We were lucky to catch up with Rae Lashea recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Rae thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s talk about innovation. What’s the most innovative thing you’ve done in your career?

I started out as a writer and decided to self publish my first book, Black Geisha, written under the name Rachel Blaze. I then self-published two more books You Are a Star, a children’s book under Rachel BB and then Fifty-Two Weeks of MIRACLES under Rae Lashea. As Rae Lashea, my fourth book, Hot Tea and Mercy, was picked up by a book boutique called Thought Catalog and as it made its way through the publishing circuit, I joined a group called Women of Color Filmmakers to begin to learn more about writing scripts. I wrote, directed and produced a short film called Filly and afterwards was inundated with scripts and ideas that people wanted me to bring to life.

One of the ideas was the storyline given to me by Tom Nelson for a feature film called “We’re Not Married?” I wrote the script and collaborated with Cynthia Garcia Williams of Cynrg Entertainment to direct the film. While all of these are innovative actions that I have taken throughout my career, the greatest one is the decision to produce it during the SAG strike that is currently underway. We fully support the strike and are “SAG Strong.” As an independent film, we are employing fifty-five actors, actresses, and behind the scenes crew during this strike, 88% of whom are women and 82% of whom are people of color.

To our production team, bringing “We’re Not Married?” to life during this time is innovative and magical, as well as very necessary as we support union and non-union cast and crew during this time of economic uncertainty.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an avid reader and writer and am originally a teacher from Brooklyn, New York. I moved to Los Angeles, California twenty years ago to pursue a career in the film industry. It was a great decision and I met a lot of wonderful people but after seven years of the ‘hurry up and wait’ grind, I decided to sell all of my stuff and travel the world. In order to finance my life and travels, I began editing and ghostwriting for people, as well as providing consulting services for writers who wanted to self publish.

My first stop was with the Masai in Kenya, followed by time in Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. As I continued to travel around the world, especially in Central America, the people that I met, the stories that I heard, and the cultures that I experienced enabled me to connect with people from all walks of life on a different level and inspired me to write more authentically.

As I delved more deeply into the art of crafting stories, I started taking scriptwriting and film directing classes and realized that the breadth of my literary skills could be more fully attained with screenplays. I started a production and media consulting company called Rae Lashea, Inc where I could not only bring my own scripts to life but also help others in the production of their ideas.

One of the things we’re most proud of at Rae Lashea, Inc. is our ability to help writers create a budget to shape their scripts into realistic projects that can more readily be produced and distributed.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Cynthia Garcia Williams is a California native born to a mother from Matanzas, Cuba, and a father from Guadalajara Mexico. Three years ago, Cynthia discovered her deep passion for storytelling in the form of screenwriting and ever since, her stories have been written to empower and celebrate the human experience and spirit. I met Cynthia in a screenwriting competition hosted by Women of Color Filmmakers and was impressed by her ability to weave magic into her stories and characters by using her rich, familial heritage, ancestral faith, and generational resilience.

After directing two award-winning films, “Dukkha” and “Bilongo,” and being a finalist in the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) for her short film “The Legend of El Cucuy” I asked her to direct our feature “We’re Not Married?” She accepted and we have worked side by side for the past six months hiring cast and crew, scouting locations, and locking the script as we gear up to film in October.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Building a social media campaign for every project is not easy. While Rae Lashea has Instagram and Facebook pages, along with a YouTube channel, each project is unique to the industry and has to develop a theme and personality of its own. For example, Black Geisha was banned from Facebook due to its erotic nature and therefore the confusion of its ads.

Beaches and Breweries is a Rae Lashea production that is being built through our YouTube channel and our current campaign for the film “We’re Not Married?” has its own Facebook and Instagram pages. As anyone who has ever had a FB or IG page knows, it takes time and effort to build a page, increase followers, and understand the algorithms. We hired a social media marketer to advise our online presence, and our director, Cynthia Garcia Williams, who has the creative and visual vision for the film has created the posts that we share at @werenotmarried_themovie.

Vixen Creative Agency is our website designer who helps us to capture the feel and mood of each project and redesigns pages as necessary.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.raelashea.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/werenotmarried_themovie/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100095130611336
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raelashea/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/rachelblaze
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@raelashea7?feature=shared
• Other: https://www.facebook.com/raelashea https://www.instagram.com/raelashea/ https://supportourstory.com/werenotmarried

Image Credits
None, though the people in the picture are: Rae Lashea, Cynthia Garcia Williams, Luie P. Garcia, Mariscela Mendez, Nicci Bates, and Monet Ravenell