Meet Your Makers: Putting Having Fun First with The Goondocks

The Goondocks is a full-service creative agency and video production company based out of Brooklyn, NY. We have over a decade of experience working with and for top agencies like 72andSunny, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, and Party Land, producing content for brands of all sizes.

EP//Director - A. Cody Osborne

EP//Writer - Nick E Finn

EP//Editor - Pratik Panda

LBB> What first attracted you to production - and has it been an industry you’ve always worked on or did you come to it from another area? 

Pratik> Surprisingly enough, none of us come from the production world or went to school for production!

Cody> Well to be fair, I went to school for advertising and worked as a copywriter agency side for over a decade. So I was around production, but it’s a completely different ball game to now be on the other side. 

Nick E> When I met Cody I was working as a playwright and actor and he was starting to direct. 

Cody> Panda was a project manager for Adobe. 

Nick E> Who knew we would all form like Voltron! 

Pratik> We all just share an obsession with storytelling and cinema. So we started making things together…  

Nick E> And have never stopped!!

Cody> It really got going in 2019. We did this thing we called ‘Project 51’ where we made a video a week for an entire year (see some highlights here). 

Nick E> Well, almost an entire year! 51 out of 52 weeks aint bad.  

Pratik> Haha nobody’s perfect! 

Cody> It was WILD! But so fun. And THE MOST work. But so fun. 

Pratik> We made spec ads, scripted narratives, mini-docs, music videos…

Cody> So many more random things…

Nick E> Project 51 was like our film school. Actually it WAS our film school. We just threw ourselves into the fire. 

Cody> Long story short, before we ever made commercials for big brands like Ocean Spray and Doritos, we got into this for the pure love of having fun making things!

Nick E> Absolutely - if ain't fun, it ain't Goondocks! 

Pratik> The budgets may have gone up, but some things never change.

LBB> And in terms of recent work, which projects have you found to be particularly exciting or have presented particularly interesting production challenges?

Cody> The Goondocks is still a relatively new company. We founded the company in late 2018 and didn’t start doing commercials until mid 2020. 

Nick E> In three years we went from filming $1,000 social ads in a garage to filming a half-a-million dollar campaign for Drizly! 

Pratik> How the hell did we make this happen?

Cody> Trust. Also talent. Also being fun and kind and cool. But mostly trust.

Nick E> Say more! 

Cody> Even though I’ve been in the ad game for over a decade, as a production company we're relatively new kids on the block. So it was a challenge to get agencies and brands to trust us with their bigger budget projects.

Nick E> Super true. Like why should these big names trust three goofy Brooklyn cats called The Goondocks over all the industry big dogs they already know?

Cody> Because we put in the work to build the trust the right way. We are as good at voicing our opinions as we are listening.

Pratik> I think it all changed when we did the Wholly Veggie. Shout out to our friends at Party Land…

Cody> Number one comedy agency in the world!!!

Pratik> …for trusting us with such brilliant creative. 

Cody> That was definitely a challenge for us, but we showed up.

Nick: E> That campaign winning two Clio awards didn’t hurt either! 

Cody> Haha for sure, but so much of the win for us was about building relationships with talented people and learning from them.

Pratik> Every time we do a project, we try to level up. Even when things go as planned, we try to learn from the experience. 

Cody> Knees bent, head on a swivel!

Nick E> At The Goondocks we have a saying, “We don’t take L’s. We take lessons.”

LBB> From your experience what are the ingredients for a successful production? 

Nick E> For us, fun is always the first ingredient listed on the back of the box.

Cody> Fun concepts, fun collaborators, fun work. Hard work is fun, but fun work is hard!

Nick E> I see what you did there….

Pratik> It’s only possible to truly have fun on set if all stakeholders are on the same page: client, agency, production.

Cody> Yup, when everyone is invested in the same vision and execution, things really come together. Confusion around things like budget or logistics are a buzzkill.

Nick E> Sometimes there’s a weird antagonistic relationship between clients/agency and production… We don’t do that at The Goondocks.

Pratik> No way - It’s way more fun when everyone is rowing in the same direction.

Cody> And what happens when everyone has more fun?

Nick E> The work is more fun.

Pratik> That’s FUN.

Cody> You can see it on screen! At least that’s what my mum says.