Into The Spotlight

Sarah Giffin is the artist, designer, and jewelry maker behind ViV Jewelry. In 2019, Sarah started making jewelry as a way to escape the stress of university. Before long, she was enamoured with making colourful, unique pieces out of polymer clay, and two years later, she has built ViV into a successful, full-time business. In our twentieth episode, we discuss Sarah's journey to starting ViV Jewelry, her creative process, how she uses content creation to promote her art, and how we all continue to find inspiration for our own projects. 

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What we're putting in the spotlight this week:

Sarah

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Ryan

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Chris Parnell is a personal chef and entrepreneur based in Golden, British Columbia. From a young age, Chris knew that his passion was cooking. He has over 12 years of professional cooking experience, which includes The Fat Duck in London (a three Michelin starred restaurant) as well as backcountry lodges across the Canadian Rockies. In addition to his personal chef work, Chris is the co-founder of Dogtooth Chocolate, which will be launching later this year. We hope you enjoy this  great conversation about Chris's story, passion and adaptation, the professional cooking world, entrepreneurship and the two-sided coin of social media.

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Ryan

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Kevin Raposo is a photographer, video producer, entrepreneur and educator with over a decade of experience shooting concerts, corporate events, sports, real estate and more. After earning his Masters in Media Production from Ryerson University, he went on to start Speedy Photographer - an online photography school. In this episode, we dive into Kevin's story, his experience working as a freelance photographer, his philosophy as an educator, the future of photography and the sometimes controversial culture surrounding the craft. We had a blast recording this episode and we hope you enjoy!

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You might know him from the Maker Knife, the Kinetic Driver, or the Polycalendar. Maybe you've been watching his cinematic maker videos for years. No matter how you came across Giaco, one thing is clear - his passion, creativity and innovation shine through in everything that he does. 

In this episode, we dive into Giaco's story, how years spent working in the Internet space created a need to make something he could touch, how he transitioned from creating viral videos to creating whatever he likes, his philosophies on content creation and product development, lessons learned from making YouTube videos, and the work that goes on behind the scenes.

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Since 2018, Roxanne Brathwaite has been reimagining vintage furniture into one-off bespoke pieces through Hollis Newton, her furniture company. When the pandemic made it impossible to work in the upholstery shop, she looked into her past and revived a childhood passion - making miniatures. By combining this with her love of everything vintage, Roxanne has created a tasteful, cohesive and whimsical aesthetic that she shares through her Instagram page @SuiteCityWoman. Her work is now being featured in DesignTO, an art festival in Toronto, Canada.

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Kristen-Innes Stambolic is a video artist, animator and dancer. Trained in contemporary dance, Kristen's intimate knowledge of anatomy and movement shine through in her videos. This connection can truly be seen when she combines dance, rotoscoping and video effects to create videos that are nothing short of hypnotic, and with her organic animations that evoke movement and interaction. Kristen, Morley and Ryan create videos in three distinct styles, but a common love for the craft and shared creative struggles made this a fascinating conversation chock full of cross-pollination!

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Charlie Kert is an arts educator, musician, skateboarder, and the founder of Little Fingers Music - a Toronto-based music school. He has released multiple children's CDs, a progressive folk rock album, developed and performed in an interactive rock operetta for children, and was a sponsored, competitive skateboarder in the 1970s (and continues to tear it up on the halfpipe to this day!). While they might seem like totally separate pursuits, skateboarding is a central source of inspiration for Charlie's songwriting, teaching and creative philosophy.

Intro: Shake yer Shakers by Charlie Kert

Outro: Breathe by Charlie Kert

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This week, Morley and Ryan compare their approaches to creating YouTube videos versus creating films. This wide-ranging conversation covers editing techniques, cinematography, camerawork that has its roots in cinema but has been adopted by YouTubers, project scale, narrative structure, "hooking" in the viewer, creating and relieving tension with builds and payoffs, judging one's work, creative development and how each medium can learn from the other.  

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Assem Kroma is a storyteller, filmmaker, actor, teacher and researcher in the fields of new media, interactive and transmedia storytelling as well as virtual and augmented reality. He is using experimental filmmaking to explore new ways of creating connections with audiences, with techniques such as 360 degree video, robotics and extended reality (XR). We had a wonderful, wide ranging discussion with Assem about his story, the importance of being flexible and open to opportunities, accepting imperfections, creative development and much more.  

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Assem: The creative outlook of children 

Morley: It's Such a Beautiful Day (film) 

Ryan: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin 

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Andy Pugh is a lifelong maker, creative and teacher. He is a one of the most supportive voices in the maker community, and seems to connect just about every maker across the globe.

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