Making my film debut as Max the Gangster in The Request was a delightful collaboration with Dania Denise and Rob Carrera of Think Post Productions. Working with them gave great insight into the level of craftsmanship and attention to detail necessary for a quality film, even within the scrappy, bootstrapped indie world.
Rob’s direction matched the best coaching I’ve ever experienced. He provided calm, clear, patient advice that instantly put me at ease even as a rookie actor. I have been on all sides of cameras as a spokesperson and journalist, but acting is a different animal. I have a whole new understanding and respect for what goes into film-making, and I am grateful for the education and experience and what it will add to my future work.
It was still dark when the Lyft driver dropped off me and Snowman at Pearsall Park and sped away. The driver hadn’t wanted to go there and looked at us funny when we climbed into his car with ten thousand dollars’ worth of video gear.
Although Pearsall Park transformed “from dump to destination” about three years ago, it still is in one of San Antonio’s poorer neighborhoods. With the Lyft car vanished, the only light came from an electric sign explaining why we were there.
Snowman and I were there not to volunteer but to gather
storytelling material for our mutual client, Wolf Pack Ninjas, who would help KaBOOM!
build an adventure course playground that would offer a Ninja Warrior-like experience.
Wolf Pack – a group of American Ninja Warrior competitors committed to “making the world healthier one kid at a time” – and KaBOOM!, the renowned non-profit playground developer, were joining forces to provide fun and fitness opportunities to youth in underserved communities.
Soon after meeting KaBOOM! teammates who had arrived even earlier than 0-dark-hundred, the San Antonio sunrise crept over the massive mulch-pile that would gradually diminish during the day as hundreds of volunteers raked, shoveled and wheelbarrowed it into the build.
Before the event kicked off, we already were interviewing participants on camera, including extraordinary, community-minded students from the JROTC program at Southwest High School and the basketball team at East Central High School.
When the volunteers started working, it was 91 degrees. The sun was grilling, and the work was grueling, from assembling the heavy playground equipment to moving mulch to mixing cement.
But the spirit of the volunteers was remarkable. The adult leaders gave their all with great patience, and every child out there defied the stereotype of screen-addicted teen slacker. They showed pride in their community, willing to work for its improvement. They worked longer, harder and more joyously than many paid employees in much more comfortable environments, undaunted by dust and dirt, unfazed by fatigue.
The KaBOOM! crew orchestrated the volunteers with an expertise borne of building or improving 17,000 playspaces. Their concern with safety meant frequent public address reminders about hydration and sunscreen. The only other interruptions in the motivational music came during an announcement that lunch was available or when Snowman and I were conducting our on-camera interviews atop the mulch pile. Wolf Pack Co-Founder and Ninja Warrior star Ian Dory was so happy with his that he flipped.
At lunch, Ian posed for photos and signed autographs for volunteers, then went back to work right alongside them. By about 3 p.m., pieces of adventure course equipment that took six people to carry were stood in place, the 22 tons of concrete were poured, and the dust began to settle. The build was finished.
The concrete had to cure, so the course was not immediately accessible. But Ian made a great offer to the crowd to come back and play when Wolf Pack and KaBOOM! reunite in San Antonio on November 16.
Summer – which I have defined not by solstice and equinox but by “school’s out” ever since attending kindergarten in 1969 – was cool this year. Inkflow’s workflow made it so.
Summer started with a Fit Kids event at Levi’s Stadium on the last day of school for the students we serve in East Palo Alto, continued with gaining new Inkflow clients, and ended with amazing back-to-school initiatives. As usual, returning to my roots in Chicago and Milwaukee nourished the blooms and fruits of these labors.
In early July, The 82 Project Foundation’s annual Swine Social pig roast and fundraiser reminded me why I love serving on the non-profit’s board. Named “82” for the year our board members graduated from Whitefish Bay High School, the organization funds a scholarship for a senior graduating from our alma mater and aids community members in need of financial and emotional support.
During that visit, Inkflow linked with the Milwaukee area’s Concord Chamber Orchestra and contracted to advise the non-profit classical musical group on marketing communications strategy. A slew of stakeholder interviews, an online survey, and observations in and around CCO’s community will inform Inkflow documents that provide the organization a map for its future outreach efforts.
Also while in Milwaukee, preliminary talks from earlier weeks with San Francisco-based real estate concern Andersen, Jung & Co. turned into a short-deadline assignment to write a 90-second speech that Principal Broker Monica Chung delivered to a group of business executives.
Back in the Bay, Inkflow sealed a deal to deliver writing coaching and marketing/business development consulting for Ferox Yoga, the brain-child of yoga instructor Claire Ngoon.
Soon after, the latest issue of Saint Thomas Academy’s Saber Magazine dropped, with several of my articles, including the cover story, “Profiles in Service.”
July closed out with the launch of a new promotional video for Fit Kids, including my first voice-over work…
…and August started with a return to Chicago as a panelist
on the topic of “Telling Your Story: How to Engage Your Donor Base” at the
inaugural Sports Philanthropy World Congress.
Back in the Bay, Inkflow forged an alliance between Fit Kids and Citizen Schools, which will have me leading Fit Kids classes for underserved middle-school students at Redwood City’s McKinley Institute of Technology. The chance to merge my passion for both non-profits into a single project that directly impacts youth and advances both organizations’ goals is a dream come true.
Then this other dream came true:
Minda, whom I informally and occasionally advised in the last several years, read from The Memo, sold and signed scores of copies, and led a rousing panel discussion with several other women of color that infused the packed room with equal parts anger and hope.
Twenty-four hours later, some of Minda’s “Memo” continued to hit home in another room of multi-culturalists, as “summer” ended with students back in school, including those who last night completed the class I teach at The Writing Salon, aptly titled — in light of Minda’s message — “On Point.”
Remember the last day of elementary school before summer vacation? Your weather may have been spectacular, tantalizing you outside the classroom window, promising the freedom to run, jump, skip, throw, catch, and finally, comfortably collapse into sleep as your pent-up energy dwindles with the daylight.
There is nothing better than that mad dash out the door to the sound of the school year’s last bell. Unless you’re an East Palo Alto public school student participating in Fit Kids. Then, it does get better.
You board a bus headed to Levi’s Stadium. There, you get a t-shirt and run out the same tunnel as your football heroes, all courtesy of investment firm HGGC, the Forever Young Foundation, and the San Francisco 49ers, and then you meet Steve Young, who has led all three organizations.
There are lessons in football and life from 49ers Youth Football head Jared Muela.
There are football drills, agility tests, music and dancing.
There are flying touchdown flops into foam endzones.
There is food and beverage and a gift bag. The ride home is much quieter. Many of the Fit Kids are fast asleep…and dreaming.
Two great joys — collaboration and storytelling — recently came together on an Inkflow Communications project for Fit Kids, a non-profit client that provides structured fitness programs to underserved elementary school students. The challenge was to humanize Fit Kids’ impact, telling the story of one child to illustrate the organization’s broader value to the communities it serves.
Dramatizing a problem and its solution through the story of an archetypal individual is a go-to approach for many brands. This is especially true for non-profits that need compelling content to raise funds.
In theory, focus on a single face instead of mind-numbing numbers is the surer way to change hearts and minds. The story of one identifiable person is more moving than statistical statements about anonymous millions, which can overwhelm audiences to the point of turn-off and tune-out.
So, why doesn’t every brand take the individual storytelling approach? First, not everyone got the memo. Business leaders focused on the bottom line may fixate on figures. Also, telling an individual story in support of a brand is not an easy execution. That’s where the joy of collaboration comes in.
Telling the story of Briana in the video above took Fit Kids Founder Ashley Hunter’s commitment to this form of communications, Fit Kids Program Director Navita Wilson’s keen ear to the ground to identify Briana and her family as subjects, Inkflow’s work to bridge brand and journalism, and the extraordinary skill, emotional intelligence, storytelling instincts, and production chops of award-winning sports broadcaster Mindi Bach.
The video was a hit when it debuted at The Fit Kids Lunch fundraiser on April 30. Of course, collaboration also fueled that event’s success. But that’s a different story.
That much became clear on February 16, 2018 when Black Panther made its nationwide debut. In the theater with three black friends I met through pick-up basketball and about three hundred other people – many in identity-affirming attire that ranged from traditional African to contemporary Wakandan – their pride was palpable. “Finally, a flick where the superheroes look like us, a film made For Us, By Us.”
Image from Wikimedia Commons
Don’t underestimate Black Panther’s importance either on the basis of who was in front of the camera or who was behind it and as a matter of employment, example and inspiration. Films like Black Panther, and now Crazy Rich Asians, send a message of hope to people from populations that are under-represented in mass media, entertainment and other creative industries: they can and should aspire to share their voices.
And we need more of them. Unless your political leanings include bigotry, you will agree our democracy needs the widest possible diversity of voice. After all, the word “democracy” derives from the Greek “demos” (people) and “kratia” (power, rule). Or, in the words of a real-life Black Panther, “power to the people.”
Lacking a “one person, one vote” style of democracy in America, it’s even more critical to pursue the “one person, one voice” approach. That’s what makes Twitter, however misused, so popular and so powerful.
But an individual’s ability to Tweet is no substitute for proportional, representative voice in traditional mass media –TV, radio, newspapers, film, advertising and other artistic and creative endeavors. Films such as Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians generate so much buzz because they are anomalous in their inclusiveness and messages of empowerment to people of color. The films’ mere existence lulls much of the public into belief that we now live in a post-racial media world. Meanwhile, under-representation of voice persists in undermining our democracy.
Thus, the importance of WeXL, a fledgling non-profit devoted to:
developing diverse creative-industries talent from under-represented populations
creating opportunity for those creatives through networking that leads to greater employment, empowerment and share of voice
providing authenticity for the clients who hire WeXL actors, directors, producers, artists, performers, and, yes, even writers.
If WeXL sounds overly aspirational, aiming too high for such a new organization, consider the bottom line. Films like Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians make bank: $1.3 billion in box office sales for the former and $164 million for the latter, making it the highest-grossing romantic comedy of the decade.
WeXL members are not looking for a hand-out or even a hand-up. They are banding together to earn a living doing what they love, to contribute economically and socially, and to find and share their voices with a public that very much needs to hear them.
Positive Coaching Alliance Collection Work by Inkflow’s David Jacobson from 2005-2017 as leader of Marketing Communications and Content at the national youth and high school sports non-profit
inkflowcommunications.com 