Ali Brownのストーリー
This is Reina Moro's podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Hi everyone, welcome to The Creative Mindset,
a podcast about what the future holds at the intersection of creativity and technology.
I'm Reina Moro, the founding partner of I&CO,
a global innovation firm based in New York, Tokyo, and Singapore.
Today's guest is Ali Brown, President and Executive Producer of Pretty Bird,
a legendary film and video production company based in Los Angeles.
It's a company with a singular goal of crafting unforgettable work
and developing talent by taking risks on and investing in new voices,
building them into culturally relevant and globally sought-after stars.
In part two of my conversation with Ali, we talk about her rituals for marching forward.
So let's get started.
What was the biggest turning point in your life?
Turning point in my life was 20 years ago, I was bit by a dog
and I lost everything under my nose.
So I've had, I lost, he fully ripped off my mouth.
And I've had maybe almost 15, 12 to 15 full reconstructive surgeries.
So I had to learn how to speak again.
You know, this is, I don't have any muscle or feeling in the majority of my mouth.
Oh my God, wow.
So I went from being like a very gregarious, outgoing, young and fun,
thought I wanted to be an actress to not leaving my apartment for a year.
Essentially only seeing 10 people in a year that was just doctors and like very close friends.
So I had a very pivotal moment in my life where I changed as a person.
I changed careers.
I wasn't in advertising at that point.
I got back into advertising after that.
Um, so that I had a very clear moment in my life.
That was a total life change.
Oh, wow.
That's a, that must have been a really hard thing to go through.
It was, you know, I think it's one of those things that
it's, I'm very much a lemonade out of lemons girl.
You know, like I'm very much like kind of wired for positivity.
So yes, it was awful.
Yes, there's still things that stay with me that I'm,
you know, very insecure about, or I don't like.
But I also had wonderful things come from it.
You know, I ended up back in this business and I have a career that I treasure.
I ended up marrying my best friend who's my husband because he was there taking care of me.
I mean, so it's really hard to look at things that happen in life, even if they're bad.
If from the vantage point of where you are now, life is good.
It's hard to not say that that played a role in getting to where I am today.
So bad in the moment, tolerable in the long run.
That's, uh, I mean, you, you have a really positive outlook
and a positive way to look at it, which I super, super respect.
And, uh, but yeah, I did not, I was not expecting that, that answer at all.
Yeah.
That's, I have a very clear, mine is like on a calendar date.
My life changed just fundamentally.
I mean, I won't get into the details, but I had a similar moment in life
where I had a retinal detachment when I was in my early twenties, playing soccer.
And yeah, I almost, and I'm, I'm still not able to see out of one of my eyes.
And, um, I was already a designer at that point, you know, young design in my early twenties,
but I thought I would have to get out of the industry because I wasn't sure if I'm
able, if I would be able to use my, one of my eyes the same way.
And, uh, yeah, I was, um, I was, yeah, about six, nine months, six to nine months.
Yeah.
I was at home and, uh.
It's fascinating, right?
It's, it's to be someone that you just take it for granted.
Yeah.
We were in a similar age group in our twenties.
You take your health and your fitness and just your tools,
whether it's your eyes or your smile or your,
you just take it for granted that you have these things.
And I think we don't also treasure them.
Yeah.
You know, you go through and you just take it for granted.
You don't appreciate like what a gift it is.
逆境との向き合い
And then at the threat of loss from it, I think you and I, it's also, it is very similar because
I, I have found also that a lot of people go through something that's really traumatic
and they don't recover, right.
They go through something and it's like, that's just gone.
They don't now have the ability to come back.
Right.
And I think if you have multiple surgeries and you're doing this thing where you become
this work in progress to get back, you actually see what it's like on both sides of the spectrum.
So you saw what it was like to be a successful designer having this, you saw what it was like
to feel the loss of all of that.
And now look at what you've gained and created in your back.
So the empathy that you generate from that sort of experience was really singular.
And I think in the same way for me, I was just like a 20 year old single kid living in Santa
Monica and you take for granted that you walk into a restaurant and someone says, do you
need a table when you have a deformity like I had, or, you know, I'm sure you had a moment
where you had patches and stuff.
When you have this thing where you signal to the outside world that something is wrong
with you.
I think in the moment of bandages, sometimes it's okay because people say what happened
the second that bandage is gone.
And your eye is looking a different direction or my face is scarred.
People literally pretend like you're invisible.
It was like, I could have stood there for an hour and beg someone to give me a table and
nobody would have.
And then you get slowly back to this place of recovery and that same person that once
gave you a seat that then ignored you, gives you a seat again, but you're the same person.
So you're like, how has my currency and commodity changed so much just by what happened
to my mouth?
It really changes the way that you look at the world.
And I think other people that go through something similar where you're like, sure, it's
your livelihood for your eye.
For me, it was my femininity as a woman, you know, your mouth is a very central part of
a woman's existence and kind of identity.
So it's just a really, you know, it's interesting that you had that parallel thing.
I mean, I would have never known, you know, but you create these kind of mechanisms to
protect yourself, you know, to try to hide it.
So, and I'm sure there was a point where you probably favored a different eye or you did
things differently.
Like I can definitely relate.
Yeah.
感情の管理方法
Like even walking into here, I asked my assistant like, this isn't going to be recorded on camera,
right?
Because it will change the way I can think and talk and behave.
It really is difficult for me.
Um, so, but those are just things where right before that, I would have been like, hey,
taking all the pictures.
Now I always go to one side.
I hide a side of my face.
Like you can see it now.
I'm always turnt in pictures.
How do you switch your mind when you're feeling down?
Um, I am literally, it's so generic, you're going to laugh.
Um, I set a timer.
Okay.
I believe in the egg, I call it the egg timer.
And if I feel sad, I will set a timer to 59 minutes.
And once it goes off, I can't be sad anymore.
Like I have no problem letting myself feel it and go through it.
And I cry and I'm a very emotional person, but I very much believe that there's a point
at which like I have to get up and I have to get back in it.
And I don't believe in like wallowing in it.
So I could have that same timer set for an hour every day and be sad for a week.
But I don't believe in spending 24 hours and being sad.
Like I, I'm in a race of life.
I believe there's so much life to live that I don't want to spend it just being sad.
So I try not to, to go any further than the 59 minutes of the time.
That's not a generic answer at all.
I think you're the first person who gave me that, that answer.
心の回復力と習慣
And why, why 59 minutes?
Because, uh, those old school egg timers go for 60.
Oh, I see.
And so you set it for an hour next to the stove, right?
And then it goes ding, ding, ding, ding.
So in my head, I was like, I'm not going to take a full hour.
I'm going to have 59 minutes and I can be sad or mad or down.
And I'll at home, I can set a thing on my phone.
I'll set it on here.
And then after that, I'm like, I just have to move on.
Like, it's just time to move on.
And like I said, I, it's not like I'm some like robot and I'm not sad.
I can be sad same amount of time, but there's a point in the day.
I'm like, okay, there's too much life to live.
You got to get back out there.
Yeah.
And do you use up those 59 minutes fully?
Or sometimes you snap out of it in 10 minutes?
No, sometimes snap out of it in 10 minutes.
Yeah.
But I never let myself exceed it.
That's what I should say.
But what do you do when you are like 58th minute and you're still like, you know, moping?
I mean, honestly, I think I usually, if I notice that it's 58 minutes,
it sometimes is, again, it's like, it's more cheesy than generic.
It's like, it makes me laugh.
I'm like, okay, here we go.
Like, it's funny to me that I have created this device since I was young.
That is like, okay, you're just going to move on.
So it's like, imagine just being like sobbing your eyes out.
And then suddenly your phone says 58 minutes and you're like, okay.
Like, it's just, it has a knockout effect.
It knocks you out of the depth to look at it.
Did somebody teach you this method specifically?
No, this is just something I came up with.
Yeah, yeah.
I've just done it always.
But my favorite day of the year is March 4th,
because it's the only day that tells you what to do.
You're supposed to go forward.
You March 4th.
So every March 4th, I make a new resolution.
I do something.
I do something positive.
Like, I just think it very much is a summation of my mentality.
I'm very much a March 4th girl.
Not to make assumptions or guesses,
but do you think that what you said about your accident,
you know, by being bitten by a dog,
did that prepare you for this sort of mechanism for you to cope with?
Or have you been doing these things before, even before that?
March 4th, I've been doing it since I was a little kid.
Okay.
I think the mentality probably saved my life, quite frankly.
Oh, I see.
I think if you're stuck in an apartment,
and my apartment was like a basement level apartment for essentially a year,
and people won't really make eye contact with you,
and you look like a monster,
I think the way forward is you're just like,
okay, this is what it is.
I'm just going to wake up.
I'm going to put my two feet down out of bed every day.
And whatever the day yields, the day yields.
Like, I think that I'm not a person that gives up easily.
So I think actually I'd almost had like a lifetime of training
for it to happen to then not let it beat me, if that makes sense.
No, that makes a lot of sense.
Wow.
Fascinating.
I can keep asking more questions about this specifically,
but just to keep the conversation going, I'll move to the next one.
What is your superpower?
Quickness of response.
My superpower is, they tease me here, they call me the first responder.
Okay.
So if I get an email, my superpower is literally emails.
If you email me, I'm a terrible texter, terrible everything else.
Responding to emails is my superpower.
Really?
I don't think there's an email that comes to me that I don't respond within 24 hours.
So responsiveness.
Yes.
So even if it's a person I know, or it's a random person, like sending me a director reel,
I will respond.
It's very rare that I don't respond.
Have you always been that way?
My dad taught me that.
相手への敬意
When somebody would call the house when I was a kid and like want to talk to me,
and I'm like, I don't want to talk to that person, right?
Like I'd kind of roll my eyes or it was like a dumb boy.
I didn't want to call back.
My dad said every person that like calls or reaches out deserves a response.
Okay.
So I was raised, if somebody gives you a gift, you write a thank you note.
If somebody calls, you return the call.
It's an act of respect to show back to the person that has put in the effort towards you
to at least respond and acknowledge back.
So that's something my parents definitely ingrained in me.
But I think that in work, it's become a superpower because in our industry,
and particularly in the entertainment side,
less the commercial and more the entertainment side,
where the lead times are longer and slower, people are not responsive.
So for my clients and my directors,
it is a superpower for them because to be a creative like you are,
it can be a very lonely thing.
You can be alone and you're waiting for a project to come in,
waiting for someone to reach out to you.
So I think if you have somebody that you know, when they reach out,
they're going to respond.
It makes me bigger than I really am, if that makes sense.
It makes me feel like I'm in more places and I'm around a lot
because I respond really well.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's a very specific superpower,
which again, I wasn't expecting, but makes a lot of sense.
And easy, by the way, anybody can do it.
That's the thing is, it's not a unique thing.
It's just something that like, it's a very replicable thing
for somebody that wants to be in the business.
I'm like, just start there.
Because people feel respected and heard and it's genuine.
It's not performative.
I am genuinely excited to respond back to somebody.
But the wiring of my brain that can't see that blue dot of an unread email
has served me well in this business because then I can respond
and it's become a good superpower.
仕事と家庭の境界
I'm picking up already just within the first few questions.
I'm picking up quite a few tips that I can employ in my life.
There you go.
The egg timer responsiveness.
Egg timer responsiveness, yeah, there you go.
Yeah, excellent.
Everybody has different things they're good at, right?
I look at people that are phenomenal, like producers,
that they zone in on every detail.
They think about, okay, for a production, I need the crane.
I need this many people.
I need to really think about what the art,
they can just focus on things and they go so deep.
And my brain can't do that.
My brain works better wide with a lot of stuff coming in.
It's almost like my focus comes from multitasking versus hyper focus on one thing.
And so when I try to say, oh, I'm just going to do one thing at once,
it doesn't, I don't do as well as when I'm kind of doing everything.
But I think I'm very lucky in that I love being at home and I love being at work.
So I don't really have lines between them.
And I don't look at that as a bad thing.
You know, people talk about work-life balance and people will say,
oh, you travel so much and who's, you know, you have a little son at home,
but it's the only life he's ever known is that mom's in and out,
but mom's always happy, you know, and that mom, you know,
like I go to work and I love going to work and he walks here and he loves being at the office.
So I think it's, um, I think it's, people are born with one or the other.
And I was just born with a lot of the move quick, but it makes, but I think it's, it's happy.
I have a hard time switching modes when I'm just at home during the week.
You know, when I walk in, I still need a minute.
I need a little bit of time for nobody to kind of talk to me for a second, just to be quiet.
If I'm like tired, I'm like, okay, I need to like get up and get a lot of chocolate.
レジリエンスと日々の儀式
I love sweets, dessert, crazy for dessert.
And if I'm at home and I'm tired, just go to bed.
Or I could stay up and have a conversation with my husband, watch a movie, you know,
go out with a friend, do something like that to separate.
I take a nice hot bath.
I take like that 15 minutes of just calm.
And then I'm kind of ready for the next adventure.
You have all these life tips, little life tips.
Yeah.
But it works.
I mean, it's like, if you, I think if you shut down for 15 minutes and usually if you're in water
and it's like, you know, it's kind of chill and you can read a book, you can do a crossword,
you can watch a stupid Netflix show, whatever.
Then you're just like, okay, you feel, you just feel restored to yourself.
Maybe that's the thing is I think in the course of a day, many of us in this business,
we give everything we have to everybody else, right?
Like everything you have is if you're pitching a client, if you're doing the podcast, you're like,
how do I make my guests come on?
And I'm saying this, how do I come up with this creative idea?
We worry about everybody else's experience that then you walk in the door
and you really don't have much left in you.
So you can either be grumpy, right?
You can either be grumpy and resentful and just kind of like, I'm tired, leave me alone.
Or you give yourself a timeout and you do that thing that restores,
whether that's working out, taking a bath, watching something, listening to music.
And then I think if you, if you choose to make that decision for 30 minutes,
then you can go back into life and you can have a wonderful next amount of time.
Or you can choose to be resentful and grumpy and just go to bed.
And I just choose to do the thing, whatever that thing is.
I think that's, it's important that you pick that for me.
家族の分担の重要性
I have a slightly off topic question.
Yeah.
You said that you travel quite a bit and, you know, your son who's, you said nine,
is used to seeing mom being busy.
Mom, you know, coming and going, but being happy.
Like, how do you divide and conquer?
So we were best friends for eight years before we ever dated.
And he was the 911 call from the hospital that his friend was in the hospital.
They weren't sure if she was going to make it, somebody needed to come.
And he stayed by my side for a year.
At the end of that year, we were engaged for like a week and a half and we got married.
Beautiful story.
The great thing about, he's a beautiful man.
The great thing about that is I have eight years of best friendship with someone that
I never dated.
There was no romance.
I was just my best friend and we worked together.
We hung out together.
We traveled together.
So it's almost without communication.
We are the most seamless, like partnership.
We're really a phenomenal.
Was it a common interest that you had that kept you guys as friends or?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We both love this business.
We both came from not any privilege.
It was very hard to get into this business.
And I think we just were like, okay, we're going to have each other's backs.
Is he a producer also?
He's an editor.
He's an editor.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so, you know, for instance, when I just got back from Berlin, I had been gone a week
prior to that.
He was gone two weeks.
I was gone two weeks before that.
And he was gone a week before that.
So we hadn't seen each other for five and a half weeks.
Yeah.
And, but our son is in his house with stability in his bed every night.
We rarely uproot him.
So I think that we both have just, we, each of us can do the full job to take care of
the other person.
And then when we're both together and we can split it 50 50, it's a bonus.
Um, but there's no difference.
We have incredible communication.
It's very much divide and conquer.
業界の理解と家族の絆
Um, but I think it goes back to the fact that we've essentially grown up together.
And also you being the same industry, you, you understand the same industry.
We understand each other's lives.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You understand the need.
And I might, I might even say sometimes the burden of the industry.
I mean, you know, although I do a different thing from, from, from what you do.
It comes with trouble.
It comes with demand.
It comes with hours.
Yeah.
But it sounds like you, because you're in the same industry, you understand the demand of
this job.
A thousand percent.
Yeah.
But also kind of like tag team.
Yeah.
Tag team, understanding what each other's doing, understanding the why of it.
We're both ambitious.
We both like working.
He loves working too.
And I think that, you know, now we've kind of transferred that onto our son of like a
guy have to go out of town for work.
And he's like, I'm coming.
Right.
Like my, my young child could navigate an airport.
He knows how to like, you know, he walks on the planes as high to the pilot, you know,
he's just like, he's very comfortable now moving throughout the world.
And that was something that neither my husband and I ever experienced growing up.
We've never traveled at all.
And so I think we see the benefits of certain parts of it.
You know, people always talk about feeling guilty, like the mom guilt that you're not
at home.
I just don't have that.
Like, I just feel like this is just who I am.
It's who I've always been.
My son is amazing.
He's my favorite person in the world.
Like he's not suffering from me being gone when he has this awesome dad at home who loves
him.
It's just like, it's, it sounds again, like kind of pie in the sky and it doesn't come
without to your point, right?
Like there's hard times, there's hard moments.
There's sacrifice.
There's no planning.
There's like, Hey, I don't know where I'm going to be next week.
At the end of the day, like everybody feels like they're covering for everybody else.
So you don't feel any lack of anything.
It just feels like you're constantly on fast forward.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you don't have to feel guilty for doing what you love.
But I don't feel guilty for what I love.
And that's the thing.
I think a lot of women, particularly in parents, particularly, I should say, I think they carry
a lot of guilt for being like, Hey, I'm not going to be home for this thing.
Cause I have to be in this place where I just don't, I just think that we get one life.
This is like, we all have to do what makes us excited.
And you're just going to be a better parent, the happier that you are.
What do you think that you do to keep you relevant in the industry and in the community
that you belong to?
Like, I genuinely love this industry.
It is genuinely, genuinely a gift of my life that I get to talk to people like you and travel
and meet people and have these experiences.
It is not anything that I could have envisioned.
And so I think that what I do to stay relevant is to stay perpetually curious.
Like there is no, when I met you in the room of the Andes, I walked in there.
So I couldn't believe I was in the room with all those people.
I couldn't believe it.
And I think that when there was a moment when everyone just was cool and started interacting,
I was genuinely shocked because I couldn't believe that anyone would even like, like,
I was like, I'm here to get you coffee is kind of what I felt like.
Like, I'm not here to be as a peer.
Like I should be, I should be in service to you all and to have a voice in a room in,
in a place in that room as a creative person.
I think that I try to, in those circumstances, just listen, be curious, ask questions.
Like I am a consumer.
I will be doing a crossword puzzle as I'm listening to a podcast, as I'm watching something
楽観主義と好奇心
on Netflix, as there's a jigsaw puzzle in front of me, like I, I cannot consume enough.
And so I think that helps because, and I'm reading, I read all the time.
I'm always have two books next to me, always a show that I'm watching, typically a fiction
and a nonfiction book.
Like I, I can't get enough.
I have such a like zest for life and existence that I think that is the, that's a fundamental
thing that just helps.
And then you transfer that to the fact that if anyone's like, Hey, can we get a coffee?
It may take me a minute, but I'm always like, sure.
Or let's hop on a zoom.
Like I had a chat with a woman yesterday who just cold hit me up in my, in my LinkedIn or
in my Instagram, and it's just trying to navigate this business.
And she was delightful.
It was 30 minutes that left me so inspired.
I introduced her to a bunch of people, like I don't know her.
And it changed the whole tenor of my day to be like how I'm going to approach things.
So I think that, again, I'm, I'm blessed with the wiring that my, my, I was given at
birth and that I'm kind of wired for optimism, but I'm also wired deeply for curiosity.
So I think that that is critical for staying relevant because if I didn't just turn on
the radio and instead listened to whatever cool album just came out on Apple music, I
literally listened to the radio because you never know what song is going to come on.
And so how am I otherwise going to hear new music if I'm just listening to albums that
I like?
So I just, I kind of live in a perpetual state of curiosity.
AIの影響と懸念
So turning the lens more towards the technological aspect of it.
And I mean, these days there's no shortage of, of headlines and news and commentary about
how AI is taking this job away or that job away.
I do, and I'm sure you hear this in, in similar ways or different ways, how AI is killing
Hollywood or filmmaking or video production.
There's, there's a lot of chatter around it, but I want to hear from you, somebody who's
literally in the center of it.
You know, you are the one who's making these video content, film content, narrative content
content with or without these types of technologies.
So from a macro level, and also want to get specific, but from a macro level, like what,
what's your take on AI and its impact on the particular industry that you're part of?
So I'll separate that.
So macro level, I, I don't know enough to know because I'm a, I'm a Luddite, but what
my understanding is, is when we start thinking about the macro level, that's where the terror
comes from, right?
That there's never going to be, you can parse out, there's been advancement in technology
throughout the history of humankind.
And if you look at the arc of humankind, it's always for the better, right?
It could go bad, but then we, we improve.
We live longer lives.
We live in better conditions, blah, blah, blah.
We have no metric against what, if everything improves at the same time and the speed of
all of that, of what the knock on an impact of that is, right?
So I keep the parallel that keeps getting made, which is the thing that keeps resonating
in my head is it's not, you can't assign emotion to AI.
You can't assign intent.
It is more the equivalent of at some point, if it's not, you know, there's not guardrails
put into place.
It's the equivalent of the city saying, we're going to put a new road right here.
We're going to repave the road.
And there just happens to be a bunch of ants that get paved over, right?
We don't think about it.
It wasn't with malintention.
There's no emotion around it.
It's just like, oh, we have to repave the road.
We're not going to go through and pluck off all the ants.
So when people give that parallel to how AI perceives humans, that worries me.
But I can't live in that level of it because I'm not the person that has the control over
AIとストーリーテリングの関係
those guardrails, right?
I can do the things that I can as a citizen, but I can't wake up and live in that realm.
So then let's go to the second part of your question is how does it apply to me and my
industry, right?
So if that's going on in the background, let's hope that there's other people that are
figuring that part out, right?
So then how does it impact in the day-to-day with us?
I feel like we are in the business here, and it goes to a lot of what you said.
We find storytellers, and we tell stories, and we're agnostic to medium.
I believe that even with AI, it is still even as great as things that it can do, you still
want a storyteller behind that.
So you may not come to me for Tim and Eric to shoot four days of a commercial, right?
Where it's the dollars and cents are spent towards equipment and labor and all these
things, but you still may say, I really want to know how Tim and Eric would tell the story
using this tool, right?
So I have to be in the business of knowing that there is still currency and value in
storytellers and how they see the world.
In the same way, that's where I think you can parse out the advancements, right?
I see.
So I think that that's the switch.
We have someone that is ahead of innovation here, that is someone we recently brought
on because I think it's inevitable now.
And we want to be able to, from a production first standpoint, say, okay, this is what
we can deliver.
We have the capabilities to do whatever comes into your brain as a creative.
We have the tools to deliver it in the best way.
I think that a hundred percent, I fear very much for friends that are in more craft positions,
right?
Like the person that's doing the lighting, the person that is going to be making all
those props.
Like I do genuinely feel like there will be a very big impact.
And I don't know the timeline, but there will be a very big impact on many people's
careers in this business that will be quote unquote, catastrophic to what they've spent
their years learning how to do.
And that I don't think anybody, I think everyone is thinking of it and I don't know anyone
can stop that or cares to quite frankly, at this point from the levels that could be
stopping it.
I think that the AI machine in our industry is just in motion and you see it with ad agencies,
starting boutique AI companies, you see it in the proliferation of it being a part and
parcel of spots on TV.
Like there was a very quick moment where there was a lot of like, well, what are the
legalities?
And like, that's terrible.
And it's going to look lame.
All that's gone in a matter of months, it's gone.
And people are using it as a tool and using it frequently as a tool.
So that's where I feel like the good and bad will get separated from who is a good
storyteller and knows how to use the tool versus who isn't.
Are you currently, speaking of AI as a tool and using AI to produce things, do you have
any, traditional may not be the right word, but traditional storytellers and filmmakers
who may have been shooting on camera and other filmmaking equipment who are now actively
experimenting with Google tools or other types of AI based filmmaking tools?
Yes, for sure.
And it's interesting because there is a dichotomy.
I mean, there's filmmakers that want nothing to do with it.
They will not touch it.
They think it's horrendous.
They think it's the devil.
They don't want anything to do with it.
And then there's filmmakers who have completely embraced it.
And then there's filmmakers that are just curious about it, you know, and they need
support and they need help with it.
And I think, again, we've gone to this place where it's really shifted.
That kind of stigma has shifted around it.
And I think while not everyone is embracing it as a replacement for filmmaking, I would
AIとクリエイティブプロセス
guess most are using chat GPT or some form of mid journey.
And as they're writing treatments or coming up with ideas, they're using it as a creative
partner.
And it's interesting.
I think when you come up through the traditional ad agency way, you are typically partnered,
right?
You have an art director and a copywriter, your team, and then directors don't have teams.
And so it is interesting that there's this tool that they can kind of go back and forth
with as they're coming up with ideas.
And it can be the EP and the best relationships it is.
But I feel like it's interesting.
It's almost like could be fulfilling some of that team need as they're batting out ideas,
they're going through things.
Again, like I am totally a Luddite.
I have never used chat GPT.
Oh, really?
Ever.
And it's one of those things.
I was going to a screening of a film about AI.
And I was waiting for it to start.
And I was paying bills as I was, because every second counts, right?
So I was in the audience waiting for it to start.
And I was paying bills and I was paying them writing checks out of a checkbook.
And one of the people related to the film sat next to me and just looks at me and goes,
oh boy, you're going to be the perfect audience for this AI movie.
He goes, you're like the only person in America that still writes a check out of a checkbook.
But like, I still get a Sunday paper.
I like the tactile nature of doing a crossword.
I don't use Kindle.
I like feeling a book.
It's just, again, it's kind of you go with your wiring.
So I look at it, whereas it's kind of cool because I think I can
understand all of those differing opinions from filmmakers.
I understand why someone doesn't want it in their process.
I understand why it's a useful tool for somebody.
And I understand why somebody is curious about it.
So I think the business is going to shape shift as it always does.
And this will be another inflection point where companies will fall away.
Directors will fall away.
Some will lift up.
But I think you're going to still have this group of companies that
value storytellers that are going to just keep moving forward.
And then I think the existential threat of what happens in the ant parallel
is so separate from what our day-to-day business challenges are.
That's where I think the two things, I kind of separate out what's AI as relates to my day-to-day
versus the potential destruction of the world.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Are you getting explicit requests from either agencies or clients or other parties to use AI?
You are?
Yeah.
And what do you do about it?
Do you say, yes, we are?
Yes, no, we don't.
What's your practical?
Evaluate it for the project.
So there was one, for instance, where a project came in and they were encouraging the use of it.
And when I evaluated the budget of what it would need, it needed both pieces, right?
Like an AI component and a live action component.
And I thought for what they wanted to do, it wasn't enough resource to do it.
And it was going to look bad.
And I wasn't really interested in being the first spot for a giant brand
making something that looks bad.
I see, I see.
I think that's where you go back to that quality instinct where I was like, oh, I can't do this
well.
Whereas there's a project right now that we're working on that very much is benefiting from
the concept art being generated to almost do look dev for what an approach will be.
And I'm learning as they're doing it.
And it's very cool.
It's a very useful tool for that.
And then we've done other projects that were really exploring kind of what could be done
with prompts, what could be generated out of using a tool, an AI tool.
And that was fascinating, again, to the curiosity aspect, because I saw what really worked and
what it really couldn't do.
AI技術とその課題
And so I was like, okay, well, this it can't do well.
Or this is what a filmmaker is really going to have to be able to do is articulate.
Like everybody was struggling at all the levels of writing the prompts, not just like our
filmmakers, but even within the different companies that were involved.
There was even the experts were struggling and kind of getting it to do what they wanted
it to do.
I was like, okay, your ability to write and articulate and say exactly what you want is
going to be really important to a lot of filmmakers that are just used to being visualists.
So give me an example of what he couldn't do well.
It just couldn't nail the vision of the filmmaker.
So it's like it just felt like off.
It just couldn't do the nuance of just the humanity.
I don't even know how to describe it.
But if you said, create a picture of a woman on a podcast in a room at her office, yeah,
it could generate me behind a brick wall, because that's very common in Los Angeles.
And I'm sitting on a couch.
But there's certain things of how everything's not in a row.
It lacked this authenticity of it feeling real.
And again, this is probably six months ago.
So that's a lifetime in AI.
But I think there was a naturalness to the world that was missing.
And it almost is from the imperfection.
And not imperfection in terms of a glitch and thing.
But it was almost like it was missing the fact that my cord is tangled.
Just things like that.
It's just these little things that are almost like these tells.
And the level of detail that's required to create that prompt to make that perfect,
non-generated feeling thing, that is going to be a very nuanced storyteller.
There are going to be experts in doing that until what I assume is that the technology
is going to catch up.
Have you had any pieces from your company that have been heavily produced or created with AI?
There was only one that featured it heavily.
And it's because the product had to do with AI.
And so it involved a tremendous amount of using it to generate the end product.
Because you had to feature the product.
Correct.
Yeah.
Right, right, right.
That was part two of my conversation with Ali Brown,
president and executive producer of Pretty Bird,
小さな儀式の重要性
a legendary film and video production company based in Los Angeles.
My key takeaways from this conversation with Ali are as follows.
Key takeaway number one, little rituals make a big difference.
Number two, do small things well.
And number three, be a Luddite, be a human.
Key takeaway number one, little rituals make a big difference.
As you may have noticed from my conversation with her,
she had these little tricks, little things, little rituals
that she does in her life and work to keep her moving forward.
Some of those examples, one of them was how she switches her mind.
I asked her, you know, what do you do when you're feeling down?
And she started by saying, oh, you know, I have something generic I do.
You know, other people might do this.
And then she mentioned something very specific, which was
that she sets an egg timer to 59 minutes.
And when she's feeling down with that timer,
she makes sure that at the longest 59th minute
that she switches out of whatever mood that she's in.
Sometimes it may take her 10 minutes.
Sometimes it might be 15 minutes.
It might be 30 minutes.
She said that rarely she needs 59 minutes
because she's done this so many times that by 45th minute,
she knows that, you know what?
I only have 15 minutes left to snap out of this.
So she knows mentally to get out of some kind of downturn
that she might have in her emotional state.
But I thought that it was curious and peculiar
that she has such a specific method
for snapping out of a stressful situation
or a bad situation that she might be in.
Actually, I heard for the first time from anybody
儀式と目標設定
another ritual that she has is that she puts a lot of emphasis
on the date, March 4th.
And it's the day for her when she reviews what she's done.
And then she looks forward and decides
that she would move forward with certain goals,
certain visions, certain ambitions,
and use that date as a turning point
from the previous year to the next year
to quote unquote March 4th.
And, you know, some people might use New Year resolution
as a way to move forward.
But just her way of mentally telling herself,
hey, today is the day that I have to quote unquote March 4th.
And using, you know, obviously a play on word,
March 4th as that particular moment in time
to mentally prepare for the next 12 months to come.
And like similar to the first ritual that she has,
which is her way of snapping out of her mood,
she uses a particular day to move forward.
And these are just two of the examples that she highlighted.
She highlighted a few other things
like eating a piece of chocolate or taking a bath,
just to relax herself.
And she had these little habits and systems
that she's developed over time.
And, you know, she mentioned these as a matter of fact,
but I found those little things to be quite simple,
surprising, but very easy for anybody
to adapt and employ in moving forward
and just looking forward and looking up in life.
So little rituals make a big difference.
So that's key to number one.
小さなことをうまく行う
Number two, do small things well.
When I asked her, hey, what is your superpower?
And this is a question that during the lightning questions
that I ask everybody.
And usually a lot of people would say,
you know what, it's my ability to focus.
It's my ability to connect the dots.
It's my ability to simplify things.
A lot of people mentioned about their superpower
as it relates to the creative aspect of what they do.
Her answer really, really surprised me
because she said without missing a beat,
my superpower is responding to email.
And I'm like, what?
I don't think I've ever heard that as a superpower
from anybody, regardless of the roles that they play.
She said that she's known for being really responsive
in the company.
And even though this may seem like such a small thing,
she said that she was taught by her father being responsive
and being respectful to reply to emails,
reply to other forms of communication goes a long way.
So it's a small lesson that she took away from her youth
being taught by her father just as a manner in life
that she now uses as her superpower at work
and as a creative professional making creativity happen.
And especially as a producer,
I can totally understand how that could make
being just super responsive to email
and creating the level of trust
that only she can provide to other people.
On that note, one anecdote that I would like to share
is that, like I said at the beginning,
I only met Ali six, seven months ago,
just in one setting for a few days at an event.
So I can't claim to know her that well.
In fact, I don't really know her that well.
And this was the first time
that I had any in-depth conversation with her
for more than an hour.
Yet, even though I was talking to her for the first time,
it was so easy to have a conversation.
And I just felt so at ease and so at peace to talk to her.
And even though she didn't say this as her superpower,
I thought that was her superpower
is the ability to make the other person feel so comfortable
and so natural in whatever that they're talking about.
And that is an ability for, especially for a producer,
I think that's a superpower
that is really, really powerful, meaningful, and valuable.
So, you know, Ali, if you're listening to this,
I just want to offer that as my observation,
as your superpower, because you made me feel so comfortable.
人間らしさとAIの影響
And even though we were speaking meaningfully
for the first time, that it just didn't feel like that.
These small things, responding to email quickly,
being responsive and just making
the other person feel so comfortable.
Those are relatively small things,
but she does those things really well.
And that, I think, is the secret to her relevance
as a producer, as a creative professional,
but also moving forward in life.
Last point, be a Luddite, be a human.
This was another unexpected comment that she mentioned.
One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to her
was that I wanted to understand the impact of AI,
particularly in the film industry.
She knows, she's in the epicenter of filmmaking,
which is LA, and she is the president
of a legendary film and video production company.
So there's no escaping from that impact
and disruption of AI, particularly generative AI
that can do filmmaking, video production so much easier,
so much more quickly, and so much more cheaply
than we have ever known.
Yet, and I'm sure there are stresses
and there are worries that she has,
but she was also quick to admit that she's a Luddite,
meaning that she's not an early adopter.
Quite the opposite, she rejects technology.
She even admitted that she doesn't really use chat GPT.
But based on the previous two things that I said,
little rituals and doing small things well,
those are very human things.
A lot of the things that she mentioned
are very human things that make her who she is
and make her relevant and make her indispensable
as a human individual.
And those rituals, those small things
are the things that make her human,
make her human, therefore relatable,
therefore trustworthy, therefore somebody
that you can rely on and you want to rely on.
Being a Luddite these days
in this really technologically-driven,
hyper-automated and increasingly AI-driven world,
being a Luddite helps you be more human
and then helps you become even more relevant.
Three key takeaways, little rituals make a big difference,
doing small things well, and finally, but not the least,
be a Luddite, be a human, those three key takeaways.
If you're listening to this on Spotify,
there's a Q&A field,
so please do send us your questions and comments.
And if you like our podcast,
please leave us a five-star rating.
We'll be so grateful.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Ali Brown,
the president and executive producer of Pretty Bird
as much as I did.
I'm Reina Moro, and this is Equity Mindset.
See you next time.
