We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jesse Felsot. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jesse below.

Jesse, appreciate you joining us today. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

Yeah glad you asked as I have not been able to speak on this too much. I was attending a family dinner at the Beverly Hills Hilton. I was 22 at the time and really eager to get my first video going for my music video company I started Treasure Ent. On stage above the dining area, a group of 4 guys were singing some real good R&B music, think Jodeci style music and their name was ‘The Real Seduction’ formerly on Atlantic Records. As they were wrapping up and getting off stage, I went over to them and introduced myself to each member of the group. I gave out my business card, got their info and started calling them everyday until I could finally get a meeting with them. When I was starting out I really called people a lot, this was before texting man, so it was no other choice but to pick up the phone and get it going that way. This group was part of the back up dancers from M.C. Hammer’s ‘Don’t Hurt ‘Em Hammer’ Concert I attended when I was 13 years old at The Forum in Inglehood that my Dad took me to that summer. I remember vividly how it looked and sounded. I had never seen a performer like this to this day with the hair, the wardrobe, the dancers the whole show, it was Entertainment at its finest and the energy was crazy, I knew in that moment I wanted to be in that industry. So after a lot of calls, we finally met at the Sportsmen Lodge in Studio City. In the meeting and since I did not have video credits, outside of this one Latin video I had done, I decided to not go there in my presentation and not focus on what I did ‘not’ have, and just focus on what I did have a lot of; my knowledge of R&B music, the music I grew up listening to, both my parents being from Detroit, MI, I grew up in Motown sound, New Jack era R&B world where I knew all the artists, the labels, the records, the soundtracks to the movies I grew up listening to in my teens such as New Jack City, Boomerang, Who’s The Man,? Mo’ Money, Above The Rim were the top ones. I had a lot of knowledge of old school R&B as well since I grew up listening to the greats from back in the day and some of the major songs that were used in sampling from rappers. I was not your typical dude from the O.C…lol. I went through each album knew each hit song and the videos that came from them from the studios, I basically just sold my knowledge and as an interview for a job and how I could get the job because I could not just pull out a reel at the time since I had limited video credits. They were all sitting there pretty amazed I knew all of this and in such detail. I told them I guarantee this will come out good. A lot of times when I would pitch a video idea or in a meeting, I was selling myself. Yeah the director reel is important, the credits is good, but what are you about is what they are wondering, meaning its more than just black and white on a paper and how is someone going to trust me with their money and does this person even want to be in business with me and will I come through for them? I needed that first video to get my company going so I was all in in my presentation and knew how important this was. So after a good meeting and them seeing I was serious and could pull this off, we decided to move forward on this music video with me producing and directing it. At this time they were not on the label anymore as their deal had ended, so through them I was able to raise $6k to make the video with a private investor that came to the table to be part of it. I lined up a mansion in Woodland Hills, a rooftop in Downtown L.A. and cast the talent and we shot the video on 16mm blew it up in post and did a really good color grade through a contact I had at 525 Studios, where we worked in the middle of the night to pull it off. So I now had the video and could not wait to show them. They set up a private screening at the Skybar Hotel in West Hollywood and I showed up with the video and when I walked into the room a special guest was there, it was M.C. Hammer! I thought this was some sort of reality TV prank. Which was crazy since it was the Hammer concert mentioned earlier that made me want to get into this industry and here I was showing the music video to the group and him. They all loved the video and Hammer gave me a vote of confidence and told me to just keep going, it will fall into place. From that moment on and my first client, I was now really able to move forward and create a great career producing music videos but its that first one that will always be so memorable.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Yean no problem. Since I have discussed a lot of my background in some other articles, companies I worked at, who I worked for where your readers can easily read about, I want to curve this more into my music video producing and what I did there some more with the directors I brought in to excel in this world and create lasting videos and as a carry over from talking about my first client. After some really good videos we knocked out, my company, Treasure Entertainment now was becoming more established which was four us that focused in different areas. I focused more in the music video world. At this time I was 27-28 years old and had just left working for writer/director David Ayer and in my mind I was now going to kill the music video game. I enjoyed the movie making process working with Dave, but my passion especially at that age was in music videos so went off on my own to follow that. I found myself doing this in the Latin Hip Hop world where I really wanted to advance and raise the bar in music videos in this world and saw a genre of music that was still untapped video wise. It was for the taking and I wanted to jump on that quickly. If the song was big on Power 106fm in LA, most likely that artist was on my set as I produced their video. Prior to the videos I was doing, we had seen groups in this genre such as Cypress Hill, Delinquet Habits, Kid Frost but outside of this, not too many on MTV on a national level during primetime outside of a few groups and rotating videos during Primetime on MTV. I was witnessing videos in the Chicano culture that were more on a cheaper home video camera level, lot of guys in the prison yard with the orange pants on, no shirts reppin’ heavy gang tats and gang signs to the camera, showing off guns to the camera, lowriders but not shot that great, lot of grainy washed out footage. Homies in the park sipping on a brown bag 40 oz and rolling up weed, mixed with bad choppy edits, more docu-style videos than anything. I made an effort to clean that up and go bigger, more creative and push the envelope some more with these real solid directors I was bringing in and by keeping the feel of the culture we are seeing but crossing it now in a higher quality world and cleaning up some of the hardcore stuff that MTV would never touch so MTV would ‘eventually’ touch it and what things to film and things to stay away from. I wanted to take it more commercial and get away from these docu style music videos. I could not do this by myself so I sought out directors such as G-thomas (formerly the go to director for Suge Knight’s Deathrow Records doing videos for Tha Dogg Pound with Daz, Kurupt, Snoop, 2pac and a deal with Hoobangin’ Records with Mack-10), I had actually met Suge Knight at a cafe in L.A. near my office and told him what I was doing and to get some background on G-thomas some more and his videos to see how this could work. I then targeted Marty Thomas (the go to director for Eazy-E and Ruthless Records and videos for Eazy-E, MC Ren, Above The Law) and since I had a working relationship already with Jerry Heller on our advisory board for the company, I was able to facilitate Marty a lot easier and then I went to get director Mink who was on the roster at A Band Apart, my former company I had worked at, he had credits with Snoop, Nate Dogg, South Central Cartel and West Coast Bad Boyz and getting permission to utilize him from my former boss Jeff Armstrong who was the Executive Producer at A Band Apart. I was able to get him off his roster where he was really not day to day there working that much due to the other directors on that roster but not for lack of talent and brought him to direct videos for us at Treasure as I really liked his videos and I thought he would do really well in this genre. For my fourth weapon, I then went and attached Lionel C. Martin who directed the film “How To Be A Player” to my roster. Lionel was one of the most well known established music video directors in the industry who at the time surprisingly to me was on his own without a company or rep. Some of his big videos back in the day were Boyz II Men, “Motown Philly” & “End of the Road” TLC “What About Your Friends” 2pac’s “Dear Mama” & “Toss It Up” as well as videos for Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison” Wreckx-N-Effect “Rump Shaker”, Toni Braxton and many more. This was a heavy hitter here. I grew up watching this guys videos so to have him on my set watching him behind the monitor direct a video was surreal. I really needed good quality director reels with ‘established’ artists on their reels and good quality DP reels, so I could sell them together to a client/record label so they can see a.) what this director has done & their quality and b.) a high end DP to go with him so the client can say, Ok if I spend this $30-40K, I am really going to get something much more than than or look bigger than what am I spending here and ‘trust’ I will get a high quality product. I wanted to position us where we were a niche company that took on $25-50Kish range budgets and could knock them out good enough to compete with other videos made at say $100-150K to then get those labels and mangers to say OK well they are slashing prices over here but the product is really solid and clean and still getting real solid MTV/BET rotation so lets go over there and work with these directors that had some big name artists on their reels. This is how we positioned ourselves to the point where Anonymous Content needed to outsource a company for the Atlantic/Bad Boy Records/Janelle Monae video and to run it ‘non-union’ to keep the budget at $250K or less; they hired us to Exec produce it for director Alan Ferguson who went on to win a BET Director of the Year Award shortly after. They were having issues keeping the budget from exploding into a union shoot, so we came in and reworked the numbers with our Line Producer to make it work for them and to get it greenlit. There were a lot of companies and people involved in this video; 2 big record labels and a management company. This had more of a feeling of a movie shoot than your typical video set. This was her first record and video, and she was not really that well known at that time, hard to believe now, but they did not want to overblow the spend on it during that time until they saw how this record was going to perform. It was a very large production for just a 2-day shoot where we rented out the KTLA soundstages in Hollywood to produce it at. It felt and looked more like $500K or more but we knew how to make it really pop with a top notch crew and equipment and high end post production.

Anyways going back to the directors I sought, I watched all their music videos in my teens during High School and college on MTV, BET and studied the videos and who was doing what from an early age so I knew who to go after and exactly what I was doing and also the budget levels I was given to work with. With all this music video knowledge and data I already had in my brain, this really was just natural for me. This was my world, I knew exactly what I was doing crossing these guys over and now that I had this incredible roster to now start getting this going. In really a short period of time and with a lot of hustle, we produced music videos for Baby Bash ‘Fantasy Girl’, two big videos for Lil Rob most notably ‘Summernights’, 2 videos for Slum Village, Dwele, Amanda Perez, Down aka Kilo, NB Ridaz, Janelle Monae (as stated already), Cam’ron, Nicki Minaj , Snoop Dogg, LaLa, Jim Jones, feat. MC Breed (Breed’s last video before he died), videos for HiPower Entertainment with Mr. Capone-e, Young Seb, Ace Hood, Rick Ross, Colby O’Donis, Mr. Criminal, Lady Pink, Lil Uno, Ese Daz, K-Yote, Slow Pain, most artists part of E-Dub and Khool Aid with Pocos Pero Locos, a deal with Upstairs Records, Sony BMG Latino, Thump Records, Silent Giant Entertainment, Aries Records and many more artists in the community. I became the go to producer in this genre of Latin hip hop music videos. Our videos went to MTV, MTV Tr3s, Mun2 BET and a lot of them were big hits and received millions of views on Youtube and still getting large views to this day. I was walking into my shoots and on sets with some really solid directors behind the monitor calling ‘action.’ I was very active in the shoots with the directors and always gave my opinion on shots or how I thought things were looking or could even be better. When you have guys like I had, it made my job a lot easier because of their experience. I studied my directors’ reels rather extensively, meaning when I thought something could be better I would talk to them and remind them of shots from one of their past videos and how that could be best served in a particular sequence on the video we were filming in that moment. That is because I knew their reels inside and out. I knew the strengths and weaknesses of my roster so I knew who to put around them or not put around them, each video requires a different attention to detail. Some guys were just about vibe shots with particular lighting set ups and solid DP partners, some were very story oriented and took pride in that and some were both. At the end of the day, my name was on the contract so the responsibility was really on me more than anyone. I got along pretty well for the most part with my directors, of course there are moments of friction but we would always work through it. I knew the guys I was bringing to the table they were not rookies so I had to respect their game as well. I was feeling pretty good about how my videos were coming out and as were my clients. Money was really starting to come in to us with one video after the next. 2008 was the year we peaked with a very respectable yearly gross revenue. With the success of the ‘Summernights,’ video on MTV during Primetime, our company Treasure Ent. became the top music video company in the Latin Hip Hop genre from about 2005-2011 and we are in the middle of a huge explosion in that genre during that time, and it was really amazing to be part of it. After a little break from doing music videos, I ventured into producing/directing feature length music documentaries; “Where’s the Soul?” and “Nightclub Star” which led me to what I am doing today with my film acquisitions/distribution business.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

I would say having a track record already where a potential filmmaker, client can just go on the VOD platforms such as Tubi, Amazon, Apple TV and already see a number of titles on there to get some sort of reassurance and can get their work out there. That’s really important when talking to the filmmaker looking to give me their title to distribute. I utilize Youtube a lot and find films on there that are getting a good number of views and do my research to see if it could be a good fit. I look at the title, trailer and overall quality and see how much time or resources I would need to put into each title before acquiring it, but I can really gauge the audience it will attract by the amount of views they have already received and how long its already been on Youtube for. Its a great indicater for how it will do based off views its already getting just on that platform. I am looking for ‘moments’, such as pacing, music in it, action scenes, sex scenes, drug activity, editing styles and other things going on that will get it ‘streamed’ and bring in revenue and to compete with the other titles that are available to a viewer on the platform. I obviously want a decent storyline and acting in it, but its the moments, music, action that tell me if I can get a real good trailer out of this. If I feel it is necessary, we will shoot additional scenes to elevate it, and redo the post sound mix, design and color grading as well with my post sound team. I have a criteria I check the box to see if the audience I am delivering to mostly an urban audience between 18-49 will stream this and keeping in mind a really good poster and trailer I will create with my graphic designers that I know will get people to click on it, that is what I am concerned with. I am going after clicks, period. So I am concerned with AD buyers on the title and how many times I think people will continue to view it to get the most number of AD views. My job as an EP on these is to keep the viewer engaged to keep them to watch it ‘all the way’ through not just for 10-15 mins or so, so I can get them to watch more ADS before clicking off of it to go to another film, that’s the key right there. You have heard of ‘Mo Money, Mo Problems’ right? This is ‘Mo Ads, Mo Money.’ My deals are in place because my past films have performed well on streaming so I am careful on what I put out to actually keep those deals in place with my buyers on all my different revenue earning platforms such as DVD and soundtracks I release as well in conjunction with the VOD, remember its a business first before the hype. I have learned a lot since I got into the distribution side more of what really matters to the platforms and my partners.

Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?

Yes, absolutely and this is something I have worked really hard on to create for my films over the last few years and glad you asked. I now I have multiple passive income streams for it, so the movie on VOD such as Amazon, Tubi as mentioned already, the soundtrack streaming on Amazon Music, Spotify, Soundcloud, the DVD being sold on online retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Moviezyng, Deep Discount, Barnes & Noble and Library distribution where I sell DVD’s in large orders throughout Library cafe’s across North America where you can watch them there or rent them for a fee. You would be surprised at the number of units I push through the libraries that purchase my titles. So when I acquire a film or get involved in a title, I have to think will this perform on all these platforms and how confident am I this is going to get streams and sales on the retailer platforms and libraries and can this get a good amount of streams when I release the soundtrack for it as well that I do these days. The music in the film and who the artists are is a big part of it too. If I don’t feel that way about it I usually pass on offers, movies brought to me or just sit back until I find something that is worth it or if I see something that has ‘potential’ with a title change, making a cool trailer from it, a good soundtrack and thinking now that have I Walmart on board to sell my DVD’s will this clean house on Walmart where a large majority of my audience shops at either in store or online where we can slash pricing to build volume sales. I would say Tubi, Walmart, Best Buy MovieZyng, Amazon Music, Amazon Prime, Soundcloud, Spotify have worked out pretty well. I keep a very strong eye on how each of my titles are performing on every platform they are on with VOD, MOD/DVD, and soundtracks/OST with timely reports and royalties due to me and to make sure I am collecting the right amount due to me through an outside company I will bring on from time to time that does auditing and legal representation on my behalf with the number of titles I have out. Having these multiple revenue streams is important especially since I am and independent producer/distributor and to not rely on just one avenue for its earnings, its good to have as many in place as possible for each title as you continue to build your volume of films and soundtracks. I am in the works on two new feature film projects for 2025 along with prepping a new music documentary I am starting to put together exploring today’s Hip Hop and the Opioid epidemic effect.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cmfilms.biz
• Instagram: @jfelsotfilms
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/jesse.felsot
• Linkedin: Jesse Felsot
• Youtube: jessefelsot7008
• Other: google.com Jesse Felsot

Image Credits

All images provided by me Jesse Felsot and approved.