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

Findlay, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

Well, I just recently started my first full-time industry job, which I’m very excited about. But… take the one paycheck I’ve received thus far balanced against the LARGE amount of student debt I have, I wouldn’t call myself an authority on making money from creative work.

What I can say is that it’s definitely not a day-one thing. The competition for jobs in this industry is more intense than ever, and the pay most companies offer for entry-level positions is barely a living wage in Los Angeles. There’s also an extra level of difficulty for non-Americans such as myself, several studios and agencies straight up say on their website they don’t consider people without American citizenship for entry-level jobs. Even now that I’m working I still need to enter the VISA lottery, a nightmare I’ll be crossing my fingers about for the next year.

I just graduated from the American Film Institute’s producing program, and like most of my peers while I was there I did a number of internships, trying to gain experience and hope someone would hire me. Eventually, luckily for me someone did, and I’m really excited to be at Authentic. They were the only paid internship I had at AFI, and they allowed me to work creatively and in-depth on real projects from day one. That level of respect and trust in an intern is rare, and that’s carried over to my full time position here.

I’m not sure if there’s anything that can speed up this process, you just need to be lucky enough to land in the right spot and be ready to prove yourself once you do.

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 got into film/tv in a sort of backwards way – by hating business school. I was still in undergrad in Canada at the time, and with every passing class learning about demand elasticity or consumer whatever I felt my will to never do this again grow. Dropping out would mean telling my parents I was quitting university, and I value my life so I trudged through to graduation, but something had to change.

I was also playing college football at the time, which I loved, but the NFL wasn’t exactly likely and was made even less so by my knee being blown out in my final college game before Covid canceled the next year of athletics.

So, what’s a disillusioned, slightly pretentious 22-year-old to do with months of being locked indoors? Go be a nurse? Volunteer? Of course not. I made a short film, the answer to all the world’s ails. That ended up playing in a few festivals, and I was completely hooked. From there, I applied to the American Film Institute, and just graduated from their producing program. While I was there, I gravitated towards development, working with writers on scripts and pitching. That’s where I feel my strengths lie in my current job, but mainly I just help the team across any project or problem I can.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

A fool and his money are soon parted.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, the rewarding part of creative work is similar to how I felt playing sports – working as a team on a common goal and seeing it come to fruition. Working in this industry means woking hard and working collaboratively, and when something you pour your heart and soul into works out, it’s incredibly gratifying. Add that something I’m a part of can truly make a difference in someone’s life, or just make them laugh, and it makes coming to work every day something I can look forward to.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: findlaybrown7
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/findlay-brown-5310a3137/