Giovanni Digiacomo: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Filmmaker
Interview with Guernslye Honorés
Balance life and work. Particularly in filmmaking, anyone who is in the stream of filmmaking and producing media are more likely to acknowledge that we are what we do. We love to do what we do, but you still have to balance that out with the rest of your life.
As a part of our series called “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Filmmaker”, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Giovanni Digiacomo, founder of the award-winning production agency Lola Pop.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
I’m a product of a little nepotism. My parents had a production studio when I was growing up in Dallas. As far as I can remember, I played hooky to get out of school to go to the office to sit in with my Dad and watch him edit in the studio, help set up lights, and tape stuff down. I fell in love with it, the people and the whole vibe of it. As far back as I can remember, it’s always been my world. It was a small shop so everybody put on a lot of hats. My dad put on every hat — writer, director, producer, coffee maker, bringing the steamer for the clothes, all that stuff. That’s kind of my doctrine that I was raised with. Do everything you can and hone it. I have two sisters who were also in the business, so it was very much a family operation. That’s kind of how I got into it.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your filmmaking career?
That’s a blank. May have to come back to that.
Who are some of the most interesting people you have interacted with? What was that like? Do you have any stories?
We have done a lot of projects over the years — civil rights, cancer research, babies born with heart defects. As a filmmaker, these are the things I didn’t think or expect I would be involved with. Frankly, they are heavy subjects. To see humanity in all its different flavors, in a stripped down, non-convoluted, non-structured, non-veneered way is really intense. For me, it’s the people who are the regular joes, if you will, that have had a lot of impact on their life that you don’t normally see. The kind of stories you hear in the news. To see it and get to be involved in telling those stories is really humbling. A lot of regular people have a lot of fascinating stories and character building experiences to tell. To see a 9-year old girl with cancer playing and being the beacon of hope and happiness for her family even though she understood little about her mortality. She is not programmed the way we are, so she is just living her life. I don’t know what she’s doing to this day and it’s been a few years since that project, but I know she touched me more than probably anyone else. You think you’re having a bad day, but you see people like that little girl where you go there is hope, and that’s how I want to be if I got stuck in the mud.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
This goes back to when I was a kid and I was growing up in my Dad’s shop. My dad went to school to be a doctor. He was a black kid in the Civil Rights era and he came from a poor family. He got a full time scholarship to go to med school. Long story short, he didn’t complete it and ended up getting into production instead. He had to learn a lot. He didn’t go to film school, so he was self-taught. He was at a news station in Phoenix and worked his way to a deal with a production company with a person he met. He taught me the way he learned: Be curious, be inquisitiv. If you want to do whatever it is you’re trying to do you need to bring focus. Bring the energy. You need to bring your appetite to learn and to stay with it. He gave me a lot of incentive and drive to be an entrepreneur and a more well rounded producer, director, and filmmaker. My dad taught me how to edit when I was twelve. He taught me a little bit about everything.There were also a couple guys in that production house who let me watch over their shoulders, carry their sticks, set their lenses, and try to do a prelight with them. They let me ask questions when they were working, experiment with all the different sounds and work the camera — all of it. Those guys are really patient and a big part of the reason I was able to do my own thing later on. What I try to do with people when they work with me, if they are not already where they want to be in terms of their skillset, is give them what I know and the space so they can learn and grow. At the end of the day, it’s really about you bringing your energy and commitment to get it done. That’s what those guys taught me. One last thing, nothing we do is by ourselves. That’s one of the big things I continue to impart onto myself. Keep mingling. Get yourself out there because it comes from all different places in terms of the people we know and will meet. Once you connect those dots, you can go into that next step and achieve that thing you were trying to achieve. You have to get out there and not be afraid to sound dumb and not be afraid to ask questions. If you have an intent to really grow and put the energy into trying to figure it out then that’s all that matters but definitely go meet people. Find a way to meet them.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
I don’t know if it’s a quote. I think it’s more of a mantra. It sounds a little militant, but you just have to keep going. It’s the same thing that everyone says. The longer you keep at anything, the better you will be at it. Whether it’s a video game, an instrument, writing or a relationship. The more you work at a thing, the better you’re gonna be. Keep searching and keep hunting for the thing that lights your fire. Whatever it is, it will start to take form; you just have to keep at it.
Can you share three reasons with our readers about why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in film and television? How can that potentially affect our culture?
This is gonna sound corny but I’m just gonna start with this. There’s diversity in nature, right. The most beautiful gardens and the most beautiful jungles in the world are diverse in plant life and animal insects. It’s just nature. This is how nature works. Creativity is diverse. Rock and roll is diverse. Jazz is diverse. The best things in life come from diversity. That includes stories. Maybe it’s low hanging fruit but if you go to a dinner and you have five people all from the same neighborhood, same school that’s going to be a fun dinner. Nostalgic. But if you go to a dinner where there’s five people who come from different parts of the world, and different cultures and different economic backgrounds, you’re gonna have some really interesting conversations and stories to weave together. That’s art. That’s business. Diversity is always going to be better than having something that has fewer layers, especially when it comes to storytelling. I think one of the problems is that what Hollywood has done is that they’ve kind of taken that low hanging fruit when it comes to diversity. They’re telling stories like okay, we need a black story, we need a Hispanic story, but in a lot of cases, they’re weak. It’s weak. I think it’s because there’s a sort of a calculation that’s done about what a black story looks like or what a woman story looks like. I think that we have barely scratched the surface as really getting down to the really good stories. The best stories and the best creativity haven’t been proven. That’s what creativity is, right? It’s about doing something that maybe hasn’t been done, or at least not in the way that it was done before. This is where diversity crashes with corporations in Hollywood because they want to use formulas. Diversity isn’t formulas. I think we can do better than that. Hollywood is easy to bash because it’s Hollywood and billionaires and all that shit, but honestly it’s everything. It’s fashion. It’s food. America really does have a problem with formulating a strategy that works. In every case Hollywood is easy to pick at because we assume that Hollywood is supposed to show us stuff that is either engaging or shows a new perspective or a perspective that we can identity with and then we bash them over the head as its one of the last honest truths of something that has been produced, right? It’s supposed to be art, but it’s just a formula. They do a lot of stuff that fits a certain mold, a certain criteria.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
Treasures of the Deep is a documentary on a post civil war naval ship that was commissioned as a transport vessel for things like gold, textiles and Levi Strauss had shit on there. A lot of people had gold on there, I think even Levi Strauss was one of the people who lost gold. It’s one of the biggest maritime disasters in American history. It basically created an economic depression when it went down. It was all gold rush gold. That was the backbone of America and the financial system at the time. This was the first exploration team that designed the technology in their garage to go down underneath the water, a mile in a half deep, to go and excavate something that was on the bottom. No one has ever done that before. This was new technology back in the 80s. This was all very, very new. They also had one of the guys who was part of the mad scientist crew that went down there; he’s in jail right now because he didn’t want to give the gold away. He stole the gold that he found because he didn’t want to give up the goods. He was like “I created this technology. I’m not giving this shit up.” The government was like, actually that is ours as it’s a US vessel. Anyway, it’s a cool project and I think there’s more to come on that. I think we’re talking about turning that into a film, two different films.
Which aspect of your work makes you most proud? Can you explain or give a story?
What makes me proud is when there’s some relative success on a project. To me, the success is when we can help them — the executive producer, the people who pay us to do what we do — to see their mission product or story better than how they conceived it. That is something I am really happy about when it happens. And you can tell when the project is done, how they talk about it, how they market it, how they come back for more. You can tell it’s a job well done and we hit the mark.
Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why.
It’s about understanding the bigger system in which you operate. This is a game and if you understand the bigger operating system at play then the easier it is for you to navigate that system. A lot of the people that come into the business just want to work at their craft. You also need to understand the bigger business. How does Netflix make their money? How do the streaming services and all the other people who come down in that economic waterfall? By the time the water drips down to you, is it worth it? You have to understand the ecosystem you’re working in. That’s the first important thing about any business, particularly this one.
Number 2 is to balance life and work. Particularly in filmmaking, anyone who is in the stream of filmmaking and producing media are more likely to acknowledge that we are what we do. We love to do what we do, but you still have to balance that out with the rest of your life. If you only see everything as a possible story or only see everything as a possible way to level up or navigate your career, you’re gonna end up not as well rounded as you want to be. Enjoy life. If you can afford to travel, do it. Even if it’s traveling outside your neighborhood or your town. Find some things or embrace the things: your other callings, your humanity, your social, music, video games. Whatever it is, do it. The more enriched you are in other aspects of your life, the more you’re gonna enrich what you do. A lot of people go into filmmaking all or nothing, but you gotta balance. If you put everything into it, then you’re gonna be pissed off at the end.
We start chasing the prize of what we think this industry is going to give us from having made the film or having been in the film. Not the most healthy way to look at it. It’s really about the process. If the process isn’t rewarding then the outcome isn’t nearly as sweet. Chasing that prize, chasing the awards, chasing the fanfare or whatever it is, I think you’re just gonna end up being, again, pissed off and you’re gonna be chasing the dragon a lot.
You get a little bit anxious when you’re starting out. When I was younger, I had anxiety about landing the work so that I can start to get the apartment, get the car, have the disposable income. There is a lot of pressure on anybody these days to make money for what they chose to do. This goes back to if you stay with whatever things you are involved in and you’re really about the process and learning and growth then it will happen. It’s not easy to do much of anything these days, but at least in this business, it will come if you lean into it 100%. It’s not gonna come as soon as you like, but it will.
The other thing is when I started, it was all about movies. That was the only thing I ever wanted to do. Now, people are telling me don’t do that, you want to do a series. But I still really like film. The point is, movies aren’t where it’s at right now and maybe they’ll never be again. If I had known that back then, I don’t know if I honestly would have chosen this path because I really love movies. It would also be nice to go back to the days of when it was sort of the emergence of independent films. Like Fox Searchlights and the Crying Game and all that stuff. There were a lot of films that you almost felt like you were special to have found. Movies that no one was talking about yet. It’s not about $100 million opening weekend. It’s about the films that really move people.
When you create a film, which stakeholders have the greatest impact on the artistic and cinematic choices you make? Is it the viewers, the critics, the financiers, or your own personal artistic vision? Can you share a story with us or give an example about what you mean?
Ultimately, I’d like to think that it’s about the audience every time, but that’s naive. Ultimately, it’s about the financiers. I’m like the chef who someone says, here’s the menu, because I don’t get to pick my menu. I’m being instructed to cook something up by the financier for their audience who they believe that they know more than me. Then I get to kind of funnel that all into my process and hopefully what I do marries with what they want to see.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
The idea of the movement is really about social media. I think ultimately what social media is potentially good for is reminding us that there is a connectivity that matters amongst all of us sharing ideas, sharing thoughts, and commiserating with the people over success or failure. Just so people know that they’re not on an island, and also so that we can help to kind of bring about the best aspects of who you are collectively because that’s what we are. We’re social beings. We need to be connected.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this.
Dr. David Greer, this UFO dude. He just did a thing on Capitol Hill on these investigations for technology. He could be a total crook, or a quack, but I think that guy would be a really interesting dude to talk to.
How can our readers further follow you online?
I don’t have a social media. We have a Lola Pop Instagram, but it’s not really there. Call me.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!
About the interviewer: Guernslye Honoré, affectionately known as “Gee-Gee”, is an amalgamation of creativity, vision, and endless enthusiasm. She has elegantly twined the worlds of writing, acting, and digital marketing into an inspiring tapestry of achievement. As the creative genius at the heart of Esma Marketing & Publishing, she leads her team to unprecedented heights with her comprehensive understanding of the industry and her innate flair for innovation. Her boundless passion and sense of purpose radiate from every endeavor she undertakes, turning ideas into reality and creating a realm of infinite possibilities. A true dynamo, Gee-Gee’s name has become synonymous with inspirational leadership and the art of creating success.
