You may be familiar with Tongal, the crowd-sourcing platform for branded media. They generate calls for filmmakers to contribute to various phases of work – ideas & concepts, scripts, pitches and production itself. I was very fortunate to have two of my ideas chosen for NASA and MIT’s Zero Robotics program, a STEM competition for pre-college students, and to have three spots made out of those, courtesy of directors Patrick Muhlberger, Drew Bell, and Andrei Ionita.
Ideations and concepts of mine have been selected by Tongal before, but this was special because, after all, it was NASA! I actually pitched to do production on these too. They told me I came very close, but wasn’t selected because of a few specific missing items in my pitch. So, this was a bittersweet win with a few lessons. Anytime work that you believe in becomes a positive reality is cause for gratitude.
In truth I think ideation is one of my best offerings. Some people direct actors at a top notch level. Some are superior at animation. I dabble in a lot and specialize in a few hard skills, but I do think I’m most useful coming up with endless ideas and then working to figure out which of them are actually worth developing. When other people are involved and everyone’s strengths are used appropriately, those ideas and those decisions turn out even better.
I’m very glad to be able to include these pieces in my portfolio.