The Weekly Arsenal

From the Arsenal: SOPs can reveal problems. Story Of The Day: Bob was walking me through a bunch of docs. There were A LOT of them.He had an SOP for every content process they did. To be honest there were so many I even lost track listening.Excel sheets, word docs, Canva slides...The list went on. After he went over them I asked:Does the team use these?Do you have one for this process? and he said:“Yes we have them, and it's shit… but it’s good.”At first it sounded contradictory.So I asked...

The Weekly Arsenal September 11th 2026 From the Arsenal: Your editor cannot read your mind. Story Of The Day: I was on a call with a video agency owner. Pure word of mouth has him selling more work than he can take on. The problem was finding the time to deliver it.(We’ll call him Bob.) He creates content for businesses in health and wellness. A lot of it involves technical explanations, so you need to understand what someone is saying before you can turn it into a video. And he wanted to do...

The Weekly Arsenal September 7th 2026 From the Arsenal: Do not pay for the same mistake twice. Story Of The Day: I was on a call with Bob, looking at the checker he had built for his team. The idea was: Let people check their workbefore it gets to leadership. If the work passes,they can move to the next stepwithout another conversation. That saves time.(On a good day if everyone's hitting the checks) But what happens to the personwhose work does not pass? They know it is wrong.Do they know...

The Weekly Arsenal August 28th 2026 From the Arsenal: Prep buys you options. Story Of The Day: I was ready to go prep the camera package today. Before I left, I got the equipment list and looked it over. My first thought was:“Hmmm. That is not what I asked for...” The lenses were not what I ordered. I wasn't pissed. I like playing with different lenses. Now I had to figure out what that changed. We have 11 setups on this project,16hours to get it done,and I had already built a 36-page...

The Weekly Arsenal August 26th 2026 From the Arsenal: You breathe it. They might not yet. Story Of The Day: The whole room went dark. We were already filming... Naturally I went to check on what happened to the generator. The generator overloaded. I traced backwards. The power was not routed right. Backwards... The light was not in the right place. So I called out: "Johnny!" Let’s call him Johnny. Johnny was newer to the lighting side of things. Straight out of film school,He has probably...

The Weekly Arsenal August 24th 2026 From the Arsenal: Microdose your ideas into the market. Story Of The Day: I woke up this morning scrolling RedNote. I like to see what my Chinese brother and sisters are talking about. Came across an interesting post - "Is TV commercials dying?" Then the reframe:"Do we just need a new way to decide when high production comes in?" That got me thinking. For a long time commercials lived or died on taste. The brand said they want a commercial. The agency had...

The Weekly Arsenal August 14th 2026 From the Arsenal: Don't treat video like your college paper. Story Of The Day: I lost a job to AI recently. A major soccer sponsor reached out. They wanted a live-action series before the season started. I was finishing the last slides of my pitch. Then I heard nothing for a few days... Finally, the message came through. They had decided to make an AI commercial instead. It was not because live action was the wrong move.(Fans would have loved that instead...

The Weekly Arsenal August 12th 2026 From the Arsenal: Where you put the video matters. Story Of The Day: Bob sent me a message over the weekend. "Adding that video increased our conversion rate on our Skool page." He had just added the all star testimonial we shot last year at his in-person retreat to the page where people opt in to join his community. Me:"Good to know the retreat video is increasing conversions." Bob:"Yeah, just adding the video took us from 2.2% to 2.5%...It was the last...

The Weekly Arsenal july 31st 2026 From the Arsenal: Don't flip the whole world. Story Of The Day: The pyrotechnician looked at us and said: "Let's just turn up the fire." And all of us went: Oh.Yeah. Let's back up 4 hours... We were shooting a night scene outside Savannah, Georgia. A little kid and his mom were talking in the woods. It was supposed to be a quiet bonding moment. There was a fire in the scene. Simple enough. my version of simple enough Except a huge rainstorm came through that...

The Weekly Arsenal July 20th 2026 From the Arsenal: The market is running on video FOMO. Story Of The Day: I had a quick Sunday thought yesterday. Pretty simple one. Some of my clients are annoyed because marketing keeps asking them for more videos. And then my marketing friends are annoyed because they keep chasing founders or clients for more creatives. Which made me think... Do you actually need to shoot more? Or are we just making video feel heavier than it needs to be? Because right...

The Weekly Arsenal July 17th 2026 From the Arsenal: Beneath creativity is choreography Story Of The Day: Film production is wild if you think about it. Someone has an idea.Money shows up.People assemble.Roles appear. Everyone works inside a temporary little pop-up shop. Then the thing gets made.The people move on.And the company basically disappears. Very normal.Totally not strange at all. But that is what I love about it. The system can expand and collapse.(If you look pass the creativity...