Ky Dickens on the Impact of Authentic Storytelling
Dickens recounts filmmaking experience and shares key takeaways for brands looking to connect with their audience
Award-winning filmmaker Ky Dickens has been hailed as a storyteller at the intersection of film and complex social issues. Ky just released her fifth documentary film, “Show Her the Money,” which focuses on the lack of women in the venture capital world both as entrepreneurs and investors. The film features award-winning actors Elizabeth Banks and Sharon Gless and opened theatrically in New York and Los Angeles this week. It’s won three Jury Prizes for “Best Documentary,” including from the Los Angeles International Film Festival – and is part of the For Your Consideration Campaign for a “Best Documentary” Oscar Nomination.
In addition to her feature film work, Ky directs commercials for some of the biggest brands in America. Her clients include Netflix, Google, Facebook, TikTok, and Johnson & Johnson.
The Continuum sat down with Ky to discuss her movies, her experience in the advertising industry, and her thoughts about the future of commercials.
Can you start by telling us how you got into documentary filmmaking?
My parents didn’t want me to go to film school. They didn’t see the value in that. So, I went to Vanderbilt and got a degree in communications, fine arts, and sociology, all of the components of documentary filmmaking. And, of course, when I got out of school, I went straight into filmmaking. Most of my films reflect questions I was asking or inequities I was experiencing that needed to be addressed on a larger scale.
I came out my senior year at Vanderbilt, which was a very socially conservative Southern school, and I was receiving blowback from friends like “You’re going to hell” and “You have the devil inside you.” I wanted to fight back, but I realized that I didn’t even know what to say. I started driving around to all of the ministers in Nashville, asking them what the Bible says about LGBTQ people, and they all agreed that it had been grossly misinterpreted.
I turned that into my first film, called “Fish Out of Water.” It focused on the seven biblical passages that are used to condemn gay people. I wanted to help people understand what the verses really said because, at the time, that was the biggest weapon used against LGBT people. It was information that could actually save lives and help families heal.
As a first-time documentary filmmaker, how did you find an audience for this film? And do you have any advice for other first-time filmmakers out there?
“Fish Out of Water” had an awesome festival run. There had not been a film tackling this polarizing topic before, and it was needed. There were people suffering and families suffering. I kind of saw myself as making this film for the LGBTQ community, but what I found—which was surprising—was that it was the faith community that most wanted to screen it. Churches in the middle of nowhere in Texas and Mississippi were screening it. The film was noticed on the festival circuit, and that helped us get distribution. It ended up on Netflix!
As far as breaking into the field, you don’t have to go to film school, but you do have to make that first film. You have to figure out what stories haven’t been told and what stories you’d be excited to spend two or three years working on, often pro bono, before you get a distribution deal.
You made four more films before “Show Her the Money.” Can you tell us about them quickly?
Sure. My second film was called “Sole Survivor,” it was about people who were the lone survivors of large commercial plane crashes. There are only thirteen of them worldwide, and most have been completely private. They didn’t want to be judged for what they have—or have not done—with their lives after surviving something in which hundreds of people perished. I slowly found them all, and it took a long time to build their trust. One of the things that traumatized them after the crashes was that most media attention was on them when so many other people perished. They were willing to participate in my film because there were other survivors doing it, too, and they wouldn't be the sole focus, which is what had traumatized them.
My next film, "Zero Weeks,” was about the lack of paid family medical leave in America. I was pregnant with my first daughter, and the production company I’d been working with for about fifteen years told me I could have ten unpaid days off work. I thought that couldn’t possibly be legal, but of course, it was.
My fourth film was called “The City That Sold America,” which is about Chicago’s overlooked but central place in advertising history. So many trends we can see today started in Chicago – harking back to mail-order catalogs, target marketing, coupons, product placement, and fast food. I started the advertising part of my career in Chicago, so this was important to me.
“As far as breaking into the field, you don’t have to go to film school, but you do have to make that first film. You have to figure out what stories haven’t been told and what stories you’d be excited to spend two or three years working on, often pro bono, before you get a distribution deal.”
Your fifth film, “Show Her the Money,” premiered in New York and LA just last week. It’s about the lack of women in the venture capital world. How did you decide to focus on this?
This idea was brought to me by Catherine Gray, the Executive Producer of the movie – this is her world. She watched “Shark Tank”—which introduced some people to the concept of angel investors—and was very concerned with the fact that only two percent of the funding on that show went to women. She started a pitch contest in LA for women entrepreneurs who needed investors. She reached out to me because she had the idea to make a TV show about it, but when we took that idea to traditional Hollywood TV producers, we were asked why there weren’t more men involved in the project and why we didn’t want to have a male host. So, we decided to make an independent documentary film instead.
When Catherine first told me about the disparity in venture capital, I realized I didn’t even know what venture capital was or how someone raises money. In a weird way, I think that ended up being kind of like the magic bullet because I had to create this film about something I was a total novice to and make it accessible and understandable to a broad audience.
Of course, one of the reasons it’s accessible is that we follow great women founders who are making these awesome products. One of the women sells lingerie, specifically for women who’d had a mastectomy or double mastectomy. It used to be that you had to shop for breast molds in a medical supply store—you’d go into one of those dingy places that sell bedpans, and someone would fit you. I don’t think a lot of male investors understood the need to give breast cancer survivors a better way to shop.
People invest in what they know. It’s not necessarily intentional, but people like investing in people who look like them and ideas that feel relevant to them. Women—even those who have great ideas that can actually make a lot of money and make a huge difference—have been historically and systematically left out of financing.
But there’s another side to the story as well—we want to encourage women who have money to invest to enter the venture capital world and become angel investors instead of only donating to nonprofits. We have to get them into the ecosystem as well, and ultimately, they will make money. So, we also focused on Pocket Sun who is a powerhouse. She went to USC for business and realized that no one was giving women money. She decided to solve the problem by starting her own venture capital fund in her twenties, which felt ludicrous. But the point of a venture capital fund is to pool money from different people so you can bet on a bunch of companies at the same time in the hopes that even one of them will be the idea that becomes a billion-dollar company. Pocket Sun has already invested in five of these highly successful companies.
It's been a surprising film for me. It's nothing that I would have set off on my own to make, but it's been a joy to enter this world and learn about it.
When you’re not making documentaries, you’re directing commercials. How did you get into the advertising world, and do you enjoy this part of your career as well?
I knew I needed steady work in addition to my film projects, and I wanted it to still be in film. I've always had a camera on my neck, and telling stories through the visual medium has been the only thing I've wanted to do since I was nine. After I released “Fish Out of Water,” an Executive Producer I’d worked with often, Noreen Szeluga, took a chance on me and put me up for a few jobs. I’ve been freelance directing for almost ten years now.
And, yes, I love directing commercials. You get to work on different creatives’ each time. It’s always a different team and a different crew. I mostly shoot docu-style, lifestyle spots, and branded content. Last year, I was tapped to direct the pride campaign for TikTok and to partner with Netflix for promotions for the “Witcher” and “Vikings Valhalla.” I’ve also directed spots for legacy American brands – like Kellogg’s, Hershey’s, Purina, Johnson & Johnson, McDonald's, and Hallmark. They have a lot of nostalgia around them, which I love. I have a Pillsbury commercial coming up, which is always fun because I adore shooting food with lifestyle boards.
Wait, is the Doughboy going to be there?
Well, he’ll be CGI in the final commercial, but we will have a fake stand-in Doughboy, of course.
How different is it making commercials that start with someone else’s creative ideas rather than your own? Do you feel like you get to add your own voice and messaging to the commercials?
Working with advertising teams is a three-tiered process. I have my agents in the commercial world. So, a board will go out to agents, and then they will think, “Oh, Ky’s perfect for this,” and then they'll send out my reels. The creatives are the ones watching these reels. They weed out the directors who just don’t seem right for the vision and then get on a phone call with those who might work. I feel like that phone call is where I can start to add my own stamp. My approach to drawing out realistic, authentic performances is a huge part of this, but I also might suggest anchoring the story from a certain perspective that wasn’t as crystalized on paper. Lensing and art direction offer another place where I can add my stamp, and I’ll talk about this on creative calls as well. If that goes well, I write the treatment, which is often forty-plus pages, describing my vision. And that’s all before I officially get the job, so there are a lot of places along the way to add my vision.
People send me boards that are reflections of my reel and my unique voice. My work tends to be very thoughtful, honest, and warm-hearted, and there are a lot of themes that come to my work that brim with humanity. I’m not a comedy director. I'm not going to be an in-your-face music video director. Whatever you hire me for is going to feel utterly real, distinctly personal, and heartfelt.
“People invest in what they know. It’s not necessarily intentional, but people like investing in people who look like them and ideas that feel relevant to them.”
Some people in the industry are talking like the commercial is dead now that advertisers don’t have a captive TV audience. Do you agree with that?
I don't think it’s dead at all. I think the way it’s consumed is different. Instead of watching TV, you might go to a website to learn more about a pharmaceutical product or look for a recipe and find an advertisement there. It’s really important that when people seek out information, they get answers in a compact, beautiful way. I also think event commercials still shine. I love watching commercials during the Superbowl, Academy Awards, or the Olympics. The commercials during the World Cup were great!
Streaming services have to figure out how to make more revenue after the strike negotiations, so they might have to take on more advertising. Whatever happens, commercials aren’t dead because we live in a totally consumer-based society.
One other funny thing. I have two little kids. They get so excited about TV commercials because they don't see them all the time. If we’re in a hotel room and there are commercials on, they get sucked in and say, “Why don’t we have that?” or “We need to eat that.” I think they like commercials and are convinced by them because their parents have been skipping over them. It’s almost like we’re creating a new audience all over.
So, if they’re not dead, what do you think resonates in commercials right now?
Authenticity is what resonates. One hundred percent. Everyone is so connected right now, right? They know brands through TikTok and social media, and if you’re not being authentic or it feels like you’re recreating your brand to reach one niche, it will fall flat. You have to know exactly who you and your audience are and be totally authentic.
I do think a huge part of that is hiring the right people to tell the story, not just from my point of view as a director but also from copywriters, creative directors, and art directors. You need people who can be authentic from start to finish. I lost a job for this big women's initiative for National Women's Day to a male director. What was that agency thinking? Of course, people can tell stories that aren’t their own. I tell stories all the time that aren’t my own. But I think whoever is telling the story is going to deeply inform the perspective, the performances, the visuals, the background, and the palate, and really make sure that the heartbeat rings true.
If it’s not authentic, people can sniff it out a mile away.
Before we let you go, now that “Show Her The Money” is out, do you have a new documentary project in the works?
I’m working on a new docuseries with Radical Media that will challenge the view that our consciousness is confined to the body. I’m also getting set to release my first narrative film called “In the Jungle,” written by Chelsea Kania. It’s inspired by her father’s story about being a deaf boy growing up in the seventies. It’s a tender coming-of-age story about beating the bullies and getting the girl. We hunkered down at the Wisconsin School for the Deaf and worked with incredible actors and crew members who were deaf or hard of hearing. It was an incredibly special shoot.
December 5, 2023
