The Zack Arnold Podcast Building a Fulfilling Career Across Multiple Mediums (Without Getting Pigeonholed) | with Stephanie Filo, ACE
Stephanie Filo, ACE is a two-time Emmy and Peabody Award-winning TV/Film Editor based in Los Angeles, CA and Sierra Leone, West Africa. She earned an Emmy win for her unscripted editing on the Mental State episode Separated (making herself and Nzinga Blake the first Sierra Leonean women to ever win an Emmy award). Most recently, she won a Primetime Emmy award for her work on HBO's A Black Lady Sketch Show, making her team the first all-women of color editing team to take home the award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming. This is just a tiny, tiny smattering of the credits and accolades which Stephanie has earned in her very young career (which doesn’t even begin to cover her social activism work in the documentary space).
In short, if you’ve ever wondered if it’s possible to successfully build a fulfilling creative career jumping between multiple mediums and genres - from scripted, to unscripted, to docs, and beyond - then Stephanie Filo’s story is for you.
In this conversation Stephanie shares how she has climbed to award-winning levels of both scripted and unscripted television…despite a lot of the barriers that unfortunately come with being a black woman in a white-male-dominated industry. She candidly opens up about how she has had to work harder to prove herself but also her own challenges around work-life balance and the sacrifices she’s made getting to this level in her career. This is a wide ranging conversation appealing to anyone looking to make a career transition, find purpose and fulfillment in life, and wanting better strategies for choosing the right projects to match both your lifestyle needs and your creative needs.
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Here's What You'll Learn:
- How the movie Seven influenced her decision to get into editing
- The struggles she encountered growing up as a first generation Sierra Leone African in Colorado
- Why Stephanie as a black woman is a better fit for certain types of stories than I am as a white male
- Stephanie shares the struggles she's endured as a black female editor
- How to avoid getting pigeonholed
- How to transition from one genre or format to another
- How to sell your skills as an unscripted editor so that they are valuable in the scripted world
- Is scripted editing equivalent to paint by numbers?
- What Lee Daniels taught me about how my life experience informs my choices as an editor
- What the cost was to Stephanie in order to diversify her resume
- The toxic work-life balance culture that is pervasive in the industry and how to fight against it
- Consequences of putting up boundaries against unreasonable deadlines
- Are scripted or unscripted editors respected more by producers?
- How scripted projects compare to unscripted projects in terms of pay and lifestyle
- KEY TAKEAWAY: You are interviewing the show as much as the show is interviewing you
- Why Stephanie recently turned down a job that was offered to her
- Stephanie’s go to interview questions to determine if a project is the right fit for her
Useful Resources Mentioned:
Cutting Comedy with "A Black Lady Sketch Show" - Frame.io Insider
Emmy & Peabody Award Winning Editor, Stephanie Filo: Episode 2 of Post in Black Season 2 - YouTube
Boris FX | Ask the Artist with Stephanie Filo, TV/Film Editor
Continue to Listen & Learn
Ep128: How to Have a Successful Career Without Sacrificing Family | with Farrel Levy
Ep135: The “Playbook” For Building a Successful Career in Scripted TV | with Steve Lang, ACE (pt2)
Guest Bio:
Stephanie Filo
Stephanie Filo, ACE is a two-time Emmy and Peabody Award-winning TV/Film Editor and activist based in Los Angeles, CA and Sierra Leone, West Africa. She serves on the board for Girls Empowerment Sierra Leone, a social impact and feminist-based organization for Sierra Leonean girls aged 11-16. She is one of the co-founders of End Ebola Now, an organization created in 2014 to spread accurate information and awareness about the Ebola Virus and its impact through artistic community activism.
Aside from editing television and film, with a passion for bringing a voice to social issues and telling stories of the under-represented, Stephanie spends much of her spare time producing and editing social action campaigns and documentaries, primarily focused on the rights of women and girls worldwide. Some of her notable campaigns include her work with the United Nations, International Labour Organization, and the Obama White House Task Force's It's On Us campaign to combat campus sexual assault. Her charitable work has been featured in Forbes Magazine, Entertainment Tonight, Telegraph UK, Yahoo, Al Jazeera, XWhy Magazine, and various others. Her work on the news documentary series "Mental State" earned her an Emmy nomination for the episode "Aging Out" about youth aging out of the American foster care system. She earned an Emmy win for her editing on the Mental State episode "Separated" which covered ICE deportations, making herself and Nzinga Blake the first Sierra Leonean women to ever win an Emmy award. Most recently, she won a Primetime Emmy award for her work on HBO's "A Black Lady Sketch Show", making her team the first all-Women of Color editing team to take home the award for Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming.
Show Credits:
This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.
The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).