Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
It has been a while since I shared any Mighteor business highlights or updates. The fact is, our little shop has been so crazy and amazing and nutty that it’s hard to keep up with everything.
Big picture highlights:
We are making so many beautiful things. Like this awesome drone reel which features some recent visuals from some shoots over the last few months. It’s just beyond pretty, I can’t believe it’s ours.
Mighteor also recently graduated from the Goldman Sachs 10K Small Businesses Program at Babson College which opened my eyes to all the growth room there still is for this business. Sometimes I literally can not believe how big the opportunities have become. And I have to admit that my most recent sense of awe is just from meeting so many other business owners from the program who have built a business around something magical or wonderful or meaningful.
Let me give you a few examples of those people I admire from my most recent business bootcamp.
Courtney started DiOGi Pet Services to provide better pet care. Awesome. Except it’s so much more than that because you meet her and you realize that the foundation she has set at her business means that she provides pet care that’s better than the care I provide for my own pet. She cares THAT MUCH. She reminds me to just care more.
Or let’s talk about Martina who founded Swift Industries, the most incredible bicycle bag and accessories company you will ever have the pleasure of discovering. You think you are passionate about biking. Then you meet the folks behind Swift and you realize - OH, That’s Passion. Because Martina + Co don’t just make beautiful products, they use those products. And test them. And uses those lessons to make even better products. It’s a reminder to be thoughtful and open to change always.
The truth is that at times, it’s easy to find inspiration outside the business - but I’m also incredibly lucky to have constant inspiration blooming INSIDE the business. Our Minneapolis team continues to grow, which is great because it means our animation depth and skills grow with it. I am consistently shocked by the brains that come up with these moving moments. I think their latest reel shows off exactly what I mean without the need for words:
As we think about the future, I’m reminded always that there are so many people in our past who have helped us get here. And what’s really been interesting is how for the first time ever, I have been able to be a customer of many of some our past clients. I am excited to be working with Slice Realty and Track Ninja - two companies that are completely disrupting industries that are prime for change and evolution. It’s beyond interesting to learn more about their worlds and gain an understanding of what it’s like to be the game changer somewhere else. Needless to say, Mighteor gets that.
Before I get to my ultimate point, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also plug Mighteor’s Second Season of Internet Video Masterclass which is smart and colorful and helpful and even better thanks to lots of Beyonce references. In case I don’t say this enough, I love my team in large part because they put up with my wacky ideas.
With so much happening, it’s easy to forget that we are still so new. In the life span of a business, anything under a decade is practically a baby infant whose still drooling on themselves. It reminds of Pixar’s “Ugly Baby” philosophy, which basically states: “The cost of that becomes clear when you think of how a movie starts out. It’s a baby. It’s like the fetus of a movie star; we all start out ugly. Every one of Pixar’s stories starts out that way. A new thing is hard to define; it’s not attractive, and it requires protection. … Every new idea in any field needs protection. Pixar is set up to protect our director’s ugly baby.Of course you can’t protect the baby forever. At some point, it has to grow up and change into something, because the beast is still there. That’s a positive thing. Because sometimes the ugly baby would rather play in the sandbox forever. It’s a lot like raising a kid. It’s complex and interesting. But most people want to make it simpler than it is.”
Mighteor is still a relatively new baby. We still have our ugly and weird and awkward moments. But when I see things like our new reels and watch the finished work we complete for clients whom I admire - I genuinely find myself convinced that all the work I did to protect this weird baby early on has been worth it.
Pretty soon, we’ll have teeth.
I’ve spent a lot of my time lately thinking about what it means to have a good attitude in the face of painful things. Like having a good attitude about the future even when we’re worried about the big world outside looking uncertain. Or coming to work with an assumption of progress and joy, even when projects are late or budgets are tight. Or just allowing ourselves to feel good when we’ve been swimming in a pool of bad for a while.
It’s the decision to Choose Up.
To choose to lift yourself up. To choose to lift your community up. To choose to lift someone else up. Not because you have to. But because you know deep down that choosing up is the right thing to do for us all.
It would be easy to say that this is just some petty play at positivity. I understand that. But actually, hear me out, because it’s not.
In the last year, I was hospitalized, lost my beloved stepmother suddenly, went through the pain of sudden widowing with my father, went through legal hell, supported my partner through an equally unimaginable death and all the while tried to hold myself together for my business. It was a heavy year. And a heavy time in my life.
There were moments where the bottom felt like it had no ending. Where I would seriously find myself thinking: “What the fuck? How does this get worse?”
And in those moments I would get the same pleasantries that we all get from our family and friends. I would hear things like: “This too shall pass.” And “If you have a positive attitude, good things will come.”
But all I could imagine was this moment, right now, with the pain and the questions and the fear. And somewhere along the way - I started saying to myself. “I just gotta get one step up from this dark bottom.”
See, I stopped aiming for the impossible - blissful happiness. Joy. A carefree feeling.
And as soon as I stopped wanting for those big, lofty dreams of the heart and mind - I started to be able to focus on what I could move forward with in that moment. I started to see that I could make my way up - one small choice at a time.
By choosing to just compliment someone for no reason.
By choosing to go to bed an hour earlier and allow myself to rest.
By choosing to be happy about the perfect coffee.
These small little moments were my way of choosing up. Because it was all the control I could muster over my mental and emotional well being.
And it parallels nicely with my new vision of my career as a woman entrepreneur in a time where things seem uncertain on a global scale. I don’t have the patience or the capacity to drown in that fear. So instead I choose up.
That was the theme of my conversation last week with Lizelle VV of Women Who Startup as part of our new Mighteor Monday live stream. And it’s the theme of my entire next quarter at my business. We are going to focus on choosing up for one another. Because it’s the right thing to do.
I know that our minds can’t always control where we are at. Believe me, the prescriptions I stare at tell me this too. But I do believe that part of every healing journey is in making choices. And this isn’t a compass. The directions are 2 dimensional. There are other choices. There are directions that we didn’t even know we could define in a cardinal way. Choose a direction that makes your life better.
This whole thing started with a mission: support female led films on opening weekend whenever possible.* If you want to read more about why, you can read that post here.
If you caught the SAG Awards last weekend, or even just the speeches from the SAG Awards last weekend, you’ll notice that women had big, bold voices with big, bold messages. It’s a strange time to be a woman, in any profession, not just the entertainment profession. But if one thing can most certainly unite all of us - it’s the notion that women are deserving of the spotlight. The work women are doing is not secondary to the work of men - it’s primary. It’s worthy of attention. And it’s worthy of EVERYONE’S attention.
That’s why I have a new challenge for you this month. If you know a little boy, or even a young man, take him to a movie that was written by, directed by or starring a woman this month. Start to help him understand his role by making him open to the stories of women. That is how we make small changes. That is how we help to make women’s stories EVERYONE’S stories.
FEBRUARY 10:
A United Kingdom (Directed by Amma Usante and Starring Rosamund Pike)
Prince Seretse Khama of Botswana causes an international stir when he marries a white woman from London in the late 1940s.
Running Wild (Starring Sharon Stone and Written by Christina Moore)
The story of a young widow trying to save her ranch following her husband’s fatal car crash. She creates a convict rehabilitation program, working with a herd of wild horses that have wandered onto her property. She did not anticipate the greed, bureaucracy and vanity that she must overcome to heal the convicts, the horses and ultimately herself.
Kedi (Directed by Ceyda Torun)
A profile of an ancient city and its unique people, seen through the eyes of the most mysterious and beloved animal humans have ever known, the Cat.
FEBRUARY 17:
Everybody Loves Somebody (Directed by Catalina Aguilar Mastretta)
On the surface, the young and beautiful Clara Barron seems to have everything- a great job as an OB-GYN; a great house in LA; and a big fun-loving Mexican family. But, the one thing Clara doesn’t have figured out is her love life. Pressured by a family wedding in Mexico, Clara asks a co-worker to pose as her boyfriend for the weekend festivities - only to be caught by surprise when her ex- boyfriend suddenly shows up after disappearing from her life completely.
My Name is Emily (Starring Evanna Lynch)
A teenage girl runs away from a foster home with the boy who loves her. She searches for her visionary writer father who is locked up in a psychiatric institution. It is a story of redemption.
Lovesong (Directed by So Yong Kim)
When an emotionally neglected woman and her best friend go on an impromptu road trip, their bond deepens and intensifies until an abrupt farewell separates them.
American Fable (Directed by Anne Hamilton)
A dark, dreamlike mystery plays out amidst the expansive farmlands of the American Midwest in this wondrous, storybook thriller. With her family’s livelihood imperiled by the farm crisis of the 1980s, eleven-year-old Gitty loses herself in a world of fantasy and make believe. But she stumbles into her own fairytale when she makes a startling discovery: a well-dressed mystery man being held captive in her family’s silo. It’s the beginning of a labyrinthine journey that will turn Gitty’s world upside down and force her to question her loyalty to her own family.
—–
One additional note before I go: I am not able to tell you if these movies are objectively good or feminist friendly, as I have not seen all of them. The point of this list is to give you a place to start. The truth is that we don’t have a lot to choose from, but part of the battle is giving you the information. Information is power. However, shared knowledge is also key. So if you see one of these films or have seen an early screening, please let us know if you recommend it or not in the comments.
I am a really lucky person. As a young child, my parents hauled my brother and I through airports, mountains, resorts, unknown cities and through backwood forests whenever they had a chance. It’s a rare gift, because it makes you unafraid of the world. Too often, I meet people who only discovered their wanderlust after making their way overseas during a study abroad trip in college. For me, studying abroad was no big thing - I was a veteran of being in unusual places by my twenties.
Earlier this month, I was reminded of my great fortune when my two dear friends joined me on an adventure to Las Coloradas, Mexico. I didn’t think twice about renting a car in Mexico. Or driving three hours to a remote part of the country. Or using my rusty Spanish to figure out if it was a safe region or not. My friends didn’t even tell me until we were on our way back that they were a little bit afraid of this decision, which I appreciated. The fact is: Nothing will make you feel more confident about your decision than people keeping their reservations to themselves.
But here’s the thing: It was totally worth it.
Going to Las Colaradas is not for the faint of heart. It requires driving through some fairly remote areas of Mexico. There are entire hour stretches with no gas stations, no rest stops, no nothing. It’s a challenge, to be sure. And with that, there is very limited cell reception.
So you don’t want to get lost. But you also don’t want to miss the opportunity to see something so perfect.
And that’s what really brings me to my point. If you’re a creative, you spend so much time inundating yourself with inspiration. My first step on any new client or any new project is to start a search of visual inspiration. I scour Vimeo. I play video after video on YouTube. I scroll through photos and graphics on Pinterest for hours. I put endless visual ideas into my mind. I let them swirl around and eventually, I start creating myself.
All these visual ideas are right there, at my finger tips. That constant access to the beautiful, creative work of others is a double edged resource, though. It’s a delicate balance between being inspired and falling into feelings of inadequacy. And once those feelings of not quite being good enough or not being able to reach the bar set in, it’s next to impossible to push them out.
Until you get your damn smartphone off the grid.
And you see something so amazing that no image on Pinterest can compare to - that no video can compete with - that no script can overwhelm you. And that’s why these adventures are ultimately worth it. Not just because you get to see something amazing, but you get to FEEL the beauty of something without judgement of yourself or the person that created it. Instead, you experience beauty exactly as it is - right in front of you.
The next time you find yourself creatively exhausted, go see something beautiful. And ideally do it without any hope of cell phone service.
This whole thing started with a mission: support female led films on opening weekend whenever possible.* If you want to read more about why, you can read that post here.
I think I speak for all of us when I say: FINALLY, WE CAN SEE HIDDEN FIGURES. This month proves two things: women aren’t exclusively making movies about love, parenthood and being single. In fact, there isn’t a damn movie in the bunch that wouldn’t surprise you. The diversity of trailers here is a delight to witness, even if you just breeze through them.
With that, let’s all make it a priority to see more women in the movies this year. We won’t make things change - if we don’t show up. So, I’m gonna show up. Are you?
JANUARY 6:
Hidden Figures (Screenplay by Allison Schroeder and Starring Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monáe and Octavia Spencer)
Three brilliant African-American women at NASA – Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson – serve as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn (Glen Powell) into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation’s confidence, turned around the Space Race and galvanized the world.
Underworld: Blood Wars (Directed by Anna Foerster and Starring Kate Beckinsale)
Death dealer Selene must fend off brutal attacks from both the Lycan clan and the vampire faction that betrayed her. Joining forces with allies David and Thomas, she embarks on a quest to end the eternal war between the two races, even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice.
JANUARY 13:
The Bye, Bye Man (Directed by Stacy Title)
People commit unthinkable acts every day. Time and again, we grapple to understand what drives a person to do such terrible things. But what if all of the questions we’re asking are wrong? What if the cause of all evil is not a matter of what…but who? When three college friends stumble upon the horrific origins of the Bye Bye Man, they discover that there is only one way to avoid his curse: don’t think it, don’t say it. But once the Bye Bye Man gets inside your head, he takes control. Is there a way to survive his possession?
20th Century Women (Starring Annette Bening, Elle Fanning and Greta Gerwig)
In 1979 Santa Barbara, Calif., Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women – Abbie, a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields’ home and Julie, a savvy and provocative teenage neighbor – to help with Jamie’s upbringing.
Claire in Motion (Written and Directed by Annie J. Howell, Lisa Robinson)
Three weeks after Claire’s husband mysteriously disappeared, the police end their investigation and her son is beginning to grieve. The only person who hasn’t given up is Claire. Soon, she discovers his troubling secrets, including an alluring yet manipulative graduate student with whom he had formed a close bond. As she digs deeper, Claire begins to lose her grip on how well she truly knew her husband and questions her own identity in the process.
—–
One additional note before I go: I am not able to tell you if these movies are objectively good or feminist friendly, as I have not seen all of them. The point of this list is to give you a place to start. The truth is that we don’t have a lot to choose from, but part of the battle is giving you the information. Information is power. However, shared knowledge is also key. So if you see one of these films or have seen an early screening, please let us know if you recommend it or not in the comments.
