Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sydney K.. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Sydney with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
That’s a great question. I think my work ethic was instilled in me from a young age from my mother, who believed and still believes that education and learning are important and essential to progressing in life. I remember her always saying that learning and trying new things were fundamental, and above all, while I didn’t have to ‘like’ everything I learned or tried, I did have to finish it. I believe this is where my work ethic started.
Always finish what you start – to the best of your ability. Learning this lesson young in combination with the importance of education (and where a good education can lead to) is what drove me to be an overachiever in many ways. I developed and still keep the notion that smart is sexy, as well as the classic adage that knowledge is, in fact, power. With that in mind, I approached school, college, and work with a bullish force and found excitement and purpose in getting stuff done and the achievements that went with it.
I love collecting achievements, be that projects or certifications. I think my work ethic both creates and comes from the process of working. Work gets me out of bed in the morning and keeps me up most of the night because it’s something I love to do as long as there is purpose and (hopefully) passion behind it. Purpose fuels the majority of my work ethic, as does passion. If there’s a reason to be doing something, I’ll do it better with that in mind. With school work, my purpose was to get into college, with college it was about learning what I would need for my future career and obtaining dual BAs. Over time I learned to get my passion as close to the purpose as possible, if not make them the same. I work best, as I think anyone would, on stuff that I love – stuff that I’m passionate about. Purpose doesn’t always imitate or reflect that but when it does, I’m at my most productive no matter what’s happening around me.
I am privileged enough to have found a few purposes and passions across a variety of different mediums. At the core of it, I love good story telling – both in creating it and experiencing it. I love literature, I love film, and I love the evolution of those mediums into modern means such as video games. Laying bare the bones of what fashions a narrative is incredible, and my favorite part is seeing the different ways in which that narrative can come to life via writing on a page or something dynamic such as filmmaking or video game creation.
So far in my career I’ve focused on the writing, through scripts and screenplays, and filmmaking, bringing those writings to life on screen. However, as writing is improved by reading and experiencing good writing, so too is story telling by experiencing stories told through different channels (pun intended). My most recent endeavor is becoming a Creator on YouTube via my gaming channel: Rickety Games. Starting this channel came from a variety of purposes: from my desire to be a YouTuber (like the ones I grew up on and still watch) to diversifying my income, and last but most importantly my love for video games and the stories and characters that live in them. The desire to do it for myself came from a childhood dream to be a part of the community that brought me so much joy, comfort and (good) distraction across my life. I believe games are a modern source of some truly original stories, and you don’t have to be a gamer to experience them. My film work has taken quite a lot of time so I got used to just watching other people play them or watching the game “movie” versions on YouTube. While watching games is great, it’s far more immersive to play them so I thought “why not?” and set about rearranging my schedule to fit this project in for myself. It took me about a year, but my passion for it fueled the work needed to make time, to set a schedule and -now- to stick to it.
To be honest, I’ve spent so much time working on a variety of amazing projects across my film career so far but over the years as the career becomes the grind, that new spark of passion starts to fade. I love my career so the purpose is still there (which is also why I won’t quit the film industry) but it hasn’t brought me a lot of joy lately – and that’s okay. Everyday life isn’t meant to be, and jobs (even if you love them) are still jobs at the end of the day. My drive to rise through the ranks of filmmaking, to have more and more projects in larger and larger scales, keeps me going, but I wanted something else to focus on, something that’s different, and also just for me.
My ambition fuels itself in that regard and I find that my work ethic thrives on those goals and achievements. Looking back on all the films I’ve made, helped to make, places I’ve been or games I’ve played however public or not gives me a sense of pride that also keeps me going. I look forward to learning more and trying more, as my career leads the way. I’m interested in producing for video games and getting involved in their creation, in addition to the future film projects I have lined up. It goes back to the lesson of trying new things, and I often find that within my own life and career choices, many of them are connected in one way or another. Skills I learn here, I can apply there and so on. This mindset helps my work ethic because it feels like nothing is ever a waste of time. At the end of the day, work will always be work and while I used to believe in the adage “find something you love to do and you’ll never work a day in your life,” I feel like it’s not entirely true. I love what I do but it all takes a lot of work. I work in the day on movies and television, and work at night on recording and editing games. My work ethic has always been strong and I’m energized by it far more than what any caffeinated drink can do for me. It comes from pride, from purpose, from passion and a thirst to always be learning and striving for something. I believe anyone can do that but you have to find the right combination of attributes and wants that do it for you.
Being productive has always been a goal for me, and as I mentioned before everything is cyclical. I’m always thrilled to find the next project, meet new people in the process and learn new information and skills. My work ethic both creates and comes from that process, and at the end of the day, I’m happy to have found a corner of the world I can call mine where all my interests and ambitions can work together. It’s not always like that for everyone but it’s something I’m proud of, something I’ve worked hard to achieve and continue to strive for.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Sounds good – Professionally, I’m ‘Sydney K.’ and I’m first and foremost a producer and editor from Los Angeles, most known for producing and editing the Crackle Original Reality TV Series, “Men of West Hollywood.”
As a producer, apart from “Men of West Hollywood,” I produced Ken Shinozaki’s “Intelligentia,” a sci-fi short featured on the sci-fi hit YouTube channel DUST; and am in the final stages for post production for two feature films, “Gold Mine” and “Shifter,” both created and produced by Matthew Marder, and also produced by Adam Chase Cohen.
As an editor, I’m most known for the previously mentioned 10-episode reality series, “Men of West Hollywood” (along with its advertising/social media campaign videos), as well as various social media projects and commercials. I’ve been working on a lot of materials under a NDA for Get Me Out Productions that range from the Docu-Reality genre to True Crime and Documentary genres. I also edit all my own YouTube videos for my channel and have edited about 184 long form (ranging from 30 mins to 2 hrs) videos in the 7 months since I started.
My Youtube channel is my latest endeavor, under the name Rickety Games, which is a subsidiary of my film production company, Rickety Wheels Productions, where I create and develop scripted entertainment and radio-narratives. This is my other main focus and a personal project, playing “Let’s Plays” of new and favorite video games. I’m particularly proud of this channel, as I feel like I’ve achieved a lot in a short amount of time. Within 7 months, I’ve put out almost 300 videos, over 300 shorts, achieved over 1K subscribers and got monetized! It’s not something I ever thought I would do, but have always admired from afar, as an avid watcher, and I’m thankful, grateful and thrilled to be a part of it, actually doing it.
I like to keep my “brand” and my projects straightforward – what you see is what you get. I’m here to make films, share my favorite games with the world and maybe even get into game creation. I love the wide variety of people I work with and get to meet, and am excited by the many possibilities for all of the on going projects I have.
You ask about some newsworthy events as well: I’m looking to create a small merch line and set up ad rev for the channel, and in bigger news, I’m looking forward to the upcoming Premieres of both of those incredible features. I can’t share much about a lot of the unscripted projects but we are close to a few sales for some fabulous projects, and I’m looking very forward to getting those green-lit and onto a network!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Three skills, qualities or areas of knowledge – that is hard to narrow down to what was impactful, but I can start with some advice and work backwards from there.
I think my overall advice would be to find a way to do what you want, find time between jobs and personal time because if it’s something you really want to do, getting started on any scale you can is worth it. Once you take that time and start to learn what you need to do, the process of it – the whole thing becomes easier to schedule and keep going. By getting started, you get a taste of what you’re looking for and if it’s really something you want.
More specifically, within film – I would say get on sets. Learn the business and meet people. I know this sounds pretty generic but it really is true. Networking really does get you far and who you know definitely matters, even just tangentially. All this is to say that it’s cyclical. Getting on sets leads to more sets, how you meet people is how you are remembered and how you get known. So as I was starting out as a production assistant, I got opportunities from moments that were plucked from where I helped with on set. I helped the set designer and someone later from that set said “hey, I’m doing a short film on my own and I noticed you were helping the set designer. Would you be a set designer for me?” Now keep in mind this was a small scale film I was on and I was new. The point stands for larger sets to a degree but of course, only to a degree. Don’t get on larger scale sets and ask for jobs, do good work and get noticed for doing it. Exemplary and memorable work will get you rehired. It’s little things and anticipatory things. If they ask you to stock a fridge, make it the nicest stocked fridge ever – that kind of thing! I dived in about this with greater detail in a previous article you can find, but film is about getting the physical experience under your belt and then going from there. I really think everyone – even on the corporate end – should experience set and see how it works. It’s really hard work, long hours, and while it’s great, it’s just grueling. Understanding how much equipment weighs, how it works, how set locations affect your crew’s work, and how every single job on a set functions together is essential to running one. Knowing how others do their jobs so you can do yours better to help them is everything to me, especially as a producer.
Beyond that, it’s about listening and learning. It’s about preparing yourself for what you want. Get the skills that you need to do the jobs you want. You want to edit, learn editing. It sounds obvious but you’d be surprised how many people apply and join and have no idea what they’re getting into. If you’re serious about progressing then learn about what you want. The internet is a boundless resource!
Speaking of the internet — on the YouTube side, I think I’m a little early to be giving advice here since I just started but what’s been working for me is consistency and persistence. The thrill and excitement of actually doing YouTube as a Creator has energized me to work. People say work 9-to-5 and then work on your passion 5-to-9. I actually work on my passion from 6pm to often 2am or 3am. I’ll take some nights off to rest up, but when I’m motivated, I’m motivated. I’ve also set a grueling schedule for myself to post on YouTube everyday. It’s not, perhaps, the most realistic thing and I’ve eased up on being strict about it, but for me if I’m going to do something – I’m going to give it my all. I set hard bars for myself to get into the grind and figure out the problems fast. I can also (hopefully) achieve results fast. Lastly, I can also figure out if I even like it .. fast. I love YouTube. I should also mention that I was brought up with YouTube. I honestly watch it probably more than any TV show. It’s a dream I’ve long had and this pacing feeds that need to do what I feel I’ve missed out on all these years of just wondering about whether I should or shouldn’t have done it.
I also should say that all my years of watching helped educate me on how to do it, and when I got more serious about being a Creator I did more research into how it all worked from that perspective. My skills in film help me tremendously as well, so it doesn’t feel like such a leap. I think I chose a good year to start as well. It feels right even though I sorta rushed into it to meet a game release. Had I done it earlier in my life, I would’ve been too busy or too stressed and hated it. I think it’s important that this was a decision I made and had thought about for a long time. When I made the decision, I took a lot of time to figure out how to put it into the schedule I have. It took me a year to have “free time” in the evenings, I used to be so busy and didn’t really have time or motivation for something like this. So another part of the advice is to make time for what you want, dedicate a lot of time to actually doing it, and if you’re crazy like me, set a hard schedule so you get to know the ‘ins and outs’ quickly. I’ve only been doing YouTube for 7, almost 7.5 months, and I’ve already achieved over 1K subscribers and entered into the YouTube Partner Program (became monetized). You can do it, but you have to *actually* do it. Like all professions, it just takes real work and time.
I suppose returning to the first part of the question, the three qualities or skills that were most impactful to me would be persistence, consistency, and preparedness. In college, I went out of my way to learn how to physically shoot a movie, theory is nice but how does a set work? How does lighting work? How do you wrap a cable? How do all the set jobs work together to craft what you see in frame, on the screen? I worked on everything short film by short film from props to lighting to cinematography. I dove in full body and mind and immersed myself in what would make me most ready for when I got a real job in film outside the comfort ‘f**k up zone’ of my college. Same goes for YouTube, when I made the decision to join the Creator side, I already knew what I wanted to make once I decided on a topic. I had watched 26 years of YouTube. I’ve watched it damn near my whole life, seen all the changes, what I love in my favorite Creators, what was missing from them that I could maybe add. Knowing that made it easier to create it, all I had to learn how to do was the technical side. How do you record games? How do you record games *and* camera and microphone audio? What equipment do I need? As I mentioned, the leap to YouTube stuff was easier for me since I come from the film world. Cameras, lighting, storytelling, audio mixing, and editing, I know how to do that well. How to apply it to YouTube Let’s Play vs a film is what’s different, but those skills were much the same. I definitely had a boon there.
In both my professions, I’m persistent in doing what needs to be done. I don’t back away from projects, from work, or from the inevitable problems that come with it all. A lot of my recordings busted on the YouTube side. I can’t tell you how many times I recorded something and hit the wrong button and lost my audio, or the game crashed, or my computer crashed. I ran out of time to record something, or my main work got too much and I couldn’t record something. Those problems devastated me, but I didn’t give in. One the film side – don’t even get me started! Film has an endless amount of issues from lack of budget, lack of hands and help to difficult interpersonal relationships on set (a lot of egos), technical problems with equipment, location issues, safety issues – the works. There’s also the difficulty of just plain, long working hours from pre-production planning to production itself into post-production and the rush to get it done. There’s alway pressure coming from somewhere. I’m painting a dismal picture, but it’s just all to say that there’s always issues, and each set is unique with its own set of challenges to overcome. It’s a mix per set and always similar but different, but it’s no different, I would guess, than any other job with a lot of working parts. You can be on set with 12 people on a skeleton crew, scarily even less than that sometimes, or you could be on set with 60 or 100 people. There are many departments and they all have to be in sync to work for the movie. It’s rarely flawless, but it’s rewarding at the end of the day when you see the incredible art you were a part of making. You’ll make mistakes, people get heated in their decisions or lack of decisions, there’s always something, but nothing gets done if you don’t keep with it. So persistence is always key. Always keep going.
The last skill or quality, probably both, is consistency. Show up, work hard, do the actual work. A lot of people want to start something and then after a while when the ‘fun’ or the excitement of something new burns off, they slowly let it go. When obstacles hit, in come the excuses. You can’t do that. If you want it to work, you keep at it. With film, working with the same people helps, building a lingo between you all helps a lot. Carrying your skills and your vision and your talents from one set to the next helps you get known for skills, for whatever you bring to the table. For YouTube, your consistency in posting, your schedule, the type of videos you put out – that reliability helps draw people to you. They know what to expect, when to watch, and what they’ll get. If you’re all over the place and scattered, people aren’t sure if they can trust the content to come or not. Consistency in your performance both literally and figuratively – how you are and how you work; consistency in what you make; consistency in your continuance to do what you do, the word applies to how solid you are. With your schedule, consistency also builds habit, builds the idea into your life in a way that becomes a part of it. It’s like the gym or a hobby or new ways of living. It keeps you focused and keeps you straight-forward. A lot of things aren’t that complicated, they can be nuanced and as you go you have your own style, but from a technical standpoint, you know what to do – the problem for most people, I think, is actually doing it and sticking to it.
To develop these skills or qualities, to answer this last part of your question, really depends on how much you want what you’re going for. You want it, you’ll make it happen. If you love it, really love it, these obstacles won’t stop you and you’ll find a way to incorporate it into your life. I think preparedness comes first. Do your research – know what you are getting into. This will help pave the way for doing it. Then I would say persistence comes in: find a way to do what you want to, be that a hobby, a career, a life change. You want it, go get it. Hunt it down, find a way to get started. Once you start it, stay with it. If that’s a struggle, set a time frame for it. Do it for 6 months, 3 months, a year. Something that will give you ‘an end’ in sight to know you a) finished it or tried it and b) it takes the edge off ‘forever’ or ‘the rest of my life’ if you don’t like it. The timeline gives you an out without taking away the drive to try it. Consistency will build your skills, your schedule, and your brand. Persistence will keep you going. Preparedness will make sure you are equipped to do so. With those skills and qualities (because they’re honestly both), you can do anything you set your mind to. So I encourage you to chase that extra something. The worst thing that can happen is you don’t like it, but at least you tried it, gave it your all, and got an honest opinion out of it. The best part is if that happens, you can move on to something else, knowing truly you got your answer about it, or maybe the opposite happens: you loved it and you found a new passion, a new career, a new you.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m always looking for new people to work with, new opportunities to work and new projects to work on – be that movies or tv shows or games. On the film side I would love to work with more people, would love more amazing projects to work on. I’d love to get back to my roots in the horror genre. I’ve taken an extensive 180 to the reality world, haha. I love it and I do both scripted and unscripted projects, but I’m looking for my next scripted project at this moment. I’ve got two features that are both almost done with post production, to be released hopefully next year, and I’m beyond stoked for that, but also ready for the next one!
On the YouTube side, since I’m still so new, I’d love to get out there and do video collabs with Creators larger than me. I would love to meet more game developers and build relationships with them to play their games, to showcase that to the audience I do have. I’d obviously love to work with brands as well and do the brand deals I’ve heard so much about, haha.
People can find me across the internet. I’m Sydney K. professionally, my film-stagram is sydneykfilm as is my website: https://www.
On the YouTube side, I’m known as RicketyGames. You can find my email on the channel page, but it’s also sydney@
I think there’s so much more opportunity out there when people work together. I have a good friend, whom I work with in movies, and he always has a phrase that resonates with me: “we all rise together.” It’s such a good mentality to have because it’s true. With movies and television shows, it takes so many people from start to finish to make a quality project. From script revisions to casting, to audio and visual performance capture to editing to vfx to color grading and sound mixing, then packaging and marketing… There’s an unbelievable amount of stages a film or show goes through to be completed and you need amazing, skilled people to do it. Collaboration only helps projects become stronger. It makes visions bolder, adds new possibilities and outcomes, and helps shape a project into something much bigger than where it started. For me, knowing all those twists and turns, those additions or subtractions, what changed here or there – those are the memories that make me smile. In the end, it’s often so worth it and so rewarding and it brings you that much closer to the people you work with, and they often become not just skilled assets but actual and dear friends.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sydneykfilm.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sydneykfilm/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydneykfilm/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyp4MXkiazJ32dw5HP1xD9A
Image Credits
Gabrielle Sundberg, Keegan Kruse, Sydney K. (me)