. But also be able to cut the 12 webisodes into a 2hr feature-length film… that can also be released through aggregates where appropriate.
    
    

  • Games - According to google 3.2billion people worldwide play video games. 1.56 billion people play tabletop and card games. Adapting your stories into experiences your fans can engage with is a great way to expand stories, worlds, and characters.
    
    

  • Music - If you’re making your own music for your projects plan to make these a part of your product line. Because… Duh.
    

  • Merch - If the folklore of Star Wars is true…merch is a HUGE part of your IP. Don’t sleep on it. Every piece is an additional asset that not only brings a fan closer to your story. But it also acts as a form of advertisement to those who don’t know about you yet. Conversation pieces are subtle hype your fans want - so give it to them.
    
    

  • Live Events - Live events include in-person events and online events. They form a collective experience that can pull audiences. It drives a deeper connection with the stories you’re telling and the people who love them. This can include screenings, tours, virtual events, and more.
    
    

  • Festival & Competitions - Pros of festivals lie in instant credibility, industry networking, and press opportunities. With the potential for validating a film in a market and attracting distributors. Cons lie in high cost, competition, and generally low visibility for indie films. Keep in mind, there are also free online film festivals and competitions that can be useful to spread narrative brands and awareness for your stories in more niche spaces.
    
    

• Brand Building Focus - I know artists hate the idea of thinking of themselves as a brand, but if we’re not going to ride the coattails of legacy media’s brand, we gotta build one of our own. Remember, we’re building a Micro Studio, a business. And businesses need brand identity, brand participation, and brand presence.
  
  

  • Website Destination - Your website should be your main destination for all fans. While you’ll use other platforms to spread the word of what you create, your website will be the digital brick & mortar location they go to get what they want.
    
    

  • Social Media - Think of social media as the marketplace where people are. You’ll be visiting these places regularly and sharing what you do there. You’ll have a strategy that reminds them - your website has more cool stuff - they should stop by sometime.
    
    

  • Mailing List - I’ve resisted the mailinglist strategy for years. I hate junk mail, and do not wish to contribute to your junkmail. But, at the same time, mailinglists are essentially our newspaper boy delivery system. It’s how we get the latest news, but instead of getting news from everyone, it’s curated to the things we like. If they signed up, they’re interested in what you gotta say. Tell them everything.
    
    

  • Communities - Communities will form naturally on social media platforms every time you post something. You can build “Official” locations for the community through platforms like your website, Discord, Patreon or Kofi. These official interactions may require extra content, regular engagement, and delivering whatever it is you’re promising if you’re charging a membership for it.
    
    

TLDR, Core Values of a Micro Studio

• A Micro Studio is a creator-owned media business built to sustain a small team by owning IP, building audiences directly, and distributing stories across formats.
  
  

• It is not about scale, gatekeepers, or selling labor—it’s about long-term storytelling, ownership, and creative independence.
  
  

To be clear: Micro Studios are not about scaling headcount, selling labor, or handing finished work to distributors.

We own what we make.
We sell what we make.
We benefit from what we make.

Maybe that sounds naive. But my goal is simple: to tell stories people love enough to return to over a lifetime.

I want to build an evergreen studio around stories that can sustain a small team for the long haul - stories that are genuinely fun to write, animate, and bring to life.

The goal is longevity. Stories people return to. Worlds people care about. Work that sustains the people who create it.

If that idea resonates, I’d love to keep the conversation going. I’m here to talk shop with anyone trying to build something lasting. Let me know in the comments what you’re thinkin’.

As another year ends and I realize I’m closer to 40 than ever before, I’ve been reflecting on my career as a line producer and post-production specialist in the Nashville area. I’ve worked on a lot of cool projects with great people. I also have a litany of stories of really terrible experiences - as we all do.

But, recently, I had a thought that gave me pause…

The gig economy didn’t teach me to be a better storyteller. It trained me to execute other people’s stories in fragments. And in many ways, it didn’t make me a filmmaker - it made me a technician.

And I think this is true for all of us who forgot our dreams to be filmmakers in exchange for consistent work in the gig economy.

Hear me out. It’s a conversation that I think we all have to have at some point.

If you’re a video professional, have you ever taken a trip into the gig economy’s valley of resentment?

That space between quiet rage and desperation, where you take on the next gig before you’ve really recovered from the last.

You smile and say things like, “No, thank you so much for thinking of me,” or “I shouldn’t complain, it’s paying the bills.” When really we’re so ready for this job to be done, so we never have to speak to these people again.

It’s the ugly part of the gig world that we’ve all visited at some point in our careers. The ugly part we don’t talk about, that we’re gonna talk about today, because I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

I mean, the biggest questions once you notice the resentment become: Why are we so angry? So resentful? So incredibly exhausted, all of the time?

Isn’t this what you wanted?

I’m going to guess that you got into filmmaking to tell stories. We all did. But somewhere along the way, a lot of us convinced ourselves that the fastest way to get there was to take any video work. Any role. Any project. Any pay. Probably also… no pay just for the experience.

And gig after gig, we fell into the weirdest career sidestep imaginable: the video gig economy.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the gig economy is a wonderful place to work. There is no glass ceiling. The work hours are as great as you make them. And the pay can be incredible. But the career goals here can get muddy fast, especially when you’re taking any and every job offered.

It’s fair to say my twenties were a blur of not knowing what I wanted. All I knew was that gig work mattered more to me than corporate stability. I preferred to work dead-end part-time jobs just to stay available for freelance gigs.

One of my biggest mistakes was that instead of learning the business of getting clients, my work came from more ambitious collaborators in need of my varied skill sets. So, I was waiting for phone calls all of the time. Thankfully, they always came.

It was entirely my fault for never setting a clear path for myself. An unconscious choice that’s left me staring down my forties without a finished passion project to point to.

It was my fault for letting my compass be set to wherever the freelance fairy pointed instead of having a plan.

I remember in 2016, it finally clicked: my creative input didn’t matter in the gig economy, and neither does yours.

I think for those of us who have worked in the gig economy for a while and have taken on a lot of clients, you kind of notice a pattern.

You are going to pour everything into draft one. But you also know that by draft three, you’ll be replacing a lot of your story shots with lead singer close-ups or tighter product shots.

You also learn that fighting for creative integrity usually pisses everyone off. So, it’s easier to give the person with the money exactly what they want. Smile. Take the money. And move on to the next job.

Now, once you accept this, phoning it in becomes profitable. But it definitely isn’t a life that you’re like, “Oh, I’m so excited to take on more work!”

And for people who thrive in that model, good for you. We applaud your stamina and drive.

But for some of us, that model is hard to bend the knee to. And one thing is certain: the Valley of Resentment is just an awful place to be for you, your client, your business, and your drive.

I get it. We can’t have these conversations outside of anonymous reddit posts and memes. Because what if a future client hears you whining? It isn’t becoming. It’s egotistical. But at the end of the day, it’s honest.

If you really feel like shit taking on client work, you should probably take a break.

So when that feeling of resentment became so loud for me in 2018, I took some time to step back from work and ask myself three important questions.

1. Where are you going?

2. What do you actually want?

3. Why did you get into this in the first place?

Eventually, I realized I needed to stop being the product of my business.

And when you make that realization. You have to ask yourself, well, how the f*ck do I do that?

Well, you start figuring out how to build a product of your own.

This usually leads straight into business self-help. Gurus. Funnels. Hooks. Mailing lists. Ad buys. You start seeing the world the way your clients do. And then you realize something uncomfortable.

You were entitled. You were inexperienced. And yes, you may have even been a bit of a bitch.

So just accept it. That’s who you were. We’re moving on to be a better people.

I personally misunderstood my role in the gig economy. In a lot of ways, I thought that my client’s work was my work.

When, really, I was creating their work for them.

I wasn’t creating anything of my own.

And that misunderstanding caused a lot of unnecessary painpoints in my early days. I wasn’t letting them ruin the vision - I was executing their vision. Not mine.

I regret stewing in that silent resentment. But talking about it, being honest, is the only way we recalibrate our focus. And for me, that led to one inescapable question:

“Why am I not making my own movies right now?”

Now, if you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably made some questionable career choices as I have. You definitely abandoned your own creative work for long stretches of time. And you absolutely got way too emotionally invested in other people’s products.

And that f*cking sucks! But you have to remember, you also became an incredible technician.

Even though most technicians are below-the-line day players, constantly aware that they can be replaced with a phone call, technicians make the films.

Yeah, I said it.

Sure, writers bring the story, directors bring the vision, and producers bring the money. But the technicians are the execution of all visual storytellers.

The number of producers, directors, and writers that I’ve met who have no idea how to turn on a camera or how to edit is insane. What do you mean you didn’t know your camera had a manual mode?

To me, it proves that without technicians, the above-the-line guys are twiddling their thumbs in a greenroom somewhere.

The problem is that our entire creative ecosystem is old. It compartmentalizes the creative process so much that technicians have forgotten how to be actual filmmakers who tell good stories.

We’ve stripped the process down to, “you’re involved with one thing and one thing only. That’s what you’re going to get good at. And if you want to learn the other things, good luck, because we’re not going to hire you for that new skill unless you’re actively disregarding your previous career progression.”

But most of all, I think the reason we’ve forgotten how to tell stories is that we stopped practicing how to tell stories.

Instead, we get handed a brief that we then execute.

In my career, I solved creative problems, but I wasn’t building worlds I owned or stories I cared about. I spent months inside other people’s visions, mistaking execution for authorship.

It took a while to realize I wasn’t a storyteller.

I was a button pusher.

In 2022, I finally decided to set forth and figure out what it would take to become an actual storyteller - a “real” filmmaker on my own terms. Because COVID and union strikes really made it clear that I had no real control over my business or the jobs I was getting.

So, of course, that led me down a path of researching Hollywood. And it turns out that every article that you pull up about the film industry is saying that everything is a mess right now. A lot of creatives, especially the ones in the mid-tier leagues, are starting to realize that they also don’t own anything - the studios own everything.

More people are having the same conversations. Whether you’re on filmstack, TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram, a lot of creatives and especially technicians are asking, should I start my own studio? Could I create a brand around my stories with social media and YouTube? Can I create a show that others could love?

And I think that that’s a beautiful thing. Isn’t there a saying about when things end, other things begin?

Over the last few years, my partner Jayson Wall and I have been upskilling to answer those questions — learning 3D design, real-time mocap, Unreal Engine cinematics, AI video workflows, social media strategy, and even self-publishing, because we know it would matter eventually.

But at the end of 2025, in the last 2 months or so, I realized I’d done it again.

I was still polishing for the role of technician. I was learning new skills so that I could get the job of YouTube.

I wasn’t building a product.

Because old habits die hard, I was building shots to test tools to test algorithms. I was constantly making something to sacrifice to the feed.

Obviously, I was learning things, but it hasn’t really accumulated into what I imagine a micro studio would actually be. And I feel like it has stagnated my journey a bit.

But for the first time in a long time, I was actually making my own stuff, and I’ve been really happy with my progress. It’s been awesome just making whatever I want. But one truth remains… I still haven’t made a film of my own.

…..I still
……… have not
…………. made a film.

Which brings me to now, to today, to this moment in time.

2026 is my deadline year.

This is the year that I’m going to put all of these new skills to work and practice storytelling, really focusing on the art of being a filmmaker. Not the tech - the story. I want to focus on the story.

And I think that if this film doesn’t get made, I’m just going to have to shelve the dream.

Because at this point, I’m going to be 40 this year, y’all. So I need to get my ass into gear and make some shit happen.

The idea is I’m going to pull all the Unreal Engine, AI, mocap and publishing knowledge I’ve gained over the last few years to make an actual feature film with all of the new tech, everyone’s kind of speculating about at this point.

We’ve seen a lot of great AI shorts. We’ve seen some really interesting Unreal Engine projects. But I want to combine the workflows into something unique. I want to bring these tools together, and I want to see if it’s even possible for a small crew to make something cool.

And by small crew, I mean like two people. Okay, that’s it. Possible? We shall see!

Now, this will either take me on an incredible journey or it’ll destroy my soul. So there’s a possibility it might be both. I don’t know, but let’s go on it together.

As accountability, I’m documenting the journey and sharing my ideas on how a small crew can create a media brand without traditional Hollywood connections - or much money.

So if you’re into AI, Non-Dependent Filmmaking, the idea of Micro Studios, or just relearning how to tell stories as an adult… I’ll be posting weekly on the strategies we’ll be trying out with our own film this year, and what we learn along the way.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for hanging out. Tell me in the comments what your 2026 looks like? Any projects? Film-related resolutions? Creative excitements? Tell me. I want to know. I’m lookin’ for friends.

Topics I’m going to explore in the coming year include;

• Strategy Behind Building a Micro Studio

• Relearning storytelling as an adult

• Self-publishing screenplays as books

• Producing Features like Webseries

• Creating standout characters in the age of AI

• Table reads, audiobooks, and story-first pipelines

• Unreal Engine, AI, and real-time production

• Marketing lanes for independent projects as we try them