Michael Afendakis and I are the mom and pop of Atta Squirrel Films. The jury’s perpetually out on which of us is mom or pop, but there’s a general consensus that the team works, in part, because Michael has a grip on all the things upon which I’ve a somewhat dubious grasp, and vice-versa.
By some cosmic boon, in our artistic partnership and our friendship, we are dissimilar where it matters, and similar where it counts.
I suspect that how one does anything is how one does everything. So it’s of little surprise to me that—like its founders—Atta Squirrel itself would seek working relationships with companies of odd-couple ilk.
The notion that our most creatively satisfying relationship as an independent film company would be with a cyber security startup is… counterintuitive. At face value, it might suggest a lack of artistic drive on our part, or a dearth of focus on the part of the client.
In reality, I suspect it’s a matter of both parties being vaguely-closeted-ex-pats of our chosen industries.
Michael and my work in tech and engineering supports the standard rockstar-status existence afforded to all independent filmmakers, and Joel Fulton (CEO of Lucidum, world-class CISO, and world(er)-class friend of both Michael and myself) is—as far as I can tell—a Michelin-tier artist’s soul squatting in the body of a cyber security geek.
Were the body of said cyber security geek built like a brick shit-house.
Whereas my own ex-actor tech-bod might best be described as “lengths of vegan scrawn, peppered with light padding”…
Whah: digression sandwich—what was I getting at…?
Right: Unlikely Artistic Pairings.
Somehow this relationship between Atta Squirrel Films and Lucidum has been a hugely satisfying, wildly productive artistic endeavor these past three years.
Over 40 videos, ranging from a series called “A Lucid View of History”, that examines modern technological challenges through the lens of historical events, to interviews with industry leaders, to our most recent collaboration: “CISO Cinema”, which pits the world’s top security experts against the world’s best-known cyber-themed blockbusters—a concept that has no right being even half as funny and engaging as it actually is.
These productive partnerships, like pineapple on pizza: peculiar players, properly paired…
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Show Notes:
Spinning: Transatlanticism by Death Cab For Cutie
Drinking: Gin & Tonic (Isle of Harris gin, Fever Tree tonic)
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