Path Found
Path Found is the podcast for anyone who’s ever asked, “What now?”
This show explores the real, messy, and inspiring journeys people take to find fulfilling work—and themselves. From pivots and side hustles to mentorship and major career changes, Path Found reveals what college never taught and counselors never said.
Path Found
The Longway Into Hollywood with Brian DeAngelis
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Brian DeAngelis knew by about age ten that he wanted to make movies. Getting there took a lot longer than that.
He didn't get into a single film school he applied to out of high school, so he went to UC Santa Cruz and built his own program out of whatever he could find and joined a fraternity, mostly because he was an introvert and knew he needed an obligation that would get him out of his room. That fraternity is where his first industry job came from.
A few years producing in Silicon Valley followed, then a full-court press on film school applications: cold calls to admissions offices, flights to Los Angeles, and a professor who crumpled up his resume in front of him and asked what was actually interesting about him. He landed at USC's graduate film program, then in animated comedy development at Illumination, and today he's in studio operations at Warner Bros., where he sees the part of the business most creative people never do.
This episode is part of our AI & Careers series, and Brian gives one of the clearest accounts we've heard of what artificial intelligence is actually doing inside a major studio right now — not the headlines, the day-to-day. But the conversation is bigger than that. It's about how opportunity really moves, why the friend on a junior agent's desk may matter more than the executive, and why, in Brian's words, "all of the people who do so much hard work here at one point or another are successful because they had the audacity to play."
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One thing that has always been consistent, no matter how hard I was sweating and bleeding and crying over the work that I was doing to be important, was that people in this industry are interested in knowing what your relationship to media is. No matter where you are in your professional life, people want to know what you love, what movies you like to watch, what television you like to watch, what it is about the way certain writers or certain directors do that really turns you on, that makes you feel very excited. And in order to answer those questions, which are ever present, you have to watch things, you have to read things, you have to play video games, you have to talk to people who you've never met before, you have to go to different countries, you have to go to different cities, you have to experience life, you have to experience culture. And they are invariably so much less interested in how many sets you've been on and what famous music artist you have a great relationship to than they are about your opinions on the Odyssey. They almost open with that question. And I think it's really beautiful because everyone here is very hardworking. Everyone in entertainment works 12 hour days, six days a week. Everyone here is of a grind mindset. They're all doing everything they possibly can to gain a competitive advantage. But at the end of the day, it's just a bunch of nerds. It's a circus. It's a bunch of people who are here because when they were 12, their mom or dad or grandparent brought them to some movie where they just went, well, damn, I have to make that, you know.
SPEAKER_01Hi everyone, and welcome to Pathfound, the podcast about the real, messy, unexpected journeys that lead us to the work we love. I'm Monica Argandonia, and every week I talk with someone whose story proves there's no single right way to build a meaningful life. Ryan DeAngelis grew up in Silicon Valley, and he grew up on media. He'll tell you he was parked in front of a television as a form of daycare, and that he's grateful for it because it showed him a world much bigger than what was available to him. Somewhere around age 10, he decided he had to be part of making it. What followed was not a straight line. He didn't get into any of the film schools he applied to, so he went to UC Santa Cruz and made the absolute most of it. The Film Production Coalition, the Film Review Committee, the campus broadcast crew. He also joined a fraternity simply to build a social life because he knew that as an introvert, he needed something that would get him out of his room. That fraternity turned out to be where his first job in the industry came from. A few years producing in Silicon Valley followed, then a full court press on film school applications, cold calls to admissions office, flights to Los Angeles. He landed at USC in their film graduate program, then an animated comedy development, and today he's in studio operations at Warner Brothers, where he sees the part of the business most creative people never do. The contracts, the infrastructure, the economics. This conversation is part of our AI and career series, and Brian has one of the clearest accounts I've heard of what artificial intelligence is actually doing inside a major studio right now. But this episode is bigger than that. It's about how opportunity really moves and why the whole point in the end is to play. Here's Brian DeAngelis. Brian, I'm so happy to have you here today with me. Thanks for agreeing to be on the show. I just want to start. You grew up in Silicon Valley, and you know, just a little background. What were you like as a kid? Did you know you wanted to go into the film industry? Kind of what did that look like for you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, first of all, thank you so much for having me here. I'm very excited to talk about this. It's because it's extremely topical. I was a kid who got placed in front of the television as a form of daycare growing up. Retrospectively, I wish somewhat that I was encouraged to do more physical play as opposed to digital play, but I really appreciate the opportunity to have grown up on media because I think I learned a lot more than I would have if I was only exposed to what was locally available to me. And I grew a respect for it through that. So yeah, from a very young age, I saw TV and movies and I was so captured by it. I said, I need to be a part of this. This is something that is so powerful, so influential, so magical, and such a safe haven from, you know, the difficulties of growing up that if I can't be a part of making this experience for someone who needs it as much as I did growing up, then I don't know what I'm doing with myself. So I knew from a very young age that I wanted to go into entertainment. So I grew up in Silicon Valley. I was exposed to a lot of different technology growing up, and I thought there's a lot of opportunity for media to become more than it is today. You know, I was very into video gaming as well. I was excited about the idea of virtual entertainment, of all the different forms of media that were going to come up in the future. And I thought, yeah, it's an exciting world and I'd love to be a part of it.
SPEAKER_01So you ended up going to UC Santa Cruz for film, not a film school that people would normally think about.
SPEAKER_00I did, yeah. Not by choice. I didn't get into any of the schools I wanted to get into. When I was in high school, I had a lot of trouble figuring out what it is that I wanted to do. I was very decided on what I didn't want to do, which was math and sciences and things that required numbers. To be fair, I, you know, I had decent grades and my parents put a lot of pressure on me to pursue careers that would be lucrative in the future, of course, as any good parent does. I upset them by saying I actually want to go into the arts. But I didn't have a high school resume that said arts and entertainment. And so it was very difficult for me to get into USC or NYU or AFI or any of the big film schools. I knew that UC Santa Cruz had a good theater program, and I knew they had a decent documentary program. And it was nearby, and it was a state school, so you know it was gonna be cheap. And I wanted to stay close to home, going to my four-year, because I just wasn't ready to move too far away from my family at the time. So yeah, I ended up going to UC Santa Cruz Ghost Lugs, and it was, it was definitely a wonderful school and a lot of opportunities there. It was not the strongest film program. So I found myself in undergrad going to a lot of extracurriculars. So I joined our film production coalition. I joined our film review committee that did a lot of trademark work, did a lot of copyright work, did a lot of, you know, review of standards to make sure that our work could be distributed outside of the university. I joined our television broadcast crew, which is very much an AV club vibe. And we did sort of an SNL weekly sketch comedy show. We reported news for the school, and then I joined a fraternity. But that was more, I just I needed a social obligation because I'm such an introvert. I was like, if I don't join an organization where I have to be social, I know I'm just gonna be shut into my little cabin in the woods for the four years that I was there. So I ended up going to UC Santa Cruz and I made the very best of it. And the story that I like to tell there is I was pretty frustrated with my undergrad experience because I didn't think it was preparing me to be a filmmaker or even anyone in multimedia at the time. I thought I was doing a lot of film criticism, I was doing a lot of theory, and I was like, okay, great. I know a ton about World War II propaganda. I know a ton about, you know, filmmaking in the Cold War and, you know, nuclear period of the world. How does that teach me how to be a piano set? And I was very frustrated by that. But I got my first job through this fraternity that I joined just on a lark to be social. And what happened was we had some professional, I guess, development people come in and they talked about who were from the fraternity and they talked about, you know, how they got their first jobs and the new company that they had started and what they were doing as entrepreneurs. And I gave them my business card, which I had at the time because I was a total nerd. And I said, Hey, if you need anyone to make some videos for you, I'm very cheap because I'm fresh out of college. I'll even do it for free, honestly, but would love to work with this because you guys seem like you're great guys. And they gave me an internship, which ended up becoming a job, a full-time job. And because it was a company of like 12 people, I was basically head of multimedia for the company at the age of, you know, 22. So I like telling that story because for the full four years I was there, I was so, so adamant about being a teacher's pet and knowing all the professionals in the in the university. I was so about like, you know, calling and talking to people who were working in film, harassing alumni from the school who were at Disney. I was so about making sure my resume was padded with internships and this and that, like, you know, checking all the boxes that we were expected to. My first job at a college that justified the degree to my parents came from two frat boys. It was a story that taught me a big lesson about where mobility comes from. I think we often are stuck in this sort of rigid thought process of I need to check all the boxes, and if I do that correctly, I'm gonna get what I want. And I think, especially in the entertainment industry, opportunities come from people, not from processes, not from places. And the more you expand your network beyond places that are comfortable to you or places where everyone thinks to go, right? You know, everyone's asking for a job from studio executives, but very few people are asking for a job from two frat boys. And so there's more availability for work there. And it's really guided my hand since then to have conversations with people from all over the place. You know, if I want to be a studio executive, that means I need to talk to people who work in finance, who work in medicine, who work in architecture, who work in all sorts of walks of life because who knows? They might be friends with or a sibling to or a parent of or a son or daughter to, someone who's going to be more helpful than anyone I would have found in a traditional route.
SPEAKER_01I love that you just told that story. So, one, I tell my students all the time, and so many young people are caught up on prestige and I need to go to this college and that, but you could go to the best college. And if you don't make the most of it or you don't network, it's still not going to get you anywhere. You know, it's how you do college and you know, did that. Yeah, and talk to everybody because you never know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, and we'll get to it next. But you know, obviously I did my master's at USC Film School in film and television production. And the way that I got into it was apparently, and I didn't know this, obviously applying to the college, but UC Santa Cruz professors almost exclusively went to USC. So they all had strong connections with the school, and it was this sort of unknown thing that it was a pipeline for people to go from UC Santa Cruz to go to USC film school for their master. And I was like, gosh, I never would have known, but again, like how what a happy accident, right? What a happy accident.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so you did you go to get your master's right away?
SPEAKER_00No. So I got the job out of UC Santa Cruz, and I was very excited because I could tell my mom and dad that I wasn't wasting my own time. And that led to networking profusely with a lot of people in the Silicon Valley, one of which was uh a guy named Chuck Alley who introduced me to a team called The Cube, and they're a tech interview show that goes around the globe, really, and interviews people in the tech world. And I became uh sort of a pseudo-producer for that show where I would schedule our teams to go out with equipment and production crews and work with local unions and work with Carnet and, you know, cross borders with it was very complicated. It was, I was a crash course in pretty complex production work. And we got to interview some very cool people, like, you know, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, you know, leads in the tech space and again learned a lot about what was on their mind, which I won't get too into it. I I have nuanced and complex views of the culture in the Silicon Valley, but I will say this even crazy people will say things that are gonna sound normal in 20 years in that area. And it's really exciting to listen to even people I disagree with on a philosophical level, because they'll throw a sentence out there that doesn't make sense right now, but I just know I need to keep that in the back of my head because it's gonna be really important to think about for 10 years so that I'm ready when it comes. But anyway, so I worked in Silicon Valley for a while. The entire time I was like, is my resume ready to be a PA film set? Do I have enough to move to Hollywood and make my dreams come true? And the answer was no, frankly, over and over again. I threw a lot of paper airplane resumes from NorCal to SoCal. And the fact of the matter is just by numbers and economics, there are millions of people in LA that are ready to work. They're local, they're already friends with people in the area or their family is and they have a connection that I just don't have. And so I wasn't making the connection that I needed. So I was like, okay, my next option is doing higher education again and doing it in a way that's a little more targeted than my four-year. So I said, I'm gonna apply to the five film schools that I want to get into, and that's USC, AFI, NYU, UCLA, and Chapman. Chapman being my top choice, by the way. It's the school that I desperately tried to get into for undergrad, and they rejected me. And I was very angry about it because I love Chapman with my whole heart, and I was like, oh, how could you do this to me? It was like a parent telling me they didn't love me anymore. So I was really sad about that. So, but I was like, I'll give it another shot and I'll be damned if I can't get in this time around. So I gave it a full court press. And I'm not saying that everyone should do this because I think the universities would revolt against me personally, but I really went in for it. I cold called several administrators from every university with good intentions, and I asked, hey, I didn't get into the school in my undergrad. I really would like to correct the mistakes that I made previously. Can you please give me advice on how I should format my resume, what I should be talking about in my statement, in my personal statement, what I should be doing right now to prepare for admissions, who I should know that's going to help me get a competitive edge, et cetera, et cetera. And I actually ended up flying down and attending a class with a willing professor. And at Chapman, especially, I ended up kind of inadvertently becoming friends with Travis Knox, who was the head of the production program over there for a while. I don't know if he still is, and lovely human, by the way, just one of my favorite people in higher education in SoCalm. And he was super welcoming and he was like, Let me connect you with a few other professors and get you talking with the student body, et cetera. And I ended up talking to Harry Uffland, who was another professor at Chapman. And he sat me down in his office and I handed, I have this so clearly in my mind, I handed him my resume and my personal statement, and he literally crumpled them up and he threw them in the garbage and he looked at me and he was like, Okay, let's cut the bullshit. Tell me what's interesting about you. And I did, and I, you know, I talked about my my personal history, my personal obstacles, you know, things that I felt made me a unique individual. And he's like, Great. Now for the resume. Tell me, did you ever work in a restaurant? And I was like, weird question to ask. I would love to talk about my film experience, but here we go. And I was like, yes, I did. I worked in my cafeteria at UC Santa Cruz. And he said, Great. What did you do when you started there? And I said, I worked in the dish room. And he said, perfect. And did you stay in the dish room? And I said, no, I worked there for a couple years, and throughout the process of being there, I worked my way into being a second cook and then I worked my way into being front of the house. And I was, you know, I worked my way up to being something that was a little more cushy and more significant than working in the dish room. And he said, amazing. Is that on your resume? And I said, of course not. Why would it be? This has nothing to do with filmmaking. And he said, I understand that. But as an educator or further down the line, as an employer, I'm way more interested to know that you're someone with the ambition to grow in the place that you are, rather than someone who's just bopping around from place to place being an opportunist. Because I know that you are going to be useful in the industry. You are going to come here, you're going to learn everything that you can, and you're going to grow. You're not going to be a plateau. You're not going to be someone who thinks you have everything figured out because you got the lucky charm that landed you at the best film school, at the best studio. You know, you really had a work ethic that put you where you wanted to go. And I said, okay, interesting. So I put that on my resume. And I basically reworked every piece of, you know, every material that I sent in on these applications based on the way that Harry had had instructed me. And I got into almost every school I applied to. I got into Chapman, I got into USC, I got into UCLA, I got into NYU. I didn't get into AFI.
SPEAKER_01Wow. That's amazing. And I think that's really incredible putting that restaurant experience. Like, who would have thought about that? All right. So you end up at USC. You're in this master's program. Was that worth it? Did it give you the connections that you needed or wanted?
SPEAKER_00This is the a hundred dollar question. So when I was at UC Santa Cruz, I interned at the Gotham Group, which is a boutique agency. They do a lot of young adult literature adaptation and animation. And while I was there, again, I was young and starry-eyed and I was asking all the questions in the world. I asked every assistant who was in the company, did you go to grad school? Was that worth it? And every single one of them had the same exact answer, which was no, don't go to grad school. It's not worth it. It's a waste of money. I'm in so much debt. I probably could have figured this out any other way. And I was like, okay, great. How did you figure it out? How did you, how did you end up here? And invariably they said, Well, I had a professor at grad school who gave me the opportunity to intern here and then it became a full-time job. Or, oh, I had a friend at grad school who was connected via their experience and found someone who led me here. And I was like, okay, so you're telling me grad school is a total waste of time and money, and it's also the only reason that you have a job in entertainment. Copy that. And it became this paradox that was so prevalent. I feel like every time I asked someone who was in an entry-level position who did grad school, they said the same thing, which was don't do it. It's also the only reason that I have what I have. So it's this like buyer's remorse of like, is it worth it? Well, it's a great question. It's really a question of like, you know, A, how much time do you think it's going to save you? Right? If you don't have connections to the industry at all, grad school, if it's at USC or UCLA or AFI or a reputable film school, will very definitely connect you to everyone that you need to know to get a start almost immediately. So in that sense, if it's going to take you 10 years, because, you know, you live in Cleveland and you really feel like you don't have anyone to talk to, it's a really good opportunity. Secondarily, you know, and this is like, I had to sort of learn this while I was at USC. Grad school isn't necessarily about teaching you to do a trade. It's not necessarily about how to become a PA, how to become a colorist, how to become a sound artist. What it is is a sandbox for you to learn really big, important personal lessons about how you interact with film crews, how you interact with people in the media environment. Things that you really only get to learn in the real world if you have the privilege of screwing up and not having your career ended by the mistakes that you're making. And I really learned to appreciate that in my three years at USC, I got to make the worst films I have ever made and make it out alive. You know, if I had done that with money from people that I begged to be an executive producer and now their name is tarnished, or if I had got that from investors who now lost a significant amount of capital because they took a risk on me, I might not be working here anymore. You know, I really may have done some damage. And because I had the opportunity to fail at USC, I learned so much about how not to fail. And I have applied all of that toward my reputation in the professional world. And I feel like I have such an advantage as a result of that. And then the last thing that I think was worth it about, you know, doing the three year is not for naught, it's very difficult to find entry-level positions in entertainment. And being in any educational capacity does give you the technical ability to have internships. And internships are an amazing way to learn a skill and to create a network for yourself. And we'll talk about this too, but it is thanks to my ability to do internships at USC that I was able to get my first real job in entertainment.
SPEAKER_01So, what was that first real job?
SPEAKER_00So I started two days before I graduated as an EA in development at Illumination Entertainment, working with a very small team in feature animation, comedy, especially, to make all your favorite movies, minions, Trek, Super Mario, things I still can't talk about because they were so far out on the slate while I was there. And gosh, what a cool way to get started.
SPEAKER_01So, what did you do? Like, what was your job? What did you do?
SPEAKER_00So, development is the process of taking existing material or finding writers who have the propensity to create material that will eventually become the film that you're watching. And it was a combination of finding writers who were interesting, who were making work that was aligned with the studio's interests and priorities of what we wanted to make, and also finding pitches or short stories or even short films that we thought could be adapted into work that the studio was able to make. So, my job as an executive assistant to both our SVP of development and our executive producer and eventually our director of development as well was to do mostly coverage, coverage being reading, reading everything, and then writing book reports on them. So, you know, what the summary of the material is, you know, what the value of it is, a critique on the material, and whether or not the material and or the writer would be right for the company. And then, you know, as I was there, my position developed a little bit more into having generals with greener writers and talking to talent to see if they might be of interest to our group as well. And then sitting in on creative meetings with the executives I supported to take notes and also offer if I really had a good idea in my head and I felt like it was the right and uh reasonable time to let it out, critiques on the creative direction that some of the scripts we were working on were making. And I did get to get a couple jokes of my own into some of the scripts that made the final cut, which I'm very proud of.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. So, how long were you at Illumination?
SPEAKER_00So I was at Illumination for two years or a little over, I think. And I tried my best to grow there, and it was difficult because this is a time that was right after COVID, and we were starting to go into those historic WGA, SAG, DGA strikes, and there was a lot of anxiety, especially in the development world, that we had over option, that we had overbought I say the royal hour. So, you know, all these studios had overbought to the point where they had too much material to develop and they didn't have enough funds to get any of it to distribution. So a lot of development teams were starting to contract. And unfortunately, at the end of my two years, I did get laid off with a few of my supervisors, and it led me into the next stretch of my professional career, and that's been quite the journey to find my way since then.
SPEAKER_01So, what are you doing now?
SPEAKER_00So I'm currently at Warner Brothers. I work in studio operations and studio services. I am an executive assistant to our head of studio operations and our head of studio services, which are two very different departments. The former is production facing and they help create the right experience for productions coming to the lot. They sign the contracts, they create the deals for those productions to find space on the lot, and they provide all of the necessary services to those productions. And that includes, you know, power, AC, certain production things. The group in large provides everything that a production needs to do at the lot. And then the studio services end of it is very technical. It's a lot of plumbing, it's electricity, it's construction, it's infrastructure, and it's very financial as well because we're talking about overhead spend on improvement and repair of a 100-year-old studio lot. So there's a lot of very interesting politics about what it means to be a 100-year-old studio lot. Like, are we more preservationist? Are we more museum? Are we more trying to keep things intact so that tours can oo and awe at them? Or are we more trying to break things down if they're not working and build them back in 2026 technological standards and infrastructure standards that productions feel like they have a state-of-the-art studio? And amazingly, the company really does both at the same time. And it's quite the balance.
SPEAKER_01So you're not so much on the creative side anymore. How does that feel?
SPEAKER_00After illumination, I was unemployed for eight months. And I tried very hard to get back into development, but it was difficult because, like I said, a lot of development departments were contracting and there weren't a lot of opportunities. But I didn't want to go back to busing tables. I didn't want to go back to driving for Uber, which I did for three years. I didn't want to do one of the jobs that I felt like I had done as a means to earn the place that I had at the time that I was looking for a job. So I opened up my scope of what I was willing to do to say, okay, as long as I'm at a production company, as long as I'm at a studio, I'll do mostly anything, right? I'll do mostly anything that will keep me within the business, especially if it's something that teaches me something about the context of where I want to be later on. So my long-term goal has always been to either be a showrunner or a studio executive. And especially when it comes to finding and greenlighting the stories that are being made. And I was excited at the opportunity to understand studio priorities. What does a studio need in order to keep the lights on? What does a studio need to do to support the productions that come to them in order to make them the best experiences possible? And more importantly, why do they say no to certain things that those productions are asking for? So studio operations has been a really eye-opening experience in the sense that I have a much better understanding now of what it means to be a financially viable enterprise, right? What it means to reduce the overhead cost of the operation so that productions have more flexibility and runway to make good creative choices. And when I was at Illumination, there were a lot of moments where we'd sit in creative meetings and we'd get a lot of no's from legal or business affairs or from the studio senior leadership on creative ideas that we had. And I'd be sitting there like, well, this is a really good idea. Why are you saying no? That's a crazy thing for you to say. We would also have meetings about casting where I would have these amazing voice actors in mind. And it'd be like, oh, this person has done such good work, they should be considered. And then we, you know, we'd be talking about the biggest Hollywood A listers in the world and seeing which one of them was going to work. And I was like, surely there's someone better for this. But knowing now, again, what the studio is thinking, what their priorities are in terms of, you know, keeping the lights on and making sure that they remain a financially viable enterprise, I'm thinking, oh, I understand that decision making now. And were I in the shoes of the people that I was ideologically up against at the time, I would have made the same decisions. I would have agreed with their pushback. I would have agreed with what they were saying. And so while it's not creative, and while I would love to be back in creative, and I am actively trying to find my way back to it, it's been a really wonderful experience to see what the world looks like outside of it. And it's actually made me hungry to know even more about the context of the things that I do want to do. Like I'm very interested in marketing as well. You know, when I was at Illumination, again, gosh, we had such a robust marketing team. You know, we had our marketing team in early development meetings to talk about what product we could potentially create or what collaborations we could have or what activations we could consider. Because in order to make whatever story we were making popular and interesting, we really needed to know how to market it, like right off the bat. Otherwise, it would be a failure to launch. And so that's a really interesting world. And then on the business affair side and the legal side, you know, AI, what does the current atmosphere of our industry look like in terms of contracts, in terms of the types of deals that we're making? You know, how do we build in protections for both the studio and the filmmaker, for both the talent and the distributor? You know, I think those considerations, again, can either be a boon or an extreme limitation for creativity. I'm almost like, gosh, I wish I could take like a two-year gap year or whatever and just explore everything around what it is that I want to do, because I feel like it would make me so much better at what it is I do want to do. And actually, I want to say really quick on that point, at USC, going into it, I knew I wanted to do producing, but I didn't do the Stark program. I did the production program. And that was one of the best decisions that I've ever made. Because in the production program, I was forced to be a DP, to be a sound recorder, to be an editor, to be a colorist, to be a sound mixer, to be a writer, to be everything. And I would never have ever been as strong of a producer at the end of that program as I was had I not understood the priorities and perspectives of the crew that I was overseeing. Because especially as a producer, you're basically a therapist of the crew, right? And not only that, but you are the gatekeeper of funds for them to reach the highest point of their talent and their creative capability. And because I knew what they needed and what they didn't, I knew when they were trying to push for something just out of hubris versus when they really actually needed something in order to do or not do what they needed to. And so I really I can't emphasize enough how important it is to understand perspectives beyond that of what you think you need to know to do what you want to do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. The more background, the more variety, diversity. So you mentioned AI, and I want to shift now and talk about that because you, you know, the film industry, I think, has been talked about a lot and how AI is going to impact how it already has. So what ways do you see it showing up every day that we're not even hearing about yet? Like the normal lay people out here, we're not hearing, but you're seeing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. The reason that I got into filmmaking was because of Star Trek. I went to the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose a lot growing up. And one of the times that I went with my dad, there was an exhibit for an anniversary for Star Trek. And in the exhibit, they had a hallway. And on one side of the hallway, they had framed images and sort of like props from the show of cool new technology, like futuristic sci-fi technology. And we're talking things like video conferencing and portable memory and things that just didn't exist in the world at the time that were so cool. You know, and this is from like the 70s through, you know, the 90s sort of thing. And then mirroring that on the parallel wall in the hallway were the same frames, but the technology was real. It was things that existed in our world that had been invented 20 years later, like a USB flash drive or like Zoom. And I was walking through this hallway and I was like, and I was like 10, I was young, but I was thinking like, oh my God, like the message here is very clear. Like a bunch of nerds watched Star Trek, said, I think that should exist, and then went into the sciences and became engineers and made it happen, you know? And I thought, wow, that's insane. That's so cool that some writer, some director, some producer thought, why not? You know, let's make this technology seem so cool and emotionally so important to the audience that it's going to inspire a generation of people to improve our way of existence. And I was like, oh my God, I'm hooked. So I have an adoration for new technology and I have an adoration for its usage in the entertainment industry. That said, I and I'll state my bias here. I personally have a philosophy that I do think that entertainment is its art, right? And art is a human expression. And I think there's a level of responsibility and protection that we must take in order to preserve the authenticity of that practice. And so it's a balance. The regular consumer is seeing what AI can do with image creation, you know, with screenwriting, with things that are real artistic practices. And they're thinking, well, that's what Hollywood's doing right now. They're trying to write scripts with AI. They're trying to create entire scenes, entire backgrounds with AI. They're trying to replace actors with Tilly Norwood and everything that's flashy in the news, right? And that's not true. It's not the reality of things right now. And I'm not going to speak to what's going to be happening 10 years down the road. I'm sure there are conversations happening behind closed doors that I don't know about. But at the time, the very real way that studios are thinking about AI is how do we improve the lives of our employees? And I really mean that. I can't speak too much about what I'm doing in the AI world behind closed doors at Warner Brothers, but I can say, you know, confidently and publicly that the idea is really how do we integrate this technology into what we're already doing to make it better, to make it more efficient, to make it easier to use, to reduce miscommunication between teams, to reduce waste in windowing when we do things and how we do them. And it's very administrative and it's very technical. And it's very, you know, how do we continue to do what we do but do it better? And then on the creative side too, you know, James Gunn spoke a little bit about this in terms of what DC is doing with AI. Again, yes, at some point it's probably gonna create a reduction in jobs, but not in a direct way, right? It's just going to change the way that we do things to the point where we're going to have to reduce jobs that don't have the ability to integrate these practices and create new ones out of that reduction that are going to capitalize on what we've been able to achieve with new technologies. And it's going to be some growing pains and it's going to be tough. And especially as someone who's on the earlier end of his career, you know, I can say that's it's a really, really scary thing to think about, right? Because what's going to happen to my job, which is very much tedium. You know, and that's another thing too. It's like the entry-level job exists because it is the, I don't want to say dumping ground, but it is the collection of tedious tasks that no one else wants to do that creates a runway for new talent to get their reps in and to learn how to be something better so that they can earn upward mobility. And there's a very real and legitimate fear that if business leaders start having artificial intelligence take care of that tedium, what's left for an entry-level opportunity? And I don't necessarily have the answer to that. But what I do know is if I were a business leader, and I do know business leaders who think this way, you know, the smart ones, if I were a business leader, a reduction in entry-level opportunities is a death march for my company, right? Because what you're doing is you're cutting off the flow of fresh talent, of new perspectives, of people who are inherently better at utilizing new technologies and creating new stories that will keep your company afloat for a hundred more years. That is the last thing that I want to do when I'm thinking about longevity of my enterprise. So I think and I hope and I'm optimistic about the idea that I think entry-level opportunities are going to change for sure in the way that they apply to the bigger picture. But I'm not as fearful as I think I once was that they're going to go away.
SPEAKER_01So, and just to give an example of that, I mean, you started at illumination in development and you talked about reading, reading, reading and doing all that coverage. That goes away, or it could, but that you learned a lot by doing that.
SPEAKER_00Well, I learned that people are worse at writing scripts than I thought they were.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, but you learned what was good, what was bad, what worked.
SPEAKER_00Yes. You know, again, I can't speak for what's going to happen 10 years down the road, but at the moment, it's pretty clear when AI has been utilized in some of these processes. So, you know, I was going out for a job in development while I was going out for many jobs in development. And in one of the interviews that I was having, obviously the subject came up, right? Why would I need you necessarily to do coverage if I could have AI do it? Or rather, if I could have you just feed it through an AI processor. And my answer at the time was kind of, well, I don't know. Maybe you should get Chat GPT to do this. Maybe I'm not right for this. Maybe, you know, that's but actually the interviewer had sort of an ulterior motive for the question. They were trying to elicit a response from me, to which their answer was, you are going to make mistakes. You're going to tell me something that I don't need to know. You're going to embellish or omit in places that I just personally wouldn't. And if you were a large language model, you probably wouldn't do that. You would try to be as efficient as possible. You would feed me exactly what's on the page. You wouldn't embellish. You wouldn't omit. And when you gave me feedback about it, it would be general feedback. It would be the feedback that anybody would give. It would be feedback that the internet and Reddit and all the sources that you've looked at have all universally agreed upon. And he said, filmmaking is still art. And it has to have mistakes in order for it to be art. It has to be imperfect in order for it to be an example of human expression. And I completely agreed with this. And I think it's very true, right? I think a lot of the coverage that I handed back when I was at Illumination was very personal. You know, I passed on things that the company probably had a vested interest in because I didn't like the writer personally. Or, you know, I thought something that they wrote was very one note, right? One of my personal pet thieves in everything that I read is adults writing children just pisses me off. I think a lot of adult writers write children as like parent porn, right? Where it's like, these are the problems that I have with children, and I'm going to make them make all of those problems very apparent. And, you know, and they're going to learn exactly the lessons that I want them to, and they're going to learn those lessons exactly the way that I think they should. Like I'm not a kid anymore, but even as a 32-year-old, I'm reading this. And I'm like, no, no kid sounds like this. No kid is like, yeah, let's go behind the bar and smoke some cigarettes and, you know, like that's not what's happening. You know, kids are so smart. Kids are so smart. And with all the resources of the internet and AI, I mean, gosh, I've talked to some eight-year-olds and been like, you probably know more than I do on a lot of subjects. And that, or at least you have a perspective that I'm so rigid at this point that I could never have, you know, and I adore that. And so I think AI is going to absolutely become a replacement for some tedium. But I think the moment that it is essential that there is a human perspective in one of the vectors of filmmaking, wherever it is in the pipeline, we filmmakers, both young and old, feel a sense of responsibility to maintain the authenticity of that expression by limiting the usage of new technologies to be useful in an administrative sense, but not reductive of the human element.
SPEAKER_01Where do you see AI be genuinely good, like for the independent creator, a person with no budget?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. We have the USC Summer Program at Warner Brothers. And during that program, we bring in a lot of professionals from the industry to talk about their history and their professional career. And almost all of them say the same sentence, which is, you guys have never had it easier. And my immediate response to that always is like, what on earth are you talking about? There are so many fewer, like so many fewer opportunities here, and the world is scary and changing, and AI is replacing everything. And like, what do you mean it's easier? But, you know, the point being that like you used to have to buy a roll of film and go out there and get like six shots on the scene that you wanted before you had to either buy more film or move on. And now you can take a hundred takes on your phone and get it in 4K and you know, upload it to a distributor like within a breadth of a moment, and people are gonna see it immediately and like that was impossible. That was you could that wasn't even a thought at the time when most people who are professionals in the industry got their start. And that's very true. And I think that's great. And I do think that for all the chaos that AI might cause at entry-level positions in a corporate structure, it creates a boon of opportunity for creators to independently create new things, right? I personally started making TikToks and social media a few years back, mostly because I, again, I like to challenge myself and it was a place where I didn't feel like I had a lot of experience and I wanted to explore what my relationship to social media would be as a creator. And it made sense, right? Because, you know, I'm someone who works in film, someone works in media. And at the time that I fell in love with film and television, to me, that was the only form of media expression. But now, if I were to be 10 again and look at the world, I might say I want to be an influencer because I would achieve the same thing that made me want to pursue entertainment in the first place, right? And when I was young, I would steal my parents' camcorder and I would go out and I would film silly things with my friends, and I would bring it into the computer and I would edit on, oh gosh, I'm like a my dad got like the dinkiest like F grade editing software, and I remember pulling my hair out with it. But anyway, I was lucky because it was digital and like I wasn't like, you know, using a movieola or anything. But anyway, so you know, I was making things the hard way and it looked terrible and it sounded terrible. And if I had the resources I had today to, you know, generate stock footage, to improve the lighting of a scene, to extend a clip that, you know, I didn't have enough footage for at 10 years old. I probably could have made some really good stuff. Like I could do so much with this. And genuinely, like, you know, if I really took the time, like a year or two of experience to get a professional grasp of how to use creative AI tools, I could go back and take the footage that I got when I was in high school and I could make like a legitimate film out of it. And I think that's really exciting. I really, really, really hope that for all the fear that young people have about what AI is going to do in a corporate capitalistic setting, I hope they're using it as the ante as well. You know, I hope that you're not just going, well, this is going to remove opportunities for me and therefore I'm reticent to adopt it and I don't want anything to do with it, and I think we should destroy the technology because it's bad for humanity. I hope you learn everything you possibly can about it and then make that decision, right? If you want to be anti-AI, if you want to really get into it, you know, if you want to make claimation, you know, because you just hate the digital image, then by all means do it. But understand why that's more effective than it would have been if you had used new technologies and have an argument for it. Because then people aren't going to look at you and go, oh, you're a Luddite, oh, you're someone who's just, you don't want to adopt new technologies. You could have done a better job with this if you had utilized them. Instead, they're going, I completely understand why you did this. You provided a very good argument and justification for your vision of art to exist the way that it does. I also like, I want to say this too, because I think the other side of this too, where it's so tantalizing to use new technologies to create media that there's another version of this where you say, Well, I'm just going to learn how to be really good at prompting, right? And that's going to be how I enter the arts. But I'm not going to get a sense of how to capture an image without technology. I'm not going to get the sense of how to edit something without having the tools available to me, you know? And so you're going into it with this sky's the limit attitude. And so because of the lack of limitation, you're kind of just making, you know, kind of slop, you know? And I think even when you're using AI, even when you're using new technologies, you need to have a strong grasp of what that process would be without those technologies so that you know how to direct it. It's kind of like having an assistant, you know, it's like, what are you going to do with an assistant if you've never been an assistant yourself? You have no idea what the usefulness of that tool is going to be until you understand what it is to do the work without it. So I am a big photographer. I love, I love nature photography especially. And I loved going out. I mean, I was a Boy Scout and I'd, you know, I went out there with a camera all the time. And I'd, I was like Ansel Adams, just like, you know, grabbing shots of the mountains, et cetera. And I reached a point where I came back from a hike in a Yosemite with a camera roll of 2,000 shots. And I remember sitting in my chair at my desk getting back from that. And I was like, I don't want to touch this. I don't want to, I don't want to go through and find the best ones and edit them. Like, why did I do this to myself? And I realized, like, you know, I've become so reliant on just thinking the camera is going to get what I want if I shoot enough times that I haven't been intentional about what I'm framing, what I'm making, what I'm creating. And so I went out and I bought myself like a Canon A1 and I loaded it up with some Kodak Ultra Max film. And I went out there with 32 shots to my name and I made every single one of those count. And I was so excited to get back from the developer shots that I just did not think I was getting. You know, they were slightly different framed than I thought in the moment, or like the colors weren't the way that my eye was seeing was seeing them. I remember falling in love with the idea that this camera saw things differently than the way that I did. And how exciting is that? That it was so that it was imperfect and that, you know, it was sort of a surprise. And that now I have these cool captures that, you know, aren't necessarily the way that someone would experience it, but the way that something has captured it. And there's an art to that, right? And the way that I take photos on a digital camera now has changed fundamentally, where I'm way more intentional about what I'm shooting, and I'm way more conscientious of how something's going to look in a capture versus the way that my naked eye is seeing it. And no amount of film school could have taught me the differences between doing something intentionally on an analog system versus using new technologies.
SPEAKER_01Right. Now, what advice would you give somebody just graduating, maybe even just contemplating, hey, I want to get into the film industry, especially that? I mean, what would you tell them about school and things like that? But then even after, you know, what kind of jobs should they even go? For what can they expect? What's that advice look like?
SPEAKER_00This is gonna sound counterintuitive, but if I could go back and tell undergrad me what he should be prioritizing, I would genuinely probably go back and just say, hey man, relax. Just take a deep breath and don't get so worked up about everything. Because the honest truth is you could do everything right. You could get an internship at Disney Animation, you could get to know several high-level directors, you could get into the best film school, you can get to the best studio, you know, you could everything could go perfectly right for you. But when you roll the die, you never know what you're gonna get. So you could be sitting there with a phenomenal resume, and there just aren't opportunities for you at the time because the timing is wrong or things are going on in the industry or the environment isn't going the way that you want it to. Or maybe, you know, all of those amazing connections that you had at the time who were doing really good work all got laid off and one of them decided to go into dentistry because they just had it and, you know, they wanted to make enough money for their kids, et cetera. You never know. You never know what's going to happen. But one thing that has always been consistent, no matter how hard I was sweating and bleeding and crying over the work that I was doing to be important, was that people in this industry are interested in knowing what your relationship to media is. No matter where you are in your professional life, people want to know what you love, what movies you like to watch, what television you like to watch, what it is about the way certain writers or certain directors do that really turns you on, that makes you feel very excited. And in order to answer those questions, which are ever present, you have to watch things, you have to read things, you have to play video games, you have to talk to people who you've never met before, you have to go to different countries, you have to go to different cities, you have to experience life, you have to experience culture. And they are invariably so much less interested in how many sets you've been a PA on and what famous music artist you have a great relationship to than they are about your opinions on the Odyssey. They almost open with that question. And I think it's really beautiful because everyone here is very hardworking. Everyone in entertainment, you know, works 12 hour days, six hours, six days a week, you know, every everyone here is of a grind mindset. They're all doing everything they possibly can to gain a competitive advantage. But at the end of the day, it's just a bunch of nerds. It's a circus, you know, it's a bunch of people who are here because when they were 12, their mom or dad or grandparent brought them to some movie where they just went, well, damn, I have to make that, you know, or you know, they played DD with their friends and they got, you know, they had 200-hour campaigns. And at the end of it, they were like, Oh God, I wish I had a movie of this, right? And I wish I could see the dragons we fought. I wish, you know, we could see the the creatures that we met along the way. And these storylines are so powerful. Like, I wish I could share them with people. All of the people who do so much hard work here at one point or another are successful because they had the audacity to play. And I think we forget that. I think you get so caught up in trying to be a hard worker of trying to check the boxes, of trying to have a good resume, that you forget the whole point is to get some friends together and watch a movie and share your thoughts about it and really get to know your relationship to the world, having watched that and enjoyed that. So again, it sounds counterintuitive because this is not advice that has anything to do with, you know, getting into the industry, but I think longevity in the industry and especially making connections with the right people are going to give you the jobs that you want to have, all starts with being a real person and having a favorite YouTuber and why and what it is about that's interesting to you and how it affected you. That's my core advice. But if you want to get technical, you know, I think the other piece of advice that served me very well that's a little more practical, is don't be afraid to cold call people. You know, I told my story about how I ended up getting into grad school. I was amazed, genuinely I was amazed at how receptive professionals are to help you. And I think me, I don't know where this came from, maybe it was self-inflicted, but I think for a long time I always thought, I'm so annoying. I'm this little booger that just, you know, this little fly that won't go away. Like I'm knocking on every door because I want to be a part of this industry. And these people have real jobs and I'm pestering and I'm bothering them. But again, going back to that idea that everyone here was just a, you know, a nerd who loved movies at one point or another, they see that and they go, Well, that's me. That is where I was at that time. And I know I do this. I have a little brother, Jameson, who's 10 years my junior, and you know, and somewhat older brother complex. But every time that he has an issue or a problem, I'm like, oh my God, what can I do? What can I do to be of service to you? You know, and if that's being absent so you can figure it out on your own, then let me do that. If that's doing it for you, then let me do that. If that's giving you advice, then let me do that. Because oh, what I would have given to have an older brother at 20, you know, oh, what I would have given to have someone who can say, you know what, mom and dad were wrong about that. This is actually okay, or actually this is something you should be more concerned about. And as someone who recently experienced it in the context of the world that you live in, you know, like let me give you some advice. So cold call people, you know, like I have, again, I'm not suggesting that you do this, but I have called agents for writers and directors that I really like, knowing that I was going to get their desk picking it up, right? And then just said, hey, this is Brian, you know, I'm at USC. I'm just trying to get to know some people. What's your name? It's like, oh, I'm Frank. I'm on, you know, Tyler's desk or whatever. And like, you know, I just graduated a year ago. I'm like, great. Hey, Frank, would you be willing to grab coffee at some point and just sit down and talk about your experience and what you've got going on? And, you know, just no ulterior motive. I'm not trying to like, you know, get a job here or get any edge here. I genuinely just want to know about your experience. And I don't think I've ever heard no. And I have through that process met well over 150 people in this industry. And some of them you sit down with at coffee and you realize that you're from completely different planets and you never want to talk to that person again because there's no spark, there's no connection, and that's fine. At least you met them. And then some of those people are lifelong friends because they're people who are interested in exactly what you're interested in and they see the world exactly the way that you do. And then the other thing that I found through that is I think for a long time my philosophy has always been be friends with the really big producer because they have decision-making power and they're going to get you a job. But more often than not, it's like the the friends that I have on like the desk of like a reality television junior agent or like, you know, something that's well beyond the scope of what I consider to be in line with my career trajectory who are willing to help me in a way that is tangibly useful because they're friends. They really like me and they really want to do something to help me, and they will go further than people who are in positions of power who don't like me to do so. And unfortunately, you know, if you're James Gunn's personal assistant, you're getting a lot of calls from a lot of people who want to have your job or something similar. And they're less likely to be like, let me go out of my way to help you, because there's just so much of that. But if you really find like a good friend who may not be doing the most sexy, exciting thing in the industry right now, who really wants to help you, that's gonna be more useful than being friends with Brian Lorde.
SPEAKER_01Right. And the worst, you know, doing all those calls and doing that outreach, the worst that happens is they say no.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. Which again, surprisingly, rarely happens, right? It's like the worst case scenario is is is even like it's not that it's not that common.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna play this clip for my students every semester now.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic.
SPEAKER_01Because they need to hear that. No, I think that's great. And so last question, what's next for you? What's on the horizon?
SPEAKER_00Oh, who knows? Whatever the universe has planned. I'm still on my beat of trying to make it back into creative, on trying to make it back into development. I really want to try to move closer to television because I think that's the most active form of traditional media right now, and I think it's the most exciting space to be in. So I'm at Warner Brothers, and obviously it's an interesting atmosphere right now given everything that we have going on in the MA space. And I'm not in a rush for the first time in a very long time to make any big moves. I think the industry is going through significant change right now. And that's not just AI, that's also in terms of what profitability and distribution looks like, what a good business model looks like, how big a company actually needs to be in order to be competitive in such a robust field, you know, what the theater going experience is going to look like. I think we're getting into a place of like everyone only wants to watch an IMAX movie these days. And so, like, are we gonna build more IMAX screens? Are we going to reduce the number of theaters that are available to fill more seats than the ones that are around? Are we going to create more interesting theatrical experiences? Are we gonna start putting Wolfgang Puck restaurants and AMCs? Like, you know, what are we what are we gonna do in the industry? And it's a big question because we are going through a shift. We're going through a shift where the industry must change. And not because it's dying. And this is really important. I want to reiterate this. The industry is not dying. In my head, that's almost impossible. The idea of media going away makes no sense to me. We have been storytellers before we invented fire. We are going to protect this industry with our whole hearts. The question is just what's it going to look like in order for us to maintain profitability? And we're addressing that question. We're doing that through MA. We're doing that through AI integration. We're doing, you know, business leaders are looking at the tools available to us in order to keep storytelling a viable enterprise. And I think that's very scary, especially for people on the ground floor. But frankly, it's also scary for people who have been doing this for 20 years. You know, I've had a lot of mentors who have been existing in this industry pretty comfortably for decades, who have recently lost their jobs or have moved on to do something else, you know? And not all of that is bad. Some of that was an impetus for them to go learn how to make a TikTok or start a podcast or do something that was more interesting to a modern media consuming audience than what they were doing previously, you know? And I think it's really cool when people who have been an AD for 30 years start making TikToks because what a cool perspective to see there. Whereas, you know, usually I'm just watching Mr. Beast videos or, you know, things that are obviously already a part of the diaspora. So I'm excited about what's going to happen next, but I do think it's gonna take some time. I think we've got at least another two or three years here of growing pains until we really see any sort of sense of stability. And so in the meantime, true to what I was saying previously, I do think I want to explore the world around what it is that I want to do. I think I'm gonna take an opportunity to make some TikToks. I think I'm gonna, you know, I started a Substack recently and I'm trying to like publish some short stories and get some reaction on that. And, you know, I've been trying to, I've been trying to read a lot more, I've been trying to watch a lot more, I've been trying to go outside more, I've been trying to touch grass, you know, like I've been grinding for so long. I the last 10 years have literally just been undergrad and then a multimedia manager and then producing and then grad school and then internships and then studio and then layoff and then job applications and then studio again. I'm like, oh my God, I need to sit down. So I think I'm taking that moment right now to really just take a breath. And true to what I was saying before, remember that the whole point of all of this is to play and just to enjoy what it means to be a consumer with the power and responsibility to contribute to that.
SPEAKER_01Brian, thank you so much. Like your stories, the advice, it was great. And I wish you all the best. You're gonna do great things.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Monica. I really appreciate this, and I I do hope anyone listening realizes that they are so much more important to this industry and this world than they they might think they are.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for listening to Pathfound. If anything we talked about today connected with you or gave you a new perspective, we'd love it if you subscribed, left a review, or shared the episode with someone you care about. You can also find us on Instagram at Pathfound Podcast. To explore more stories, resources, and ways to get involved, visit Keystoneetwork.org. This podcast is just one part of the journey. A Keystone Network for helping young people and anyone figuring it out as they go build meaningful futures one step at a time. A huge thank you to my podcast editor, David Strutt. You can find him on LinkedIn for helping bring these stories to life, and to Elizabeth Minor at Silvermine Creative for the beautiful artwork and web design. And if you're on your own path, navigating the unknown, making a pivot, or simply figuring it out as you go, just know you're not alone. The route may not be linear, but there's always a way forward. I'm Monica Argandonia, and I'll see you next time on Path Found.