Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Olivia Martini. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Olivia, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Your life is defined by the risks you take. I think for most people the goal is to be comfortable. But I think the best way to be comfortable is to just continue taking risks. You get better and better overtime at distinguishing which risks are the right ones to make. For context, I grew up in the core of Gen Z. I’ve noticed a huge collective fear in our generation of embarassing ourselves. Everything we posted online as kids or young teenagers quickly became scrutinized by friends, family, and even strangers. Of course controversial takes will cause hate, and I really believe critical assessment is important. However, sometimes even posting yourself dancing or smiling will generate so many mean comments. Then, to make matters worse, we can see that these rude comments are often rewarded. They’ll have hundreds of likes!

I think we’re so collectively numb to hate that we’re afraid to do things we love. It seems like no matter what there is always a negative comment. Every time I have made a huge move in my career, I recieved some scrutiny in the process. In 2022, I wanted to take a chance on some college students shooting a feature. My family originally told me not to do it, (which you could defintely say rightfully so) but I was completely sure that I needed to be a part of it. Thankfully, they came around and helped me through the process. The next summer, the film was distributed to Amazon Prime. Then, I really wanted to start directing intimate and personal stories. I had a professor who told me directly that festivals were not interested in women’s personal stories. The short I went on to direct after the class, a woman’s personal story, won or was nominated in almost every festival it was submitted to. If I had listened to the first negative comment, I would have nothing to talk about in this interview. Take the risks that you truly believe in and feel connected to. They will work out just fine.

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 was born in the entertainment industry. I would never deny this. In fact, I love it! My favorite memories as a kid were visiting sets and studios. I remember thinking that if we drove through Hollywood long enough, we would just end up in a backlot (a.k.a Burbank). This industry is something I saw first as business or road to success rather than a passion. It wasn’t until my teenage years that I really fell in love with film as an art. I’ve never really been able to pinpoint a person as my first love and I think that it’s because entertainment is my first love. It’s not to say that the industry is not incredibly flawed. But it is the one thing that has been present in my entire life and so I will love it forever. I’m really grateful for my experience because I feel it’s much easier for me to balance both sides, the creative and the costs. I think this is exactly what has made me fall in love with producing. My brain is not purely artistic nor business oriented, it’s somewhere on a tightrope trying to balance the two. I’m defintely the happiest being able to focus on the creative aspects, but I want a say in marketing and where the projects will go. I’m super analytical and I’m always thinking five steps ahead. I’m not afraid to wear multiple hats. Whether I’m the actress, director. producer, editor, holding the light, I’m really just happy to be there. I always want to work on projects and use my knowledge and connections to make things happen for people. If your idea resonates with me and I’m the right person for it, nothing will stop me from making it happen.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think it’s not only that non-creatives struggle with talking to creatives, but that creatives also struggle with talking to non-creatives. Up until recently, almost all of my friends came from acting classes, acting jobs, or also happened to be working in the industry. Talking to someone who was not in the industry felt like having a conversation in a different language. I never really explored out of this. I just wanted to be around people who share the same dream as me. Truthfully, anything else just felt boring. However, my boyfriend (who I love dearly) is not involved in the industry. He’s one of the most passionate and driven people I’ve ever met and it’s impossible to not be interested in his conversations. He’s a fantastic businessman and he really loves that. This causes a lot of cognitive dissonance for me! I don’t think it’s that creatives and non-creatives have different values, both can be equally dedicated and driven. However, people have different interests and meanings in life. One isn’t nessecarily bad or good, I think the world needs a little bit of everyone. Anyone who is really passionate about engineering or business can understand passion. There’s artists with the same passion, it’s no different. At the end of the day, they’re both needed. They need each other. The engineer and the architect need each other to finish their project. That passion and dedication is what glues them together.

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

I’ve always been more fascinated by how social media works rather than the content on social media. It’s interesting how many people equate theatrical film and TV with social media content. I find them to be incredibly different. I actually think social media content is more similar to commercials! Most platforms are composed of short clips or photos of people trying to market themself or something else. I never really feel refreshed or satisifed watching social media content in the way I do after a movie or good TV show. Social media makes me feel stimulated, rather than happy. The best example of my journey with a social media platform is Instagram. .For reference, I started using Instagram in 2012 when I was nine. I have always viewed it as networking platform to enhance your publicity, and not a a place to share your real life.. When I first started, I was determined to get 100 followers. I quickly achieved this by figuring out how to engage with people in a way that would make them follow me. At 11, I ran a successful Hunger Games fanpage. Twice. My first account got inactivated shortly after reaching 1,500 followers (it was a lot in 2014 okay) . This was because I commented follow for follow so many times instagram thought I was a bot. This happened on Christmas and it literally shattered my world. The next hunger games fan account I grew organically. I eventually stoped posting as i noticed people had moved away from fan accounts and towards different niches. After this, I chose to post nothing of my life on social media for a long time as I value really value privacy. This is the one aspect of social media I have a huge issue with. It can make you accessible to extremely creepy people and you won’t even realize. I think this is really important to keep in mind when growing your social media as nothing is worth putting yourself in a bad position for. That being said, a couple yesrs later, I converted that fan account into my current account @olivemmartini. I used my old skills and was able to amass over 1,000 likes on my photos using these techniques. For a while, I started posting travel content and had one video go around the world with a million likes on both Instagram and Tiktok (over 10 million total views). I prefer to use my social media today to post videos and photos that represent my creative eye and my upcoming and past projects.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pro.imdb.com/name/nm5387761?ref_=tt_nv_usr_profile
• Instagram: olivemmartini

Image Credits
Frederick Royce, Steven De La Cruz, Miguel Castillo, Prime, Tubi