We were lucky to catch up with Matt Pallotta recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Matt thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

While our podcast has yet to become a return on investment in a financial sense, it is the most fulfilling project that myself and my team have ventured on. Between seasons of the show, I felt a void. The overwhelming nature of the show can be daunting and hard to begin working on, but once we started back up for season 2, that void was filled. The longing for human connection, intellectual discourse and intrinsic catharsis weren’t realized until they were fully present once again.

Our show, Going There: Taboo Topics Are Back on the Table, is all about bringing together a variety of diverse and varied voices to share their experiences that aren’t often discussed. Human connection and community are harder to come by these days, with social media, poor communication and polarizing topics spreading us all further and further apart. Our podcast aims to bridge those gaps, even if in the smallest of circumstances. And for the team, on a personal level, it brings us a sense of earnest connection and even therapeutic events.

While we continue to create more episodes, grow our audience and find new ways to build a platform, we know that despite what may come, this is a worthy venture. It brings us joy and has already had a positive effect on those who already listen.

Matt, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

As a lifelong storyteller, I have built my career around creativity, media and the arts. I have worked in everything from education to government, Fortune 100 corporations to small, family businesses. In the new age of employment, I learned to adapt and found a way to be creative in even the most stale of environments. I also observed the leadership skills, and lack thereof, from every boss, client and mentor throughout my journey. I am fortunate enough to have gleaned those lessons to apply to my own business, which launched in 2018. Frame One Media is a full-scale video production house with a brand-new studio, creating projects and telling stories for clients from around to the corner to around the world.

Frame One focuses on the client, their story, their audience, and the mission. Our projects range from commercials, music videos, promotional material, e-learning courses and company training, to documentaries, short films, social media videos and employee recruiting. A video isn’t a silver bullet. It can’t fix your problems for you. But approached and executed the right way, it can be an extremely valuable asset in your arsenal. We don’t just make pretty images – we learn everything we can about you and your product so that we can effectively tell your story and make it engaging.

Under the Frame One Media umbrella lies the passion projects that the team and I create out of love, not for profit or anyone else, but for a creative outlet and a sense of true purpose. The “Going There” Podcast has been in the works since 2020, giving us something to dig into in a time when the pandemic was making video work almost impossible to do. It started as a few people in a room, with only audio recording gear, covid testing daily and often taking remote guests by phone. Season 2, kicked off in mid/late 2022, has grown into a full audio-visual experience, with a full studio set, multiple panelists, a 4-camera shoot and more hands on deck. We stream across all podcast platforms and have grown our YouTube audience as well.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Since first picking up a video camera at age 10, my goal was to become a filmmaker. Over the years I had my ups and downs on the path. The biggest hurdle in accomplishing my lifelong dream was finding a mass audience. Watching kitten videos gain millions of views, while my passion project that I obsessed over tediously for months only found a few thousand, or even several hundred, views. It was deflating. And the disappointment is still valid.

What I’ve had to learn is that in only very rare cases will someone pay you a living to be creative in the way that you want. You’ll often have to settle for finding creativity in new and different ways. But your passion projects aren’t necessarily for the masses. While connecting with a large audience would be wonderful, you have to do them for you. You don’t create for others. You do it for yourself. You do it for an outlet, your artistic vision and in all honesty, you do it for your sanity. I had to learn that you can’t enter into a project with a benchmark of success being a large audience. You enter into it because there’s something inside of you that won’t let you rest until you turn that idea into something real. If it happens to find a large audience, that’s simply icing on the cake.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I have had the luxury of working full-time jobs (even seasonal) since I was 12 years old. It taught me discipline, how the workforce functions, and the various management mentalities that exist. Even on my worst days in my career, I can look back at some of the jobs I had, and quickly remember how lucky I am. So many of the jobs you work will not fulfill your interests or goals, they won’t care about your value as a person, they won’t give you a reason to get out of bed every morning, beyond the paycheck. We shouldn’t live to work, rather work to live. When you can sync your life and career goals together, it is an amazing experience.

Not all clients, projects or jobs will feel rewarding. But you can always find that aspect in any situation. Someone is compensating you for the very thing that makes you, you! Think of 8 year old you playing with dolls or action figures – then someone comes along and asks you to do it for money. It seems crazy. But to a degree, with objectivity and awareness intact, creative roles can feel just like that. The thing I would do for fun is now what I do for a career and sustainable lifestyle. I can’t imagine anything more rewarding.     

Contact Info:

• Website: thegoingtherepodcast.com
• Instagram: @thegoingtherepodcast
• Facebook: @goingtherepodcast
• Linkedin: @frameonemedia
• Twitter: @frameonemedia
• Youtube: @thegoingtherepodcast
• Other: www.frameonemedia.com for the video production house information

Image Credits
• Matt in blue shirt photo – Photography by: Studio SPC • Group photo with monitor – left to right – Beth Wilson, S*xual Health Counselor; Matt Pallotta, Host; Mattie Jo Cowsert, Author of God, S*x and Rich People; and Syrmylin Cartwright, actor/chef • Group with Matt in Pink shirt – left to right – Peter Toomey, Tamika Shelburn, Matt Pallotta, Brittany Draganic and Patrick Warner, discuss the generational gaps from Baby Boomers to Gen Z. • Other 5 person group photo – left to right – Shannon M. Blower, Palliative Care specialist; Megan Cox from “The Way Down” docuseries on HBOMax; Matt Pallotta, Host; Bryan Arroyo, church trauma advocate; and Mandy Kirsch, counselor, discuss religious trauma and its effects. • Matt at table photo – Photography by: Todd Biss Productions • Megan Cox photo • 3-person group – Left to right – Megan Cox, Matt Pallotta and Hassan Rogers discuss diet culture and fat shaming. • Last photo – Award-winning filmmaker Robert Banks discusses his takes on outdated and films that are now deemed offensive.