Produced By - Insight #SPECIAL - Taliah Lamont: How to Connect with the Right People in the Film Industry
Episode Date: September 1, 2023Taliah Lamont is a London based freelance video producer who recently graduated from MetFlim School in Ealing with a Master's degree in Producing for Film and Television. Born in Al Khobar, Saudi Arab...ia and raised in Leeds, England, Taliah was surrounded by the arts and cinema since she was a child. This passion carried her education through as she starred in musicals and plays and participated in collaborating with older students on business films for both of her high schools. This would lead to her decision to attend a BA Film Production course at Middlesex University in London where her short films, such as Potty the Plant and Chopsticks!!, would win awards and show at festivals internationally. Currently, she focuses her own style on individual ideas with strong emotional connections and relatable stories. Additionally, she hopes to push more LGBTQ+ characters and stories into the industry and shine a light on the community. Listen to this episode to get a sneak peek into behind the scenes of Taliah’s successful short films, discover more about pitching projects to have them commissioned and get inspired by her story as a hard working, enthusiastic and optimistic student. Connect with Taliah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taliahlamont/ https://taliahlamont.wixsite.com/lamontpictures https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9102759/ https://www.instagram.com/talibops/ https://www.instagram.com/sergeantwings/ Potty the Plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RKitlTof3Y&ab_channel=PottyThePlant Episode topics: Introduction Current projects Second year short film - Potty the Plant Third year short films - The Langford Loop and Chopsticks!! Festivals University advice Studying masters Masters final project Pitch decks Getting into the industry Career advice Follow Taliah Quotes: “I'd heard about the story and it was so unusual and so different. And for some reason, nobody else wanted to touch it. But I was just like, why not? This sounds amazing. Why wouldn't we make this?” “We were so proud when it was finished. Do not get me wrong though, doing those films, especially doing them at the same time, burnt me.” “These steps, building these connections takes time. It's baby steps. So you just have to be patient and you just have to keep in your head that your time will come. Do the work, keep putting in the effort, build up your tolerance for rejection and just keep making those baby steps.” “At the end of the day, if you want to be in this industry hard enough, it makes it much easier to get in. It doesn't guarantee it, but having the motivation, knowing it's something that you want to be in and that you're willing to put all of this work and time and effort in, then it's worth all of that trouble. And that's what separates probably the casuals from the serious.” Connect with the podcaster: https://tomasloucky.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/ https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/ https://twitter.com/TomasLoucky Follow the podcast: 🌐 Website: https://produced-by-podcast.com 🔗 Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_by 💬 Contact: https://produced-by-podcast.com/contact 📷 Instagram: https://instagram.com/produced_by_podcast 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT5LHnM6YCaeVzIr0WatOsw 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@producedbypodcast 👾 Discord: https://discord.gg/8j3zNzwqJg ✉️ Email: podcast.produced.by@gmail.com Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e5Y8Wscx Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/produced-by/id1684669642 📨 Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7092551882589528065 If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting it on Patreon. ❤️ Connect with Tomas:X: https://x.com/TomasLouckyStan: https://stan.store/TommenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/Unproduced:Newsletter: https://unproduced.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unproducednotesSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Ddo8ibDlLYoaP7FFLIWMore:Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_byNewsletter: https://producednewsletter.substack.com/The Podcast Club: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25420030/Tools & gear that support the show:Metricool: https://f.mtr.cool/HRJBZKRiverside: https://riverside.sjv.io/vDnDodFavikon: https://www.favikon.com?fpr=tommenRa Optics: https://ra-optics.myshopify.com/discount/TOMMEN?rfsn=8803777.591d19JamX: https://jamx.ai/podcasters-offer?ref_id=e02d48af-ef66-4e76-b804-c2e8d282a8bfSome links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you find them useful, using these links helps keep the podcast running. Thank you! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I wonder, before you said that you've already got from context,
but who did you speak to when you started?
Because back then you probably didn't have any context.
So who did you reach out to or how did you start?
So one of them was through university,
my second year short film, Pottie the Plant,
now one's available online, and talk about that one.
I feel like I may have seen it, actually.
We attended the same university, didn't we?
Yeah, so I think.
they showed it to us.
It was like a musical, right?
Yeah, short comedy musical,
the singing part of plan and the evil doctor and...
I will share the link like in a show note so that people...
Oh, definitely, definitely.
It's ever so fun.
I know a lot of people probably haven't seen it,
but it's, especially for my first official short film,
I was dead proud of it.
It was lovely and a fantastic...
It was a fantastic production as well.
I was producer.
Also produced.
So it sounds like your whole...
whole career has been producing?
Those are my main projects.
I have done production, assistant work, location managing, I've helped with casting on other
ones.
Those have been, you know, projects that I've done for, I've only had to be a part of
like a week or two, a couple of months.
Yeah, the bulk of my work of my experience is through my own production.
Sorry for interruption.
Oh, no, no, no, no worries.
Yeah, the first contact was through Potty the Plan.
We'd screened it at university and the creative.
director of our courses. She had contacts at Channel 4. She invited the CEO of Channel 4's wife
to the screening and she saw Pottie the plan and she was like, oh my God, this is fantastic. It's so
funny and so creative. I'm going to show this to my husband. And it's like, oh, you're going to show
this to the CEO of Channel 4. Hmm. Like both a sense of incredible pride and just massive fear.
like being pushed onto train tracks
where it's like boom now you've got this light on you
and it's like oh my god
and imagine being in the second year of uni
it's like a great achievement
yeah right I was still focused on like
you know I've got a degree to finish right
like I can't just pull out of that
for us to do a TV show or can I
like it was so weird
but it was absolutely
yeah it was absolutely hilarious
it never expected it
But I was lucky enough to go to a great uni.
So what was the reaction then?
Did you get some kind of feedback or they got back to you or you kept in touch with them?
So for the most part we've kept in touch, the project itself,
how the plan is a brilliant short film.
I'm really happy with the short film.
But translating it to TV is difficult.
I'd like to make it into a TV series.
Make it into a TV series is one of the first.
those things where we would either have to remove the musical element, which we didn't want to do.
We thought it was a big part of who it was. And we were having ideas of like, oh, we'll put
potty the plant on like a pirate ship. We can have an episode of potty the pirate. And like we even
drafted a couple of songs for that. But if we didn't remove the music, then it couldn't really be
an episodic thing. Because it's like you can't really have a connected series of things.
musicals. There was a cop procedural show in their 80s that was made that was a musical.
The first two episodes did great and it tanked after that.
It was the example I was given when it's like, okay, if we're going to make this into a TV show,
we should know that other people have tried and it did not succeed.
However, I have also developed two pitch decks in case potty the plan ever wanted to be a TV show.
So was it the baguadena?
like sometime recently.
So the first initial, like, conversations of turning potty into a TV show happened in 2019, I think, 2018 to 2019.
In that case, it was a situation of just like talking to these contacts and they were like,
oh, this is really fun, but we're not too sure.
We need further developed ideas to have a little bit more confidence.
And it's like, that's fair, that's fair.
Yeah, we'll take this away.
We'll develop it a little further.
and then it was while we were trying to develop it
that we started to hit those sort of marks of like
oh we really want this to work but something's not clicking yet
and that was sort of what halted potty for a while
it was so difficult to adapt we really wanted it to work with TV
but it was it was really difficult to strike the balance
and make it marketable