Meet Dmitri Mikhnev and Ly Tran of GoodGaff Productions in Downtown

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dmitri Mikhnev and Ly Tran.

Dmitri and Ly, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
GoodGaff started as a natural progression to the ever collaborating duo between myself and Ly Tran. We started working together in college at the University of California, San Diego. We probably worked together on about a dozen creative projects for classes and also a bunch of commercial content for Triton Television. TTV is UCSD’s best platform to meet up-and-coming filmmakers and helped refine our filmmaking skills while being a part of a heartwarming community. After 3 years of working together, we graduated and instantly became unemployed freelancers.

After being in between jobs and applying to every listing on this side of the planet we couldn’t break in without any prior connections, especially being relatively new to LA. In the midst of our dry period of work, we decided to go back to basics and just create for the sake of creating. It was this mentality that led us to make passion projects like music videos and eventually we had realized that we already made the building blocks for a video production startup. GoodGaff is the culmination of both of our blood, sweat and tears.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When we started we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. I took a business minor in college but it didn’t help all that much in the real world. Before even going after clients we had to get through the toughest paperwork we’ve ever seen. We had to quickly educate ourselves on business infrastructure and practices and don’t forget we’re filmmakers, so this did not come all that naturally.

After the dust settled and we incorporated we had to find clients; this opened up a huge new can of worms. Working with clients is by far the most important and difficult thing there is about a company that we’ve encountered so far. We went through the ringer: rushed timetables, lengthy contracts, clients who don’t know what they want … we just want to make videos.

All in all, it was nothing we couldn’t handle. We continually push ourselves just a little beyond what we think we can do and we’re stronger for it.

GoodGaff Productions – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
When we started entertaining the idea of running a business, we wanted to stay true to our nature as visual artists. We originally flocked toward music videos because they have a crazy amount of visual freedom and room to experiment. What we found out quickly was that at least at where we started, music videos don’t pay all that much. Of course, this meant we had to branch out and do commercials, weddings, real estate and testimonials to have a consistent cash flow.

However, our creative passion hasn’t subsided. We strive to book as many music videos as we can while doing the other projects to keep us afloat. What is cool about doing that is even when we get projects that aren’t necessarily that visually interesting, we bring all of our knowledge and effort from our filmmaking background and spice up every piece of content we put out. We have yet to make anything we haven’t put 101% into and staying true to that makes us very proud.

I think production companies get a lot of inquiry about how they’re different and we all strive to answer in a way as if we had our own special sauce. But as cheesy as it may sound, our special sauce is us. Throughout the years we’ve made many friends and allies to our company. We can work with whatever an artist needs because we are flexible to whatever the scale is. If need be we can always call on our good friends to come through and provide the specialties that they’ve been working on since our college days. Our network is a family of filmmakers that never let us down.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
My proudest moment was a day that if anyone else had seen it, they would think it was a terrible day. We had been in talks with one of our first clients who we thought was going to be our big break. It was that rainy day that he pulled the plug on the projects we had been planning for two weeks for unforeseen reasons. If that wasn’t bad enough, Ly’s car battery died the moment he hung up on us. While I was shocked by all the turmoil, Ly just had this giggle about him.

When I asked him what he was so cheerful about, he showed me a text from our accountant and it proved that we had all the necessary paperwork processed by the State. That day we were a full-fledged corporation. Ly explained that no matter what happened that day, nobody could take away from the fact that we had evolved from two kids dreaming to actual business owners.

Contact Info:

• Address: 420 San Pedro St, Los Angeles, CA 90013
• Website: www.goodgaffpro.com
• Phone: 3016464531
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goodgaffproductions/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodGaff/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/goodgaff-productions-los-angeles?osq=goodgaff

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