Lucky Day – The Boutique Post House With a National Perspective and a Human Touch

Portland, Oregon is known for its vibrant and diverse creative industries, making it a hub for artists, designers, and innovators. The creative, eclectic spirit woven into the place blends traditional and modern artistic endeavours, with a strong emphasis on community-driven projects. Lucky Day, a collective of dexterous editors, post-producers, and support staff, founded by Zach Jones and Chris Vanderloo in 2017, personifies this spirit. 

Though the boutique studio is based in Portland, its influence stretches far beyond the Pacific Northwest. With a team of creatives hailing from diverse regions across the US, Lucky Day brings a unique blend of perspectives, talents, and insights to every project, offering clients like Google, Netflix, ESPN and Sprite, the best of both local craft and national experience. 

LBB’s April Summers chats with co-founders Zach and Chris, along with editor and copywriter Kyle von Hoetzendorff, to explore the origins of Lucky Day, what drives the company, and the people behind the creativity.

Diversity Guides Creativity 

Zach and Chris’s journey to founding Lucky Day was driven by their shared vision of creating a company that emphasises collaboration, creativity, and a high standard of craftsmanship. Talking to them about their paths to founding the company, I learn the story is uniquely shaped by their personal and professional experiences. Zach, who started as a freelance editor, honed his storytelling skills while working with a wide range of clients. Through this experience, he developed a keen eye for detail and a deep appreciation for collaboration.

“I want our team to understand the idea and motivation behind each project. It’s just as important that our clients and employees feel heard, understood, and engaged,” Zach explains. His belief in the power of collaboration remains central to Lucky Day’s creation.

Meanwhile, Chris, who met Zach at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, brought a different skill set to the table. After studying business, Chris spent years in the corporate world before making the leap to post-production. “I didn’t want to leave business behind, but I was seeking a change,” Chris tells me. “So I followed Zach to Portland and became a PA. From there, I worked my way into producing.” This combination of business and creative expertise would go on to play a major role in the early success of Lucky Day.

“The way we work together is complementary,” Chris notes. “We focus on our strengths and align on one important rule: ‘Don’t work with assholes, don’t work for assholes.’ People matter. Our clients and our team are what make this company tick.”

In talking to both of them, one of the standout features of Lucky Day is the team is built on diversity and shared values. Many of the team members come from different parts of the US, including California, Colorado, Indiana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Kansas City, and this diversity infuses their work with a wide range of creative perspectives and insights that make the post-production process more dynamic and collaborative.

Kyle, a key member of the team, highlights how personal experience influences the company’s approach to creative challenges. “Personal experience informs how we tackle problems, and creative challenges are no different,” he says. “Our unique histories, memories, and fascinations influence and guide our storytelling decisions. At Lucky Day, it’s about collaboration. We bring our individual expertise to the table, where it is then blended, challenged, and fostered to create something greater than the sum of its parts.”

Lucky Day didn’t intentionally set out to assemble a team from across the country, but as Kyle puts it, “Each new colleague adds a lifetime of experience, and we’re fortunate to have the chance to share in and add to it.”

This diversity is more than just a creative asset; it also strengthens the company’s culture. By recognising the value of each person’s background and expertise, Lucky Day fosters a supportive and collaborative environment where ideas flow freely, and everyone’s voice is heard.

The Power of Passion

In addition to their lengthy list of professional skills, the Lucky Day team also contributes a slew of personal passions to their work. These outside interests inform the way they collaborate, problem-solve, and engage with each project. Whether it’s sports, filmmaking, volunteer work, or recreational adventures, this diverse range of extracurricular interests is woven into the fabric of their creative process, and greatly influences the team’s dynamic. 

“We’re a competitive bunch, not your typical Type A maximalists, but we encourage the kind of competition that leads us to be the first to show up and the last to leave. The motivation to do these things comes down to care," says Kyle. 

Emphasising the importance of empathy and passion, he tells me, “Writers say, ‘You have to care about your characters.’ It’s the empathy invested in understanding the motivation of each character that makes them truly feel alive. And I’d say this holds true for our Lucky Day crew. Everyone has always got something cooking—volunteering, playing sports, baking, making music, figure skating, racing bicycles—we are curious and caring about a lot of different things.”

This is reflected in the team’s attention to detail. “We go back over the edit one more time, add those few bits of sound design, make those subtle frame tweaks,” Kyle says. “We care, and that care shows up in our work.”

One of the best examples of this care is the way Lucky Day celebrates team members’ birthdays. “As a predominately remote operation, we rarely have the chance to all get together,” Kyle shares. “So birthdays have become a big deal. We get someone a tasteful gift, but it’s the gag gifts that show how much we care. Bobbleheads, minivan t-shirts, gamer chairs—these are the gifts that say, ‘We see you.’” 

It’s clear to me that this personal touch, this empathy, is at the heart of what makes Lucky Day’s culture so unique.

Crafting Collaboratively 

Collaboration is at the core of Lucky Day’s creative process, and it’s what sets them apart from other post-production houses. The team is quick to point out to me that collaboration doesn’t end at the office door—it’s integral to everything they do, from their work with clients to their internal dynamics.

Kyle recalls one of the most challenging projects the team took on, Google’s 2023 Year in Search video, which marked the company’s 25th anniversary. “A year is a lot to go through, so compound that by 25, and fill it with more or less the entire internet, and you’ve got a whole lot to go through,” Kyle explains. “There were moments of stress and anxiety, but it was on our team meetings, in group Slacks, and during Evercast sessions where humour, humility, joy, and pathos seeped into the project.”

Lucky Day’s collaborative spirit was also on full display during a particularly challenging project with director Joseph Kahn, a Fox Nascar spot. The project was happening at the front end of the Covid lockdown, and the team had to figure out the best way to collaborate remotely. 

“Nick Davis, our editor, wasn’t going to be on set, and Camera to Cloud wasn’t available,” Kyle recalls. “We put together a hack using Skype screen captures, which allowed us to cut rough edits for review, syncing the timecode to the raw footage later.” 

This resourcefulness and ability to collaborate in new ways are hallmarks of Lucky Day’s ethos.

Looking back at the journey so far, Chris reflects on the team they’ve built and the culture they’ve created. “Hands down, if it wasn’t for this team, we wouldn’t be talking about Lucky Day,” he says. “From the first full-time hire, who is now a partner, to our most recent addition, each person has brought so much energy and joy to this team. And that energy and joy is what makes our Lucky Day, your Lucky Day.”

As Lucky Day continues to grow and expand its reach, the team’s dedication to collaboration, creativity, and quality remains at the core of everything they do. Whether they’re working on commercials, short-form branded content, music videos, or corporate videos, the Lucky Day team’s unique approach to storytelling and post-production ensures that every project they touch has the potential to make an impact.

For brands, agencies, production companies, and other post houses looking for a creative partner who can bring a national perspective with a human touch, Lucky Day offers the perfect blend of expertise, passion, and collaboration.