On his new series, he said, “We wrapped post on the pilot Breaking: LA about a month ago and have had a couple industry preview screenings in the last couple weeks. It is a one hour travel and lifestyle show featuring buzzy emerging recording artists from all over the country and act as the guide to our host – film & TV Music Supervisor Mike Turner. LA was our pilot episode for the series which we did with Adaptive Studios for their Project Greenlight Digital Series. They’ve been a great, supportive partner throughout production as well as amazing allies to filmmakers. We’ve been arranging upcoming pitch meetings and shopping the pilot to network and SVOD platforms. It’s been really exciting, we are looking to have it placed by the end of the year.”
In addition, he is promoting two narrative projects, Cuck and Los Ninos Sicarios.
When asked what motivates him each day, he said, “I’m motivated with the thought that my current projects are on the verge of getting made or seen. It’s quite a process to think of an idea that drives you, work and develop that idea over a number of years, write the scripts, create pitch materials etc to show people your idea, and then finally to have someone go for it. Driving the projects up the hill while juggling video jobs and life stuff has been a fun challenge. My two year old Grace is pretty good motivation, she keeps me on my toes.”
Digital transformation of film industry
On the impact of technology in the film industry, he said, “Social media has changed the game in that it has opened up the way you can work as a filmmaker/video person in so many different ways. The old school videographer still exists but there are so many other paths. There are jobs involving just Instagram video shoots, YouTube comedy, event shooting – all of it comes back to social media. I think there are more jobs now than there were 20 years ago. For better or worse it has probably given way to ‘no more waiting your turn,’ the apprentice system has gone or at least shrunk. Not sure if it’s improved the overall work though!”
Lambert continued, “I know I’m not saying anything ground breaking here but the Netflix model has changed the landscape big time. There is so much great content now on so many platforms because of that breakthrough. It’s a great time to be a filmmaker with projects ready to go. It’s the gold rush of the content age, no doubt about it.”
On his use of technology as a filmmaker, he said, “In my opinion, Vimeo has been the biggest tool for filmmakers today, especially over the last 5-10 years. To be able to shoot your short or proof of concept and upload it to Vimeo and send it out has really lowered some of the walls that were set up. In other ways it has raised the noise level too, but for me if someone wants to see my work I can just send over links and immediately they can see what you’re doing.”
For his fans, he concluded, “Hang in there! I got such a great response on the short film for Los Niños Sicarios, especially from Mexican-Americans who saw the short at festivals or came across it online asking for more. It’s really a joke that the fastest growing group of young people in the US have so few quality shows and films created to reach them. Breaking will be a fun ride too.”
He defined the word success as “Not caving in to my two year old daughter’s demands!”
For more information on Lambert, visit his official homepage.
