We were lucky to catch up with Nicole Kemper recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nicole, thanks for joining us today. Any thoughts around creating more inclusive workplaces?

The most important mission of my production company, Critical Crop Top Media, is to create a more inclusive workplace for women in the film industry. This is not an industry where women always feel respected, valued, or safe. It is not always a space where women’s voices are heard and their stories are thought to be of value. It felt like the best way to change this was to create space where women are valued for their contributions and their stories matter. As a white, cis woman this also means that I need to work to fight against my own programming and bias to create space within my company where WOC, queer, and non binary artists feel valued and heard. I want Critical Crop Top to be a safe and collaborative work environment for all women and non binary artists in my community. If you aren’t offered a seat at the table – so to speak – why not build a better, stronger table?

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?

My path has been a winding one. I started out as an actor and a writer who became a filmmaker and editor. As I really began to hit my stride in my career I was living in Atlanta with my husband cutting commercials and industrials, and I knew that would be a good living but I really missed my creative self. Once I became a mother everything changed. I left my very promising job to stay home with my kids and I started taking acting classes just to keep myself sane. It was there that I met an amazing group of friends and collaborators who brought me back to writing and filmmaking as well. In 2016, I founded Critical Crop Top Media with two of these collaborators, Sarah Alison Hodges and Hillary R. Heath. We began making short films, series, podcasts, and live comedy shows together – with the goal of telling women’s stories through a comedic lens. Although I now run Critical Crop Top by myself, I am incredibly proud of the work we did together in those first few years. Critical Crop Top now to me is whoever is coming together to work on each project. There is this myth in film of the auteur. This lone creative voice that drives the excellence of a film – when in reality auteurs like Tarantino, or Nolan, or any of those filmmakers, work with the same craftspeople time and time again. Film is a collaborative art at its core and whoever that collective of artists is shapes the outcome of the final product. I seek out collaborators that challenge me and the work and I hope that is reflected in our films and content as we continue to grow.

How did you build your audience on social media?

We have built our social media audience through consistency of brand I think. I have discovered that the more specific your flavor and the more unique it is to you, the more people are likely to engage with you. Engagement is the most valuable part of a social media presence. Connecting with people rather than creating content that they will just scroll past. We have tried a lot of different stuff, but ultimately what works the best is when we are sharing something personal about Critical Crop Top and our journey as content creators and filmmakers. I also recommend tools like Adobe CC Express to create quick, nice-looking graphics, and apps like Buffer to batch schedule posts. Between all the podcasts, films, and main account I am running four accounts all by myself! Tools like this help you to focus on the quality of content and not the mechanics of how it’s getting up there.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

There are many resources out there for creators but they are very competitive. I wish I would have tried to learn more about grant writing and labs and things like that sooner. Not just where to apply, but how. Just as there is a craft to filmmaking there is a craft to grant writing or seeking investors. Financing is something I am continuing to learn about and it can be very overwhelming. It’s difficult to pull yourself away from writing a screenplay or producing a short to focus on grants or creating an investment plan but you have to. A big reason I wish I had started sooner devoting myself to this stuff is because often you need to apply again and again until you have the right project at the right time. There are some really excellent organizations like Fractured Atlas, Georgia Lawyers For The Arts, C4 Atlanta, and Film Impact Georgia that I have learned so much from over the years. They have great education and support for creators.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.criticalcroptop.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/criticalcroptop/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/criticalcroptop
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/criticalcroptop
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgmPLRFWdV8kcEGizhIRZIA

Image Credits
Lola Scott, Julie Jones, Ivey and Seth Tatum