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Shaping the Future: Lessons From a DEI Internship Journey
133 Plays9 months ago
Explore the transformative power of diversity in the advertising industry with Tony Fulgham, owner of the commercial film studio All is Well, as he unveils a behind the scenes story of launching a year-long BIPOC internship program. Discover the motivations behind this initiative, the challenges and hurdles to overcome, and the unexpected rewards it offered. From inception to execution, learn how All is Well navigated finding and hiring talent, developed a meaningful curriculum, and built community partnerships to overcome the blindspots of privilege. This episode goes beyond success stories, offering a practical guide and reflections for those ready to embark on a similar journey. Join us for an inspiring discussion on making diversity and inclusion a reality in the creative world.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Crossing the Axis'
00:00:07
Speaker
You're listening to Crossing the Axis, the podcast that explores the commercial side of film production with your host, James Kebles.
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome listeners and thank you for tuning in to the show.
Diversity Challenges in Advertising Production
00:00:29
Speaker
For this conversation, we're diving deep into the problem of diversity within the advertising production business, specifically the lack of diversity racially, culturally, and in gender. But before we begin, let's talk about who this conversation is for. There's a concept in modern sociology that breaks people down into three categories when it comes to addressing societal problems and challenges.
00:00:49
Speaker
There are those who believe there is no problem at all. There is those who see a problem but don't care. And finally, there are those who acknowledge the problem but don't know how to fix it. This conversation, at least from my point of view, is for that last group, the production company and agency owners who know but don't know how. And I should rephrase that. This conversation is for us because I put myself in the don't know how group too. I don't have all the answers.
00:01:15
Speaker
and I'm not even sure if the issue can be entirely fixed anyhow. However, I do firmly believe we should make a genuine effort to learn about it, take meaningful steps within our capacity, and then repeat the process over and over again until we're making improvements.
Tony Fulchum and Fujifilm's Internship Program
00:01:31
Speaker
To help me explore this topic, I'm joined by Tony Fulchum, the owner of the film studio All Is Well. Tony is a seasoned advertising professional with a long history in this business who has earned the right to speak with a bit of authority on the subject of our industry. And full disclosure, Tony was once my employer.
00:01:47
Speaker
It was during our time together at All is Well that the idea of addressing the diversity problem took root through the creation of a year-long, BIPOC-focused internship program, which is what we're discussing in this conversation. The timing for this show is the result of a short film series recently published by Fujifilm, who documented the details of the All is Well internship program for the entirety of the whole year.
00:02:09
Speaker
Fujifilm's hope is to reveal the transformative power of diversity in the advertising industry and to offer inspiration for production company and agency owners interested in using their influence to bring about some change. Together, Tony and I are going to explore the motivations behind this initiative, the challenges it presented, and the unexpected rewards it brought forth.
Practical Guide to Addressing Diversity
00:02:31
Speaker
will uncover how all is well identified and recruited talent, developed a meaningful curriculum, and forged community partnerships to address the blind spots of privilege. If we do this right, this episode will serve as a how-to practical guide and a reflective resource for those ready to embark on a similar journey. With that said, I'm thrilled to welcome Tony Fulton to the show. Tony, thank you for joining the conversation. Hello. So, two middle-aged white guys talking about diversity. What could go wrong?
00:02:59
Speaker
Well, um, everything. Yeah, pretty much. I think so. It's interesting. You know, at some point I was, this is not about the program, but I was, uh, talking to two white men 20 years younger than me about feminism.
Racism and Societal Issues
00:03:15
Speaker
And there was just this argument and they were definitely the, this is, this was a while ago, long before all as well, but there was this, uh, real sensitivity around privilege and work, you know, and they were there at that stage where they were having a really hard time appreciating their, their white male privilege. And I was able to explain it to them pretty simply to the point where by the end of this two hour conversation, they were like, Oh, you know, like I had used a lot of analogies that I'd seen on the internet, like everybody else, but I was,
00:03:44
Speaker
old enough and beaten down enough that I didn't, I didn't fight them anymore. I was like, uh, and so when I got done explaining their white male privilege to them and they understood it, I told my wife about it. And she's like, she's like, that's who you're supposed to talk to. You're supposed to talk to the old white dudes who don't get it. You know, just be the white dude whisperer. Well, that's my, I'm so glad you brought that up because that's my first question for you is like, I said, who I think this conversation is for. Who do you think this conversation is for?
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not. I never set out to. Well, first of all, I don't think that.
00:04:15
Speaker
systemic racism and misogyny and homophobia and any otherism is the core problem. I think they're all symptoms of the core problem.
Creating Ripple Effects for Change
00:04:24
Speaker
And so all we can really do is try to move things forward by eliminating as much of the pain from the symptoms of racism, misogyny, homophobia as humanly possible. The core problem is a much deeper and older thing that is
00:04:42
Speaker
just sort of baked into humanity for the last 5000 years. And that is not a quick undo. So when you said that you don't know if it's solvable, I don't know if it's solvable either. You know, I think it's a giant mental health. It's a it's it's it's mythologies that we believed in forever. And and people will do horrible heinous shit and make it systemic to hold on to some story that's bullshit. Right. So like racism, basically any other ism that oppresses people.
00:05:09
Speaker
is to keep people in power because they're afraid to let it go and they feel like they're going to die. Right. So.
00:05:13
Speaker
We're not solving that problem by starting a BIPOC film internship program. So who this is talking to is people who have power and who have influence and are getting to the point where they realize they need to use that power and that influence to have an effect only on their sphere of influence, which is never as big as we think. Right. You know, so an agency owner, even a successful agency owner could be a huge agency owner. They don't actually have as much influence as they think because the world is big and nobody cares.
00:05:41
Speaker
So what they're doing is making it better for a few people and then those few people will make it better for a few people and it's just a ripple effect that you use the starter of a bipoc internship program will never see the end result of who we're talking to is people in power and didn't need to do something interesting and cool with it.
00:06:05
Speaker
I do want to talk about the motivation for it, but before we get that, I want to flip the question on the other side and say, who is this not for? Because you said something that was profound to me when we were starting this program, and you gave the metaphor of a bad math teacher that makes people
00:06:21
Speaker
hate math, right? Like math isn't bad, but a bad teacher can make it bad. And it can leave a really bad taste in your mouth. And I thought oh my that was it was profound to me when you said it. I loved it because it rang true for this internship in my mind around getting people that aren't prepared for this don't fully haven't done they're not self aware enough.
Teaching Honesty and Accountability
00:06:41
Speaker
I don't know what it might be. But is there anyone that comes to mind that this isn't for? Well, that's I mean, that's what comes to you. You know, the
00:06:48
Speaker
the motivation for starting something like this, you have to be really, really honest. So who it's not for is someone who isn't being honest with themselves about why they're starting it. But also, if you can't teach or if you don't have anybody in your system, in your organization that can teach, don't do this.
00:07:04
Speaker
There are so many opportunities to start a program like this and make things worse. You can burn an intern out and make them never, ever, ever want to do film work ever again, because their internship was so horrible. You know, your stories about it in, you know, tattooing is a is still a very much apprentice based art form. And it's one of the few like really like apprentice mentor based art form still out there. And you just hear nothing but nightmare stories about people who quit tattooing because their apprenticeship was so horrible.
00:07:33
Speaker
So if you're really trying to get underrepresented people through the door, you know, so that our industry looks more diverse in a decade, don't do it wrong. I mean, you can make mistakes, but doing it wrong is when your motivation is incorrect and you, there is no meaningful education through osmosis. You can't have somebody around it, but their job is to get coffee and have it be a meaningful thing. You have to have a curriculum.
00:07:58
Speaker
you have to have a point of view. And you know, honestly, there's just a lot of people in a position of power who don't have a point of view and don't have a curriculum. So a little self-awareness and a little bit of a lot of self-awareness and a lot of accountability on the part of someone willing to invest a year into teaching people how to get into this industry is necessary. So check yourself. Can you do that? Cause I thought I could and it
00:08:21
Speaker
was so much harder than I thought it was going to be. It crushed me in a lot of ways, you know, I would, I would, I would do it again, but, um, it was, it was really, really hard. I'm going to get into those details, um, into here in a sec. But before we do that, I have a couple more big picture questions and that is we've talked about a problem,
Equal Opportunity and Creative Perspectives
00:08:41
Speaker
right? I've set a problem and I think we're inferring there's a problem, but
00:08:45
Speaker
What is that problem and why is it a problem? Why is it important to solve? From a business point of view or from a humanity point of view? What problem are we actually talking about? Why is it important to deal with? Well, I mean, your head's in the sand if you can't see that humanity is not equally represented in the opportunities we have, just say in America, but the world.
00:09:10
Speaker
Right. There are always the haves and have nots and that gap is growing and the have nots tend to be parsed out by race, gender and economic class. But the problem is that finding opportunities to get people into the beginning of the process is difficult. Like, you know, it's run by a bunch of white people who know a bunch of white people and the people hire who they know. And so it just stays a bunch of white people. That's the best case scenario.
00:09:39
Speaker
The actual scenario is racism and sexism and homophobia. And those are things that are a problem. Right. But if so, from a humanitarian standpoint, I think egalitarian and egalitarian society is would be my utopia. So but from a business standpoint in a creative agency, it's just common sense like we're I shouldn't admit this, but I don't watch TV commercials because I see the same thing over and over and over again and it's just
00:10:08
Speaker
fucking boring, right? So if you want to do something new and fresh and exciting, you need a new POV. So stop hiring the kid from RISD who has rich parents and is white to be your art director, hire somebody else with a new point of view, right? Hire some young creative that has a vision that couldn't go to RISD. He went to some college in central California and has a really good take on things and brings a damn, you know,
00:10:34
Speaker
I'm speaking specifically to one of our interns who had a dance background and a music background, an articulate, well thought out point of view that couldn't have been more different than mine.
00:10:43
Speaker
It was amazing. And then we found commonality in those points of view. Like, I mean, he was just an amazing human being to work with. And I loved watching his eyes light up. And I was like, you know, that scene you think is so important. Let's take it out and see what happens. He was like, holy shit. You know, like so it was just this this this feedback loop that we both had. I gave him what I had and he became better at what he wanted to do. And he gave me what he had, which made me better at what I want to do. You don't always get that from somebody who's just a less experienced copy of you at that age.
00:11:09
Speaker
boring, right? Like I've said what I need to say. Nobody fucking needs to say it again because it's been said by a bunch of people before me. And, um, so yeah, I think the advantage, the problem is everything's too white and male here. It's a different problem in other places in the world. And that just becomes homogenous and boring. And that's bad for culture. It's bad for business. It's bad for creativity. So
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's just common sense. Get a new set of eyes on it. I think too often people that are in control and in power are afraid of the new. They're afraid of something they don't understand. They're afraid of something unknown, so they stick with the familiar and just kind of produces bland work. You know, and the diversity of thought is what's going to make more interesting work, but that takes bravery.
00:11:52
Speaker
right? It takes someone that's willing to look at something else. And maybe there's a term that I was turned on to by Blair Enz about a year ago. And it was, oh, no, I'm sorry. It was David Baker who turned me on to it. And it was, don't try to be right, just try to be accurate. And if you could just let go of trying to be right, that will free you up to hearing different points of view and listening differently. And that will turn into better work. And if you're trying to sell to people, let the people make it. It should be all together. And
00:12:21
Speaker
putting together a platform for that to happen, I think is. And also the other part of it is I'm glad to see that agencies and brands are starting to demand more there. They want to work with shops and agencies that are more diverse and they're putting their, you know, they're basically pushing with their dollars. And that's a good thing, too. It is a good thing. I think the intention is the motivation is crooked in a lot of ways, but but it is good. Good is good. Like if the dollars are coming down and forcing diversity, that is a good thing.
00:12:50
Speaker
I would say in half the cases, it's motivation is bullshit and they don't know why they're actually asking for it, but because their Instagram algorithm told them they're supposed to. And that kind of goes back to who should start these programs, someone who knows why they're pushing for diversity. You got to know why you're doing it. You can't do it because someone told you it's supposed to, because that means you haven't fucking checked the shit that you need to check before you can do this in a way that's not going to be damaging.
00:13:12
Speaker
You know, going back to that thing that Blair and said, you know, that need to be right comes from a society and generally a generational fear of failure because failure can physically feel like death, which is wrong. Failure is actually.
00:13:27
Speaker
super important part of any process, including the creative process, but like starting a business and, you know, hiring people. And the fear of failure is what paralyzes people from doing anything meaningful. When we started this program, I thought that there was a very high likelihood that we would fail, which probably meant that it was a good thing to try. When I was teaching these interns how to write, that was the thing that was stopping them so much.
00:13:51
Speaker
They thought they needed to write something perfect. The first time I was like, no, you were going to write mountains of garbage, just piles and piles of shit before you get one log line that is worth exploring.
00:14:02
Speaker
by our societal standards, that's failure, but it's actually an important part of the process, especially when you own a business and you have employees and there's a revenue stream required and you're feeding people and you got to pay their medical insurance. And you know, like you're constantly trying to forecast and predict what's coming next. You live in fear of failure because failure is expensive. And to eliminate that from your thinking when you're running a business is almost impossible if you have employees, but man, it's the, it's the only way that you can do anything interesting.
00:14:31
Speaker
Let's dive into the, to the nuts and bolts of this whole thing. So let's start from the top. What motivated you to do this specific internship program and tell us a little bit.
Motivation and Internship Collaboration
00:14:41
Speaker
How does it, what's the shape of this thing? So the, we, we were growing and we had, we were looking for a creative director and a senior level producer and both of the roles, uh, required at least 10 years experience. And we,
00:14:56
Speaker
just really pushed it out there into Los Angeles and New York and Chicago and our own town. And we put a high value on diversity. We just didn't get any, you know, like nobody showed up, nobody showed up. And, you know, and we tried wording in a bunch of different ways. And, you know, there is a lot about the language of outreach so that you don't alienate specifically people of color. But but LGBTQ and females as well tend to get excluded by
00:15:25
Speaker
masculine language that you're just not aware that you're using. And so we really honed that in and like resubmitted out into all the world. And we just got mostly male and mostly white applicants. And we found some good people, but one white dude and one white woman who were great at their jobs. But it was like, you know, we really tried and and we just didn't see it. So the question was why, right? Because we knew they're out, we know they're out there. But so the thing we realized is one,
00:15:55
Speaker
I sat back and thought about our industry in Seattle 10 years ago because I was asking for 10 years experience. And 10 years ago, I can think of maybe two full-time black people in the professional community I was in, and both of them are producers. I couldn't think of one creative director or art director or junior creative 10 years ago who would now have 10 years of experience and be interested in the job. Couldn't think of one from a decade ago. And so that was shocking. It shouldn't have been, you know, but it's like when you stop and think about it, things get real shocking.
00:16:25
Speaker
The other thing was that it was important to our company culture and the employees said it like we need to not be an all white company. And I was like, absolutely. I completely agree with that, but we couldn't find the people to hire. So how do we do this? And.
00:16:41
Speaker
There had been discussion. I think it was right around when you came on and you'd been talking about doing an internship program with Africa Town Land Trust specifically for ad agencies. So we started kicking that idea around. And I think we had a conversation with Africa Town Land Trust folks. We got in a little early with them. So they were kind of like, yeah, let us know what you got. Right. And then that Labor Day, that was August and then September Labor Day weekend, I went to a
00:17:07
Speaker
a burning man party. It was one of the, it was the year they didn't have burning man because of COVID. And I went to a burning man party in the middle of a field in Oregon, met a dude wearing some very fancy spandex. And a friend of ours introduced us and because we were both in film work, you know, he asked me a really interesting question. He's like, what are you excited about right now? And I, you know, two days, three days before I just gotten off the phone with the Africa town land trust. I was like, well, I'm really excited about this internship program.
00:17:33
Speaker
He's like, we should stay in touch after this. It was Victor from who's the head of marketing for Fujifilm America and wanted to sponsor the program so that we could afford pay for two interns at a time instead of one intern, which is what we had budgeted for, for a full year. So we were going to get two interns at a time, one quarter each for a full year. Yeah. So that may, and you know, and plus there was, you know, within a month of crates full of cameras showed up as well.
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's how that's how that was the motivation. So the motivation was we couldn't find. Oh, well, the other thing we realized, oh, this is important. So we didn't get the applicants. We really were talking about language, trying to get the language out there, right? And then knowing that we needed to not be an all white company. But the other thing was outreach, like.
00:18:20
Speaker
The language
Algorithm Bias and Outreach Challenges
00:18:21
Speaker
was right. The platforms were correct, but the algorithms were bad. So who is actually seeing this job offering? Right. Who is seeing it? Well, a bunch of white people were seeing it. There is a you have to jump out of the list. This took some this took some time. And I don't think we ever completely nailed it. But you have to jump out of the echo chamber that you don't even realize you're in because we rely so heavily on digital technology now and social media platforms.
00:18:48
Speaker
for communicating and you are in an echo chamber. You are speaking to yourself and almost exclusively to yourself. So no matter how hard you try to push outside of that, the algorithms don't want you to and don't let you. So even if you want to reach somebody who geographically is only a mile away from I'm, you know, I'm in North Seattle and there's a whole bunch of people I want to reach in Rainier Beach or the central district.
00:19:14
Speaker
And the algorithm says, not on your computer. There's no way I'm putting your message there because the echo chamber doesn't go. So you have to find outreach. You have to find people, you have to find people who help you who have a different echo chamber. And that's, that's, if you don't have that, that is super essential. You will never find the people if you don't get out of your own sphere, because that's the point you're trying to bring them in. And social media is horrible.
00:19:37
Speaker
When it comes to trying to cross pollinate different cultures and different neighborhoods and different ethnicities and sexual orientations like I mean an outreach partner like Africa term land trust of the William Gross Center is absolutely essential and if we were to start the program today and work with William Gross we would have all the information and resources we need to make it happen.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think that is very sound advice and critical for anyone thinking about this. The other thing that I would like to add to the partnership conversation is it was something that, um, why King Garrett, the head of Africa town said to me early on when we were talking about this, he goes, James, I've seen a lot of companies talk about this. I see them calm. I seen them go when the times are good, they want to do an internship program.
00:20:19
Speaker
And then the minute things are tough, the minute money's tight, it goes away and I don't see it again. I've seen this, you know, dozens of times. So how's this one going to be different? And that's what for me was a real eye-opener in terms of creating a program that wasn't just going to be a one-off.
00:20:35
Speaker
If it's just you and you don't have partners, it's going to live and die by whatever attention and capacity you can give it. But if you can build something with partners, you give it a better chance to scale out to to reproduce to to take on its own life. And that I thought we
00:20:52
Speaker
Our intention in calling that out or being called out to us and then embracing it and building it that way was really critical. So in this situation, Africa Town is now taking the experience that we all shared together with all as well and turning that into an ongoing program that they're taking to other production companies and advertising agencies so that this just wasn't just one thing. And that only happens with partnerships. There has to be this intermediary. I think the point of view from William Gross is a
00:21:20
Speaker
job center writer and economic development or career center. Right. If you if any agency or creative agency or production company wants to partner with William Gross for outreach to find these interns, I think it should be an application process that the agencies have to go through with William Gross. Right. I think that you need to submit a plan. I think you need to submit a budget and you need to be and you need to commit for a year. So it's not
00:21:47
Speaker
Because it would be very easy for an agency to come over to William Gross and say, we're going to do you a favor and give some of your people an internship program, which is the most fucked up backwards way of thinking about it. It should be, we need to build this internship program. Here's our plan. Here's our curriculum. Here's our budget. William Gross, we'd like to submit this application for you to be our outreach partner. And then William Gross vets the processes and says, yes, we will partner with you as an outreach.
00:22:13
Speaker
because if you don't have the curriculum, if you don't have the if you don't have the capital set aside, like our our program would have died if it wasn't for Fujifilm Fujifilm. Absolutely. One hundred percent made it possible for that year to work because at the end of twenty one budgets went away and we absolutely would have been in a situation where we could have we would have gone down to one intern and then we would be like shit.
00:22:36
Speaker
We can't pay the interns and this is a meaningless thing if we can't pay them, you know, because 22 was not a good year for anybody. Everybody struggled in 22. You got to do the hard work at the front. So put your plan together, make it a part of your business plan. No.
00:22:52
Speaker
that the the good repercussions of this, some will be soon. Most of them will be after you retire and and just know that it still needs to be done and that you're actually making your industry stronger. So, I mean, like there's a lot of really good reasons to do something like this. But man, you have if you don't have if you don't have a shit ton of profit that you can dump into this, you have to find fiscal sponsorship. You also need to find outreach. Outreach needs to vet you. You have to have a curriculum. We should talk about the curriculum at some point here, but
00:23:20
Speaker
Well, let's dive into that. It was worth spending that time, at least to me, around partnerships because it's that critical. It's foundational. And if you don't focus on that, if you don't think about that and have as much of that field covered as you can possibly get covered with partnerships, it's gonna fail. It's gonna come up short. And so that's why I think it's worth spending the time on that. Okay, let's get into this curriculum.
Focus on Story Development and Production
00:23:41
Speaker
What did All Is Well build that was unique to its kind of business? What was the curriculum for the interns?
00:23:48
Speaker
Well, well, our company specializes in, you know, script to screen, right? So like, you know, we're, we're a very traditional production company on one hand, whereas an ad agency will bring us creative and our directors will interpret it. And then we know how to produce it and edit it and finish it. But the thing that we do that's sort of not unique to us, but unique to a very niche sort of
00:24:11
Speaker
branch of production is sort of this creative agency slash production company. We're not an ad agency, but what we do for film is if someone needs a video and they have a set of problems they need to solve with video, we will do the creative concept and we'll come up with a campaign or video. We'll come up with log lines and we'll come up with a strategy and we'll write things. And then.
00:24:34
Speaker
We sort of go back into production mode and we produce it and we edit much like a feature film or a TV show. Like it is creative concept through completion for individual projects, not like an agency of record or anything. And so we kind of.
00:24:50
Speaker
gave them a creative brief that was make a 60 second short film that just ladders up to the phrase all as well. That was that was it. I don't care if you believe that all is well, I don't care if you believe that all is definitely not well, you can use contrast, you can use optimism, you can, you know, but and however you want the end of your film to ladder into the animated phrase all as well. That's it. That's what we're doing. And so we we set up a process in the curriculum that was logline,
00:25:20
Speaker
Uh, lots of log lines, lots of concepts, hashing out concepts, like sticking them to the board and see, you know, throw up the board and seeing what sticks. And then we took them from that into scripting and from scripting, we took them into.
00:25:32
Speaker
Uh, we, we put them with our producer, David Bradburn also who this, this program would have absolutely failed if not for his passion, uh, that has gone beyond the, the life of the program. He produced every one of the films and bent over backwards. So like he's, he's the shit. So he would produce these films with, with, uh, the interns and then they would work with an editor and then they would finish them. And I worked as the client. And so I would teach on one hand and then give notes to like a client on the other hand, and we would take them through the process.
00:26:00
Speaker
That's what I thought was so powerful about that part of the curriculum, that it was the story development and the story skill making and the, you know, learning about what's a story, the ideation of it and the producing of it. But it was to serve a client. You have this next layer on it and that you were the client. Here's your brief. Here's what I expect. And, uh, but you also have your, the brief had this room for your, whatever you interpret the need to be or a reflection of you or how those things come together. I thought was just fantastic.
00:26:29
Speaker
Well, and we talked a lot about the relationship of a creative with a client, and I took it out of advertising. I was like, you want to make a feature film? You're going to have a client and whoever wrote the check. Right. Like, I mean, there's going to be a studio exec with notes. There's going to be a financer with notes. You know, I don't know. I mean, the concept of being a writer director who doesn't have to answer to the money. I mean, film is the most expensive medium there is. Right. Someone will have an opinion that you have to listen to.
00:26:58
Speaker
And someone will have the ability to turn your shit off if they don't like it. Period. I don't care. If you want the world to see it, someone's going to pay for it and you don't have the money for it. That's just like, I don't. You know, I mean, the only thing I can finance is maybe in five minutes short film.
00:27:13
Speaker
So like, you know, the idea of doing this particular medium as your outlet, especially if you want to make a living at it is we talked a lot about that. But the thing about what we do is like I didn't teach them how to use an editing system. I didn't teach them how to be cinematographers. I didn't teach them how to be gaffers or grips.
00:27:36
Speaker
They learned a lot about all of those things through Fujifilm and our editor and our amazing freelance crews who jumped on board to seasoned professionals came on to do these films. Grips and gaffers with decades of experience were lighting these films. And so they and gave them a lot of input about how to communicate with a grip, a gaffer, a cinematographer. And at the end of it, if that was their
00:27:57
Speaker
If that was if they were drawn to that, then they could go someplace else and learn how to be a cinematographer because I can't teach them how to do that. Again, it's like, what can you teach? Your curriculum needs to be around that. I can teach how to find an idea and how to write it down and how to turn it into something on the screen. And that's what we focused on. And I think what was really fascinating was how shocking it was to every intern.
00:28:19
Speaker
that writing was the most important thing. They all thought that if they had this idea and picked up a camera, the idea would go into the camera and then they would have it. And the writing process was very painful because writing requires vulnerability and requires self-reflection and requires accountability to the idea and to yourself. And there's just a lot of, there's a lot of work that takes writing into observation and question asking and exploration rather than standing on a soapbox and saying something.
00:28:46
Speaker
that you want to say overtly which as we all learned was exposition. That was my favorite part. That was the thing that I just loved was going through log lines and looking at their scripts and going through script notes with them and just asking questions that they couldn't answer and then they'd go back and try to figure out how to answer them.
00:29:04
Speaker
inevitably they would find out how to answer it in the script. Every single one of them have come back and said that writing is the thing that they do more now since the internship than they did before. And which is, I mean, I couldn't feel better about that. You know, you said something profound to me just now. You said, you know, if anyone's interested in doing this to focus on what you can teach and that's you. And so I think it's such a great illustration of there are many things going on here, but there's one thing that you
00:29:29
Speaker
confidently can teach. And that is writing. I know that of you as well. And I saw that come through in the interns just for context here. So the internship program is three months long. There's two interns that get hired at the same time. We did a whole application process. The only requirement we made for the interns was they had to identify as an artist and be able to express that. They didn't have to be filmmakers. They didn't have to be
00:29:55
Speaker
anything they decide to say i am an artist and here's what i want to do with that and if they could do that
Internship Structure and Impact
00:30:01
Speaker
and some compelling way we bring aboard we probably had about what over twenty applicants we had writing samples come and i want to make sure they could actually string a sentence together i didn't want to teach them grammar i want to teach them to be writers you know i get them started on that process you know
00:30:16
Speaker
And then we got two and they would start together. And then it was for three months. Break down what that three months looks like, because there's also the curriculum that you put together, which was from like this New York Film Academy from way back in the day. You kind of borrowed that. Yep. I borrowed that and realized how incredibly difficult it is to do. It was too much. The curriculum and Verena from Fujifilm really helped us pare down the curriculum to something that was manageable because, you know, I went to
00:30:45
Speaker
a three-month program at the New York Film Academy in 1997, and it was eight hours a day, five days a week. And I can't teach eight hours a day, five days a week. I mean, we could do that curriculum if we had a staff running the internship, but I also had a company to run commercials to direct. So, yeah, it started with
00:31:04
Speaker
You know, certain like like there's a mise-en-scene exercise and like do, you know, do a tell a story in three shots, tell a story in three shots and it has to be edited in camera. There's no editing. You have to shoot it in sequence. And so it made them to think about getting in and getting out and, you know, and so just a lot of little exercises like that. But by the end, I realized that really what it was is get them to focus on learning how to write a story down and then pairing them
00:31:33
Speaker
with an amazing team that that was going to help them execute that story on the screen, which I've been doing this, like I said, since 1997, I'll write a story and then I will hire a bunch of people who are really good at what they do to work with me to get that story on the screen. Right. So we went through casting. We went through storyboarding and shot listing and and sequencing and all of the things that you have to think about to make a film. And then we would hire
00:32:02
Speaker
for very little money or volunteer. You know, a lot of it was volunteer, a really great crew that they would go out on location scouts. They would do wardrobes. They would do art department meetings. All the things you have to do as a writer director to get your film on the screen. And to be honest, like having the client thing, you know, definitely there was a a focus on advertising that I abandoned pretty early on because it was it didn't take long for me to
00:32:32
Speaker
Basically, I was having some issues with the idea of bringing doing a diversity internship and teaching people how to work in the propaganda wing of the system that has its knee on their neck. Right. There is a there is a conflict I have with advertising alone because the advertising industry does not look at the core problem because they make their money off the core problem.
00:32:58
Speaker
So they're just looking at symptoms. And I have to remember that that's still important that we have to bring people into all industries so they can make a living. But I abandoned the whole get a job in advertising early on. I was like, I'm going to teach you as much as I can in a shorter time of can't as I can, along with all these amazing creative directors and producers we have here at all as well.
00:33:19
Speaker
to have an idea, develop that idea, execute that idea, use that education, however you want in whatever industry you want, be a marketing person at a, a nonprofit, go make feature films, make music videos for your buddies and start a record label, like whatever it is or work in advertising, if that's what you want to do. But, but I, I took the focus off of that because I, I felt like the thing we were teaching them needed to be broader reaching than that. And,
00:33:48
Speaker
Really like, I mean, if you want to start a, if you want to start a business doing accounting, you still need to write your story down and execute it. You know, I've worked in advertising for 25 years, so clearly I haven't completely reconciled my feelings and I still very much love directing TV commercials and working with crews and getting a story on the screen, no matter where it's coming from. I'm, you know, my ideology and my practice are not in alignment and they probably never will be because I live in a capitalist world and that's just the way it fucking goes.
00:34:17
Speaker
But I didn't want to. I didn't want to focus heavily on where they were going to take this education. They all wanted to write. They all wanted to direct. They all wanted to be in film. I was like, all right, here's how I make a living. And here's also how I create. And everybody here is going to help you get there the best we can in three months. Do with it what you will.
00:34:41
Speaker
And I think that in the end, you know, I mean, it was a pilot program. So as successful as all of the interns are right now, the most successful, uh, cohort from a teaching perspective was the third one, which is no surprise. COVID mellowed out. I finally got in a groove and knew what I was doing. We were, we were in a bigger space. We had, um, we had more employees, so I had more time.
00:35:07
Speaker
Uh, but you know, the two, the two interns from our first cohort are killing it. You know, Aaron just is, uh, producing a short film series called gay Jesus. That's hilarious and amazing. Gemma is down in LA shooting videos and, and, uh, and photos for bands and going on to, I mean, they're, they're killing it. You know, they're doing great. Um,
00:35:31
Speaker
So, you know, it's. The other thing that I want to add to the structure of it that I thought was really critical for anyone considering this is so we did these three month internships with two people. And I thought having the two was really important because they could work together. They supported one another. And we did three of those. So we skipped a quarter after the first one.
00:35:57
Speaker
And we did it. I don't know if we put our finger on why we did it, but we knew something intuitively to do to carve out that time. And I thought that was so smart in hindsight to we did the first internship.
00:36:10
Speaker
And then we just took our time to, okay, reflect what worked, what didn't work. What would, like, what do we need to, how do we course correct on a few things here? And I, we took that process seriously and I thought that was really good. And anyone that was, first of all, what you said, I think it has to be a year long. You really have to do this for a whole, a minimum one year. And I do think there's value in having a start stop period. So to start, you're going to start, you're going to do it for one year and then you're going to assess. But within that year,
00:36:40
Speaker
It takes a time for you and your team and everybody to decompress, to reflect, debrief and do all of those things to be honest about what you could do better. And we did that. And I thought that was really good. So we did the first two interns took a break and then we did the second, third and fourth quarters after that. Right. And that that break after the first one is where that's that's when I was like, Oh, okay. What are the expectations that everybody has?
00:37:09
Speaker
What are my expectations? What are my motivations? That's where I got, you know, I was all utopian pie in the sky ideal, idealistic around the first cohort. And then when we stopped and thought about it, I was like, okay, why am I actually doing this? And that utopian ideology still was the number one priority. But then I had to, that's when I started to find all the things that I didn't want to look at. And that's where I really, um, I really tapped into
00:37:38
Speaker
the hard part of privilege, right? Whereas the, the feel good part of privilege is I have the power and the influence to make lives better for people. Can't get through the door. That makes me feel very good. And that was, that's the prime driver for most people getting down to the other, to the other things that I talked about earlier, those are harder to look at. And that's the actual harder work of,
00:38:05
Speaker
of being in a position of power and being in a position of influence is doing the hard work of counting what you want out of anything ever.
Program Refinements and Team Participation
00:38:15
Speaker
And and it's, you know, that's not easy work. And I think that the second and third cohort really, really benefited from that break that we took to, you know, to to get that down. I like.
00:38:30
Speaker
That's when I decided that I wasn't teaching advertising. I was teaching writing. I was teaching filmmaking. I wasn't teaching them to go in any particular place or direction. I was teaching them a process that could be used in a lot of different ways. And, and that's also when the rest of the company got on board, right? Like the first cohort was basically me and Daisy. And by the second and third one, we were all back in the office part time.
00:38:55
Speaker
Everybody got excited. All the, you know, our other creative directors were teaching sequencing and editing and, and it was great. Like everybody was able to get on board in a much more meaningful way. And the second and third cohort, because we'd taken that break and sort of reflected on what needed to be known. Yeah, that was a big deal. That was a, that was a, I forgot that it was after the first one. I couldn't remember if it was after the first one was second, but in hindsight, like.
00:39:17
Speaker
We took that break, moved into a new space. And then the second and third cohort had access to just so many more people and so many more resources with a clear mission.
00:39:25
Speaker
I share that profound moment there that it changed everything and made it much better. And I would, no matter how much prepared, no matter how good you might think you have this down, still do it. You know, you really, it's really valuable. So what advice do you give your peers who are like, okay, this isn't, this is getting something going here. I'm feeling it like what kind of management structure do they need to have in place in terms of keeping this thing going? Or what other advice is advice do you have?
00:39:52
Speaker
Well, the big one is know what you can teach and write a curriculum around it. That's that's huge. Make sure you can pay for it. So fiscal sponsorship, make sure you have outreach. So an outreach partner, those things are essential, you know, just kind of recapping and know why you're doing this. And if it if all the reasons you're doing it make you feel good, you haven't dug deep enough. Look for the reasons you're doing it to make you feel bad. Then you'll know that you're on the right track. From a management standpoint, you have to have a point person and that point person
00:40:22
Speaker
needs to have 20 to 30% of their work week free to work on this. So it might make sense to get enough of a fiscal sponsorship to hire a manager for the job. What that manager looks like depends on the industry you're in. Like if you're an ad agency, it's going to be totally different than a production company, which is going to be totally different than a marketing department at a brand, you know, like digital studio or something. Yeah. Yeah. Like so who that could be a creative, it could be a producer, it could be, you know, an editor, like whoever the heck it is, but you need someone who has
00:40:52
Speaker
20 to 30% of the week minimum. I would imagine that Daisy and David would both say more. Um, we got help from Fujifilm in the, in the, in the form of Dema and Farina who would come in and take care of some of the more technical stuff around the Fujifilm cameras and things like that, that we just needed. We just needed backup on that. So our physical sponsor definitely
00:41:18
Speaker
It was a it was a lot of cooks in the kitchen because we couldn't put one cook. We didn't have a chef. Right. Like I taught there was management that was producing all this stuff. So, man, someone needs to be point. And I think lesson learned is is that everything needs to be scheduled. Right. And this is where the point person comes in. Like there was a little bit of loosey goosey around whether or not people would come in if there was something for them to do. And it was like that.
00:41:44
Speaker
And we left it to the interns sometimes, which is also not a good idea. A job has a schedule. A schedule is something you show up for and you show up and you get paid. And if you're showing up and getting paid, then your point person will probably have some really important work for you to do, which means the point person then is motivated to execute on the curriculum. It's like, all right, we get we're paying two interns to be here for 20 to 40 hours a week this week. Which part of the curriculum are they going to tackle? Because if they don't have a job to do outside of that,
00:42:14
Speaker
That's the other thing, like we brought them on set like we shot a huge science fiction film for a for a video game company and our interns on that one. Like Aaron was the we put Aaron on as the script supervisor for that. Yeah. And and, you know, there is no better place to see how things work than script supervisor because your job is to log everything that happens and you are very close to the director at all times. So that was a I mean, for Aaron, that had to have been I mean,
00:42:42
Speaker
I was just thinking about where I was at Aaron's point in his career and had I gotten an opportunity to be on that set during that week for that project. Fuck me. I mean, that shit was awesome. And you know, and like, um, we, and you know, I've hired Aaron to be a script supervisor for me on commercial since then.
00:43:03
Speaker
Well, I thought that was, I liked, I wish we did more of it to be honest, but I, what we did, I thought was good. And that was bringing the interns into the business of all as well, right? Our clients participating in the creative briefs, um, being on set in production, understanding all of the ins and outs of everything we were going client management, all of that kind of stuff. Yeah. And you know, like it's one of those things where like, when you're taking a, doing an intake call with a client,
00:43:30
Speaker
we would have the interns on almost every time. And then it's where that point person needs to be like, what are you going to do with that information? Right. And.
00:43:37
Speaker
Sometimes we came up short on that. Sometimes we came up really short on that because I didn't know what to have someone with no experience do with that information without me spending two days working with them when I needed to be writing the pitch from the intake call that I just did because we didn't have a dedicated full-time manager of the interns. Daisy and David split it a lot. They, they took on a lot of that, but I don't think either one of them could have walked them through what to do with a creative call input and like putting together pitches or shit like that. Like I just.
00:44:07
Speaker
You know, it would be a part of the program. I actually think that would be learned better at an agency. Right. Yeah. I think that that skill would have been better taught with an ad agency on a creative team taking in, you know, taking a creative brief from a client. So, oh, shit, AT&T just called and they need a whole new campaign. Let's sit in there and then start, you know, and then having the intern in there during the creative brainstorming pitching process in the conference room that agencies always do their shit. And so, like,
00:44:37
Speaker
That wasn't, I don't think we were, I don't think we were well suited to teach that. So I really, by the second and third one was like, just kind of focusing on the thing that I could teach. What about you personally, you know, you go into this, I think you probably did a good job of checking yourself and calling out your motivations, but what happened to you after a year of doing this that you didn't
James' Reflections on Humanity
00:44:59
Speaker
expect? What, like, what were some of those things that you've, you know, you have a little distance now. What, what, how have you changed?
00:45:10
Speaker
I was not expecting that question to be hard. I don't know that I can answer that in an easy way, but I'm going to say on the one hand, I'm a much more optimistic person and have reaffirmed my hope in humanity. And on the other hand, I'm much more cynical and skeptical of people's ability to do the right thing because I unfortunately feel like right now
00:45:39
Speaker
Everybody's too scared to give a shit and because giving a shit requires vulnerability and vulnerability feels like death to most people. And I think that's worse now than it was even 10 years ago. And giving a shit is hard. And so, yeah, I'm I'm I'm more optimistic about
00:46:00
Speaker
who humans are at their center because of what we actually all share and what we all have in common. The amount of commonality that I found with a 23 year old black male and I'm as of last week, a 55 year old white male. We found more in common than we then was different. And I've always believed that. But at the end of this program,
00:46:29
Speaker
It just made me feel more that way. So, yeah, on the optimistic side, my humanism is on 11 where it might have been on seven, you know, when we started. My cynicism is I I just think that people are too scared to give a shit right now. And I think that's always been the case. It's gotten better at times and it's gotten worse at times.
00:46:52
Speaker
So I'm I'm sadly more cynical because I don't actually like to be cynical, contrary to popular belief, you know, and and I don't know. I don't know that the industry that I work in will actually support programs like this. I hope they do. But I'm on the fence about whether or not
00:47:16
Speaker
Anybody cares enough to actually step up and do what we tried to do. And, you know, I can't do it again. Not anytime soon because it wasn't sustainable for a company our size unless we had another corporate, a fiscal sponsor that was willing to show up with even more money than Fujifilm did, which they did a really good job. I got nothing bad to say about that, but now I know what it would take.
00:47:41
Speaker
I would like to see some bigger agencies like publicist or Accenture or Wyden and Kennedy, the ones who have some savings accounts.
00:47:54
Speaker
Or I think one of the audiences I imagine for this and would love to see respond to it is more corporations, more Fuji films, right? More corporate sponsors stepping up going, they have a DEI policy. Everyone's talking about it. Like this is actual, you know, on the street, like do this with small companies. It shouldn't have to be.
00:48:15
Speaker
you know, Wonder Men or whatever. It should be all as well. There should be a place for that. If Fujifilm was talking about this to other people, they should be talking to Sony and they should be talking to Apple and they should be talking to Microsoft. Yeah. Like, you know, they should be speaking to their corporate peers to start investing in places like all as well. Or like DNA is a great ad agency in town. I love those guys. They have
00:48:46
Speaker
programs in place. And, and you know, for all intents and purposes, they're a successful agency, but I doubt, I mean, I don't know, but I doubt they have the, the revenue or the capital to put the $150,000 to $200,000 that you should dump into this to do it for a year. You are going to be putting together a little practical guide, right? That is going to have
00:49:09
Speaker
the details like this so that, I mean, the goal, if I understand this, correct me if I'm wrong, but the goal is to take what you did for a year and have it be useful information so that the mistakes don't get made again, at least as many of them, and that there's information to be able to plan better from the beginning, including budgets, including schedules, including job descriptions and hiring protocols. You're putting something together for everybody to hopefully have?
00:49:38
Speaker
That is the plan. This is my way of putting pressure on it, by the way. It's public now. Right. The worst. I mean, at minimum, I'll write the outline for it and have somebody else actually put the words down. But I mean, yeah, I would like to write that. Actually, let me let me rephrase that. I would love for that to be written. The
00:50:00
Speaker
But sitting down to write it, I'm starting one step at a time. And the outline, I'm probably going to go back and listen to this podcast just so that I can revisit the outline, because I'm much clearer now on what worked and didn't work a year out because it took two years. Like, I don't know how long ago we did this. It's been a while, but there is actually some clarity that makes things simple because I've forgotten all the details that I felt emotional about. Right. Like I'm much it's much more nuts and bolts now so I could really get in and just give like a
00:50:29
Speaker
You know, like I think you asked me what advice I would give. And there was just a little recap that I did. That's the book. That's it. Right. Like know what you can teach. Really dig deep and know why you're doing this. Make sure you have a budget to do it. They must be paid. You must have a schedule. You must have a manager. Go back around to the beginning. Know what you can teach. Write a curriculum. Have your manager say that's unfeasible. Rewrite your curriculum. Done. Right.
00:50:58
Speaker
And then you, then it's whether or not you're a good teacher and a good person, you know, and by good person, I mean someone who can fail and not freak out, you know, that's.
00:51:06
Speaker
It's not a complicated process. The the pitfalls are just mostly have to do with self reflection and self accountability. Like the big one is what can you teach and why are you doing this? I got to say I you and I never had that. We never said that. We did this. We never said no, what you could teach. And it's the first time I've heard it in this conversation and it's profound. It's actually that is one of the most important takeaways from this conversation. And I think one of the most important
00:51:35
Speaker
Things that need to be in any guide for how to do this successfully is it you start that's one of the key pieces to start So I'm glad we landed on that. Yeah Well it it put I mean it so much so that the distance from thinking about the internship program and getting away from the emotional part of it and really thinking about where the roadblocks came from and
00:51:59
Speaker
It was around not doing the work at the beginning around what can I teach and building a curriculum off of that? You know, like it was, you know, this this that recap I just did. Like if you do that, honestly, those points, then you are setting yourself up for probably an 80 percent success and you will have the other 20 percent, which is the unexpected things that humans do and your unexpected reactions to those humans. Right. And that's just being human.
00:52:28
Speaker
And that's where you'll make mistakes and you will either correct them or you won't. People will get mad and maybe then we'll get mad. Like, I mean, you know, Daisy and I, Daisy being the managing partner at all as well and my wife, we were at the bar the other night talking about this podcast and like kind of reflecting on the on the internship program.
00:52:49
Speaker
And it really became very simple. I mean, it's just a very simple thing. It's just, but like most simple things, if done well are expensive. And so I can't, I can't stress enough. Don't do it if you can't afford it. And even the simplest things are hard. Nothing's easy. Everything's hard.
00:53:03
Speaker
Yeah. Simple is the opposite of complicated. It is not the opposite of difficult. I mean, you know, like it is a, it is a simple process. It is a very difficult process. There was a great quote I heard once that was making something simple is neither easy nor simple. Right. Yeah. I always use Danish furniture as an example. You can't hide anything in a simple process. It's all there. If you screw up the straight line, everybody's going to see it. You can't put some shitty molding across it to hide your seams, you know,
00:53:32
Speaker
And the, the, the thing about this is if you distill your curriculum down to what you can teach, your failures will be obvious. If you complicate it with a bunch of bullshit, your failures will be hidden. Right? So, cause you can point in all kinds of directions, but if you just strip it down to, okay, the person who's going to be the primary teacher on this thing knows how to teach this period. If that's what you set out to do when you fail,
00:53:57
Speaker
It will be obvious, which allows you to correct or acknowledge a failure, right? Like, Ooh, I really gave you bad advice on that. Like I knew better than that, you know, and it can be really immediate. And then that can be a learning experience, but.
00:54:08
Speaker
If you're trying to teach it, you don't know how to teach, then you don't know what damage you're doing. It's like you certainly don't want me to teach you heart surgery, even though I know basically how a heart works, because I read it in a book once. Right. Like, I mean, it, you know, it pumps the blood up and it pumps it back. You know, like, but you know, you don't want me to don't give me a knife to work on that. You know, so like it's just know what you can teach. You're not screwing people up. And in the end, when you ask yourself, what can I teach? Your curriculum will be bigger because you're going to learn something.
00:54:38
Speaker
from teaching for a year, right? Like that, you become a better teacher and you're, you're
00:54:43
Speaker
your breadth of knowledge and your ability to teach widens. That's funny. I, I saw you change as a creative because you had to think upside yourself and teach. And I watched the transformation happen on you and I don't want to get into it. That's podcast number two or when we take this on, but I think that's another unforeseen advantage of doing something like, Oh yeah, I'm a way better writer now than I was before I taught that class. And I've been writing for my whole life and I'm a way that that program made me a better writer for sure.
00:55:13
Speaker
Well, speaking of writing, now you're on the record for having to get this guidebook done by the end of the first quarter. So get to work. Yeah. But Tony, in all seriousness, thank you for putting this program together. Thank you for coming on and talking to me about this and sharing your experience so honestly and candidly.
00:55:34
Speaker
If folks want to find out more, watch these videos. Oh, man, on the all as well studios.com slash internship, you can see all of the you could see the anthem that Fujifilm made about seven minute film that is just beautiful. And then there's.
00:55:52
Speaker
individual stories on each of the six interns. And then also, of course, the product that they made, their 60 second spots that they made for all as well. And the whole collection is great. You can go on to Fujifilm's website as well. They did a really fantastic written story along with all of the videos. You can go to African Town's program, which is now called the Creative Pipeline. So Seattle, Seattlecreativepipeline.com
00:56:18
Speaker
And you can see how they're running with this program and trying to inspire other agencies and companies to continue it. So this it started here. It started with you, Tony. And I just want to just hats off to you on that. And thank you for coming on and sharing all of this. Thank you. The other thing you can find on the website is profiles on the interns and how to hire them. There you go. Right. So you got six people there who learned a lot and want to work. So hire them. Thank you, Tony. Thank you. I appreciate it.
00:56:50
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Crossing the Axis with James Keblis. If you're interested in joining the conversation or have a topic you'd like covered, please drop a note at keblis.com. That's K-E-B-L-A-S dot com.