Today we’d like to introduce you to Garret Ollish.
Hi Garret, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I never had any real career aspirations when I was kid. I wanted to be a magician, a master thief, a Jedi knight. I was obsessed with fantasy worlds and wanted to live in one. The older I became, the more I realized I didn’t just want to live in them, but I wanted to make them. I was 15 years old when I really learned about video production and filmmaking. That was the first time I realized I could make a living pursuing my passions.
I graduated from Cincinnati State with a 2-year audio/video production degree and immediately began working in the freelance commercial industry. I wanted to work for the best in my city, and that brought me to the doors of another Cincinnati production company, Lightborne. Over a many month internship, I learned what felt like lifetimes of knowledge about producing great commercials, both live-action and animated. After Lightborne, I joined IATSE 209 (The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists, and Allied Crafts of the United States) as a set lighting technician. I worked on many feature-length films, met some really incredible artists, and learned more about my craft.
I dreamed of directing something someday. Through high school and college, I created countless short documentaries, music videos, and short films, even winning a student-level film festival in Yellow Springs, Ohio with a documentary I created. This itch, this desire to direct and express only grew stronger the more I progressed in my career.
That led me to creating Storyocity with a fellow Cincinnati State alum, David Klingerman. Storyocity is a direction & design studio based here in Cincinnati; a collective of artists & filmmakers trying to do something. We’re forever in love with art & cinema.
We have lofty goals of being one of the best production companies on the planet and being artists that get to study expression and creation at the highest level. Whether we’re producing commercials, music videos, or even original feature-length films, television shows, or documentaries, we have an unending passion for producing work worth falling in love with, forever and ever.
The ultimate goal is simple: To be artists making art that matters, at least to us.
Storyocity is still a young studio, turning 5 years old in September of 2022. We’re far from where we want to be, but we’re also far from where we started. I feel privileged to come to work with a team of the most inspiring, caring, and ambitious people I have ever met.
We’re excited to keep growing, to keep studying our craft, and continue to make art & cinema worth falling in love with.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Like many fields, the production industry is powered by networking. As an unknown introvert in my city and in my industry, I had to learn how to better connect with people. I had to learn how to promote my own work. The first few years of Storyocity were tumultuous at best. Like many young creatives, we wanted to push ourselves to our limits and grow our team, but we struggled with connection and reputation. The growth we were trying to force was unsustainable, and we found the breaking point.
In November of 2018, a big project we had lined up fell through. We had to break the news to the team. Everyone was out of a job starting January one.
This was hard. There was a period of self-doubt and guilt. But the more my partner David and I talked about what to do next, the more we felt called to keep pushing for the dream we started at Storyocity. We just had to find the right way to do it.
In January of 2019, we had less than a month’s worth of money to keep the studio afloat. For a young creative, this was less daunting for me, but my partner David had a family and a home to take care of. We had to figure out how to make his mortgage payment and how to keep food on the table. We had to find a way to make it work.
By mid-January, we had landed a job producing content for the in-park entertainment system for Cedar Fair. This gave us brief stability. We cut all of our expenses as aggressively as we could. David was delivering pizza on nights and weekends for extra income. Every project we won as a studio was the most important job in the world because we needed it, and we had to make the most of every situation.
Our reputation grew during this time. Our work got better and better. We began to build the team back up, hiring incredibly talented and ambitious people. We built a runway, a year’s worth of cash in an account that pays all of the studios expenses, including salary for every team member. This is our safety net (which proved invaluable at the start of COVID in 2020.)
We’re still on a steady upwards trajectory. We still focus on growing like an oak tree and not like a weed. We’ll never forget the end of 2018. It humbled us. But 2019 taught us that our dreams were possible.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’ve directed work of all kinds for clients at Storyocity, from commercial projects for Febreze, Cincinnati Insurance Companies, and Altafiber, to brand films for The Taft Museum of Art, Best Point, and even my school, Cincinnati State.
I’ve been heavily focused on growing Storyocity through producing bitchin’ work for clients. 2022 has been the first year I’ve been able to start diving back into personal projects. It’s been incredible to build out our process in a way that personal projects can now get rolled into our portfolio and process the same way that work we do for brands is.
We’ve been developing a short film throughout this year that will blend live-action visuals with 2D & 3D animation. It’s an exploratory film about the creative process, about what it means to be a creator. I am excited to keep working on it and keep exploring other films and projects that I want to direct in the near future.
What matters most to you? Why?
Storyocity is founded on four principles. These principles are non-negotiable for us.
Principle #1: Create art & cinema worth falling in love with, forever and ever.
Principle #2: Think like a designer; we don’t rely on luck to be this good.
Principle #3: Lead with passion, no matter who is in the room.
Principle #4: Be most proud of HOW we accomplish our goals.
Fostering passion and excitement in our work is critical. We want to make things worth falling in love with. We want to understand the process that made our work that good. We want to stay dedicated to our craft, no matter the adversity we’re facing.
But above all else, we want to accomplish our goals the right way. Our industry and our region struggles with diversity inclusion, not just limited to race and gender, but things like socio-economic background and self-identity too. It’s deeply important to us to create access, opportunity and champion diversity as we pursue our goals. This is something we will forever be expanding.
My partner David and I often say that a successful business in a neighborhood that is struggling is not actually a success, and as business leaders in our community, we have the responsibility to do all we can to help our neighbors. We discuss our social impact often and look for opportunities to donate money, do reduced rate or free work for organizations that make a difference, and expanding our volunteer efforts to prioritize our whole team giving the most precious resource we have: time.
David and I lead our studio as real human beings (as best we can be, anyway.) Family always comes first for us. We have an open work-from-home policy. Open vacation policy. We are all artists, and artists don’t live to work. We reduced our work hours to less than 40 a week on average. We close the studio between December 25th and the New Year (and hope to expand this time.) We are also 100% transparent with financials with our team. This includes the financial health of the company, but we also promote transparency with everyone’s salaries (including the two owners), something we think should be widely adopted across all industries.
Leading as human beings means we often look for opportunities to break down barriers and norms. The nature of “work” in the world is changing, and I hope companies like ours can inspire others to adopt similar styles of empathy and transparency.
Contact Info:
- Website: storyocity.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garretollish/?hl=en
