Every so often, a documentary comes along that just shakes you to the core. For days, weeks or even longer, you get uneasy just thinking about the 90 minutes you were captivated and, perhaps, forever changed by what you viewed. Just ask anyone who streamed Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma,” which used investigation and narrative drama to delve into the hidden machinations of social networks and their frightening power to persuade. Intensifying the film’s grip was its use of visual effects that transported viewers right into those UI algorithms and inner workings. If you weren’t truly disturbed by the end, you weren’t paying attention.
To date, “The Social Dilemma” has amassed
! So, when ALIBI got the chance to interview the award-winning producer/storyteller behind the film’s visual effects and motion graphics, we jumped at it. Our very own Paul Ortiz sat down (from across the pond) with Mass FX Media’s for a lively discussion about VFX, storytelling and her creative process working on high-impact documentaries.Grab some popcorn and enjoy!
PAUL:
Hey, everyone... my name is Paul Ortiz, and I'm music director here at ALIBI Music. Welcome to our video series podcast where we sit down and chat with leading creators in their fields from across the world of music, film, games, TV and much more. And today I'm joined by Shawna Schultz, the award-winning producer and storyteller, co-founder of Mass FX Media, the motion design and visual effects company behind “The Social Dilemma,” “Friends: The Reunion,” “Q: Into the Storm” and many other high-profile projects.
So, first of all, hello, Shawna!
SHAWNA:
Hello! Thanks so much for having me.
PAUL:
No worries, and thank you for taking the time out to be with us. So, we’ll jump sort of straight into it. I guess, just sort of tell us a little bit about yourself and, more specifically, what your entry point was into your current career path. What was the thing that kind of got you involved in this in the first place?
SHAWNA:
Sure, yes, so I went to film school and got a kind of a BFA in Film Production, specifically in Documentary Film. And so, right out of school, I worked for a company doing short docs, kind of weekly short docs, and I feel like it was really, really good storytelling training to need to every single week come up with a story and then edit together a story. And after that, I got the opportunity to do this really cool four-month project where I would live on a ship and follow around social entrepreneurs, and we would travel the entire world, so we literally circumnavigated the globe, and would travel into countries every week or so, and so kind of like go on the ship and then go in, and we would document what these social businesses were doing in each country, and we put together a web series that you can find. It's archived, called “Unreasonable at Sea.”
But, in order to do that project, I had to step away from that full-time gig. And so, me and my husband, we started a production company, Mass FX Media, just out of like, we want to go, you know, do this crazy project. And ever since then, that was kind of our entry into starting the company, so we always joked that we kind of started it on accident… very selfish reasons of just like, we want to do this project. Let's just start a company. And, as we grew over time, what one of our things that we were really good at was animation and visual effects. And this marriage between nonfiction and then animation and motion graphics was a really interesting place where our love of storytelling intersected, and so our skills there and then also with kind of this non-fiction storytelling brought together to create Mass FX Media, that we now serve documentary series and features, doing a lot of title work and animations.
And our specialty is kind of taking things that you can't see and are really hard to explain or maybe they're just numbers, and we pull the story and humanity and emotion out of it. And so that's kind of like what brought us to where we are today. But we've been in business for 11 years, so it's kind of… it was a very slow process. We had to be very patient to get to the point where we're working on these higher-profile projects, of course.
PAUL:
That's incredible. I mean I can tell just by the way you're talking about it that it's a real passion and a love of yours. And I guess, before even you were in education, was there something that was kind of like an inspiring thing to you? Like you saw something and thought, “that's what I want to do”? Or was it something that you kind of just sort of stumbled into?
SHAWNA:
Ooh, that's a good question because I feel like, as a little kid, I always loved to entertain. I think I was very shy, and if you could get people to laugh, they were laughing with you instead of at you.
PAUL:
Yeah, I know the feeling.
SHAWNA:
Yeah, I was always kind of this goofy entertainer. Even amongst my family, I was always the silly one, and I think that then went over into like I would put on plays. And when I was really little, my mom would rent a VHS camera, and I think you could get it from the library or something, and she would get it for like 12 hours or something, we would only have it a limited time. And she used to do this thing where we'd sit on the stairs and she would record and we'd all sit and then she would say, “Abracadabra.” And then she'd stop the camera. Someone would move or we'd switch places. She'd start it again and it was like in-camera visual effects where it was like we could make each other disappear, right? We could make each other shrink and stuff. And I think I loved that so much because then it was like, “Let's go watch it. Let’s go see what we did.” And, I mean, that like magic, I think just inspired me to want to continue. Let's do that. You know, how can I do more of that?
PAUL:
And incredible as well that you were able to sort of share that with your family from such a young age as well. I mean, it's a similar story for myself in that I grew up with parents that did the thing that I now do. So, yeah, I think to have that at home and just sort of be immersed in it from such an early age is a real, you know, is a real strong thing.
SHAWNA:
Yeah.
PAUL:
Well, I was going to ask what the most surprising thing about your career path has been so far, but you've already been on a boat and traveled around the world so that's pretty cool, but is there anything that you've kind of encountered that's just not anything that you're expecting? Anything that's kind of outside of that?
SHAWNA:
I feel like documentary, in general, is just the Wild West… every minute of projects, I'm like, “What? We're getting paid to do this?” When we worked on “Chasing Coral,” for example, we got to go and be a part of the camera installs. So, if you've seen “Chasing Coral,” they put these cameras under water and try to do timelapses to capture bleaching. And that process of trying to install those cameras – no spoilers or anything – but didn't go as well as maybe they had hoped, and so they had to take different approaches. But at one time, there was one event we needed to capture, so multiple crews needed to go to different places, and so we got shipped out to Bermuda, and I got scuba-certified just so I could be a field producer, because I was like, “I have to be on these trips.”
PAUL:
Oh, wow.
SHAWNA:
And that was just wild thinking, “What are we doing?” We're helping these scientists with their research and being a part of amazing things that you never thought in film school you would be shipped out doing that.
PAUL:
Yeah, so it's just taking you far beyond where you and everybody thought that it could do.
SHAWNA:
Yeah, I think the other piece of it would be the inside, the inside look you get to people's lives and the things that people tell you with a camera in your hand. I love human stories, and I love the complexness of things are not black and white. There's just huge gray areas and, as you dig into people's stories and emotions, you just get this boldness to ask a question you would never politely ask someone, and…
PAUL:
Yeah, it's very, very revealing.
SHAWNA:
Uh, I think yeah, and I think that that grows me as an individual as well, and that could be another really surprising part of my job – that it's crazy, the types of stories that we get to capture and that people are willing to tell.
PAUL:
Incredible. And, I mean, do you have a sort of standout moment in your career so far? I mean, is there something that you're especially proud of or something that you kind of feel is the peak at the moment?
SHAWNA:
Yeah, I think “The Social Dilemma” is that for us. We had worked with that producer and director previously on “Chasing Ice” and then on “Chasing Coral,” so we already had a really good relationship, and they had a lot of trust in us.
But “The Social Dilemma” was, at the time, no one knew it was going to go and be as big and amazing as it really turned out to be. It was still an independent film when we started, you know, years before it got released. And a lot of those conversations were like, “We have a really big ask. Like there's this dream of half of this is going to be in a narrative world, and there's kind of a sci-fi, like we need a world for our AI. We're going in inside the phone.” And that was like, “No, we can do it. We can do it like you come to us.” Come to us, but it was such a giant endeavor. We had never taken on anything that big before, and for the director and producer to trust us with that, I feel like was one honoring of the fact that they loved our storytelling and our design capabilities enough. We had to design an entirely new social media network from scratch, and we had five days to do it.
PAUL:
Oh, wow.
SHAWNA:
Because the timeline was so tight, we had to work with the designers who were building the sets that we would create kind of these interfaces that the algorithms would use to control the social media platform that our main character was interacting with. So, it was like, “OK, we don't have time to, you know, hold your hand through it. It's up to you guys.” And it was a really great. It was just very honoring for that, but it was also really tough because we had to scale up our team really fast, and we didn't necessarily have the infrastructure to handle all of that, which maybe I shouldn't admit, but you know we had the grit…
PAUL:
I think that's the way all good projects come together, isn't it? You just you make it happen, you know?
SHAWNA:
And you always just say yes, and then you turn around and go, “How are we going to do it?” But it came, like we had amazing team of people and just my creative director and the producing team that we had leading it. Just everyone was like, “OK, we're going to do it.” And we pulled it off and almost died a little bit and needed to take some time off after that. But I think what we did and how we helped tell that story was a huge highlight so far. And then, of course, it put us on the map, like people got to see our work in a really big way. And, so, we got a lot of really great next projects and still do, which is a very exciting thing for a company as you're growing.
PAUL:
Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, it's you know it's an amazing piece of work inasmuch as it kind of changed the conversation around social media in the same way that like “Blue Planet” did for environmentalism. It just put all of these issues on people's radar, even myself. As someone I consider myself to be reasonably tech savvy, I just hadn't given any of it any thought, so I think the fact that you were able to kind of reframe something so innocuous as social media is like this is a really serious thing that we have to deal with. Incredible piece of work, so really enjoyed it myself. It also terrified me as well. I think it terrified everyone.
SHAWNA:
Hopefully scared you enough into action, right?
PAUL:
I mean, I still spend too much time scrolling, but I know why I'm spending too much time. That's the difference.
SHAWNA:
That's good. Awareness is number one, right?
PAUL:
So, the “Friends” reunion -- huge deal, huge project, massively culturally significant. What was it like to work on that? Any sort of cool stories that you have to tell?
SHAWNA:
Yeah, that that was one of those phone calls that, after “The Social Dilemma” came out, we got a call from the producers at CBS and Fulwell, and it was like this unreal like, “I'm sorry. Who are you??? Oh, my!”
And they're like, “We're working on this project and we want fresh eyes. We just want a team who's fresh and we loved your work on ‘The Social Dilemma,’ and we just want you on it.”
And I was like, “This is unreal” because they're like, “Do you know the show ‘Friends’?” And I was like, “Like THE ‘Friends’? I mean, I know of A show ‘Friends’ like THE show!” It was just a really cool call to get. It was an exciting group of people. Everyone that was on it just loved “Friends,” and this depth of connection to something that kind of changed people's lives as they were growing up, was really cool to be a part of. And a lot of the work that we did was on the fans videos, so you can also see those maps, and kind of that travelling the globe on the fans extras that are there on HBO, but it was just really neat and exciting to be a part of that cultural phenomenon of just like how? How did we get chosen for this? Did the universe pluck us out? Oh, man, it was really fun.
PAUL:
But you would say that that was off the back of the success of “The Social Dilemma”?
SHAWNA:
Definitely, yeah. They just literally loved that film and then looked at the credits and picked us out. And, I mean, that's something that I feel like, when you're a young entrepreneur, and as you're growing your business, you just dream of, and you think that's just never a thing that's going to happen, but we kind of fell into the luck of “The Social Dilemma,” like not knowing that it was going to go on Netflix. And I think I can't remember the stat, but it was something like 30 or 40 million households streamed that in the first month that it was on Netflix. And just… you can’t have predicted that, knowing that, and I think part of just our passion for storytelling, and being a part of these projects just led us into a little bit of luck there. A lot of hard work got it done, but I have to admit that was just a little bit of luck there.
PAUL:
Yeah, I’m kind of backtracking a little bit, but also with regards to some of the environmental stuff, I mean, do you feel like kind of being involved in those projects… has it had a personal impact on you as well? I mean, I know you sort of asked did I sort of learn anything from the experience of watching it. Has it changed anything for yourself or any of the other documentaries that you've worked on?
SHAWNA:
So, Matt and I (my business partner), when we started our career just as kind of young storytellers before we started Mass FX, we used to cut together these blooper reels. And because we had these capabilities of visual effects, I mean, we would modify footage and we would put cuts together and juxtapose things that weren’t “true,” but we did these edits and they were so funny. But, ultimately, we’re kind of making fun of and teasing people, and during that time, our boss was, “These are great. Make sure you delete them off our things so they never get out.”
But he was like, “I want you to always remember to use your powers for good. You have very strong abilities that you can change and make things whatever they are, and as you go out into the world, use your powers for good.”
And that just stuck with us as something like we have a lot of power and what we can do with video, whether you can do visual effects or not, the edits that you make, where you point the camera, like you can change and modify, and there's bias and everything. And that's just like a mantra that has stuck with us as our company Mass FX has grown, and the projects that we do… they’re handling topics that are going to be divisive or, you know, controversial.
But, a lot of the things that we want to work on, we just want to make sure we're using our powers for good. So, the films that we've worked on over time, we've just always believed in them, and I think that's a huge part of us being a part of that storytelling process with the graphics is that we're also on board with what we're pushing. And so everything, we just dive in really deep and I think it definitely changes me and the way I think about the world.
So, like climate change… Do I eat seafood? Do I still use social media? You know all these big questions… like they’re big life shifts that that we've made just because of the projects that we been working on.
PAUL:
That's incredible, yeah, and I think that level of sincerity is, well… it's something that, as viewers as well, we can definitely pick up on and it just makes the work that much better for it.
So, I'm sure you've been asked this question a few times but when you are approaching a project, do you kind of have a starting point for your creative processes? Do you have a formula or a method? I know that's quite a broad question.
SHAWNA:
Yeah, we do. I think we've kind of honed in on a really nice method. What we always say to the teams that we're working with is that story comes first. We can do flashy, epic, cool things, whatever you want, you know. You want fireworks and you want explosions? We can do all of these things, but is it serving the story? And I think keeping that thread throughout our creative process is important.
And what we'll typically do is this creative development phase where we dive in, and we work with our clients to do mood boards where we basically get inspired by either work we have done and pull it forward, or things out in the world, and a nice mix of that just to get to our initial NOs. What we want initially when we're working with a director and a producer is, “what do you hate?” OK, if you hate orange, we're never going to use orange or if you don't like robots, let's make sure everything is organic or whatever these things are. We're just kind of like putting as much out in the world that we can start kind of carving.
It's almost like, maybe it's all our raw materials and we start kind of taking it away, and we start to hone in on where we want to land. Then we begin the process of doing style frames, and we take some concepts from the film that we've watched. No matter how rough it is, you know we want to see how it's been shot. What is the editing technique? How fast or phonetic things are, so that our graphics can be married in with that language of where the director is going with things.
And so that process, that ends up being a really long -- much longer than it used to be where we failed fast on a lot of those things. And we have the client pick a section and we do a proof of concept and we go all in and we do the graphics for that section so that you can see it in context and make really big, sweeping changes before we've made 30 of them and we're laying them in the film and going, “Hmmm, that doesn't work.”
PAUL:
Yeah, and then by that way, you're too far down the hall to make a change. And I guess that kind of leads a little bit into the next question, which is that, given that you have your own creative workflow and your own ideas and your own visions and stuff, how do you kind of deal with the tension between what you see in your mind's eye versus what the client or people that have a stake in the production, you know, what they want? And have you ever encountered any instances where you've just had competing visions and you've had a really hard time sort of meeting in the middle?
SHAWNA:
Yeah, I think that was harder earlier because I think maybe the younger you are in your career, the more attached you are to your brilliant ideas. And I think a lot of what our role is… We just kind of have to accept our role as there being one director and we're helping speak into that vision. And, so, whatever they're looking for, we want to make sure we're always coming alongside them in that process. And I think that creative development phase is a great place where we do all of those collisions, where like as the creative sparks are flying of like “No, we don't like that.” And we're like, “But we really think you should.” Right? We can ask twice and then as soon as it's done, OK, we'll accept that we're going in this direction. So, a lot of that early on can help with that.
But we've certainly had situations where… there's a project that came out on Netflix just recently, and we did 50 graphics for it -- 50 maps for it that are all cut. And, you know, the only thing that's left is the opening title that we did for it because it got all the way down to the line and there was somebody that was like, “This isn't serving the story. It's not doing what we want.” There was a major reedit and a new executive that came in, and they just decided they wanted to cut it all out, and it was like, “OK, that's your prerogative, right? Yeah, and I think we joke about what makes the cutting-room floor. We should have the reject wall where we just put off all our stuff that's been rejected. But I think it's a part of the process and separating yourself like that personal feeling that you put into your art… having that separation a little bit is a really hard thing to learn because you can take it personally…
PAUL:
Yeah, so it's almost like losing the ego a bit and just kind of learning that…
SHAWNA:
Which is very hard to do.
PAUL:
Yeah, yeah, trust me, I know.
SHAWNA:
Yeah, but then also you know, remembering we're working together to serve this story. Is this really telling the story? And I think, as long as a creative in a part of a team which you have to be, you know, you kind of have to fall in line to that hierarchy of a film or a series, you're a part of telling that story, and you have to remember what your role is in that. And, so, that's a great place where you don't have as much conflict.
But we've also been pretty lucky that a lot of the directors and producers we work with have a lot of trust in us. And I think we've proved ourselves early on in some of those relationships to, you know, work for a little bit cheaper or even how much we invest in story, rather than just like, “We'll push the buttons and make you your lower thirds.” It's like, “Is it serving it?” I think that trust has been really valuable, where they let go a little bit more because they like our vision and they like where we're going.
PAUL:
Yeah, amazing. Creative blocks… I mean, this is something that I struggle with a lot. Do you have any kind of tactics if you if you hit a roadblock in a production. Do you kind of have a go-to method or anything that you use to get around it?
SHAWNA:
Yeah, I think the only two things are just time and space. When you get those blocks… For us, sometimes it'll be like maybe we're doing a pitch or something like that, or we're right in the middle of that creative development and it's like they don't like anything we're creating. We're stuck in this old, “But, I love this! How do we get out here?” And I just feel like time… stepping away is the only way to clear your head, 'cause I… think when I was early in my -- I play the drums, and my drum teacher when I was a kid, he said, “When you walk away, even though you're not working on it, your brain is still working on it.”
And I do think that's true of like, if you walk away, go to a museum, go experience -- you know -- play with your kids, go on a hike… whatever, to get yourself completely outside of it. When you come back, things will be clearer.
Sometimes you don't have that time, and so that's where we turn to our team. I think having those big blocks, one thing that we do are these design sprints where we give our team way too little time to design something. Like sometimes, if we're stuck on an opening title or something's feeling like we just can't nail it, we get our entire team together for two hours and we put them all, you know… “Don't look at anything else we've done. Here's your prompt.” Everyone just kind of turns out something raw and fast and quick. And putting those things together, the value of having this larger studio to just, “Oh, I like this. I like this. Why did you do that? That's brilliant.” And you can really team up with each other, because being in your own head, sometimes you can just get lost in those blocks.
PAUL:
Absolutely, yeah. I mean that's an interesting approach, actually. It's almost like you're setting artificial deadlines or restrictions to say you've only got this amount of time and just do whatever comes out and then you kind of refine it further from there.
SHAWNA:
Yeah, 'cause nothing moves without pressure, so we kind of have to make that fake pressure and be like, “It's due by noon.” You know, whatever it takes for me to do it, do something. Do anything and that can help too… just to kind of get those juices flowing.
PAUL:
Yeah, I'm taking notes for myself here. So, obviously music and visuals are kind of very similarly emotive, very tied together. How important is music selection to you in a production? How do you feel that it kind of feeds into and feeds back with the visual process?
SHAWNA:
Oh, it's just everything. I feel like the music and the sound for so much that we're doing is just so vital to getting the final oomph of whatever we've created. For us, in animation and motion graphics, there's no sound. If you go out and film something, there's some sound, even if it's room tone, like there's a something there. But with what we do where we're creating it from scratch, there's nothing. Like we start from nothing, and so working with composers when we're working on those larger films or series is brilliant, where they send us a little something and we can get a taste of their rhythm or whatever they're doing in the music, we can pull out and kind of visualize in the motion. And that kind of relationship that we have is so valuable to have either the temp stuff for the early stuff when we're working on graphics from our composers, or even temp scores or stock music, just to get that feel for it. I feel like it's a little chicken and egg where it's kind of like, “Well, we need the music.” And they're like, “Well, we need the visuals.” It's really nice we can inspire each other a little bit.
PAUL:
Yeah, and I mean how often is it that you would have the music to work with first? Or is that something that usually comes after?
SHAWNA:
It depends. So, if we're doing shorter-form brand content which, you know, the other half of our company does (we still work with tech companies doing short explainers and things like that), we'll need to pull something. I feel like we always want some sort of audio track even if it's down to just, we get a tempo, or it's like we want this thing in six. And so now we feel the threes throughout the animation or something like that. Just having that sort of access is really valuable for our animators to get going.
PAUL:
Amazing. That's, yeah, super interesting.
Inasmuch as you are able to say, is there anything coming up that you're particularly excited about? Anything you're working on at the moment that's kind of got the juices going?
SHAWNA:
Oh, yeah! We actually have today, there's a show coming out on HBO called “The Invisible Pilot,” which is a limited series that we did the main title for, so I'm really excited. We can finally talk about that as of today, which is great, and the other projects... Let me think. Yep, I don't think I can talk about any of the other things, but [overlapping dialogue]… my NDAs.
We’re working on a feature film right now that I’m really excited about. I think it’s going to be another one of those impactful documentaries that, when people learn about it, will be like, “Oh, why didn’t we know about this sooner?”
PAUL:
Wow, OK, that's got me intrigued
SHAWNA:
Yeah, we're going to scare some people again, but it's part of our job, right?
PAUL:
I can't wait. So, kind of given that you know we've talked a fair bit about your entry point into the industry, what advice would you give to someone that's looking to get into doing what you're doing?
SHAWNA:
Oh, that's good. Yeah, I think my best advice would be to follow your passion. I think, as you grow in your career and as you're early on, you know, you think you want something and you start charging down that road, and you kind of imagine yourself there and you feel like you haven't succeeded until you get there. Like, “I need to be working for the best studio in the world, and I need to be a creative director there!”
And I think following your passion and having patience… maybe it's an alliteration there -- passion and patience. It takes so much time to hone your craft, continue to do your practice and to hone that and become good because, as you continue to follow that passion, things will follow. Things will fall into place. And, so, passion, practice and patience! That's my advice.
PAUL:
That's my… I’ll get that on a chalkboard, stick it on the wall It's very true, though, I mean, and I think especially because things are so fast moving, you know, I almost don't blame people for wanting quick results and they want to get to the top of the tree super quick because the impression is that that's just how fast things move but, certainly, from my own experience and the experience of others I've talked to, it is very much a waiting game, and it can sometimes be five, 10 years before you're in a position to be demanding even just good pay for your work sort of thing, so I do totally understand that but it's very personal advice. I don’t get paid for it.
SHAWNA:
Yeah, excellent. Put it on the list.
PAUL:
So, just to kind of close out the interview, really, outside of work, when you're not doing amazing motion graphics, what keeps you busy? What do you enjoy doing sort of pastime leisure?
SHAWNA:
Oh, I'm the worst, because I'm developing a film.
I just love film so much. I've always wanted to do a narrative, so a scripted feature, and I found I did a documentary, a short film, a half-hour film about a true story that I just fell in love with, and I decided it needed to be a feature. And, so I've been developing that for the last two years, and it's been keeping me very busy evenings and weekends. And everyone's like, “Stop working!” Right? But when you're just really passionate, it doesn't feel like work. So that's been my latest endeavor on the side.
PAUL:
That's amazing and now how close is that to being ready to release into the world?
SHAWNA:
Yeah, we're actually attaching talent now, so we finished the scripts and we're finding our two leads and moving into kind of the fundraising phase of finding the right partners. And our hope is that we're going to be shooting late this summer here in Colorado.
PAUL:
Incredible. Well, I definitely look forward to seeing that, and you’ll have to keep us up to date with that as it goes.
SHAWNA:
Well, thank you! Fingers crossed.
PAUL:
Excellent. Well, I think that's about all we've got the moment, Shawna. It's been really, really interesting to talk to you, and I appreciate you taking the time out to share with us, and all the best with your future projects
SHAWNA:
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
PAUL:
Thank you.