#17: Storytelling Techniques with Hollywood Producer Marcia Gwendolyn Jones
Tell the stories of your arts organization and artists with tips and techniques from former Pixar Hollywood producer. Marcia Gwendolyn Jones, the producing force behind blockbuster animated films Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, and PAW Patrol: The Movie.
Aubrey and Marcia cover what bringing a script to the screen has in common with bringing performances to the stage, expert storytelling tips to apply to your own stories at arts organizations, and the highs and lows of storytelling: what are the best things about storytelling? What’s the biggest challenge?
Pretty much any brand that’s thriving and growing its customer base is good at storytelling, and this episode shares from one of the best storytellers around, so that we can feel empowered to bring our organization’s own stories to life.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Aubrey Bergauer: Hi folks. Happy June if you are listening to this close to the original air date drop date. And if you are listening later, happy day to whenever you are, wherever you are. This past weekend. I wanna share, I went to this very cool event that I thought I'd tell you a little bit about. I serve on the board of an organization called.
Mercury soul, and it's led by artistic director Mason Bates. Now, many classical music fans listening know of Mason or know his music, but for anyone not in classical music, because I know we have other disciplines, other roles who listen regularly, which by the way, you all rock. But for those of you who aren't in classical music, Mason Bates is a Grammy Award-winning composer.
He often writes electronic elements into his orchestral music, and sometimes when he occasionally performs at the orchestra, you'll see him sitting at the back of the ensemble playing his laptop, whatever electronic, uh, you know, part in the score he's written. So he does other things [00:01:00] too, opera, and he also founded this organization, mercury Soul, which combines.
Classical music with DJ sets in unconventional settings. So usually that's in clubs, but definitely we've had performances in other venues too, and it's just awesome. In my opinion. I have totally drank the Kool-Aid, you know, to the point that I agreed to join the board, and this past weekend was a show here in San Francisco that I just think is so cool.
Hence, I'm talking about it now. And it was a collaboration with the guys who wrote the score to Stranger Things. So if you are like me and getting a little nerdy right now about this, you are not alone. Netflix says that Stranger Things was the most streamed show on their platform in 2022. It was viewed for more than something like 7 billion minutes or something like that is what I read.
And if you [00:02:00] watched the show, you're probably thinking about. Like that pulsating bass, dug dun, dug dun in the opening, and then this, like that rhythm underneath. But then the synthesizer comes in. No, do, do. Anyways, uh, that's my, that's my synthesizer voice, as you can tell. I really am a super nerd about this, but super nerd and super proud.
And so this event brought in the composers, these two guys, Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, they won an Emmy award for the score to Stranger Things. And what Mason and these guys did was work in, this is why it's so interesting to me, not just the analog synthesizers and the Stranger Things music, but they contextualized it within the history of the organ.
And as they explained, the pipe organ was the world's first synthesizer and their words, and. So they had program notes and facts projected onto the walls of the club and they mixed in performances of organ [00:03:00] pieces by Bach and, and I just think that this combination, this journey is so interesting because what they did was say one type of music is not better than the other.
And so this combination is what has me nerding out so hard. To be fair, this is what Mercury Soul does all the time. Combining actual classical music pieces with the program, notes on the walls, all that kind of stuff. Amazing professional musicians. I could go on and on. And holding that music side by side, meaning equal to other genres, and often that's DJ sets.
As I mentioned this time it was the Stranger Things big synth soundtrack. It's all cool, it's all good music. It's all performed at such a high level. The production value, you know, meaning the projections, the lighting, that is all just incredibly high value, high quality as well. And there's just not a lot like this out there, [00:04:00] and I think it's a great blueprint.
Not that every classical music performance needs to be like this, but it's just so accessible and fun. And interesting in how they wove together this what's really a history lesson in the evolution of these instruments and made it in such an approachable way. So super nerd, super fan, and it was just a total blast.
Now moving on to today, we get to take another page from the pop culture playbook. And that has to do with storytelling, but not just any storytelling. Storytelling from someone who does it best. And that is to say a big Hollywood feature animation producer. I am so excited to bring you this conversation with Marcia Gwendolyn Jones.
But first, let's talk about how the narrative is changing here on this topic of storytelling. So today, content [00:05:00] is king. It is a creator economy. Now, we talked about this in the last episode about leveraging our artists as influencers in this creator economy. Another side of content creation is what we're tackling today in terms of storytelling, and pretty much any brand that's thriving in any sector, any industry, any brand that's thriving and growing.
Its customer base is good at storytelling. Boy, do we have stories to tell in the arts? This is something that is so in our corner we have ample stories about our artists, about the people working off stage on our staffs, about the people we serve, stories about the history behind each piece, stranger things in pipe organ, the history behind each piece or, or even piece of art on the law.
Just so many stories at our disposal. This is a real asset that we have. Like I said, this is in our corner. So what do we do with it? How do we leverage it? And the thing is, we, meaning arts organizations and many other brands as [00:06:00] well, we are not selling a product, we are selling an emotion, a transformative experience, right?
We talked about this in the very first episode of this season with Ruth Hart when we hit this topic of, you know, reframing marketing and, and this is the thing. We're not selling a product, we're selling transformation. And that's what storytelling is and does. Storytelling moves us. It transports us. It takes us on an emotional journey, right?
So there's just so much to learn here and parallels to draw to what we do. So we're gonna spend the next several minutes talking about this with somebody who really knows the business of storytelling inside and out. Hollywood producer Marcia Gwendolyn Jones is such a boss and such a genuine, thoughtful, truly wonderful person.
I just really enjoyed this conversation with her. We cover topics including, What bringing a script to the screen has in common with our work to bring performances to the stage. We talk [00:07:00] about the highs and lows of storytelling, what's best, what's challenging. We also talk about failure failure's role in learning and in all of this bigger conversation.
And we also hit some expert storytelling tips. We can all apply in our work. Storytelling with Hollywood producer Marcia Gwendolyn Jones. Welcome to today's episode. Let's do it. Hey everyone. I'm Aubrey Bergauer and welcome to my podcast. If we haven't met, I'm known in the arts world for being customer centric, data obsessed, and for growing revenue.
The arts are my vehicle to make the change I wanna see in this world, like creating places of belonging, pursuing gender and racial equality, developing high performing teams and leaders, and leveraging technology to elevate our work. In this season, I'm bringing you conversations with some of my favorite experts from both inside and outside the arts.
All to help build the vibrant future we know is possible for our institutions and for [00:08:00] ourselves as offstage administrators and leaders. You are listening to the offstage mic.
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You can focus on what's important helping your patrons grow as artists and performers through education. And we're back today on Top. Tunes. The music, is it just me or does this sound terrible? Wait, I think I heard of someone who might be able to help us. There's this company called Novo Music. They provide across the board audio solutions from recording repair, to audio editing, to original music and sound design and beyond.
Well, what are we waiting for today? On top tunes the music. Now that's better. Novo Music. [00:10:00] Conducting your creative vision. Find out more@novomusic.co. Marcia Gwendolyn Jones and I met last summer, almost a year ago now, I think. I was down in LA and we met through a mutual connection and. I was immediately just so drawn to her and really just so stimulated by our conversation and connection some bio points earlier in her career.
Marcia previously worked at Pixar, most notably on Monsters, Inc. Does 2001, and on Finding Nemo, that was 2003. More recently she produced, oh my gosh. Every parent listening is gonna know this movie. Most recently, she produced Paw Patrol, the movie for Spin Master Entertainment, and she now is currently at Sky Dance Animation producing an unannounced feature.
Very cool. So much of what she says, I feel like you can swap out Studio [00:11:00] for Arts organization and it still holds true a hundred percent. There's just so much wisdom. She brings so many similarities, both in the challenges we face and in the rewarding parts of the job as well, like being able to share our final product with an audience.
As a feature animation producer, Marcia Gwendolyn Jones catalyzes creative vision from script to screen. She is known as, and I love this, she is known as the Closer She delivers challenging projects on time and on or under budget. While balancing artistic goals and creative vision, see, I kid you not, when I say this stuff, just totally, you can apply it to what we do.
These are sentences we say a lot projects on time, on budget, under budget, balancing artistic goals and creative vision. The parallels are just so similar. Marcia creates high crew morale, even under the intense deadlines they see in Hollywood. Through great collaboration and communication so that teams feel valued, supported, connected.
And thrive and do [00:12:00] their best work. She was born and raised in New York, and Marcia was an expat from 2013 to 2021, living and working in Canada, Ireland, and France. She returned to the US a few years ago to join Skydance Animation producing that unannounced feature. Hi, Marcia. Welcome.
[00:12:19] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: Hello. Thank you for having me.
[00:12:22] Aubrey Bergauer: You have said to me, and I'm gonna quote you, you said Creating efficiency in order to attract incredible talent or creating excellence for your audience is another phrase I've heard you say. Can you say more about these ideas? What does it look like when there are not efficiencies? What's the normal talent attracted?
I mean, I'm asking you a lot of questions right now, but let me just, Hand it over to you to expand on all
[00:12:45] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: of that. One of the things I wanted to say about creating efficiencies, I recently gave another talk and one of the things I said was, and it was quoted back to me, which I loved, was, I love what I do, but I'm not what I do.
And [00:13:00] efficiencies or effective ways to approach essential actions and tasks. They help create the focus on the art and on innovations and iterations, and that gives time back to the people for work life balance. That's really essential for almost everybody I know that works in the business, particularly when they're balancing.
Being a spouse, being a parent, other things that they're, you know, devoted to in their lives. And it doesn't take away anything from the passion for what we do. It's just that work-life balance and efficiency support that. What I think that looks like when they're not efficiencies is that time and effort is put into tasks that should be more automated or anticipated.
This could be things like having a conky tracking system. For not ordering equipment until a new hire is physically in the building rather than anticipating. And I just wanna share one story, one, uh, real life example of that. I once worked on a film and we [00:14:00] ordered all the stiks, which is a specific kind of equipment that we needed for the artist well in advance.
Unbeknownst to me, a decision was made by the larger studio to raid my stash for another show. So when the time came, I came up short on equipment, even though I really felt I had anticipated to make sure we were like ready to go. So we ended up having several days of downtime for several team members because of that decision to rate my stash unbeknownst to me, and needing to order new equipment.
And then have it arrive and then set it up. That's just an example. Attracting incredible talent, and I think this will speak across arts organizations. Attracting incredible talent can be like a seasoned creator who has a stellar track record and who you know you can count on because they're just so experienced in season.
Or it can be like a recent graduate, somebody who's a novice, even who has the style and the ability and the [00:15:00] talent that fits beautifully. With what you want to achieve. Incredible talent. One size doesn't fit all because it's so much depends on what is the vision you have for what you wanna achieve and who's the best match for that.
So I hope that answers those initial questions. I love that.
[00:15:16] Aubrey Bergauer: Well, I appreciate you saying that too, that it's not one size fits all. Talent takes many different forms. I think that's so, so important in breaking out of sort of standard definitions or, or maybe just. I don't know, things we fall back on.
Sometimes your bio says that you catalyze creative vision from script to screen, and that just feels like such an impactful, actionable statement. So can you say more about what does that mean for you? It's
[00:15:42] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: about supporting the creative process with excellence and balancing the needs of the timeline and budget while creating space for the artists to do their best work.
Mostly unencumbered, the artist being mostly encumbered by the day-to-day being counting or number crunching, and it can look like just [00:16:00] asking the right question about a creative choice that helps move the needle on any given day. It's one of those talents, it's a bit intangible, but that's the way it looks, I would say, and that's my
[00:16:10] Aubrey Bergauer: approach.
So I wanna get into storytelling a little now, and you said to me that whatever resonates with you, me, the tour of the storyteller is whatever resonates with the storyteller will resonate with other people. Can you talk a little bit more about that and maybe specifically how does somebody producing content for an arts organization, whether that's video shorts, Pros about whatever the next concert, exhibit, et cetera is.
Videos for the website, you know, whatever. Even TikTok or Instagram videos, how does somebody producing this kinda content get in space of whatever resonates with you as the storyteller resonates with the audience? Is this about empathy? Is it something else?
[00:16:57] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: I think it largely [00:17:00] is about empathy and common human themes.
It's about humanity. I am going to quote the late great Maya Angelou. We are more alike than not alike. We are more alike than not alike. And what that means to me is that there are themes that connect humanity, and most great storytelling taps into those themes and they're universal. And my experience is if a story deeply, passionately resonates with the storyteller.
Then it's likely gonna resonate with the audience too. Is this
[00:17:34] Aubrey Bergauer: hard? I think so often, at least the marketing teams I've worked with and content producers I've worked with, when we know we're so close to the product, we're so close to the art that it can be very challenging. I think to have empathy with somebody who's newer to the art form to produce a story or a piece of content that is meeting them where they are is the same.
True. Do you think in these [00:18:00] feature films in your work as a producer or, I dunno, yes.
[00:18:03] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: I, people don't make anything as an island unto themselves, so it is highly, highly collaborative. There's feedback loops with story trusts and uh, one of the things I really respect about Skydance animation particularly is inclusion trust.
They're looking at issues, you know, of diversity, you know, as a woman of color that's. Hugely important to me. So it's not like somebody goes away in a closet for five years and creates art, that there are feedback loops including, you know, practical ones like previews and you know, audience testing and stuff, stuff like that.
But it always starts with an idea that has a passion behind it. I find I'm gonna talk my current organization, all the features, even the ones that I can't talk about. I'm happy to say our original stories and there's not a lot of studios doing that right now. And that's about the artist that has a passion to tell something that's [00:19:00] close to them.
So even with all of the constructs of feedback, which are essential in such a collaborative environment, I'm sure like, again, insert any arts organization here that, um, you're still the basis for that. The genesis of that is the passion and the storyteller.
[00:19:17] Aubrey Bergauer: Pro tips. Are there any storytelling tips or conversely anything that you think people should not
[00:19:23] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: do?
Well, I talked about feedback loops and testing and all the things that are, you know, part of the industry, but I honestly believe this to my core, the don't. Don't try to predict a hit. Instead, tell the story that speaks to you. Tell the story that speaks to you, that you're passionate about telling.
That's probably the best advice that I can give.
[00:19:45] Aubrey Bergauer: No, I love that actually. Yeah, we can't predict what will resonate. We can't predict what will be a hit. We can't predict what piece of content will do well. Yeah, but what are the points that resonate or inspire us and and are passionate to us? Yeah, I like that.
I remember
[00:19:58] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: a filmmaker that I deeply [00:20:00] respect. He said, make an animated feature is like telling a joke and waiting three years to see if people are gonna laugh. We don't have those crystal balls to look ahead to see how things are gonna be received. So I think it's being true to ourselves in our storytelling tribe.
[00:20:13] Aubrey Bergauer: Yeah, I mean, I think I'm just in my head sort of running the parallel to classical music. And in some ways it's similar. We know what our season is two years in advance. Sometimes definitely some large amount of time in advance, and to some degree we know, okay, the Beethoven will always do well. You know, those kind of things.
But then what about this other, Work that we're trying to either world premiere or a lesser known piece. And then I really go back to what you just said in your tips of do and don't. Do you know what about that piece is interesting? What about that piece or that composer made us decide to program it in the first place.
Pitch you here in
[00:20:51] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: the fields. Yeah. What is that? The story
[00:20:53] Aubrey Bergauer: to tell? Yeah. Yeah. I just, um, anyways, connecting the dots here. Okay. Switching gears a little bit here. [00:21:00] You and I talked before about how technology has evolved to allow for storytelling, and then that also segued into the conversation that we had about failure.
And I think this is an area of great importance for all of us, particularly for arts organizations. And that's just for two reasons. One is because we don't always embrace the new tools and technology available to us. And there's so much out there now and that even wasn't available just a couple years ago.
And then the second reason why this topic is so important is because we definitely at arts organizations don't always allow room for failure. And I'm wondering, you know, what does that look like? This is a very two part question, tech and failure. And somehow I've like bundled into, into one topic, but can you talk about that?
[00:21:50] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: I would love to, I, I'm pretty passionate about it. It really harkens back to your initial conversation about creating efficiencies and effectiveness, and [00:22:00] let's just think about it. Innovation pretty much requires failure. How do you grow and change? How do you create something new? You test. You learn from that test, you move on.
You can say failure. I'm not afraid to say that word. You could say, I did these iterations of tests. Storytelling is that you iterate something, you have a screening. Some things are good about it, some things clearly need fixing. That's how you improve. That's how you get to the storytelling, what the best version of itself is, and getting together in that way.
Technology is the same. Sometimes it's scary to say, okay, we're gonna. We're gonna upgrade to this new thing. There's, um, it was in gaming and it's now coming into animation more and more. It's a platform called Unreal Engine, and it's definitely different. It's definitely new and it gives the opportunity for real-time iterations and rendering.
This is just an example in my industry of something that's now being embraced and tested. One of the things I think that can be [00:23:00] scary is saying, well, I've got a tight deadline. How do I allow. For failure, how do I allow for innovation when I've got a budget and a deadline? The best thing to do is to build that in.
If it's not possible to build it in, build it maybe in tandem. So, well, maybe it's not this picture, but maybe we can do it on picture three, you know, that sort of thing and say, okay, let's have this writing in the background. There's a term that's use stress testing. That's important. You wanna have an opportunity to see something and say, that's great, but the first version failed.
Okay, can we go back to the manufacturer? Can we go back to the creator and can they adapt their software or even hardware if it might be to help us? Do what we need to do. Those kinds of relationships are actually quite common, and sometimes it takes a little bravery to say, well, you know, hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
And just set that aside and say, you know what? There's something out there where we can do better and this can help us. And it's all, all, all in the support of great storytelling. [00:24:00] I remember back when I worked at Pixar, one of the reasons that I was so attracted to that studio is they had a motto, no amount of technology can turn a bad story into a good one.
And I think that that's important. So it's not just, uh, hey, this is a cool gadget. It's what will help us. Tell our stories better. And again, so that's that innovation, efficiencies, but it also has to do with trying and failing until something works better. That's what innovating is. Oh my gosh.
[00:24:29] Aubrey Bergauer: Thank you.
That iteration is innovation. I'm sort of paraphrasing what you said, but I say this all the time and I'm just like, You're talking about iteration, not just in the sense, it's not just trial and error, but it's iteration and then progress, not perfection, improvement. Yeah,
[00:24:45] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: exactly. Um, I love that. Focus on progress, not perfection's.
A huge, huge motto of mine
[00:24:52] Aubrey Bergauer: to hear Marcia talk about this, and she's talking about full length feature animation, animated films like. We're talking in an [00:25:00] arts organization at like 62nd TikTok videos, like the pressure is just not that high. So to iterate and try is okay. And then, yeah, if it gets three likes, then it kind of bombs in that way.
It's okay. It's gone in the feed. The algorithm doesn't promote it like our bar. Is so low in a good way. And testing ideas and content is so much easier for us cuz we're not putting out a two and a half hour movie, you know? So I wanna talk about you a little bit more in that, you know, I said at the top, you're known as the Closer, which just sounds so cool, but you're also known as a solutions architect.
I want to ask you about that. Like what is the most rewarding thing about what you do about being a solutions architect? And then conversely, what's the most challenging?
[00:25:42] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: The rewarding collaboration, working with great people to tell great stories. I have a lot of fun. I get to be laugh every day. Now, being a producer, there's a huge financial responsibility.
It's not for the faint of heart particularly, but nobody's brain is open on a table. Nobody's life at stake. I realize there are people that are, you know, paying [00:26:00] mortgages and putting food on the table, and I get that, so I take it very seriously. However, I do understand it's a cartoon. And I think perspective is very important.
So I truly, truly enjoy, uh, working with the team and collaborating. That's absolutely the most rewarding thing. And then again, as you said earlier in the talk, putting your product out to, to the world, your performance, you know, whatever, it's your film, whatever it might be. As a gift to the world and with the best intentions of, you know, creating high value entertainment and hopefully something that, you know, families and people will enjoy for years and years.
So that's hugely rewarding. I would say the challenging thing is probably really, really being proactive in anticipating. I wanted to give a real life example of that challenge. Solutions architect, you know, uh, what does it, what does that look like? When I did PAW Patrol specifically, again, it takes a village.
I worked really closely with my post-production supervisor because I was looking six, eight months [00:27:00] ahead about when we delivered. So I said, okay, I can see where we're tracking with our final shots, and I'd like to give. Uh, you know, way more time as as much as I can. How far can we push? So we worked together and we figured out where we still delivered to Paramount on time, but also gave post production more time.
But this means you're talking to your sound designer and you're talking to your sound mixer, and when your mix dates are, you're talking to your composer and when they're recording the score. So it's a lot of collaboration, but the earlier that you can look ahead at that and say, Hey, can we shift it a bit?
The more leeway you'll have and then you'll just be giving yourself more time. And in this particular instance of Challenge Meets Solutions architect, one of the things that I wanted to create was more time for everybody to go into what in my industry is called C B B, and C B B means could be better.
And what that means is you put a shot through, cuz you know you need to put it through, but there's something about it you wanna improve. Like I, I can live with it if I have to. So you, you [00:28:00] really are saying I'm approving this, but you're flagging it as something you'd love if time permits love to go back into that.
Well, we were able to hit all our priority CBBs, or could be betters because we push the schedule and then you also have to do fixes on quality checks. Like there's actual. Fixes you have to do when they go through the QC process or quality check process. So you just give yourself more grace, more of a grace period and more grace, if you will.
And that to me is one of those challenging things. But again, with experience and with an eye to being proactive and looking forward, you can tackle head on. That's just a real life example. I do wanna ask you the same thing. I wanna flip the script in the time that we have and say what is the most rewarding and most challenging thing about what you do?
I'd love you to take some time to speak to that if you'll indulge
[00:28:49] Aubrey Bergauer: me. For me, most rewarding is moving people forward for sure. Like that feels very similar in some ways to what you were saying, just moving people forward toward a common goal, whether [00:29:00] that's internally at an organization or externally moving audiences forward on a journey.
I just, that is so fulfilling for me and changing a paradigm. You know, that for me, and the challenging part is, Overcoming change as somebody who is known for. You know, I just said I get fulfillment out of changing a paradigm. Therefore, like the other side of that coin is that change can be scarier, intimidating sometimes.
Mm-hmm. And that I think is the top challenge I face in my work. It's a, you know, meta level. It's a big challenge for the industry as a whole. How do we change, and in industry that's very steeped in tradition and what's the good of that? And then what's the, the part of that that is no longer serving us.
So, So, okay. Question from Kate. This is a little off topic, but both Aubrey and Marcia have a passion for bringing diverse voices to the table. Do you have any recommendations in this area for how we can cultivate this in our organizations? Oh, love this question. You wanna go,
[00:29:59] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: Marcia, [00:30:00] on that one? This may sound so elemental, but it's a motto I kind of live by these days, and I think Covid kind of brought this home in a big, big way.
Take nothing for granted. There's a lot of unconscious bias. I mean, there's. Clear blatant bias, but even our unconscious bias. And look at the metrics of, you know, who are your voice talent, uh, what are the body types of, of the characters that you have, what are the features and shades of color of the characters, if you know, if they're on a, a human scale, even if they're, if they're not, if they're fantasy characters, are they falling into certain tropes?
Just really look at what you're doing and why and what might just be habitual or out of an unconscious bias. Then I think on the floor, it's really important. When I say on the floor, what that means is the actual team that you have that is working on the film and look and say, what are the themes of the story that I'm telling?
Is there an opportunity for me to carve out a creative lead who can bring a different perspective to this? Another saying that I love [00:31:00] is diversity add dimension. It's key to really keep yourself open to that and be willing to ask questions, even if they're a little uncomfortable. And sometimes those conversations are because people are, again, it's the same.
If you are shifting into a more diverse arena, there can be a discomfort because you're used to a different paradigm and it's a shift in thinking. And sometimes you really have to dig a little deeper, myself included, to think differently, to make different choices. So take nothing for granted is probably the headline there in my answer.
That's
[00:31:32] Aubrey Bergauer: such great advice, and I think, I mean, we talk a lot, especially in classical music. I will not open the can of worms on the audition process, but there's a lot to be done there. But faster changes and choices we can make are, you know, who are our guest artists? Who are we bringing in? And I like what you said about.
Different body shapes, different ethnicities, colors, like all of these are choices we make every season. Same thing is true as staff, as we hire, and especially right now, this is, I. Like such an [00:32:00] opportunity that so many organizations have is there's been so much staff turnover and great reshuffle and board members is another area.
And so I just thought that was really, again, just another parallel. You're talking about these choices we make and it's like, yeah, whether it's drawn or like I R L I in real life, like these are choices. So I really love that. Question for Marcia. How do you personally keep a team? Or group that's invested in a project inspired along the way when encountering uncertainty, whether that's budget, technical glitches, audience projections, et cetera, or other challenges.
How do you keep the process of producing content from feeling like a punch list of to-dos?
[00:32:41] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: Well, I think part of it is, this is a great question cuz it's a great reminder to me as a producer and a leader is remembering the common goal. We wanna tell a great story and remember that the focus, whether it's a reset, a rethink, setback, whatever it might be, it's like, okay, let's keep our [00:33:00] eye on where we want to end up.
And what we're holding hands to do here. That's a huge help in keeping people invested and passionate. The other thing is really listening to your people and having an opportunity to see where they are and where they want to go. That's important. And I have to say that there's a talent development department at my current company that's very invested in talent retention and really tracking people's goals.
And I, as a producer and a leader, that's very important
[00:33:28] Aubrey Bergauer: to me. Any suggestions for new upcoming producers? I have personally noticed that nowadays being a producer is more about numbers. In finance, you are one of the few. Producers who are not only keeping projects on track, but also have a voice when it comes to creative decisions as, so are you involved in storytelling, do you think at the end of the day it's only about delivering?
[00:33:52] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: That's a huge part of it. That's why I said, you know, producing isn't for the faint of heart cuz you have a very large financial responsibility. So there's no [00:34:00] question that's a huge part of it. I think part of it depends on your organization and the culture. So, um, I will say that that might impact, you know, where the focus is.
It's important for you to examine that. And I also say, take nothing personally. Look at what the culture is, what your sphere of influence is, and see if that's the right fit for you long term. That might be something to examine. I.
[00:34:23] Aubrey Bergauer: There are so many relevant crossovers to classical music. How do you reconcile artistic vision and egos with telling your story in a way that most resonates with
[00:34:32] Marcia Gwendolyn Jones: audiences?
It points back to culture and what is tolerated in your leads and your artists. Egos are important, but so is collaboration and having a voice at the table. Even if the buck stops with somebody and they're the one who has to make the final decision, you still will need to create the space for people to have input.
[00:34:51] Aubrey Bergauer: Yes. Thank you for that. What are we tolerating? So important? So important. I wish I could just talk to you forever, but you, I feel we're so lucky to have your [00:35:00] wisdom shared with us and it is so applicable. Hey, off stagers. One of the things I hear from people the most is how frustrating this business can be.
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This four week program [00:37:00] begins this July, and only 20 spots are available in order to facilitate meaningful discussion among the group. I'll close with this. Any time in my life I've decided to go for it instead of waiting. It has always been the right decision, and I always look back and think, why was I so hesitant to begin with?
So if you've been thinking about this, Jess, do it. Aubrey Bergauer dot com slash summer uplevel. Seriously, I can't wait to see you there. That's all for today, folks. Thanks so much for listening and keep up with more content like this by following me on LinkedIn or Instagram at Aubrey Bergauer.
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And edited by Novo Music, a studio of all women, audio [00:38:00] engineers and musicians. The narrative is changing for arts and culture, and I'm so glad you're here to be a part of it. This is a production of changing the narrative.