Filmmaker Spotlight: Issa Rae5/19/2024 ![]() In February of 2005, the website YouTube began in San Bruno, California by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim as a place where anyone could upload, watch, share, and actively engage with videos posted by other users. While the early days looked more like home videos, the content matured with the platform. On February 3, 2011, a young creative named Issa Rae uploaded the first episode of The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl, a show that followed the life of Rae’s characters as she interacts with the world around her and the uncomfortable positions she is put in as both a woman and an African American. The show was shared through blogs and social media creating a buzz that scored Rae interviews with traditional media platforms that allowed her to leverage the attention into a Kickstarter campaign that funded the rest of the show’s first season. The show’s second and final season was produced by Pharrell Williams to award-winning acclaim. The final episode aired on February 28th, 2013. In August of that year, Rae began working with Larry Wilmore on a series pilot with a similar concept. The showed would be called ‘Insecure’ and the pilot would be picked up by HBO in October of 2015. The show would run for 5 seasons and propelled Rae into being a household name. One of the biggest factors for Rae’s success is filling the void in an industry that had a scarcity of content that captures the black, female experience in a demographic that was exploding. Seeing that hole and calling the audience to action built an unbreakable bond and proved to key decision-makers that growth lay in the audience Rae built a fanbase in. YouTube proved to be the perfect platform to grow for Rae because distribution and advertising costs were minimal so most of her budget went into the product and there was no barrier to entry for audiences such as subscription fees or ticket prices. Rae’s ability to capitalize on a hungry audience with accessible content and a call to action built a community that is actively rooting for her success which translates to growth for whatever distributors partner with her on her creative endeavors. What other filmmakers followed a similar path?
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