Issa Rae has once said she went from being “stupidly optimistic” early in her career to pessimistic about Black stories being prioritized in Hollywood. One thing about the multi-hyphenate though, she’s not one to rest on her laurels. Rae is laying the foundation to ensure diverse projects get greenlit, and her latest partnership is the perfect example of using power for good.
Color Creative, Rae and co-founder Talitha Watkins’s production and management and production company, recently joined forces with Tubi, a streaming platform that has significantly grown in popularity largely because of Black viewers and filmmakers. As HuffPost editor Phil Lewis points out in his newsletter, “Tubi isn’t just a streaming service for fans to enjoy—it has become an outlet for independent Black filmmakers to showcase their art.”
Rae agrees. She started her career leveraging a community-based platform (YouTube) to tell her stories long before Hollywood studios were knocking on her door. Now she’s helping turbocharge the careers of filmmakers aiming to do the same. Color Creative and Tubi recently announced the launch Stubios, a fan-fueled studio for aspiring filmmakers and their fans.
Tubi’s Stubios is a program for creatives that enables their fans to have a say in what gets made. It aims to support first-time filmmakers and creatives from non-traditional backgrounds create larger scale film projects with the help and guidance of the ColorCreative team. The application window officially opened this month, where applicants can apply straight from their phones. Much like with its viewers, Tubi’s aim with Stubios is to meet prospective filmmakers where they already are.
“They have done a great job of seeing their audience, cultivating that audience, and now investing in that audience tenfold,” Rae tells ESSENCE. “Not only investing in the audience, but they’re investing in creators to make long-form work for that audience and putting it in some ways in their hands to determine whether or not the work that’s produced out of this program is worthy enough to continue. And I love that about it because it fosters a creator and audience relationship that can often be ignored. Democratize is the process, which is how I came up with my own digital background. But I really appreciate and I think it’s incredibly cool that they are actually and quite literally putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to black audiences and audiences of all diverse backgrounds, which the creators that are chosen will reflect.”
The program also provides funding for the films, an incredibly important step since filmmakers of color often struggle to get financing early in their careers.
“It’s hard to be scrappy,” Rae tells ESSENCE. “Nobody wants to make a film {on a shoestring budget}. Nobody wants to revise their script and rewrite 100 times to chip away at the dream and just settle for what’s possible. The importance of making sure these creators, these filmmakers have an opportunity to make what they want to make is critical. And again, it’s also audience-fueled, so there will be feedback there that they can take into account. But the resources matter. You can have all the talent in the world. And to our credit, and I think to audience discernment, people can see what you want to do, but to be able to actually do what you want to do makes all the difference. With ColorCreative, in general, we want to make sure that people have the resources because we want to stand behind them.”
Talitha Watkins adds: “We’re giving these creators a fast track. We’re giving them deep industry knowledge from all of the creators that we work with at ColorCreative, being able to crew up these productions. We’re going to tap into our client base to give them mentorship and guidance on script development and directing along with other things that they need to move into this new world of long-form content. In a way, it feels like guardrails on a superhighway. I think I know as Black creators, we’re ready for that. We’ve been storytelling our whole lives. It’s just like let us in the game. And this just feels like a really awesome way of letting us in the game with financial support, with mentorship, and community.”
