“The Crazier, The Better!”: In & Out Productions Is Bringing the Impossible to Life

Production, they say, is the art of creative problem solving. You’ll rarely find a purer expression of that idea than In & Out Productions, a Miami-based company which takes pride in making the seemingly impossible possible. 

Looking back at the company’s journey since it was founded in 2005, president and EP Frida Sellar recalls a clear challenge that In & Out continues to rise to today. “If I had to put it in a single sentence”, she says, “I’d say we wanted to make peoples’ lives easier. Working in this industry you’ll always hear horrible stories about stuff going wrong around shoots. As a producer, my mind always went to ‘well the production team could have stopped that’, or worked around it in some way. So I decided to prove it, and we started In & Out”.

And, for the past 16 years, In & Out has been doing just that. Whether it be enormous clients such as Toyota, Ford, Mountain Dew, Volkswagen and Google, A-list talent such as Samuel L. Jackson, Luis Fonsi, Megan Fox and Mike Tyson, or huge logistical challenges on-set, the production house has always risen to the task. “We’re not a service company”, notes Frida, “but we do have a service attitude. That, I guess, has been the secret to our success”.

Above: In & Out sets up for a remote shoot.

Easy Does It

But for a company who likes to make things easy, In & Out is no stranger to a challenge. Asked if there’s a particular project which endures in her memory, three jump to Frida’s mind straight away.

“It’s impossible to pick one - of course, a couple of years ago we managed to carry out a shoot on top of an erupting volcano in Guatemala. That’s pretty hard to forget!”, she laughs. “You could see the lava coming down. But, you know, the one that really sticks with me is a Powerade ad we shot in zero-gravity. It was inside an airplane and we managed to set everything up and it ran totally smoothly. Those kinds of projects are so rewarding - the crazier, the better!. Although I didn’t go inside the plane in this case - I would have been the worst passenger!”. 

Above: In & Out’s work for energy drink brand Powerade was shot in zero-gravity.

More recently, the company’s taste for the ambitious was applied to a Mountain Dew campaign airing in Pakistan. “That was a great campaign to work on, it turned out we’d worked with a lot of the cast before on different projects, and you can just get into a groove”, Frida notes. “There’s a zip-line we filmed on, and then a lot of VFX work in the background makes it look really nice”. 

Above: In & Out’s work with Mountain Dew was filmed on a zipline, and is set to air in Pakistan. 

Familiar faces are part of a recurring theme for In & Out, and a large part of why the company remains such a well-kept secret. “Most of our business is repeat business”, explains Frida. “I put that down to the kind of ‘service mentality’ we have. We often become a reliable partner for agencies and clients, someone who they know can pull a rabbit out of the hat when needed. The result is that we feel like we’re a part of their team. That makes it all the more satisfying when you make your team’s lives easier through smooth production!”.

Beyond the Pandemic

Like everyone else in the industry, In & Out was not immune from the challenges brought about by the Covid pandemic. “We’re at a point now where we are comfortably able to work around it”, says Frida, “but I think there’s no doubt that things have permanently changed.

“Some of that is good, in terms of having remote filming as another tool that you know you can draw on as a producer when necessary. But let’s be honest - we would only want to use it when necessary. It just isn’t the same. Being physically present makes creativity so much easier, because you can throw yourself into something without having all the potential distractions we see that - ah excuse me, hold on….” 

As if to illustrate her point, Frida takes a moment to calm down an excitable dog just off-camera. “There’s a case in point”, she laughs.

Looking forward beyond the pandemic, the future is as exciting as it is hard to predict. “I wouldn’t say we’re ‘counting the days’ exactly because we have found a way to get by”, says Frida. “But on a personal level I can’t wait to get out there again. There’s so much cool stuff to shoot”.

When you’re talking about a company for whom volcano shoots and zero-gravity are all in a day’s work, it’s hard to know quite what the future holds at the best of times. One thing is certain, however - for In & Out Productions, it won’t be boring.