Episode Details

Building a Fulfilling Career Across Multiple Mediums (Without Getting Pigeonholed) | with Stephanie Filo, ACE

Published 3 years, 10 months ago

Description

Stephanie Filo, ACE is a two-time Emmy and Peabody Award-winning TV/Film Editor based in Los Angeles, CA and Sierra Leone, West Africa. She earned an Emmy win for her unscripted editing on the Mental State episode Separated (making herself and Nzinga Blake the first Sierra Leonean women to ever win an Emmy award). Most recently, she won a Primetime Emmy award for her work on HBO's A Black Lady Sketch Show, making her team the first all-women of color editing team to take home the award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming. This is just a tiny, tiny smattering of the credits and accolades which Stephanie has earned in her very young career (which doesn’t even begin to cover her social activism work in the documentary space).

In short, if you’ve ever wondered if it’s possible to successfully build a fulfilling creative career jumping between multiple mediums and genres - from scripted, to unscripted, to docs, and beyond - then Stephanie Filo’s story is for you.

In this conversation Stephanie shares how she has climbed to award-winning levels of both scripted and unscripted television…despite a lot of the barriers that unfortunately come with being a black woman in a white-male-dominated industry. She candidly opens up about how she has had to work harder to prove herself but also her own challenges around work-life balance and the sacrifices she’s made getting to this level in her career. This is a wide ranging conversation appealing to anyone looking to make a career transition, find purpose and fulfillment in life, and wanting better strategies for choosing the right projects to match both your lifestyle needs and your creative needs.

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Here's What You'll Learn:

How the movie Seven influenced her decision to get into editing
The struggles she encountered growing up as a first generation Sierra Leone African in Colorado
Why Stephanie as a black woman is a better fit for certain types of stories than I am as a white male
Stephanie shares the struggles she's endured as a black female editor
How to avoid getting pigeonholed
How to transition from one genre or format to another
How to sell your skills as an unscripted editor so that they are valuable in the scripted world
Is scripted editing equivalent to paint by numbers?
What Lee Daniels taught me about how my life experience informs my choices as an editor
What the cost was to Stephanie in order to diversify her resume
The toxic work-life balance culture that is pervasive in the industry and how to fight against it
Consequences of putting up boundaries against unreasonable deadlines
Are scripted or unscripted editors respected more by producers?
How scripted projects compare to unscripted projects in terms of pay and lifestyle
KEY TAKEAWAY: You are interviewing the show as much as the show is interviewing you
Why Stephanie recently turned down a job that was offered to her
Stephanie’s go to interview questions to determine if a project is the right fit for her

Useful Resources Mentioned:

Cutting Comedy with "A Black Lady Sketch Show" - Frame.io Insider

Emmy & Peabody Award Winning Editor, Stephanie Filo: Episode 2 of Post in Black Season 2 - YouTube