Transcript: This Is Not The First Episode//Prepro v1

Hey there

So I’ve been working on this intro for quite a while now, just trying to figure out what to do, and this morning we got the sad news that Hampshire College is gonna shut down. So I wanted to say a few words about that first, because Hampshire is where I went to school for the second half of undergrad. And this is education, you know - its about education - and anyone from Hampshire knows that this work we do later in life exists now because creative inquiry and solution-seeking were fostered in us there in a really deep way.

Hampshire’s ethos, of empowering us to take responsibility for building our own education throughout our lifetime, and _connect_ through that learning (because To Know Is Not Enough), is something that’s come up actually in conversation lots recently. Its showed up in car rides to film festivals, in a zoom room, in family funerals. Someone I love even asked me the other day what’s my favorite inspirational quote, and that’s what came to mind, is Hampshire’s motto.

I was surprised how hard that hit, hearing that that light went out. I feel very profoundly grateful, deeply deeply grateful, that i got to be there in the time that it was open, and all the more compelled to share the vim and vigor that they gave me. Here’s to honoring the vision it carried forth in all of us.

Just a moment of silence for Hampshire College.

With that, I’d like to introduce… the crew coop podcast.

This is a podcast about worker cooperatives in film. It came about because I wrote a sci-fi feature during covid, which is kindof my way of bringing up some uncomfortable material that people aren’t talking about a lot yet when it comes to AI and psychological development. I absolutely still want to make this. And I don’t want to see data centers or nuclear or any other kinda terrible warehouses make an inch of headway, because these conversations really need to happen. And most [[All]] of those warehouses are just awful. So, I feel compelled to make that movie. And I feel equally compelled to do it as a worker cooperative. There’s just no other way I wanna do it.

So the podcast itself unfolds over four seasons - season one being the big first step, intended to teach us about how to set off a series of individual LCA productions - meaning, LCA Limited Cooperative Association, as opposed to LLC Limited Liability Company. How to get these LCA productions each operating under their own rules, in alignment with established labor contract efforts. How to get them funded by values-driven capital through contingent promissory notes: the idea behind that being that after debts are fulfilled, all members (capital and labor alike) receive dividends in equal share. How to get the projects seen, under what systems, and how to develop equity in the distribution world.

This LCA (vs LLC) approach - as opposed to one big umbrella agency right off the bat - is basically to honor the lifestyle of freedom so many of us crew are attracted to in the first place about filmmaking. By operating under these individual LCA productions, workers on these crews could continue going from show to show to show, ensuring their creative freedom as sole proprietors, but allowing them to still experience deeper agency through ownership at the front end and the back end - on the front end deciding how the production will operate, and then on the back end enjoying their own equal portion of the profits. Most crew may not really be ready to dive right into the deep end and just outright join a workers coop studio, but as they experience more of that level of empowerment in this low-pressure familiar context, I dream they will see the merits of worker cooperatives in their lives and others.

To give ourselves all a comprehensive education here, in this first season we’re going to 1) digest some philosophical background, 2) align our vision with labor and social movements for strength, 3) look into what’s been done in the past and what’s going on now, 4) elucidate the nitty gritty details of actually running these operations, 5) expand our ideas for distribution and theatrical, and then finally 6), bring together a deeply considered plan of action for our first production_s_ to take off in earnest.

Then once we’ve got that first season under our belt we’ll be able to start moving on to the second third and fourth seasons, aach of those being their own specific LCA productions. We’re gonna be following in S2 that sci-fi, S3 a horror. S4 a comedy production - and they may not be hour or comedy, but any 3 disparate genres. I figure being able to see things through all the way to streaming and blu ray sales with three very different genre-specific professional networks should prove pretty solidly that it’s viable, for anyone wanting to do this in their own part of the world. Only then will I partially feel like it is complete.

But Really, that’s not all, though, because through all this, we want to start to lay some solid infrastructure for a Federated Cooperative which can support all sides of these LCA productions, and any other worker cooperative film production studios that are out there now or in the future.

Craaaazy? Just crazy enough!!! That actually was one or two shows before my time, OKC folks. But u know, wut up OTrip. Keep kickin’, huh???

Visually, you may wonder why this is how I’m starting things off. Please enjoy these patches of dancing light, etc - maybe I’m milking it. It’s nice though, right? it’s not gonna look like this all the time, i just wanted to make it (pretty), and symbolically relevant for all this first up stuff.

The next few posts here you may get some more faces - two or three people in a library room, going over syllabi. This is kindof all just the lead-up to our first episode - as like, a real episode - I’m trying to bring you in on the prepro, as it were. The Real McCoy (interestingly, a phrase for which there is no one distinguishable etymology) is when we sit down as a big ol group in front of a live audience. Here in prepro though, I wanted to meet with some other filmmakers, educators, local coop advocates and visionaries - and we’ll post some of the nuggets from those conversations, to open up room hopefully for you to add in the comments to things that you want to see here too all the way at the top of this whole project.

Something worth mentioning here is that for the live-audience episodes - which start this summer after we’ve got that syllabus nice and tight and ready to roll - the structure we’ll use for those episodes for framing a live discussion has some significance, which is, of course, something that can be said about worker coops, too - that both the CCorp or LCA structures, Rochdale Principles, etc - are significant. Not just bureaucracy, but actually helpful.

But what I mean by that episode-wise is that I’m modeling our facilitator-led format after group therapy, because it’s been where I’ve been most successful opening up to people - and my golly that’s really hard! I dunno, you may not think so from the fact of me posting this at all if you haven’t met me in person, but just this one little okay-lets-start-a-real-deal-post has been a lllonnnng time in the making.

It’s maybe a bit of an experimental thing, to model a podcast after therapy, rather than just have a dang conversation, right? That may seem kind stifling in some ways. I don’t mean for it to - But I’m approaching it in this way because, well I feel like this is kindof about healing an industry, yeah, and an industry is made of people - and maybe on some level it also it’s about healing people too by way of empowering them both vocally and financially. I apologize if all of this just like, makes yr fuckin’ jaw hurt it’s so goddamn sweet but I yam what I yam. It’s what I got. And I hope that you jive

I figure set things up like this for the live episodes - first, watch a movie or two or listen to a podcast or a lecture, before we get to any kind of recording. And with the movie we’ll have a set of questions that we can consider about what we saw or heard, to contextualize it with LCA worker cooperatives in film. Then, on the day, when we all meet, we’ll be at a big table together in front of an audience - I’ll be the general facilitator, and sometimes we’ll have a guest facilitator who’s gonna know a lot more about the subject than I do, and at the table with us, there’s gonna be about 6 folks (ideally) that change from week to week, originating from various parts of the film industry, answering whatever questions struck them most - just going in depth, uninterrupted, for as many minutes as we divvi it up to be, probably about 5 to 8 apiece or somethign depending on how many people are there, with room for reflection with the facilitator. No cross talk and all that - perhaps you know the 12 step ethos too. Finally, we’ll open it up to table discussion as well as audience q&a&reflections - and hopefully, we’ll all learn something useful.

So thats what all this is, what it's all kindof shaped itself up to be by now. I’m really looking forward to getting this out there and working with all of you on it to make it really good. Thanks for listening, take good care out there, and I’ll be back soon. Thanks.