We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Madison Lin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Madison below.

Alright, Madison 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.

I’ve been lucky. I’ve been involved in a lot of meaningful projects so it feels impossible for me to pick a story about one. But I can speak in broad strokes about what makes projects meaningful.

Ideally, you’re picking projects that serve a dual purpose: they allow you to express yourself, and they allow you to be of service. And when I say that, I feel super preachy, but it’s true. It’s your job to put a feeling on screen and hopefully, someone recognizes it, because that feeling lives in them too. And that intersection is a connection between a filmmaker and the audience, between you and someone you’ve never met. That’s fucking magic. Not to be super cheesy but I’m almost certain that’s what the real “movie magic” is. Not Steven Spielberg bringing dinosaurs back from extinction in Jurassic Park, not Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a plane, but when a movie speaks to an emotion that reminds us that we all bleed from the same place.

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?

In terms of brand, I’m definitely focusing on working in the narrative, magical realism space. I’ve been really interested in coming of age stories for a long time, but more recently I’m interested in coming of age specifically in the context of family. I think that one of the most integral parts of getting older is figuring out how you fit into your family (the family you were born into or the family you’ve found and made) while still exploring and defining your individual values. The push and pull of being your own person in the context of a community is something we all wrestle with and I think addressing it in the context of family allows you to zero in on community at one of its most fundamental building blocks.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspect is getting to collaborate and expand access to film making. One of my biggest frustrations with film is that it has incredibly high fiscal barriers to entry. Entertainment is tremendously lacking in socio-economic diversity at the studio and indie level because at the studio level, most entry level jobs don’t pay a living wage in Los Angeles or New York, and at the indie level, films can be expensive to fund.

Effecting change at the studio level is more difficult and there are movements going on right now to promote better pay that would allow for greater socio-economic diversity in the entertainment labor force – especially at entry level positions. However, I like to focus on change at the indie level because that’s the space where I can have a greater and more immediate impact. I founded a company back in Oakland called Enigma, which focused on giving students in high school free access to film equipment and a film education. It was one of the most rewarding experiences in my film career because I got to watch young film makers grow and accomplish their vision.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

There’s a video essay called the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch about achieving your childhood dreams. I know that sounds super cheesy but he has great advise on how to set kind of lofty abstract goals and break that goal down into smaller, actionable items. He also talks about making sure that the goals you set are things you would find fulfilling and using everything you’ve learned to enable the dreams of others.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.enigmafilms.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madisonlin.jpeg/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madison-lin-46b641123/
• Twitter: @Water_Mel_Lin

Image Credits
Annie Swenson