How Far Would You Go for Your Vision?
Today, I want to share the idea of connecting to one person at a time, compare that with mass consumerism concepts like fandom, and explore how to influence a person’s speed of consumption. I’m taking a new, increasingly more personal approach in my work, which was difficult for me, but surrendering to it is yielding some incredible results.
Before I share more, I have a big update:
- A jolt of confidence hit me like lightning when Legion M’s president Jeff Annison invested in my startup ReelwUrld on Wefunder. I’ve studied Jeff and his partner Paul Scanlan for years as they built the first fan-owned entertainment company. I wrote an entire article last year on what their work has meant to me. Jeff’s given me personal guidance since then and his investment and public statement about ReelwUrld and our team is a huge vote of confidence.
- Ask: Jeff told me to get a publicist for ReelwUrld. We’re a startup and don’t yet have a budget for that. If you know a publicist that will LOVE what we’re doing, and would consider working for equity like many folks on our team, please reach out and let me know.
Okay, now I can talk about connecting to one person at a time. I’m in the midst of raising $1.69M for ReelwUrld and I need to get the word out to investors with essentially a zero dollar marketing budget. I paid out of pocket for ads in January, and ROI was less than break even. My efforts posting content on social media have some results, but there are higher priority tasks in the company that need execution and I’m the only one who can do them for now. I was pushing myself hard for a very long time to get everything done at 70%. I want to do less, and all of it at 100%.
Then, Manuel Gadoy, CEO of Black Sands Entertainment, put out a video that resonated with me. In it, he says, “Working hard don’t mean shit in this industry, you need to know why the fuck to do.”
“What to do that moves the needle? What do I do? What am I truly best at?” I had to ask myself. “Oh yeah, I bring people together to achieve shared goals!”
I achieve this by looking people in the eyes.
I had to figure out how to get the one element I can always rely on to unite people, myself, in front of lots of people IN PERSON.
Enter Lyft.
I had planned to rent a car to start passing out flyers. That was too expensive, so I contemplated buying a car. Challenge there is, I’m a native New Yorker who doesn’t know the first thing about owning a car, which I was reminded of as a dear friend was guiding me through the process with the nice lady at the auto-financing office.
Then, I found out that Lyft gives you a car to keep indefinitely if you drive for them one day a week. I thought to myself, “I can pass flyers out to every passenger, talk to them about ReelwUrld and our first show Justice For Hire, and convince them to follow on social media, join our cast, or become and investor on Wefunder. AND I can drop off flyers at comic shops and martial arts schools after each ride to reach even more people.” I says to myself I says.
I started last Monday. IT’S WORKING. IT’S MAGICAL.
People I drive are following, joining the cast of our show, and investing. I turn off my app to hit the nearest comic shops and martial arts schools in a given neighborhood. Then I turn Lyft back on, pick up a passenger and start my sales pitch all over again. Here’s a TikTok of me doing exactly that.
Driving Lyft was a tough decision for me, as it eats time. Time that could be spent making a lot more money doing other things for me, but my vision means more than money. I feel for career Lyft drivers, as they work long hours for a low salary. I make more in a 1-hour Tai Chi coaching session than 7-hours of driving for Lyft. I’m fortunate that I don’t have to rely on this as a main income, and am now a strong advocate for tipping your driver handsomely.
It also is a reminder of classism, and how people might unconsciously (or worse, consciously) treat others. People can look at drivers, waiters, and other servers as being beneath them. When I let a rider know I’m a producer promoting a show and tech startup, their entire demeanor changes. That “Hollywood effect” wouldn’t happen if I just stayed silent and drove. Part of me was apprehensive about stepping into this position because of these dynamics. It reminds me, in a less than pleasant way, of all the things we need to fix in the world.
“Imposter syndrome” can also be a factor if I don’t stay positive and maintain the perspective that Lyft is covering my marketing costs. My car is a mobile pitch meeting office. I was grateful to the USC film student that I drove a few days ago inspiring that mobile pitch meeting viewpoint and recognizing the type of dedication it takes to share my vision with the world one person at a time. He even called ReelwUrld “the most correct idea in Hollywood.” I made a video about my conversation with him.
This one by one approach to sharing my vision to produce films & shows that anyone and everyone can creatively be a part of is exactly what I was praying for. Literally, I spoke to the universe like, “Please get me in front of people all day every day that want to help me build.” It’s happening, one person at a time.
As I go 1x1, which can understandably be perceived as “slow” by a 3rd party, Marvel Studios released Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which to me and some of the teenage/20-something members of my tribe felt was incredibly slow.
Hmm. Here’s an equation: I’m doing something that can be perceived as slow, yet my experience is fast + Marvel is doing something several critics perceive as fast-paced, but my experience was agonizingly slow = opportunity to highlight a societal shift.
This made me think of something my ReelwUrld cofounder and former Newsweek journalist Autumn Noel Kelly said when visited the Museum of the Academy of Motion Pictures: they did a great job of slowing down the speed of consumption.
The museum’s exhibit is multi-floor exploration of cinema that intentionally honors the pace of each piece of cinema it highlights. It’s not fast, but it’s dense with meaningful content.
When I talk to people in a Lyft ride, I ask personal questions and share aspects of myself that all tie back to the core reason I’m in that car — to follow through with a commitment to a greater vision. Each ride is dense with meaningful content.
Doctor Strange felt slow to me, and I believe for the teens and twenty-somethings I know, because with all that was happening with the film, it lacked meaningful, purposeful density. Aside from the Scarlet Witch motherhood narrative, there wasn’t a lot of unique insight into the human experience.
Now, let me tie this into the societal shift from the aforementioned equation.
Consumption speeds up when we get used to consuming the same things.
When you take a bite of something surprising and delicious, you slow down for a moment. Your face changes. Your breathing changes. You savor the moment, even if for a brief second before wolfing that delicious burger down (excuse me, I’m a vegetarian, but keep passing In & Out Burger in the car and am having flashbacks to that delightful dead cow on their Double-Double).
I just edited a pre-visualization video for a commercial for a buddy in less than an hour on Monday. I could do that because I watch most videos on 2X speed, and edit on 4X speed. No matter how fast I go, I know where the cuts are, because the information in the video was two-dimensional. The video came out great, blew people away and now my buddy is getting flown out to Germany, but it was a simple story structure and didn’t require much depth, similar to most content on the market.
Since Avengers: Endgame wrapped up a saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, each film, and now every show due to Disney+, with the exception of Shang-Chi, has lacked the depth and interconnected clarity of the previous MCU films.
The content has felt slower to me because they follow a formula. The patterns are predictable.
If you follow the Marvel comics, they lag, in part because there is no definitive end to the Marvel stories (which is a topic for another time — mark my words, world-ending will become a big thing). In 2018, the release of Ant Man & The Wasp was a telltale sign that Marvel would mirror the challenges their comics have in cinematic form. Rather than going completely dark as an entity between Infinity War and Endgame, Marvel gave us a “filler film.” They’ve done the same in comics for decades, releasing a milestone issue, then surrounding it with stories of what other characters were doing around the same time.
After Endgame, we’ve received more filler films.
But Endgame was the greatest film franchise experience of all time. Bigger than the first Star Wars was. It changed how we consume and what we expect from our media. It made us all understand that our stories could be united. That each voice and every hand on deck mattered. That we could all see ourselves on screen, together, at once.
We’re different now.
We want to wield that power, and learn more about it. Like this fan that made his own working Spider-Man mask, or this group making web fluid like Spidey’s (there’s global arachnid hero subculture if you weren’t already aware).
Marvel’s flaw in all of their releases since Endgame, including every show, has been that their play is to expand the cinematic universe into a multiverse.
That’s the logical next step, and therefore it’s predictable.
That’s not to say I didn’t geek out when (spoiler alert) Patrick Stewart was on screen as Professor X (#PatrickStewartforPresidentofEarth). However, the missing ingredient is the acknowledgment that we as consumers have changed since Endgame.
The flaw is to think that all we want is more stories.
The flaw is to think that fandom equates to consumption.
We’ve seen the stories. We’ve been inspired by them. Used them for our own growth as a society. Now, it’s a bit boring to simply get more of the same. We’re already done listening before the film is finished, because we know the tropes.
This is an important articulation.
Think for a moment, where in your life do you confidently assume the end of the story before the story is told? What interactions? With whom?
I bet it happens to you almost every day.
It happens to me in almost every conversation.
People cut each other off. Half listen. Redirect the attention of the conversation to themselves. (I’m guilty of this.)
Why?
Because we’re bored of the same old patterns. We consume quickly because we assume knowledge of the whole experience before it’s complete.
When we’re truly engaged, we’re captivated. To be captivated, we need depth. Meaning. Purpose.
We were captivated by Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. He gave us the first truly vulnerable superhero. He set the tone for all of the marquee MCU heroes to come, so much so that Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther was differentiated by being the only Marvel hero that doesn’t quip!
But Marvel is far removed from that emotional intelligence at the moment.
The “speed” in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is because the film is formatted like a long chase scene. We don’t need stories about chasing outward power or love happiness. That’s old thinking.
We need stories about finding that happiness within ourselves. That’s where the youth is. Remove the “th” and we have “you”.
We can slow the speed of consumption to a savor if important themes and messages are focused to impact one person rather than a group of people. TikTok influencer agency owner JT Barnett has some beautiful words on the subject that he calls the “1 View Theory”. The concept is to improve one human being’s day with your content.
Without you finding something in you, we can’t proceed as a collective with meaning and purpose. It’s the same boring conversation, film, burger. Been there. Done that.
The Marvel films have already served their purpose.
Endgame won’t happen again. Not without us in it. I mean that literally as someone working toward normalizing fan participation in mainstream media.
We must and are evolving beyond consumerism.
Culture is in the process of reframing fandom as action.
Consumption can be one of those actions, but there is more to us than just buying and passively paying attention. There’s a creative side that is coming out because we have the tools and the access. We have smartphones and TikToks and web3 and ReelwUrld.
It’s the person to person connection that allows ideas to thrive. That’s why I’m driving around in a Lyft. Passing out these flyers, talking to people one by one.
In my experience, having a vision of how grand something could be is an incredible burden until it’s made real for all to benefit from. I hope that by sharing what I’m doing to make my vision a reality, it inspires you with your visions, no matter what it is you may have to do to bring them to life.
Thanks as usual for the love and support on this journey.
Consider joining the cast of JFH from our app and investing in ReelwUrld on Wefunder and build with me and my team.
With Love,
Jan Lucanus
