The Invisible Mentor Interviews Alison Duke, Film Producer, Goldelox Productions

Mini Biography of Alison Duke – Your Invisible Mentor

Interviewee Name: Alison Duke, Film Producer
Company Name: Goldelox Productions
Website: http://www.alisonduke.com/

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Alison Duke: I was born in Canada after my parents moved from Guyana. I was the only girl in the family of four boys. I am a proud Canadian who makes films about social justice.

Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?

Alison Duke: Nothing typical actually for me. I run my own production company so right now I have three productions on the go. I’m in production on a documentary about abused women and their children going through a leadership training program which is run by Redwood Shelter in Toronto. I’m also developing a documentary on the criminalizing of women living with HIV for the Canadian HIV Network, and I have a couple other productions on the go as well. So from the time I wake up and actually do my walk, and ready to go, I look at my inbox to see emails coming in, and I’m on the go.

Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Alison Duke: Motivating myself is to love what I do. I really love being a producer and director. And even though some days I wake up feeling challenged I know this is what I am meant to do, and this is what I’m good at, what I excel at. So going out into the world and hearing other people’s stories, and documenting it and hearing how they have overcome obstacles is like a gift for me. I feel blessed that I’m able to do that. The reason I talked about me being the only girl in a family of boys is because when I was growing up I felt kind of marginalized all the time and being from an immigrant family that was on top of that. When I look at my job talking to different people who have had challenging lives and learning something from them, I think it just helps me as a person.

Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

Alison Duke: When I was growing up I became very shy. I don’t know if people know this but in the entertainment industry they think I’m an extrovert but I am a very shy person. Everything now is about branding yourself and telling people what you’re about and what you do and I avoided doing that for a really long time, just for the fear of doing that not knowing what to say. Even though I used to be a pundit on TV about social issues, I would never talk about myself, what I’m doing or my successes. So knowing what I now know I would have taken some courses on public speaking to come out of my shell. I didn’t know those kinds of things were available to people as you’re developing. Now I know, just being shy is not a big thing, but I could have done something about it earlier.

Avil Beckford: What’s the most important business or other discovery you’ve made in the past year?

Alison Duke: I think the personal is tied to the business. I discovered that I could do a lot more than I thought I could. I even discovered that I was more creative than I thought I was. Instead of hiring other people to do editing I’m doing it myself. I never used to edit any of my projects. I used to hire people to do that because I just thought you had to be really creative, you needed to be really technical, you needed to have all this experience. And then I took a few courses and I learned how to edit and by editing in-house I’m saving 20 to 30 percent on my budgets.

So the discovery of trying to learn something new, that I can do it, helped me and helped my business.

Avil Beckford: What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

Alison Duke:

The biggest threat – and you wouldn’t believe it’s a threat because it’s supposed to be something that’s supporting my industry – is technology because people all of a sudden are expecting faster production and delivery times, and bigger production for less money. Because of that, the price of labour and other services started to drop so the marketplace became saturated with people who can afford the technology because it was readily available and they can learn how to use it. What I have done, is try to stay ahead of the curve, always researching the technology, taking courses, workshops, learning how to use it and investing in it in my business, not being afraid of buying the equipment. I’ve been using them in my productions because at the end of the day if you’re not owning this equipment and using it then you’re spending a lot of money on either renting or you’re not keeping up with the competition. I choose not only to keep up with the competition but to be the competition so I have to embrace technology as much as I can.
The other threat to the business is that the funding sources have changed. There is a lot of convergence going on, on a larger level. You don’t know what broadcasters are going to merge with next. You are always starting again because the structure of the industry is changing so much, so for me I try to develop personal relationships. The people might move to different companies but I know who they are and people don’t change. So I develop personal relationships with people who work with broadcasters. You have to learn who is who in the industry and form relationships with them.
The third thing is I’m really cautious about growing too fast. I’ve already been a part of another production company, it was in the nineties, and we were a music video production company. We grew really fast and it seemed every six months we were moving to a bigger location. Now what I’m doing, I have a studio in my house and I have an editing suite and I have someone who works with me as a production/administrative assistant. I also interns come in to my home business. I really don’t want to grow too fast too soon. I want to keep things at a manageable level because when you grow too fast you have all this overhead. For me it’s more about the quality than the flash.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Alison Duke: I produce social justice documentaries. I tell stories about people who are trying to make the world a better place by their activism – by what they fight for. A lot of these people are faced with human rights violations because of who they love, what they do, so I’m telling the stories of those people and those communities. And that’s a very unique situation because I get to go in and see some of the issues that are facing this world today, and some of them are big issues. I was just in Uganda and I was capturing some of the activities of a transvestite activist from Uganda who was expelled and for the first time is going back to their country to do a workshop for the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite) community there. I get a really unique perspective on life and some people are so strong, that’s good to see and it motivates me to be a better person and to do whatever I can to help society.

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

Alison Duke: My biggest challenge was learning the industry and overcoming my shyness. Although I say you should get to know people in the industry, I was a very shy person for many years, and meeting people was excruciatingly painful. I would freeze up! I would literally freeze up and when it came to pitching ideas I would freeze up. What I did is I said, “You know what, the most scary thing is getting up in front of a group of people and talk,” so I started teaching. You would think that I would avoid that, but I just threw myself into teaching media, and that helped me to overcome some of the shyness. I learnt more about my profession, and how to talk about it, and it really shaped me, and how I am out in the community. So now I’m more outgoing, I’m not afraid to talk to people, and a lot of the people who I’ve mentored and talked to actually come up to me in some of these places.

Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Alison Duke: My big break came when I directed my first film, Raising Kane a rap documentary. I went to the National Film Board of Canada and pitched to them asking if they’d be interested in producing a documentary film about a Canadian Hip Hop group featuring my brother’s band, Citizen’s Kane. I didn’t hear anything from them and a month later and NFB producer Karen King – she is no longer there – called me back and presented me with a contract to produce the film. And that was my first big break and I have been making documentaries ever since.

Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

Alison Duke: My biggest failure was a film I made for a major broadcaster. I left my job as a producer for a syndicated television documentary show to direct a documentary that was commissioned for a major broadcaster. I went into it very naive. I thought the broadcaster wanted me to make a film that was from the point of view of the community as opposed to a film looking at the community from the outside in. I was young in my career and I had no idea what type of film they really wanted to make. They wanted something sensationalized and then I learned during the editing process that they were looking for something different from what I was looking at.

I learned that you have to speak up and you have to lay your agenda on the line when you are taking contracts, when you are negotiating. You have to let people know what kind of films, what kind of product you are going to make. What are they going to get from you? And let them know the things that you won’t do, and the things you don’t feel comfortable doing. That way down the line there are no surprises.

I think back when I was younger film maker, I was afraid to do that because I thought that I would lose the contract. Now it’s very apparent – it’s on my website, that this is the type of films that I make, this is what I do, there is no discrepancy when you hire me what you’re going to get. And you probably wouldn’t come to me if you wanted another type of product so that is another way to filter out those jobs, some of those clients who would come to you for something different than you are comfortable making or producing.

Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

Alison Duke: One of the toughest decisions I had to make was not talking to my dad. I stopped talking to my father. He was a very abusive person growing up and whenever I spoke to him it would just get me down. He’s now in a nursing home and I don’t visit him too often because he is very, very abusive. So I decided to take him in very small doses. Sometimes you just have to set boundaries and this is one of the times where I decided to set a really strong boundary and that’s helped me in other areas of my life. I don’t tolerate people who behave badly around me, people who are abusive or condescending, and whenever someone is like that around me I just think about my father. I wouldn’t tolerate that from my father so why am I going to tolerate that from this particular person. It was a hard decision, but I had to do it to preserve my own sanity. It was a tough decision because in society you are taught to respect your mother and father, and hold them in high regard but you have to preserve yourself first. And when you are in a relationship that brings you down, you have to take a look at that seriously and set boundaries because it affects you in other areas of your life.

Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Alison Duke:

Being the only girl showed me how to play with the boys, be competitive and I’ve learned how to have endurance through that experience, just being able to keep up with the boys.
Another event was when I was selected for an all star basketball team representing Canada. One summer we played in Scandinavia, Germany, Denmark, Amsterdam and it was my first glimpse of the world outside of North America. I just loved that experience, not just being able to play as a junior Canadian basketball all-star player, but just being able to travel. Now I travel constantly.
The third would be meeting my partner, she’s very supportive and a very grounding person. And that’s great for me, especially for someone who is in the entertainment industry and also an entrepreneur. So it’s also nice to have a person around you that is opposite to what your life is like. So having a good relationship is a key to my success. You get to practice all the stuff with your partner and also hear about yourself too. Sometimes people won’t tell you on the outside things that you are not doing well but your partner surely will.

Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Alison Duke: I think being inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame at the University of Windsor. I was inducted in 2009 and that was a culmination of all my years as an athlete, but I also played basketball. When I played with the boys that taught me how to play basketball, and I became a very persistent basketball player and I played in university and I was MVP (Most Valued Player) for the team many times and I was also captain of the team. Being inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame made me feel like my life as an athlete was growing up – everything in life was worth it. Sometimes people think that playing sports is a waste of time but I learnt so much and it was just great to see that that part of my life was acknowledged. I’ll never forget it.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Alison Duke: I had more mentors in sports than I did in the film industry and they were my coaches, teachers and some of the people who used to watch me play. And they really made me feel that I was accomplished, whenever you did something good or tried your best people commented, and that is always great. It’s great for your self-esteem, it’s motivational. Those same people, many of them I see in my film world or I see them when I’m doing different things around in Toronto. They are my Facebook friends and they also come out and watch my films, so my mentors have allowed me to believe that I can do things and that I’m good at what I do and that I’m accomplished. They pushed me to be the best that I could be, and encouraged me not to give up on myself.

Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Alison Duke: One message is that the universe has a special plan for me.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Alison Duke: The universe has a special plan for you and I think that is true for everyone. It is your job in life to find out what it is you are to do, and then do it well.

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Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that’s why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people.

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