We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Autre Fish a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Autre, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright, let’s jump into one of the most exciting parts of starting a new venture – how did you get your first client who was not a friend or family?

Snagging that first client was a really interesting journey. We hadn’t really worked with crews. We’d never hired a DP, grips, gaffers, etc. We didn’t even know how to begin reaching out to people. We’d saved money and gotten a new camera. It was a serious upgrade from the one we’d previously been using while shooting with friends up until that point.

Interestingly, we were post-production coordinators at the time, working on finishing Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. Because of the pandemic and other health concerns, everybody had to be in a pod that didn’t mingle with anyone else. We would take covid tests everyday and then go home and see nobody but each other. So we couldn’t shoot with any actors, any friends, or any crew at all. However, we still had this new camera we really wanted to try.

So we stared acting in our own little skits & shorts, and we’d post them on instagram. The two of us were the directors, the DPs, the grips, gaffers, editors, and sound designers. So whether it was waking up at 4am before we went to work, or late at night after we got home, we made an effort to shoot as often as we could, regardless of how sleepy we were.

We would bring our laptops to work and edit our little films on our lunch breaks or any other free time we managed throughout the day.

These 1-2 minute shorts we made ended up getting us work with a music artist who then wanted us to do all of his album promo based solely on those little films. We were able to do the entire rollout with just the two of us as the crew because the times were so unsafe. However, practicing on those films taught us how to use our camera and light for it with what little we had.

Since then, it’s been a snowball effect. Our clients grew and grew, friendships blossomed, and we were able to build the start of our freelance career during a very trying time in the world. Of course, we were always cognizant of moving safely, but it was a special thing to see how creating in a vacuum, just for the sake of creating and not feeling lonely, could blossom into such a beautiful career.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Everything up to this point has been built on friendship. We (Chris and Alex) are best friends who, while originally building with a larger group of friends, have now found a home in being a director duo.

Chris started off as a young kid taking pictures of cars since his father was big in the lowrider community. Alex began by making parody music videos, so we were coming from very different beginnings. It has been a fun journey for us because similar to how Autre Fish is built on our friendship, all of our work has been birthed from a similar place.

We’ve done a lot of work in the streetwear industry through nothing more than friendship. We meet people, we chat, find common ground, and then we talk about what we do. Fortunately, since people have liked our work, these seemingly everyday encounters have blossomed into full blown friendships and business partnerships. For years now, we’ve been working with our friends at a number of companies: Bricks & Wood, Bristol Studio, Mitchell & Ness, Highsnobiety, Tumi, and many more.

We’re so thankful that our work has allowed our community to be able to hire us and put food on our table. The people we work with are people we hang out with, and when it comes down to it, that’s what we feel we provide.

We’re most proud of our relationships because that trust allows us to explore ourselves in our work. That’s where our passion lies. That’s why our commercials, films, videos, and branded content are (hopefully) good. It’s because we care about every project since every project begins with real people we meet and get to collaborate with.

Of course, there will always be people out there “better” than us who might have doper shots, editing skills, etc. However, what we feel we excel in is our ability to find a home in any story and beyond that, we have the gift of being able to make people feel something.

To a lot of people, directing or filmmaking in general is something they love to do. However, for us, it’s like oxygen. We can’t live without it or we’ll crumble, in the same way we can’t live without the meaningful relationships we’ve gathered along our journey. Our craft is our best friend, just as we are best friends, so the feelings will always come through because we matter to each other.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

We don’t actually think that anybody is “not creative.” We fully believe that everyone is creative, but not everyone is in a creative profession. In our experience, some of those in salaried jobs or 9-5s often have a tough time understanding people who have chosen a different path because freelancing is actually an entirely different world.

Oftentimes, people say “You’re lucky. You get paid to do your passion. I have to sit at a desk all day doing something that doesn’t feed my soul.” Yes, while that might be true, we feel that people often fail to realize how vulnerable we make ourselves to the unforgiving creative world. We feel that we’ve almost have to be a little delusional and irresponsible to take that initial leap into the deep sea that is being a freelance creative.

Every morning we have to convince ourselves we’re good enough to survive forever doing what we do. With no check guaranteed at the end of this week or next, we have to believe we’ll be able to make our car payments and our rent. With no healthcare attached to a company that can subsidize it, we pay just as much for that as we do to pay off our car. There’s also no clear path and no clear destination. There are no promotions where you know there will be a pay raise. We work 7 days a week, not 5, because if we don’t take that gig on day 6, what if we won’t see another for months?

So much is uncertain and so much lacks security, but that’s also why it’s so beautiful. To us, it’s what living looks like. There is risk, so the reward is so sweet. We cherish every day, and we cherish every job. Every compliment a friend or family member gives us actually means so much more because it helps us convince ourselves each morning that we aren’t stupidly chasing some pipe dream.

The journey is special. It’s beautiful and painful. However, the further we go along it, the more we feel like we belong here. Somehow, 5 years in, we’re still standing. And the more work you get, the more the portfolio grows, and the more hireable you become because you keep learning how to do more and more things along the way.

So we never knock anyone for going the 9-5 or salaried routes because that’s tough in itself. We’re lucky to make a living doing our passion. However, it does require us to put ourselves on the line daily in a way that is so vulnerable at times that it seems inconceivable.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

2023 was a brutal year for the industry. With the strikes and the global economy going haywire, production was almost non-existent. No work was coming in. From February to August, we couldn’t land anything. We didn’t know what to do. Business was rough for everyone. Every company cut their marketing budgets by more than half, so if you weren’t a big time director, you were fighting a serious uphill battle in trying to find work.

We got down to our final dollars, but at the same time, we couldn’t bring ourselves to give up on our dream and just go back to trying to find a 9-5 job. There’s something about making that initial commitment to being a freelance creative that’s so daring and so final, that going back on it could feel worse than struggling through the tough days. We had an almost irresponsible belief in ourselves that we’d make it through, and we’re glad we did.

During the 7 month dry period, we were eating chickpeas and arugula lettuce everyday for multiple meals. We can’t even make this up. We also did about 15 free jobs for friends just to keep creating and feel like we were working toward something. Maybe we were creatively, but we DEFINITELY weren’t working toward anything financially. Things got really bad in July because we almost had nothing left. Cost of living in LA is already hard enough. Going 7 months without work definitely didn’t help.

But then…of course, our friendships saved the day. One of the videos we did for a friend’s sweatsuit outside of a sandwich shop ended up landing us a huge gig in August with probably the biggest crew we’d ever worked with. Then, next thing we knew, we were drowning in work during the fall, and the companies were referencing things we’d shot during our dark times as the “vibe they were looking for.”

By the time December hit, and we were able to exhale, we felt really proud that we hung in there. Though we got pushed to the edge of our faith in ourselves and our craft, we managed to stay strong and were rewarded tenfold. Maybe that’s how the universe was testing us to see if we were really about this life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://autrefish.com
• Instagram: @autrefish
• Linkedin: Autre Fish