Welcome to Alumni Live: The Podcast.

These are conversations with Grand Valley State University film and video

graduates about the industry, the film/video major, and alumni profiles.

Welcome back to another episode of the Alumni podcast.

I'm Samantha Drougel, I am a senior at GVSU in the film and video major program.

I'm also in the JBM program as well.

I am here with Justin Woychowski, who is the Senior Creative

Director at United eSports.

Welcome, Justin.

Did I get all that right?

Hello, Sam!

Yes, it's good to see you.

Yeah, I am the Chief Creative Officer of United eSports, which is a premium

creative media and marketing agency that really specializes in the areas

of gaming and eSports and, you know, all things fun and interactive.

We're here to talk today about a very niche and kind of underrepresented

career opportunity for film and video, which is the eSports realm.

And there's a lot of video that is involved with that.

I guess let's dive into what you do for eSports.

Yeah.

United eSports is a company that really touches all parts of the

gaming and media space where anyone who plays a game, interacts with

developers, from influencers to the marketing side, we touch it all.

We've worked with the top developers in the space to promote their games.

We've worked with individual eSports teams and productions in order to integrate into

the broadcasts at the competitive level.

And we've worked with major triple-A brands who are looking to basically

develop relationships with a new audience, a new generation, and

really trying to meet them in their passion point and finding interesting

and authentic ways to do that.

Yeah.

I think in talking about what we're passionate about, I think taking your

hobby and turning it into a career is one of the best ways to find a job.

That's how I found my love for eSports.

I've talked to you.

Yeah.

Once before, and that's when I was just starting out as a producer for

our eSports club here at Grand Valley.

And for those who don't know, we do have an eSports program here at Grand Valley!

Both club for people who don't wanna play competitively, but also, we

have quite a few competitive teams and all of those teams have the

ability to be broadcasted live.

And each of those people have the ability to try their hand at broadcasting too, if

they're not sure they wanna go into that and wanna try that out for themselves.

That's amazing.

Sam, where were you back in '05 when we were graduating and just pouring

into hours of gaming at night?

05, let's see, I was one years old.

There you go.

All right, well that, that hurts my heart, a little bit.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

So sorry.

I'm starting to get to the point where there are some nostalgia

kicks, like I just modded my uh, 3DS.

Okay.

There you go.

Yeah.

Without going, without going too much off topic, there

topic.

of things that come with getting a little bit older in the gaming space.

I love it.

Yeah.

Let's talk a little bit about the industry.

Now that you're recalling your first time with it, just kind of

how the industry has developed.

eSports has been around since the seventies, I think, if I'm getting

right, maybe that's a little too early.

Yeah, I think that's a bit early for eSports as a whole.

Gaming as an industry, right, has been around generations, right?

Anyone that's gonna come around a table and whether it's playing cards, whether

it's, you know, interacting, things like D&D and that kinda stuff, right?

They all had very early roots of bringing people together for

sort of a common purpose, being recreational and fun and whatnot.

With the onset of more home accessible entertainment right?

Especially with the success of the early NES in the US market and whatnot kind of

taking off, gaming as a digital device was certainly a massive talking point.

It was a huge wave that rippled through the consumer base and it was

interesting because, growing up in that time, you didn't necessarily know

whether it was here to stay or a really cool gimmick of the moment, right?

Like, no one could project in the future at that time, especially if you

were a kid and just interacting with these things out of pure passion, no

one could have seen how far it would come, and that one day there would be

professional careers rooted in this.

So as an industry, it's certainly become an amazing

thing to watch, to be a part of.

First just as a fan of gaming and video games, and then watching a

professional scene come out of that, and then all the media and all of the

opportunity as an industry, right?

Like, it's been quite a journey and a ride to get here.

And it's still moving by leaps and bound every day.

One interesting point, and I think this is going towards your ultimate question

is, if you really look at today, right?

In 2026 and the current market, especially when we're talking about

what I'd say is the lower end of Gen Z and especially Gen Alpha, gaming is one

of the only almost guaranteed shared social experiences that they have when

it comes to the cultural identifiers or water cooler moments, right?

Because it's not guaranteed that every house has the same subscriptions,

one house may have Netflix while the other has Disney Plus, so what used to

be shows where everyone would gather around and we all were generally

aware, at least when I was growing up, of the main things that were the

most popular, the most talked about.

And these are the cultural magnets, kids now don't necessarily have that.

They don't have access or watch the same things.

At least on one scale, the creator economy has sort of become that for a lot of that

generation so there's that piece of it.

But video games as almost like a glue has really become such a connector,

especially for younger generations.

And so I think, in some ways, it's almost taken the place of traditional media and

roles that it had played before as kind of generational connectors, and you can

see that throughout the industry, you can watch it over the last 10 years and

how it's developed and where it's gone.

It's really fascinating and, a fun space to be in.

Yeah.

I, I, just looked it up.

I was curious while you were talking, when the first eSports event

really was and it was, it was 1972.

There we go.

What was the event?

Space Invaders, I think it was.

The Olympics.

Interesting.

Okay, sure.

So if you're gonna consider Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Yeah, arcade games.

Yeah.

That, I guess I was thinking more, in the, the digitally connected.

Yeah.

The more traditional sense, but sure.

If you look back at a lot of the earlier more arcade competitions

and whatnot, you're right, then that that would be, as far back as that.

That's great.

Which is, which is cool.

It's absolutely amazing how far professional broadcasts for eSports

have come, especially with the creator space that's available.

Like, I think there's definitely two sides, like you were saying, to eSports.

There's Twitch, YouTube streaming, that kind of content, and then there's

eSports events, which I think is, arguably more eSports as a profession.

You know, LCS is a massive one.

Valorant Nationals, all kind of stuff.

These massive events with almost like expo centers and booths everywhere.

Multimillion dollar broadcasting setups, all that hype that you would

bring to a normal sports event brought into like a gaming competition.

And you're right, it is more of a mark of our generation that

we're seeing gaming not as a niche hobby anymore, but we all do it.

That's how we communicate with each other.

And not only that, but we hold it to the same pedestal, if not

more than say, a football match.

Sure.

Absolutely.

So

the broadcast industry has to grow to meet the standards of our passion for eSports,

and I think that's absolutely amazing.

Yeah, and I think we've actually seen, especially on if we're gonna talk the

pure eSports side of things, right?

Because in some ways you also have to remember, no matter how big it is and how

complicated some of the productions of the really big tent pole events are, eSports

is always gonna be the smallest part of the pie as gaming as a whole, right?

Like it is the, it's the F1 racing of gaming, right?

Not every gamer is a die hard competitive gamer.

There's so many genres and so many ecosystems to be a part of and to

participate in, so many communities.

So, yes, I would say on the highest end, like the major, major, major eSports

for sure fall into that category.

But what I think is also so interesting and wonderful is that you can find

unique production focused elements on the biggest of the biggest and certainly

the most exciting I've been in many of those rooms, I've been a part of many

of those teams and what those are like, and all the way down to a creator who

wants to create something, you know, in Animal Crossing by themselves and

they're putting some content out in the world and they have their own style.

All of that is production.

All of that is visual communication to an audience.

And so there is just a great crossover for any student or anyone looking

to potentially take their passion of making something, making content, being

creatively driven to produce a product and seeing the gaming space as a whole

as a massive potential and possibility.

Yeah, I wanna kind of bring it back because I bet you, you and I could

talk about gaming in general for

for hours.

for

What kind of videos do you make?

And not only what kind of videos do you make, but what kind of specific jobs and

roles does it take to make those videos?

Sure.

I'll back up.

Just so I can explain this in that my personal path was from Grand

Valley, I was a student there.

I made incredible memories there.

Lifelong friendships.

My primary writing partner and I both went to Grand Valley together.

We are still very strong.

In fact, he just flew out to California for a show I'm on right now, and so

that was a great sort of a training time and onboarding time and time to develop

my personal style and craft, right?

And then, my first move, basically five days out of graduating, I

flew to California like a very, wide-eyed, very innocent little puppy.

And came out here.

Really, I knew no one, had no real contacts in the industry and basically

had to try to figure out how to navigate this space and whatnot.

So I, my path was a very traditional one.

I worked in TV and movies and commercials and, those are sort of the

three big sectors, I guess if you're gonna come out to California, right?

Normally you're bouncing between these things and they all come

with their benefits and drop offs.

And I did that for over a decade and really cut my teeth on just

pure production at every level.

Eventually, I got to a point in my career where I moved slightly more over into

writing and worked to develop that, like I said, along with Josh Hutchins, who

also graduated from Grand Valley with me.

And we became writers who had to then sort of start over in

the career and try to work up a different ladder on that side right?

And we eventually got into writers' rooms, worked on various projects, whatnot.

My first foray into gaming in the gaming space happened because

Nintendo at the time, this was just pre the launch of the first Switch.

So Switch one.

I know we're on Switch two for everybody, but,

I'm still at one, at heart.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

So before the Switch, I got brought in to help Nintendo create a show to

grow a brand new channel that they were trying to launch on YouTube.

And so they needed content and I built out a whole plan with,

different this that and the other.

We launched and I ran three seasons of a show, which, throughout that, they brought

me on as a producer because what I wrote, the people who were pure producers and

production people didn't necessarily know how to perfectly translate the writing

to action because they weren't gamers.

They didn't know the source material, and I did.

So I stepped into producing.

I produced multiple seasons of a show for Nintendo right?

And that was my first official , step from what you'd call traditional Hollywood

industry into the gaming industry.

And this was around the time where things were really moving in Hollywood.

The industry was starting to really get hit by a bubble and so a lot of

productions were going down, but a lot of gaming was coming in to fill those gaps.

So it was an interesting time.

Places that had traditionally been studios for years and years and

years we're now becoming little eSports hubs and gaming and whatnot.

And so.

I was amazed at how one-to-one, my skillset from creating content and being

a producer and writer and just creating media immediately translated into the

gaming space, which I had never considered from a professional level before that,

I just sort of found my way into it.

What I think that immediately taught me is like this is a massive side of the

industry of just pure media creation that not only I'm sure did I not think

of, but you know, man, it be cool to explain to the next generation stepping

into the media side of things like, "Hey, this is a very exciting, very quickly

growing sector that you can immediately find some work in", especially because

the traditional side was seeing a taper and a sort of a downturn in jobs, right?

Television, less and less movies, less and less.

And so, especially with the streamer wars and all that kind of stuff going on

at the time you know, I, I think it was very natural to now find those moments.

So coming back to the, I think the heart of your question, like what kind

of jobs are there, there is literally every job that one used to be able to

find in more of a traditional media and Hollywood set over on the gaming space.

There are camera operators, there's writers, there's directors, there's

producers, there's prop makers, there's graphic designers, editors,

sound designers, like literally, the gaming side has all of that as well.

And I would say, of course it depends year to year, whatnot, but the amount

of possibilities there is actually encouraging when you look at maybe the

rest of the industry and seeing the numbers of where those jobs used to be,

and maybe they are now ? So, I would say if a student who is looking to hopefully

obtain a job within the creative arts, visual media and whatnot, the gaming space

is a, I think, a great place to consider

For sure.

I was surprised at how many jobs were open in terms of gaming.

'Cause I think when we think of gaming, we think of it as just a one off hobby

and that you can't really make a job

Sure.

Yeah.

come from the generation, especially who growing up,

everybody wants to be a YouTuber.

That's, that's all we wanna be.

YouTuber, Twitch streamer, content creator, and now, now we see that that

space has been oversaturated a lot.

And that's not really obtainable for a lot of people.

Even, somebody like me or you who have an immense passion for video work and

gaming, it's just, it's nearly impossible.

But you know, when you step into the professional broadcasting space

and still get to be around gaming.

Like I'm at all, when I walk into a production room to do a

stream and I set everything up.

I'm doing everything, setting, lighting, setting up the set, miking

everybody up, checking our softwares.

And now I just, I watch video games.

That's what I do all day.

And that's amazing for somebody who loves games and I'm sure you can relate to that.

Mm-hmm.

I wanna talk about the types of content a little bit more.

You mentioned a couple of shows, the show that you worked on for Nintendo.

I'm sure people would be interested in hearing like,

what kind of show that means.

I think people are very into specific genres, specific types

of writing or types of films.

Just what kind of content is out there

for

people who wanna go into the space?

Sure.

Okay, so forms of content, starting with probably the largest, bucket, if you

will, of, what's out there is normally going to be on the commercial side of

the industry one way or the other, right?

There is a massive amount of brands and developers and people who basically want

to leverage the passion point of gaming and the culture of gaming in order to

ultimately get the attention one way or the other, of the audience, right?

So there is a plethora of jobs, as far as writing and conceptual, storyboard artists

or whatnot that I work with every day in order to ultimately take a need, we'll

just chalk it up to say a commercial need one way or the other, and create media

around trying to naturally or as naturally as you can, bring that commercial need

into a space like this and make it feel as authentic as possible, right?

There's certainly people who have failed at doing that and failed

at it pretty spectacularly.

But then there's those who, what I feel and what my company's won many

awards on and what we're known for is trying to make it so that if a brand

comes into this space and wants to, form hopefully a lasting relationship

with this audience, that what we do is, to the audience's perspective, is an

opportunity they wouldn't have gotten, had that brand not come into the space.

The types of roles and the things that one can do even from a writing standpoint or

an individual craft standpoint, whether it's editing, sound design, whatever.

There's that commercial edge to the gaming side that is probably the largest

bucket that you can find yourself participating in one way or the other.

Even the show I did for Nintendo, we got to do three seasons,

it was absolutely a blast.

I loved it.

In the end there is a commercial slant to everything, right?

Like no brand out there, I don't care who you are, puts out content

just from the goodness of their heart because they just want to entertain.

It's always like, Hey, remember me, look at me, follow me,

like me, all that kinda stuff.

So, there's always that, right?

But it is still something that I think needs skilled individuals to

figure out concept through, understand the audience, and bring all these

skills together in order to make a product that ultimately people enjoy.

And then, you know, you can see things happen.

when you say, I make a show for Nintendo,

What is that show?

Is it something like, are you familiar with Arcane?

very familiar.

I am sure you are.

Know, I know some of the, the

bad question.

Do you actually?

We'll talk about that later.

that

I'm a massive fan.

But like, is that the show you've been, is it a show or is it like,

are we talking, showing off different parts of a game?

Are we talking, you

Sure.

For Nintendo, again, this was, oh gosh, 12 years ago or whatever, this

was a show that they were doing to launch their new YouTube channel.

So it was more for entertainment, let's put it that way.

The goal was, yes, it was Nintendo.

They wanted to use it as a platform to talk about their latest and greatest

games and this and that and the other, but we had a lot of creative freedom

to try to bring kids and families back, week after week, in order to

experience the fun that we were having.

So we developed a ton of just silly things and whatnot.

I remember one night we were up till 4:00 AM gluing tacos to a cardboard

castle just for a joke that I wrote.

And it was, I still, I always talk about that night of like, sometimes you're like.

"Why is this a real career?" I wrote a joke and I wanted to see it through,

and so I literally stayed up with the production team to try to figure out

how to glue tacos to a, cardboard in order to break it the next day on set.

You know, it's just, it's one of those things.

So it was not like Arcane, what I'd say is, on the Netflix side is, you

know, purely story driven entertainment that serves a specific function.

This was not that, per se, but this was still three, I think three and

a half seasons of entertainment for entertainment's sake that had the roots

in some form of still commercial brand equity, trying to get out in the space

and make a relationship with the audience.

We're taking a short break to tell you about the Dirk Koning

Memorial Film and Video scholarship.

Here's Gretchen Vinnedge remembering Dirk Koning.

The Koning Scholarship enables students to get that kind of an education, to be

a good filmmaker, to be able to express their voice and to continue Dirk's dream.

For more information, and to donate to the scholarship, visit

the link in the description.

Now, back to the show.

We're talking more of in the realm of like, I don't wanna say content creation

'cause it is still a show, but trying to mimic the same energy as traditional

gaming content, YouTube content.

Yeah.

I think this was, yeah, this was still early enough in the YouTube sphere

that I don't think we were necessarily competing super hard to emulate.

It was still everyone kind of just doing what they thought was fun to do.

But yes, in essence was long form YouTube content at that time.

Yeah.

It's definitely evolved over time, is that kind of how we're still looking,

is that what we're going towards?

Is still that YouTube esque content style?

Or are we trying to switch more to something that's more story

driven, like, like Arcane?

Do you mean as an industry as a whole?

Yeah, I guess you can answer personally for your company.

Or as an industry.

Oh.

And for my company that, yeah, my company personally still works heavily

on both the media and marketing side.

I'm in the middle of a another different show.

It's more of a tabletop RPG show that we're halfway through production

right now called Rigamarole.

Super fun.

Really, really, a great project to be a part of.

So that is just because we loved the concept.

We wanted to do something and put it out there.

So I'm the showrunner on that, and we're in the thick of that production right now.

But what I'd say is the company's sort of bread and butter exists on the media

and marketing side of the gaming space.

So there are people who wanna come and they may want what they c onsider to be

a show or long form content, something that is consumable from the audience

standpoint, from a gamer standpoint and mindset, and making sure that what they're

putting out there really resonates.

And that's how I always look at everything we do, especially on

the marketing side of my company.

Putting the media side aside for a second, but I kind of have these three

golden rules that my entire team, the creative team, the production team, the

post-production team, is everything we do has to fall and connect with these rules.

The first one is we have to find the fun no matter what it is.

I've been on different panels and whatnot where I've freely given these rules,

but I genuinely believe this is how you win the audience in the end, is you

have to find the fun, whatever it is.

Gaming at its heart is fun.

It is something we do for leisure.

It's something we do to forget the world's problems.

It's something we do to connect with people.

It fulfills a creative need.

It gets your brain going and thinking about the worlds and the

characters you're interacting with.

So it's a inherently fun space, and anything that goes into that and activates

the audience and looks to capture their attention should be equally fun.

The second rule is that you have to know the audience.

The audiences who will show up and really consume Sims content is

factually different than those who are showing up to watch Call of Duty.

Like it's, they're very different audiences, and you

need to treat them as such.

And to do that, you need to research them.

You need to understand them, you need to be in those communities.

And so the creatives on my team, their number one thing is they need to dive

into those communities and make sure they understand what they want so we

can ultimately not just meet them, but supersede those expectations.

And the third one is you gotta make it memorable, right?

If you're not trying to be talkable or push the limit or do something out of the

ordinary, it's sort of like, well, what are you doing in the first place, right?

Especially from a marketing standpoint.

So if it passes those three things, then as a company by and large,

that's what we're all about.

And that goes as far as working with massive clients on the pure marketing side

to also do, campaigns, global campaigns, nationwide campaigns or whatnot that are

targeting the gaming audience and mindset.

I'll give you an example.

One of my absolute favorite ones, we did a, just such a fun campaign with

Old Spice a couple seasons back where they're really going after the demo they

wanted to go after they targeted someone in the space that they thought would

really align with their, target demo.

And so we worked along with a content creator named SypherPK,

who, is really known for Fortnite lovely, lovely individual.

And my team created the idea of instead of just handing him product and,

having him do an ad read, why don't we do something that, again, it's that

third golden rule of mine is like, you gotta do something memorable.

And so I, came up with the concept of, well, what if we flew him to California?

He's not based here, but what if we flew him and I recreated his gaming setup in a

studio here locally, and I mean recreated like piece for piece, object for object.

We recreated it all and we created it to be a breakaway wall.

In which we could do a stunt live during one of his broadcasts.

And so, you know, we had this moment in which we introduced a

character that represented sort of odor, like body odor in essence.

Sam Forbes, lovely, lovely, uh, character actor and improv actor.

And so while gamers are showing up to his stream and participating the way

they normally would, suddenly somebody kind of weasels in the background

and starts messing with stuff and all of a sudden you, you create

that like big question mark moment.

Like, what's going on?

This isn't normal.

Like what, what are we doing?

What is this?

And so, we're gauging that we have all these stunts and

tricks and things we're doing.

And eventually when we've kind of hit that fever pitch of the audience

just being like, what is happening?

We blast through a wall with, at that time, the product's mascot, which is

this eagle, we blast through the wall and this eagle tackles this character,

this odor character, and takes him out.

Like, to be there live and watch that moment happen and watch the audience

react, and even those who maybe came in after that moment and was

like, yo, what happened to his wall?

Like he has a hole through the wall.

You know, like, We created scenery behind the wall, so it looked like the living

room it was just such a fun campaign and, everyone who got to be a part of it, who

saw clips of it or whatever, that was a moment that I think was, that's exactly

the heart of what we try to do is if we're gonna bring something commercial in this

space, we wanna do it in such a way where the audience is going to be happy we're

there and get something unique and make a moment out of it that, that is fun.

And then obviously buys the brand a lot of goodwill, and the fact that they're

willing to, to go that far and meet the audience where they're at, right?

So that gives you a well-rounded picture.

of, you know, We've done everything from, from Yeah.

The pure commercial and campaigns to creating and looking for ways to create

long form, short form, everything from socials, TikTok, the gamut.

Yeah, as soon as you said that, I'm like, that is such a 2010 to 2020.

YouTube gamer aesthetic,

streaming environment

aesthetic that you've perfectly captured and

turned into an ad.

To me, that tells me what your content is.

You are basically creating advertisements for brands who are not necessarily in the

gaming space, but wanna sell to gamers.

Yeah, basically non-endemic brands, so things that might be

completely outside of gaming, right?

If your endemic brands are keyboard makers and developers and headset and

mouse brands that are naturally already targeting gamers because their product

is obviously very inherent to gaming.

To your non-endemic brands, things like Old Spice or the Olympics,

something outside of the space that is looking to come into it in

order to reach a new generation, a new audience, and grow ultimately.

And then you did touch on a little bit, the parts of your job that are not

necessarily advertising, like you said it was, there's always a commercial edge to

everything

we

did.

Sure.

Commercials keep the lights on, to be honest.

Exactly, exactly.

But you do things that are not pure advertisement, like you said, the

RPG type show that you were doing.

We're running the show just because we're passionate about it.

We love the idea, we love, TTRPGs and so we developed a show called

Rigamarole that we're in the middle of production right now on, and

two episodes have already aired.

Another one airs actually tonight at seven o'clock.

We do a lot, and we have a lot of touch points, but I think

it just shows how versatile.

the space itself can be, how interesting and wide range this audience is, and

how many ways you can really reach them.

Yeah.

I think what a lot of people are interested in is, okay, I might

like gaming, but is this the type of content that I actually want to make?

Right?

So like say somebody did wanna do that, now how do we go from a degree

in college to this kind of job?

'Cause I'm sure it is not the same path that

you described Sure.

yeah.

I get taken out to many a coffee asking, Hey, how do I get in the industry?

What do I do?

What do I tell my kid?

Or, if they're.

right at the edge of entering it themselves and wanna

ask a lot of questions.

So, I would say, any creative industry is gonna be a challenge

to enter and to succeed in.

That's just the reality of something that tends to grab the attention of a

lot of people, because, especially on the outside, it looks fun and therefore

draws a lot of immediate attention.

The truth is today, if you were to look for a job, whether it be gaming

specific type job, even if it's on the media side, or more of a traditional

Hollywood style job, the truth is, is that there is not any one way to

go about it, so you have to always approach it as many ways as possible.

You're gonna want to try to connect with as many people as you can.

You're gonna try to reach out through all of the digital means, whether it be

LinkedIn, finding them online, emailing them if you can find a workable email.

The more angles you have in order to approach someone and let them know you're

interested, is always gonna be better on the side of the one looking for the job.

I have personally hired many people because they sought me out

and I didn't know they were there

. And then the right person approached me and looking into them and looking at their

skillset, I was like you're my guy, right?

So there's a variety of ways to go about it, job boards and whatnot for sure.

But I find trying to reach out directly to the person who might be in charge of

any one department you would be the most interested in, and introducing yourself

and showcasing any work you may have.

But being proactive in as many ways as you can is always gonna be, I

think, your number one way to try to break into the ground floor of any

one industry on the creative side.

And it almost doesn't matter what side of the industry.

It could be as big as working at Netflix to Blizzard to working

for individual content creators who have grown their own teams.

There's many creators who have more than 50 employees just to keep their

own channels up and running, right?

And so all of those are great options and possibilities.

And what kind of work do you think that the people specifically in

the eSports space are looking for?

Is it the same as film where they want resume, demo reel

portfolios?

What are we looking for?

I think it varies to a degree.

This is always one of those areas where the gut instinct is always to say,

yeah, you wanna have all those things.

You wanna have reels, you wanna have this, that, the other, I have never--

I need to be careful with my words 'cause I wanna make sure this is right.

I have never landed a job because of a reel or a resume.

In fact, I think, and I could be wrong here, so don't hold me 100% to this,

but I think in my entire career, I was only asked for a resume I believe once.

So much of it came from word of mouth of my work ethic and my ability to

basically be incredibly hungry to learn and honeable, quickly, learn

the things that I don't know about any job as I keep stepping up through my

career so that I can quickly figure it out and then ideally become master

of that until you keep moving up just outside where you're comfortable, right?

Man, early on, I got honestly, most of my jobs simply because I had what they

chalked up to be a "Midwest mentality", which, normally just meant I was the guy

that would be willing to put in the work.

My goal was to show up, before everyone and Yeah, exactly,

and leave after everyone.

So, a good work ethic is absolutely something that I think, especially

in an industry that becomes more and more and more picky and choosy.

That is certainly, I think, a big factor.

Now, I say that all not trying to dissuade someone from having a

amazing body of work to show, right?

Because I think that that's coupled with the number one thing I would tell

any student, Grand Valley or otherwise, and have many times, is that if you

are looking to get into a creative art and you are not actively creating

art right now, then you're sort of asking for very uphill battle, right?

I think there's sort of a falsity of thinking, "Hey, I'm just going to think

about and internalize what it would be like to work in a cool field without

actually starting the groundwork now." And, you know, in today's day and age

where you can pretty much create just as compelling content with a few friends,

your phone, and maybe a mic so that your audio goes up just a little bit.

You really have such amazing tools at your disposal now that, if you're

not using them, you really are doing yourself sort of a disservice.

Because when you get to that spot, you get to that job and you're asked

to do something, Hey, I need you to, if it's post-production, I need

you to come in and start compositing this and that and the other.

You've never done that before, right?

Like your learning curve just, it really takes you out of the

running much earlier in the process.

So, whether it's writing, whether it's camera work, whether it's, pure

creatives, I've brought up and trained many, just purely in the creative space

where their entire job was to come up with good ideas and then bounce

them off and mold them and whatnot.

And it's like, if you're not actively doing that stuff now, then I really do

think that you got quite the challenge to enter a increasingly competitive space.

And so that's what I would suggest of anyone.

Even if the chances of let's call it riding the organic algorithm of

YouTube is not your main desire, the amount of effort you can put into

still creating content and putting it out there and learning the ropes

of what the digital space has to offer watching your own craft become

something unique to you and your voice.

I think that you're missing the opportunity that you

have during this time.

Yeah, for sure.

Just to recap all of that, it's good to have those key things.

Good to have a resume, a demo reel, a portfolio, because it means you're

working on it, you're working towards

that

you

really like.

Yeah

I don't, know, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the goal isn't to,

talked about making connections, right?

And that's how you get a job in this industry.

The goal isn't to reach out and shove all of that

their face

Right.

Yeah.

One of the best ways to, I would say meet, even have connections now is there's so

many ways to literally digitally connect with people and then start communicating

with them, whether it's finding someone in within the industry who you're like, "that

would be the job I would want to have."

It's like, great, well connect with them, whether through a variety of

different ways to connect, see if you can reach out, ping them, ask to see

if they can, you can take a half hour zoom meeting to ask them questions.

Or if you're local, take 'em to coffee or that kind of thing.

You'd be surprised at how often those things pan out to be yeses and "yeah,

sure, why not?" Or you know, at least some chats where eventually, when those

people or their companies are looking to hire whatever, all of a sudden you pop

up in their brains of going, Hey, there's somebody who has been communicating

with me a lot about this, actually.

That is something that is certainly, whether you're a freshman at GVSU

and you know you are industry bound one way or the other, gaming or

otherwise, this is the time I think to absolutely start doing that.

Yeah, for sure.

Making connections with

people instead of using them as a one stop shop for a "Gimme a job."

Right, right.

Absolutely.

Because those come, I mean, especially in the age of AI where, I wake up

to probably, I don't know, 75 emails every day that are all auto generated

asking me for one thing or another.

So, start most of my days just deleting a million emails just so I

can get to the ones that are actually business related and important.

And so I think developing even now, over time, some kind of

communication, with people of industry is only gonna serve down the road.

if anything, it'll also teach you just how to communicate with people and

etiquette of writing and communicating.

Yeah,

So, you know,

going back to experiences that we have at Grand Valley to build that

rapport and build that portfolio and start working on your career.

We have an eSports program now, like I mentioned before,

but we didn't, I don't think

you guys

had one when you were going to school.

do I wish you did.

I'm sure you would've absolutely loved it.

We would love to have you back.

what kind of experiences did you grab from Grand Valley when you

went to school here to help shape

you

into the career you are now?

Sure.

Okay, so my time at Grand Valley was great and it was great, partly

because of the class that I was in and the connections I made to that class

that continued on into the future and ultimately helped a lot of my career.

I met, literally became a lifelong best friend of Josh Hutchins.

He and I went through many classes together and when we

graduated, we stayed connected.

I moved out to Hollywood, and he followed right behind and our careers

continued to work off each other.

So, when it came to the experiences that we basically built on, a lot

of those came back down to our days at Grand Valley where it was

figuring things out together, right?

It was renting equipment and, taking it across state and experimenting, shooting

ice that had formed in Port Huron and taking cameras down these ice trenches as

if it was like, the battle of Hoth right?

Or all the late nights going through, back then it was CD racks, in the library

trying to find the exact right music for something or trying to finagle the

janitors to let us into the equipment room when we, you know, hadn't reserved

something so we could potentially still fiddle with a few cameras before

our big shoot and that kinda stuff.

So there was absolutely wonderful moments and memories that we made, but really

what we were making is friendship and partnerships, and I can't say enough to

any student there that might be listening to this or any of these podcasts . This

is your time to try to develop or forge some relationships with people that you

can ultimately move forward in an industry that is so relationally bound, right?

And I had to learn this early on, there's some things that you have to kind of

figure out how you ultimately sharpen each other rather than dull each other, right?

But there are moments that I can absolutely look back to and be

like, yes, had we not tackled this together, we wouldn't have developed

the skills that we use every day.

Everything from figuring out how our own comedic style is, our

writing style, how we approached looking at contracts together.

There's so many things that we learned as firsts, especially back

in our days at Grand Valley, that I wouldn't have traded for the world.

And that's what I think is, I hope, that any students that are currently

there and studying and practicing and whatnot is like, use this time to forge

good partnerships and try to carry those forward into an industry that ultimately

relies on strong partnerships, right?

I would say my time there certainly, that is one of the,

key and most valuable takeaways.

I also absolutely loved, and I hope it's still this way, I don't know for sure,

but is the amount of support that at least our class, was given by the staff and

the program to get our hands on equipment and get our, class in front of working

professionals as much as humanly possible.

One of the best pieces of.

advice we ever got as a class was from Jack Anderson, who

was a visiting cinematographer for one of our summer films.

And he straight up looked the class in the eye and said, " If

there's any other industry you can happily do, please go do that.

This industry is not for everyone." So, I would say, this is a true statement

that I've really seen play out throughout my career, is that the creative arts,

the industry, whether it be gaming, Hollywood, whatever, is not for everyone.

In the end of the day, it might look fun from afar, but it is work

and it is long hours, and it is, sometimes very hard situations.

And so if you are.

only driven by the idea of this and whatnot, then you're probably made for it.

Pursue it with all of your ability and passion, right?

But if you're on the fence and you're like, "I don't know, I could also

see myself being whatever, a teacher, a nurse, a, this, that, the other,"

like, great, go do that thing.

It's a serious piece of information and advice you should really consider.

Yeah, yeah.

We still have a great support system in the film and video program.

I don't know how many times that I've gotten advice that was not necessarily

related to class from professors.

Sometimes the professors just in the program that I

even had yet

and don't really know, but they're always, willing to help.

Well, thank you for taking the time to talk with us about eSports, especially

since it's a very niche topic that we hope will grow only in time.

And if nothing else, I hope this encourages people to, stop by the

eSports club and chat with us.

There you go.

I hope they do.

Sam.

Had you been there, back in the day, I absolutely would've

been a part of the club.

I think it would've been a really great, experience and honestly may

have just changed the very trajectory that my own career took off..

And so I'm glad you're there and I'm glad that you're gonna leave

a legacy behind and, ultimately, change the school moving forward.

Oh yeah, we're always looking for help.

We're always looking for people who just want production experience.

And if they don't like eSports, you know, there is a lot of things

I think apply to the industry as a whole, so I'm sure they'll get

something out of it either way.

Again, thank you for talking to us and this has been another

episode of

of Alumni Live.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thanks, Sam.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Alumni Live: The Podcast.

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