Who are you and what do you do? I'm Hallease. I have a hard time saying what I am so I just give a long list of things: I'm a digital storyteller, a video producer, filmmaker, content creator. Basically I'm on the internet in a lot of different ways, telling stories or working with companies and entities to help tell their story better. I have a lot of personal projects that are usually all under my YouTube channel that I've had since 2009. And then on the professional side, I work with companies to create content for them or traditional CEO corporate documentary work. I also teach online through Skillshare and Adobe Live and Adobe Creator Camp.

How have you felt about the way the digital world has evolved over the past couple of decades? I think it's always a bit of fear mixed with excitement. I originally wanted to be a feature film editor. I went to film school, and I learnt pretty quickly that there is a lot of gatekeeping in traditional filmmaking that I knew I couldn't break through. And then YouTube existed. I realised you can work on a film as a young filmmaker and try to get into festivals, which costs money. Or you can put it on YouTube and potentially have 1000 people see it, whereas if you do it at a film festival, maybe 100 people see it. For me, it's been exciting because the internet, specifically YouTube, is like my first love. The access to community and the access to having people view your content and engage with your content directly has always been the most exciting thing. And it's the thing I still cling to, even when the internet is very scary.

When you first started your channel, what were you making videos about? I was mostly making videos about hair. That was the big thing because at that time the black community, especially in the United States, was moving into a more natural hair movement and not doing a lot of processing to our hair textures anymore. And so I relied on the community to learn how to take care of my own hair, and I started making my own content from that. I was like 18, 19, and in my dorm room. When I actually started trying to grow, I did what I call 'vlogumentaries', where it was vlogging but it had aspects of cinematography built into it as well. It had aspects of introspection. And that was how I started to get more traction.

Tell us about your web series. This Coulda Been An Email is a comedy web series that's on the channel and it follows two black women in an office setting who are navigating being in a mostly white male dominated space. Almost everything you see in that series is based on some sort of event that happened to either me or my co-writer, Evelyn From the Internets, or colleagues or friends. It’s all amped up because it's comedy but, the root of it is based in something true.

I actually self-funded the first episode of it because I was an Adobe Creative Resident during that time and I had a salary through Adobe. So that allowed me to move funds to this creative project. Now It's available on kweliTV, which is a non-profit streaming organisation for mostly African diaspora content. 

Have you always been interested in comedy? Yeah, definitely. I cover a lot of hard topics around social stuff, and I find that comedy is the best way to get people to not put a guard up and to be open to the conversation. That was the big thing that me and my co-writer for This Coulda Been An Email would do when we did a show for PBS Digital Studios called Say It Loud, which is an African American History and Culture Show. We use comedy to break down those barriers, to get people to actually want to engage with the story. It's really laughing to keep you from crying all the time.

What’s one thing that you wish you'd known when you first started? I think I figured it out pretty early, but just knowing that it really will be an uphill battle, and there's kind of no way around that. You’ve got to put the work in and the time in. I do wish I had started my YouTube channel way sooner, just to pick it up faster. And I wish I started my company, StumbleWell, sooner.

What does your company do? I'm the only full-time employee and I contract out people for help, but StumbleWell is a creative production company. It's basically the brand, the company, that I put all of my works under. I started it in 2018. Actually, I got passed up to be the Adobe Creative Resident in 2018. I applied and I got really far in before they were like, “We're gonna pass on you, but we're gonna give you a grant.” So Adobe gave me a grant, and then in the same year, YouTube gave me a filmmaking grant. And that was how I started StumbleWell. I quit my job and both of those grants got me through to the end of 2018. And then I started working for PBS and doing that show, so that's how I got the company to keep going.

How did you learn the business side of being a creative? I'm still actively learning. Before I quit my agency job at a boutique agency in Austin, the woman who ran it basically mentored me. She’s how I became a really competent producer and how I got my editing to the next level. She was really great. I think that by being under her at such a small agency for five years, I was really able to see what it means to manage corporate relationships. What it means to have deadlines. What it means to work with 10 different contractors across 10 different video projects that are all due in the next two months. What it means to direct. What it means to pull interviews out of people and get them to say what you want them to say. I think a lot of that just ended up translating when I finally did it myself. 

See more rad stuff from Hallease on YouTube, and head this-a-way for more info about Adobe MAX.