A short bonus episode showcasing a few standout moments from this week's guest interview with Lidia Scarlat  ~

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

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Radim: Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Forever podcast. This is my weekly opportunity to zoom on a few standout moments from this week's interview, finding those moments that deserve a second look, and dig deeper into what makes them special. This week, I spoke to Lydia Scarlett, who's a producer who has spent years turning ideas into finished work across the creative industries, moving from project to project by simply showing up.

In our conversation, we talked about why producing means jumping off the cliff before anybody else does, and how nobody gets discovered before you show up. 

 The episode published a few days ago was titled "Dare to Build the Conditions for Others," and it was a great chat about creative projects with someone who's got a different view and experience to most of my other guests who seem to be sitting on the other side of the table.

If you haven't checked out a full episode, let me share with you these four standout moments.

Yeah. I love building the conditions for other people, artists to dare, right? I think that's, probably my daring aspect.

Lidia: 'Cause, people think that Being a producer is being in the safe seat. 

No, it's actually jumping off the cliff first. 

 I think it's, usually as a producer you say yes before anything exists. You have no staffed team yet. There's no roadmap. Every project at the beginning is really a mutant.

 You don't really know what you're putting up with, but you have some acquired intuition of the fact that you're gonna figure it out. You don't know the answers, but you kinda know where the questions are gonna be and how they're gonna pop up. as producers are saying yes before, before anything else happens, and you know, that jump happens very early for producers, and if we don't take that jump, if we don't take that leap, then the artist's leap doesn't happen within that project.

 So I think it's a beautiful kind daring thing to do to say yes to a project which feels like this transformer of a thing that could become anything, and then you dive into the conversations with, you know, the creative director or all the stakeholders to understand what is it that we're actually doing, but yes, let's do it. 

Radim: from a creative's perspective, you often think that producers are slightly different types of humans.

I've met quite a few producers in my life, and they are differently wired. They keep us on our toes. And I love chatting to Lydia about her way into producing and what it is to actually be producing the work right now. Because we love the idea of the confident yes, But Lidia's version of yes isn't actual confidence.

It's commitment before the facts get in. When she's got no team booked, no plan drawn up, just a promise that it will all come together, it's that early-stage mutants that she calls it that's brilliant. The way she says it, it captures how messy and shapeless things are before they become polished thing, before we see them in the end.

And it serves as a reminder that behind every finished project of work is a period when nobody, including the person running it, quite knew what it would become. Of course, there's a brief and an idea of what it should be, but, you know, things sometimes show up in the end slightly differently. So this moment potentially can tell you that if you ever felt like you're winging it, basically Lidia's telling you that's not a flaw, that's actually just a job

Nobody is looking for you. unless you put yourself out there, nobody's gonna discover you. I feel like if we go back to childhood times, I feel like there was that kind of a narrative that, oh, talents get discovered. You know, there's, like, headhunters, that you should just wait to be discovered by, as a music artist, for example, by an amazing producer that will then propel you into your beautiful super-duper future.

Lidia:  that doesn't happen. Nobody knows you exist. you could have the most beautiful portfolio, but if you don't put it out there, it's not gonna be seen by anyone. And at the same time, you can lack a beautiful portfolio and be very seen by people just because you show up, you join the conversations, you're someone people may want to work with.

 I've done that countless of times. I've given, opportunities to artists who do not have portfolios just because I feel that they have that desire which you cannot buy with anything, and that they're jumping at the opportunity. And when they're jumping at the opportunity, they're like, " Let me prove to you that I can do a great job."

And I'm like, "All right, you got my attention. You got my attention. Let's do it." And I've seen amazing projects when, you social media management company did the craziest, beautiful looking 3D designs, like surreal 3D designs. I'm like, "Wow, that was not exactly part of your About section on your website, but I'm happy that this opportunity presented in front of you," and they performed, This is one of these moments that dismantles the, do the great work and you'll get noticed myth. I've seen people forever sort of sitting on, Twitters and Instagram saying, "Hey, I've just put my work on Behance, and I've got my work on Dribbble, and I've got my work there and there, and I'm waiting for anyone to get in touch."

And I'm thinking it's like opening a shop in a round a corner on a busy high street and hoping that the traffic will show up because you're doing exactly the same thing as everybody else. I think the general equation has changed because it's no longer who you know, but who knows you.

The world is changing. The world is turning, and there's no such thing in shame of actually saying, "You know what? I'm going to make noise about myself." Because when you look at your inbox alone, there's so much stuff from every brand, from everything. I'm simplifying here, but people who are established, multinational corporations are sending marketing emails every day, every night, and it's landing in your inbox.

They are bombarding you with, with digital ads. They are telling you, "This is what we are. You know us, but this is who we are. This is what we do." And in terms of creative skills and talent, it can feel a little bit dirty saying, "Well, I don't like sales. I don't like this, that, you know, pushes me in the other side.

I'm an artist." Well, you can stay being an artist, but maybe slightly poor artist because it's the people who might be average in what they do, but they're very good at sales. And you can look at the number of design influencers these days who got great following. They're making money off affiliate marketing.

 let's be honest, very average designers, but they're savvy. Let's be honest to that. that's their skill. That's their talent because they are showing up in places where others don't, doing the thing that you might not want to do. But if you wanna do the thing that you do want to do, you gotta tell people about it.

So in Lidia's case, she was just basically re- reiterating the same thing, saying, "You gotta show up. You gotta find your people, your opportunities." She was talking about how she found work through Motionographer, going to Off Festival and not waiting to be spotted. 

That's one of the ways to get seen because the whole moment here, if you think about it, sort of visibility is an active choice rather than reward for talent, it's a genuine advice to say, you know, "Keep showing up, keep showing up, and keep telling people about what you can do and what you want to do."

Because in my history of not employing people in my business, I've always employed and commissioned those that were not potentially the most talented, but it was the ones who never went away.

 I don't I wanna show that I understand, I get what, where they're coming from. And at first, in my first years in this craft I was afraid to ask questions because I thought that suggests that I may not know the answers. And the longer I'm in this, the more I understand that you gotta ask all the questions, even if the questions are stupid.

Lidia: If it helps, put a disclaimer out there saying, "I'm gonna ask some obvious questions," but do ask the questions because, 80% of the times you may think that the answer may be A, but the answer is actually F. And nobody, appreciates it when a question is not asked at the right time. And, you asking questions about a specific project or about a specific need actually shows that you're thoughtful and care, and you're anticipating things that can be answered early in the process rather than coming back to them at the end where it's like, "Oh, wait, that's what we were supposed to do?"

Radim:  we cannot read people's minds, you if we say think of an apple, you may think of a red one. I will probably think of the logo of the apple, you know? we're in separate thinking territories even if the questions seem obvious. But I love putting all the questions out there. You never know how they may not even have the answers at that time about the most obvious things to put on the table.I have realized that this season of the podcast, entitled Daring Forever, is just about questions. It's questions, questions, questions. Last week, I talked to Dan Budja about daring to ask for what you want.

You know, if you keep asking, you keep getting. And in, Lidia's case, it's about finding the outcomes that are hiding potentially sometimes in plain sight. Because there's no such thing as a wrong question. I think in my view, the people mentioned in a previous moment who are potentially too scared to show up, sometimes are people too scared to, actually ask the question and, see if that might make them look a bit weaker.

But questions is what drives us forward because we find that people who might possess the answers don't always know the full truth or the full scope of the answer, and this is where we find the hidden meaning, the hidden answers, the hidden things that needs to be unearthed and found. So I love Lidia's moment here when she's talking about, you know, you think the answer is A, but it's actually F.

And I think what makes it most comforting and liberating is to realizing that, you know what? Let me look for every possible option because, you know, if the F is what I thought was an A, what a fantastic way to find and solve a problem.

We iterate previews. Instead of rolling into Pinterest boards, we roll into, prompted images that we prompt and we see tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. So as curators and as art directors and as creative directors, it's a faster way to get to the initial stage of the actual production. I've seen that being used extensively around studios.

Lidia:  I've seen, tech leads using AI to make some of their processes faster, but it's not something that you can just hop on a, into a browser and prompt and get it done. It's still node-based formulations to make, your 3D pipeline, for example, work faster. I'm curious. I'm very curious about where this all is gonna go.

I'm very curious about how, we can focus on the taste of understanding art and visual and audiovisual work rather than just execute on it. So I think those who have an executor mindset should quickly switch into, you know, learning directing, screenwriting, scriptwriting, storytelling because those are the things that are, not replaceable.

Radim: humor, situational, anecdotal storytelling AI can go that far with it At Of course, the question about AI had to show up. We talked about AI a little bit from production perspective. How does it work? Where does it help? Because, Lydia works with, my previous guest, Tim Thompson, who says, "You know what? In some cases, some of my studio clients, they get maximum benefit of working with AI because some of the tooling is enabled them to use AI from the production perspective, from, a boost in productivity, boost in the output."

 the ideation, the creativity is always best kept human, but the tools can help us make things bigger, make things faster, you know, make render more sharper. So what Lidia's advocating here is actually you've got the human skills, the soft skills, the imagination. Use it to your best advantage and see what you can do with it because I don't know, from where I'm sitting, the conversations about AI, you know, seems a bit more mature and a bit more informed and less panicky.

Sometimes I look in a different corner of the world and people are still flapping and panicking. And- Yes, Some of those bits, it feels like it's still unknown shape what AI is about to become, but in other instances, it makes perfect sense. It's just a glorified calculator.

It's something that does something really well if you feed it the right numbers, the right data, and it can help you to get somewhere faster. But where I'm sitting, in any possible way is a great tool in, you know, getting that extra ten percent or twenty percent on top of what you already have.

But if you've been running a business that's based on ideas, relationships, client, you know, relationships, you've got a job for life because there's always a way to find an idea or, an idea or a way to collaborate with real humans on real stuff that humans actually need. And AI is just a buzzword and a tool that is just on the peripherals unless you allow it to take over your mind.

So hope I can encourage you to check out the full episode with Lydia. She's beautifully well-spoken about what she does. She's passionate, talented, and compassionate. She runs incredible teams with some incredible people around the world, and it was a joy to speak to her about what she does and how she does it.

I can thank you for joining me on this episode of the Daring Forever podcast, and I'll join you next week when I'm talking to Pep Salazar from OFFF Festival.