クリエイティブな才能の発見
This is Rainomoto'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 Rainomoto, 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. Being in a similar industry, I've been a fan of their work for such
a long time. I met Ali earlier this year for the first time while judging a Creative Hours show.
I wanted to find out what the secret is behind their stellar work for such a long time,
so I took the opportunity to reach out to Ali. Part one of my conversation with Ali
is about the secret to finding and developing talent. So let's get started.
Hi Ali, good to see you. Good to see you.
Where do I find you? Where are you now? I am currently in my office in Culver City,
California. Where I'm sure the temperature is much, much warmer than where I am, which is New York.
I mean, it's in like the 80s here still. It's crazy. We're still having summer.
Yeah, yeah. It's like you wake up in the morning and it's winter,
like by the afternoon it's summer, by the evening it's fall, and then we're back. We have like
seasons in a day in LA. Excellent, excellent. Okay, let me get into the meat of the conversation.
Give me a description of what you do. I would say describing what I do
for outside the industry, I feel like if you imagine your spouse, your parent, your therapist,
your ATM machine, your workout buddy, and your cheerleader put into a single person,
I think that's my job. Like that is my job. Almighty, almighty.
Yeah, but not all mighty, but all in service. Only service, oh.
I feel like it's all in service. I feel like my job is very much an act of service. So from
making sure that a director or a creative person has protection, and to making sure that their
career reflects what they want to do, that they're making the art they want to make,
to making sure that a client feels heard, and that the project that they've paid us to deliver
exceeds their expectations. I feel like I am in service of making everybody else's kind of hopes
come true, and that I get the privilege of being the connector of that. So I can say,
okay, well I know this person wants this, and you need this, and they would like this, and gosh,
wouldn't it be great if those could all come together to make something happen? So I think I'm
a connector, I'm a project manager, but I think it becomes more intimate when you think of those
roles in your personal life, because I actually think that's a bit closer to what we do. Like
we really care about kind of what that end result is. You've been the executive producer for a long
time. The output, is it always film-based output, or do you also produce other types of output?
That's a great question. I would say other types. So we have started another company called
Ventureland, my partner Kirsten and I have, and we have two other partners in that, Paul Hunter,
who's a partner in Pretty Bird, and a gentleman named John Batik, who does a lot in the unscripted
Pretty Birdの制作活動
film. But in that company, there's a lot we do direct with brands. So we have produced everything
and the entire ecosystem of companies, from fashion shows, to immersive experiences,
to television series, to documentaries, to advertising traditional commercials, music videos,
concert visuals. I think that that's what's cool, honestly, is my favorite part of my job is,
and probably the better answer to your initial question is, I'm just a producer, I'm a maker.
And so whatever industry you're in, think about in your industry, who's the maker? Like I'm the
maker in this industry. And I get to do it with creativity forward, which is amazing.
That's the fun part. Yeah. And again, just to give some visual imagination to the
listeners, since this is a podcast and it's audio only, can you give a few examples of
the work that Pretty Bird has produced, either in the past or more recently, that people might
recognize? Yeah. I think one of the spots that we did, and it will be interesting to know how
internationally it's known, was for the brand Beats. And it was called You Love Me. And it was
this beautiful spot directed by Melina Matsoukas. And it really touched a lot of people because it
essentially asked the question of, you love my culture as a black person, but do you actually
love me as a person? And at the time that it was made, it was really progressive of Beats to be,
any brand to be giving that statement on the heels of George Floyd being murdered in the US.
The brand did not push putting their actual product very deeply in it. So it became this
beautiful film and kind of homage really to black culture. So that one I'm very proud of,
and that's one I think a lot of people know. Then to the other side of it, there's
the music videos like Formation, Turn Down For What. I mean, I think that we have been fortunate
that for the bulk of the career, actually for the entire professional career of the Daniels,
we've done everything with them in their advertising and music video side. So a lot
of people I know, they have a lot of fans internationally. I would say, I'm trying to
think of the other kind of big ones that people would know. It's funny, your instinct
always goes to music. And isn't that interesting? Commercials feel like they're more,
oh, what's out right now? Whereas I can point to music videos where I'm like, oh, watermelon sugar,
Old Town Road. There's all these things that I think internationally, it translates in a
different way. Yeah. So I want to get a little bit more specific and deeper into the quality
aspect of creativity. And as long as I've known Pretty Bird, from the get-go, the work that you
produced, the work that came from, that had a thumbprint of Pretty Bird, always had a level
of quality that is super high that you can say, wow, no wonder that this was done by Pretty Bird.
So how do you think you cultivated the understanding of what good creative or
what good output is? How did you come to understand and learn quality? I think I put
that into two parts. I think that there is production quality and there is creative quality.
I think that from a production standpoint, we are unique in that all of the women, it's funny,
women, we're all women that are the EPs here, everybody has a producer background versus a
sales background. So when you look at the ilk of production companies, typically they're started by
クリエイティブな才能の発掘
people that had a sales background and they had great relationships with directors,
or there's producers that may have had relationships with directors, right? And that's how they start.
I think that we had this unique combination of we're all producers. So we're very much thinking
about what the client and agency experience is, but we're also very knowledgeable about how to
make a wild idea come true, right? How to actually make that. Like I said, we're the makers.
We actually think about what do I need to do to make that? What are the resources I need? Who are
the best people to bring on board? We're very thoughtful in that strategy, but I think it
combines with the fact that we look different from most of our peers, not all, but most, because
we never were in a position to like write a big check and sign a fancy director,
right? We weren't just trading the best jewels amongst ourselves, right? Which is what
happens a lot of times you have very incredibly talented directors and they're at company X
and then company Y says, hey, come over here and I'll pay you to come over. We just never played
that game ever. So we had to find the talent ourselves and we had to cultivate them. And I
think that there's actually less control over that than there is more control in that you sort of let,
you have to go off of just sheer gut. You have to be able to look at something that like
says, why does that stick with me? How come that's something different? I mean,
we signed the Daniels at this company for a music video, I think that was done for under
a hundred dollars. I think it was $85. And I did something a couple of years ago where I showed
their first music video against the trailer for everything, everywhere, all at once.
You would absolutely see that it's the same director. That is an entire 15 year span that
there is that signature, the way that they see the world was so clear as young people coming out
of college as it is to now. And all we did was create an ecosystem that could just support that
coming to life with resource, with the cheerleading, with all of the things I said up front.
So I think in a way you spot quality by kind of getting out of its way. If it breaks through,
you're like, there's something special about that. Let me just give it, let the beautiful
plant feed it what it needs and see if it grows. And so I think that there is a bit of,
it's hard because you have to constantly do that. We're constantly finding new talent.
We're constantly signing people. It'd be much easier to just be like, oh, great. Right. You've
built that person. Great. All right. I'm going to check and have them come over. But instead we're
like digging and trying to bring up new people all the time. But I think it's what's enabled us to
stay creatively relevant for almost 20 years now because it's constantly new. Do you know what I
mean? It's like we're constantly bringing up somebody else and it's really hard and it's
difficult to convince people to give them opportunity. But when they hit, it feels like,
gosh, every time I call pretty bird, there's somebody new I don't know about that's doing
something cool. And I think we've always had that as our North star. So on that point,
are you consciously always looking for somebody that's undiscovered? Is that something that you
do consciously? Always. Always. And that is why I look at every reel sent to me. I return every email
無名の才能の発掘
that's submitted because you never know where you're going to find it. I have two people on
our roster right now that's walked in here as PAs that none of us knew. And they're now directors
at our company. And it's because they were really talented and they got their way in the door.
And one of them in particular, all the PAs at the office were just kind of huddled around
a desk. And I was like, what are you guys doing? And they were watching a video that the guy had
made on the weekend. And I was like, that's good. And we started working with them. And
one, another one of the EPs here, same with another. It's a PA. He started doing our
treatments. He said, I have an idea for a music video. I think he made it for three grand. She
helped him and it was phenomenal. And he's been on there on our roster. And these are people that
we've been working with for almost a decade now that walked in literally unknown to us. So yeah,
we find them everywhere. Yeah. But it sounds like you maintain quality and relevance by always
looking out for undiscovered, unproven talent, even before they might know that they are talent.
Yeah. A hundred percent. It's that signature. It's that, how they see the world that's just
different than other people see the world. And it doesn't mean that it has to be refined or
polished or have a gimmick. It's like, if something is just, it's like an artist, right? It's if you
looked at every Picasso on the wall, there's different periods. You could see how he's
transformed, but there was something there from the beginning that you're like, oh, that's a
Picasso. And you can still see it to his last work. That's a Picasso. And it's like, I think that
that as a company, as our superpower is trying to find who is going to be that Picasso. And then we
try to, we try to keep them here. Yeah. Why did you start taking that approach in the first place?
Was it out of necessity? Yeah. A hundred percent. We had three directors, Kirsten and Paul started
the company. It was the two of them and they had two other directors and that was it. And
it was a hundred percent necessity. It was like, okay, well, how are we going to build this thing?
And we're not going to start writing checks to people. And you didn't have a name and you had
to prove yourself. And I came on soon after. And it's funny. I was out to dinner with Paul last
night. And we were talking because one of our first directors was Max Malkin and Max was Paul's
DP on a job. Max is a phenomenal DP. He did frozen moment. He worked with Glazer. He's phenomenal as
a DP, but they did a job together. And Paul kind of looked at him as like, dude, you should be
directing. Like you've got this. And then suddenly Paul and Kirsten were like, Hey, we got a new
director. This is your guy, you know? And it's like, now I've worked with Max since 2010, 15
years old. Long time. So it's like, I think that it was those things where we just kind of had to
find them and build them and take people from different areas to help. Yeah. How do you think
that you specifically as Allie Brown, did you have a mentor that you worked under or how did you
develop that eye? I mean, I would say in terms of mentorship for business, Kirsten is very much
that person. I think mentorship for the, my eye, I, I think it's because I grew up in the arts.
家庭の影響と芸術への道
You know, my, my sister's a curator. Um, she's a professor at Yale. She's a curator of modern art.
My, I grew up dancing and acting and my, we didn't grow up with a tremendous amount of money at all.
And the one thing that my mother maintained, even when I know there was times she couldn't play,
pay the bills for just regular stuff was, um, a membership to the art Institute of Chicago.
So we were like the arts, there was always music playing. We were always brought to museums.
We were reading Shakespeare out loud as a family, um, as very young children. I think our parents
just said they knew that they didn't have the money for us to go see the world. So they were
going to bring the world into our home and make sure that art was a priority. So I think it's,
it's interesting. My sister and I both did very well at school. We both ended up in the arts,
you know, versus going to be a doctor or a lawyer or something that would have been more preferred.
I'm financially more academically. Yeah, exactly. Neither of us took that route. And I really think
it's because my parents just emphasize that. So I don't know that I have a mentor in, in that,
that curation and that picking other than, you know, my parents just instilling
the importance of art. That's a, that's a great story. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure I'm a parent as well.
And, uh, you know, I had a lot of influence from my parents in a, in a similar way.
And also now as a parent of, of a couple of kids that, uh, what I expose them to and what I show
them to and how I, uh, show creativity one way or another. I think, I think that that can have
much more profound impact than I might give it credit for. I think it does. I mean,
I really, I, it's funny. I never really thought about that until you just asked that question,
but I'm like, it is a, that can't be accidental because I don't know that you can really teach
taste like that, but I think you can instill the importance and the refinement of it. And I think
our parents just always emphasized it. It was always dancing, music, art, you know, theater,
all of that was just so important as a balance to all the academic stuff and sports and everything
else. But it was like, that was always emphasized. And I, I, I think it's not an accident that we
both ended up in these, in these careers. Cool. So thanks mom. Make sure that you send, uh, send
her this episode. Shout out mom. Yeah. Shout out. Exactly. Was there a defining project in your
キャリアの転機
professional career? I would say beats was very, it was very pivotal to me. I think that there was,
I've had defining moments in my career on my path. Okay. Um, where I worked for Forest Whitaker in
film and TV. I was kind of, you know, just a kid at a production office for commercials,
ended up meeting him. Yeah. Went into this whole film and TV world, which was extraordinary. He's
an extraordinary person. Um, same thing with my accident ended up being stuck at home for a year
and an EP from that very first company called me and said, after a year of checking in on me
and me essentially going, cause I couldn't speak. If I asked me if I needed anything
after seeing him briefly at the end of a year, it was like, Hey, I got a job for you. Come to
work for me Monday. And I was like, what? I've worked in commercials in like years. I wouldn't
know what to do. He's like, great. See you Monday. Um, and you can kind of guilt me and trick me into
doing anything. I'm like, okay, March forward. Right? So I was like, I guess I got to show up
on Monday. Um, but by him pulling me out of my, my apartment, literally creating a position for
me that did not exist. Then I met Kirsten because when she started pretty bird, someone said,
oh, well, there's this girl working there. And similarly, she'll tell you the story. We were,
she interviewed me and I was like, I don't know how to do any, like, I don't know how to do this
stuff. And she was like, I'm not, I'm not hiring you for what you know, I'm hiring you for who you
are. And so then suddenly I ended up here at a place where all of that previous experience made
sense and came together. If that makes sense. You know, it's like I, my creative years of doing
development with forest, my in production years of pretty, uh, of Atlas where I first started,
all of that kind of came together. And then I think beats became that pivotal project because
it was in COVID and it was a script that came in looking very different. The director, like I said,
Melina, she wanted to create something completely different. There was a lot of conversation with
Steve Stout that owns translation about what her vision was. And he was like, okay, I'm going to
support that vision. And it was a tremendous undertaking with the amount of celebrities.
And you couldn't go near anybody. It was COVID. Right. So I couldn't even have a client on set.
Our client Diallo from beats was sitting in a car by his mom's house, trying to watch it remotely.
This was early days of COVID. So I think it was so pivotal because a creatively Melina is an
incredible partner. She welcomes my input. She really, um, she has been pivotal in my pivotal
in my career as well, because she genuinely approaches me like a creative partner.
She welcomed me in the process. We had Lena wait, writing the script who is tremendous.
So launch Knowles did the music. There was just this incredible group of people,
but because of COVID, we had to help bring everybody into the fold. And then because
nobody could be around and it was this intense high level of production, we had to just pull
it off against kind of all the odds. And I think it, it becomes that thing. I keep going back to,
because so many other companies were like, we can't work right now. We should be pencils down.
And we were like, Nope, we are open for business. We have to support our directors. We have to
support ourselves. Like we will figure out how to get stuff done. So not only do we figure out
how to do it, we made something really beautiful and lasting. So I think that that was a pivotal
moment in my career. I'm very proud of that spot. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. So that was part one of my
重要な学び
conversation with Ali Brown, president and executive producer of pretty bird, a legendary
film and video production company based in Los Angeles. I have three key takeaways from my
conversation with Ali. Number one, expose your kids to art. Number two, look for talent where no
one's looking. And number three, hire for who they are and not what they've done. As I said at the
beginning, I wanted to find out what enables her and her company pretty bird to maintain such a
high level of craftsmanship and high level quality. And it wasn't like there was a specific
thing that they do or that she does to maintain that quality. But what I came to realize after
the conversation was that there are multiple things over her life that is now contributing
to the quality of work that she's able to produce as a producer. And this was one of the first
questions that I asked her. What does a producer really do? It's a simple yet tricky question to
answer, because especially if you're not in the film and a commercial production industry, you
might not quite know what a producer does precisely because producer oftentimes does a lot of things.
When I asked her that question, she listed out anywhere between five and 10 different things
that she does at pretty bird and on the project that she manages and she produces, because not
only does she have to worry about budgets, timelines, qualities, and quality of the work
and so forth, but also making sure that the team members, the director, other than the actors,
the talent, and editors, and so many numerous people who take part in creating a piece of film
or creating a piece of narrative, her job is to encourage, motivate, creating context for the team
to succeed. So it is difficult to define what a producer does, but it's all these little things
that she does on a daily basis, but also more importantly, the way she was brought up and the
way she looks at her work and life that contributes to the quality of the work that she's able to
maintain for such a long time. The first point that I made, expose your kids to art. She mentioned
that she doesn't come from a privileged family or background and when she was growing up,
her and her sister were often brought to local art museums or her parents made sure that even
though they may not have been able to take Ali and her sister to different cities, different countries,
different cultures, they made sure that they brought elements of creativity to their life
by bringing them to local places, or playing music at home, or exposing them to different
types of art as kids. As a parent myself, having kids between the ages of high school
all the way down to kindergarten, it was a really good reminder because as I was listening to Ali
mention how she was exposed to art when she was growing up, I remembered that my parents were
always encouraging us, of course, to pursue science and math and language, but also music
and visual art. Similar to her parents bringing her to art museums, I remember when I was a small
kid, elementary school kid or junior high school kid in Japan, my parents and particularly my dad
would take us to local galleries and museums. They're not expensive endeavors, they are relatively
inexpensive endeavors, but I still remember the paintings and the sculptures and art exhibitions
and shows that I saw when I was 12, 13, 14 years old, you know, 30 plus years ago, and the image,
that impression that was etched into my eyes and my mind still remains very vivid. Even though I
may not be thinking about these art pieces on a daily basis today, but indirectly that kind of
sensibility, that kind of eye, that kind of creative judgment that I was given and that I
was trained for indirectly influences the way that I look at creative work today and just work and
life in general. So I'm glad that she brought that up because I was able to relate to her point about
being exposed to art at a young age and how profound that impact was back then, but also
クリエイティブタレントの発見
is today in what she does day to day, and it's something that I could relate to.
The second point, look for talent where no one is looking, and this is another dimension of the
question that I asked, you know, how are you able to maintain such high quality or work coming out
of Pretty Bird for such a long time? Actually, two different things that she said. One is that
she mentioned that every email with a portfolio that she gets sent, she makes sure to take a look
at every portfolio she receives, and that's a way of keeping the radar of creativity and
discovering talent sharp and making sure that she's not missing out on any future superstars
that might come across her inbox or even social media and other channels. Another thing that she
brought up that made an impression was the fact that she now has these amazing directors on her
roster and at Pretty Bird, the people who weren't necessarily superstars 10 years ago or
they weren't even on a path to becoming a high caliber director, but they were doing something
else, and she noticed that some of them were in different roles, but through interactions and or
indirect interactions with them, noticed something that was raw but quite promising and
then gave them opportunities and roles that they may not have been expecting, which then contributed
to making those individuals the great talent that they are today. So look for talent in places
and in interactions where no one's paying attention to, and that might result in unexpected
places in terms of talent and what they are able to achieve. So look for talent when no one's
looking. Key takeaway number three, hire for who they are and not what they've done, and this is a
comment that she made about her own expense of being given the role at Pretty Bird 15, 17 years
ago when she was hired by her now mentor Kirsten Emhoff, one of the co-founders of Pretty Bird.
She said that when Ali interviewed with her, she didn't have a lot of experience producing
film, so she didn't have a reel or she didn't have a resume that was rich with different projects
and different productions. Yet when she asked Kirsten why she would hire Ali, the answer that
Kirsten gave Ali was that I'm not hiring for what you've done or even the skills that you have,
I'm hiring for who you are. That's such a simple thing to say, but it's not an easy thing to
actually do, especially as a hiring manager. This was a bit of a lesson for me because I have to be
honest to myself that I probably tend to gravitate towards a certain type of talent. I remember,
this is probably about seven years ago, when I was presented a portfolio from, at the time,
a design lead that I had at my company, at Ayanco. This design lead, Ari, brought a portfolio of a
student designer. I said to Ari that, hey, it wasn't bad, it was good, but it just wasn't relevant to
what we do, so I don't know why you would want to hire this person. Ari said, no, no, no, I believe
that she has something really special that the company can benefit from, and so I'd like you to
hire her. I said to Ari, you know what? Why don't you bring her on as your intern? You'll be responsible
for her, and why don't you mentor this student designer? You know what? If you're right, great.
If you're not right, then that's fine too, but let's try, see if it works. It turns out this
才能発見の秘訣
student designer is the leading designer at my company now, seven years later.
The comment that Ari made about the way she was hired reminded me of my own shortcoming in not
recommending to hire an individual, and I was proven wrong that by looking for talent when no
one's looking and hiring for who they are, not what they've done, how that can lead to unexpected
places that are great and even magical. So these three things, exposing your kids to art,
look for talent when no one's looking, and hire for who they are, not what they've done, are simple
yet profound things that over time that can lead to great creative results, and I think that's the
secret to finding and developing talent. So my key takeaway, number one, expose your kids to art.
Number two, look for talent when no one's looking. And number three, hire for who they are and not
what they've done. In part two of this conversation with Ari Brown, we discussed her rituals for
marching forward. 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 Ari as much as I did.
I'm Rene Nomoto, and this is The Creative Mindset. See you next time.
