Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennell Lewis and Sally O’Grady.
Hi Jennell and Sally, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
We met back in 2017 when we were working at a sports media startup here in Austin. We found ourselves philosophically and politically aligned, it was an easy connection. We were running the branded content department, and we realized – we are creating these great mini documentaries, which have a lot of depth, a lot of emotion and viewers really like them. We knew we weren’t valued at that company. So, Jennell suggested we go out on our own and we did – in 2019. We cold emailed Josie Fox at Tito’s, Handmade, Vodka, and they became our very first client (after about a year of conversations, meetings and getting to know one another) we have been working on and off with Tito’s and other brands ever since.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
There are inherent challenges in starting your own business, primarily the unpredictability, but we are drawn to the unpredictable nature of working for ourselves, so it is not an easy answer. We like the excitement of working through roadblocks and surprises. That said, we have experienced challenges! You don’t know what you don’t know. We are creative people who wanted to create a business because we love doing what we do. But there are a lot of aspects of running a business that we did not know about. At the beginning, not having a steady paycheck and every task falls on you – things can fall through the cracks. If we didn’t have a healthy dose of naivete , we wouldn’t have started this
We appreciate everything that we’ve learned along the way and are continuing to learn, and the fact that we’ve been as successful as we have as creative experts but not necessarily business experts is pretty promising for our future.
However, the biggest challenges at the moment are at the political level. These are challenges beyond the scope of just, the machinations of owning a business. We have been impacted by the federal government in ways that we never would have imagined. We’ve been impacted by the cultural move away from some of the types of content we are asked to create along with the economic uncertainty.
As a minority company, DEI was a positive for us when we started but now culture has shifted. We started Electric Pearl because we were working in an environment where as women we weren’t getting taken seriously. We wanted to work on our own terms as a female-owned and run company. We wanted to work in production with other women, gender queer folks and other minorities. Yet, we still see obstacles to just being a minority in this white male-dominated, production industry. We had a great year in 2021, during the wake of George Floyd’s tragic death, and the resulting push for diversity in vendor hiring. Now we’re seeing the cultural pendulum swing again.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Electric Pearl Productions?
Electric Pearl is a full service video production company. We handle everything from commercials, branded content, short documentaries, business brand films, events and more. We can swoop in and work as your creative partner from creative ideation to post production and final delivery or if you need a discrete task (got a mountain of content you need edited for a social campaign?) we can handle that too. We also manage production days for out of town agencies or production companies looking for boots on the ground in Texas.
We strive to do beautiful work, that also has a conscience. That’s the kind of work that we love to do. And that’s the kind of people that we attract both in front of the camera and behind and the kind of clients that we attract. We excel at what we do, we’re creative partners from beginning to end and can conceptualize and hold a project all the way through, but we’re also, people that you want to hang with after the shoot, have a drink or two with, have a chuckle.
We get consistent feedback from partners and crew that they love working with us. We have heard from clients that previous partnerships were lacking in communication, or that there was a toxic element on set and we just get such positive feedback from clients and agencies . However, we are most proud that we get glowing feedback from crew and the freelancers with whom we work. We know what it’s like to be a freelancer and not get treated well and our ethos is to kind of create a positive feedback loop.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Special shout out to Josie Fox, former creative director of Tito’s. She walked her talk. She had a mission to work with more female & minority creators. She said, I will meet these strange people. I will give them a chance and she did, Josie really gave us our first big break. Sharon Miller, Amanda Fox and Kat Thay have also helped us with networking and general suppot.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.electricpearl.productions/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/electric_pearl_productions/
Image Credits
Image 1) (Jennell head shot) Camille Adriene https://www.instagram.com/camilleadrianephotography/?hl=en
