Dominique Ulloa: Moving Up by Helping Out

Episode Description:

"When I started helping other people, my career took off like a skyrocket."

Documentary Editor Dominique Ulloa worked her way up the chain from from being employee number two in the post production office of Oprah Winfrey Network to a Peabody Award-winning documentary editor for her work on the explosive Lifetime documentary Surviving R. Kelly.

Listen as Dominique talks to Fanshen and Anya about working her way up the production chain to editing—with two kids, what it was like "trimming fat" for the paparazzi, getting the gig at Oprah, uplifting Black women through the nonprofit organization Ujima Entertainment Coalition, and why it's important to give back and help out your peers.

TRANSCRIPT:

Anya Adams (00:10):

Hey, hey. Welcome back to Sista Brunch, with me Anya Adams. We're so excited today.

Fanshen Cox (00:18):

And me Fanshen Cox. We sure are. We continue to uplift Black women plus making it in the entertainment industry. And today we have Ms. Dominique Ulloa who rose from being employee number two in the post production office of Oprah Winfrey Network. She went on to become a Peabody Award winning documentary editor. She worked on the explosive Lifetime documentary, Surviving R. Kelly, and she was a contributing editor for the upcoming feature documentary films by the folks that made Minding the Gap and The Great Hack. She has also worked on several other non-fiction and documentary projects across TV, film, and digital. Now she is currently an Artist In Residence in Documentary Editing at Concordia Studio, which is a non-fiction studio founded by An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim. And was named as a Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellow in 2020, Dominique.

Dominique Ulloa (01:18):

Yes, hi. [crosstalk 00:01:23] that sounded great.

Fanshen Cox (01:25):

Because you are great.

Dominique Ulloa (01:28):

Thank you.

Anya Adams (01:28):

We're so excited to have you.

Fanshen Cox (01:31):

So good.

Dominique Ulloa (01:32):

Thank you. So glad to be here, thank you.

Anya Adams (01:35):

Welcome. So we like to start this podcast by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about where they started and how they got to where they are now. So take us on that journey.

Dominique Ulloa (01:45):

Yeah. Oh my gosh, that is a hell of a ride. Okay, so it was 2006. I had a six year old and a two year old.

Anya Adams (01:57):

Wow.

Dominique Ulloa (01:58):

And I decided I was going to go back to school and finish my degree. I went to Cal State LA, where I connected with Fanshen and our late great friend, Dr. Kelly Madison, and majored in radio, television, film there. In my senior year, I entered Cal State LA's Film Festival and won for Best Documentary and Best Experimental Editing.

Anya Adams (02:24):

Wow.

Dominique Ulloa (02:24):

So through that, thank you. And through that Best Documentary Editing project that I made, I got hired in my senior year to start editing for the paparazzi. And so my senior year, Cal State LA, I was making $25 an hour. You couldn't tell me nothing. I'm like, okay, well, here we go [crosstalk 00:02:43].

Fanshen Cox (02:42):

Wait, Dominique, back up. What do you mean for the paparazzi?

Anya Adams (02:45):

Yeah, what does that mean?

Fanshen Cox (02:46):

What am I missing?

Dominique Ulloa (02:47):

For the paparazzi. So I worked for a company called X17, and they're a photo agency. They supplied photos and videos of celebrity at that time. The year of 2008, so that's when Britney Spears was shaving her head [crosstalk 00:02:59] going all the Kevin Federline stuff, and all that drama. So I actually knew the photographer who videotaped her shaving her head, and her hitting the umbrella against his car. But the thing about that is she opened the blind to other photographers to get the shot, and she could have easily closed the blinds and nobody would have seen that. But she made sure that blinds was open so the cameras could get the angle to see her shaving her head.

(03:25):

Here's the thing, with celebrities, if they don't want to be seen, they don't have to be. You never see Tom Hanks. He don't want to be seen. There's people, and if they have a new album coming out, pre-COVID-

Fanshen Cox (03:38):

And you suddenly see them ...

Dominique Ulloa (03:40):

Suddenly you're having lunch at the Ivy on the patio.

Fanshen Cox (03:42):

So what exactly were you doing for them, Dominique?

Dominique Ulloa (03:49):

I was an editor. I was a night shift editor, and it was my senior year. So I went to school all day and then I went from four to like one o'clock in the morning. I worked as an editor and I did that everyday with two kids.

Anya Adams (04:03):

That's where people are like, we'll give you $10,000 if you send us video of so and so walking, and then you would take that video and edit it down.

Dominique Ulloa (04:12):

They would follow people around. Like, okay, Britney Spears went to CVS, Starbucks, and the gas station today. And so they bring it to me, and then I would just trim the fat and get the shots or whatever. And then we send a mass mail out to Good Morning America [crosstalk 00:04:29] dah, dah, dah. It's like AP, they're buying the photos from the photogs. So like, oh, we got Mischa Barton in her first appearance since the baby. [crosstalk 00:04:42].

Anya Adams (04:43):

Okay.

Fanshen Cox (04:44):

I'm glad you used the word, the phrase, trim the fat in this, because you do that a lot as an editor, right, and especially assistant editor. That's basically what you doing when you start, right?

Dominique Ulloa (04:54):

My whole job. That is not kind of what I do. That's exactly what ...

Fanshen Cox (04:57):

Okay, still, right.

Dominique Ulloa (05:02):

I'm a fat trimmer. So from there, from the paparazzi, I went back here and there. I was still wanting to be in development and thought I would do more development route, more corporate route. What happened was is that through a temp agency, I got hired at the Oprah Winfrey Network. And I was only supposed to be there as somebody who did the QC of the videos of Oprah's contest, Oprah's Next New Star for the launch of her network. Everybody sent in these videos. So I'm just there to QC.

Fanshen Cox (05:34):

And QC we'll say is quality control.

Dominique Ulloa (05:36):

Quality control. So make sure there's no cussing, there's no labels, there's no Coke bottles. They're just making it good for air. So I'm going through all these videos and seeing the ones that's going forward, rejecting the thing. And I was like one of 30 temps. At the end of that week, I was in charge of all the temps. And then from there, I parlayed that into working as an assistant editor on the show that they eventually made about it. And then they would bring me back to be an assistant in the development department. Oprah Winfrey Network kept retaining me. So I kept the getting carried over, carried over. The Oprah Winfrey Network was keeping me. And then I was working as an assistant editor for this show, and then one day I saw the budget. And the editor that I was working under was making $700 a day. And then from that day forward, I was like, I'm an editor. Call me editor. That's what I do. That's my career, that's my, call me editor. Everyone, that's my name now. I'm an editor.

Anya Adams (06:42):

Hey, y'all, you're listening to sister brunch with Anya Adams and Fanshen Cox. We'll be right back. (silence)

Fanshen Cox (07:08):

Welcome back to Sista Brunch, I'm Fanshen. And we are back with Dominique Ulloa.

Dominique Ulloa (07:13):

I got hired as staff, as employee number two of the post-production operations at the Oprah Winfrey Network. So that meant like all their promos and all their shows and episodes will come in from production companies and we get it ready to go to the satellite. The operations part, the very technical part of the network. So I was a part of that. And then I flimflammed in networks for a while, worked for the Africa Channel for a minute. Then I ended up getting laid off. And so that plunged me into freelance. And so from there, I went to Assistant Editing at World of Wonder for a while, and that's RuPaul's Drag Race [crosstalk 00:07:50].

Anya Adams (07:49):

Did you do RuPaul's Drag Race?

Dominique Ulloa (07:52):

Yes, RuPaul's Drag Race [crosstalk 00:07:54] an assistant. This is like season three, like an assistant. I wasn't an assistant dedicated to that show. I was doing Million Dollar Listing Miami and Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles a little bit, and then Big Freedia. They made Big Freedia, so the Queen of Bounce. I was working on that show. So I was working on just a lot of different shows there. It's a reality show factory. You work the night shift [crosstalk 00:08:22].

Anya Adams (08:22):

Wait, how did you do that with kids?

Dominique Ulloa (08:25):

That's a great question because at the time my son was 13 and my daughter was, what, nine. And there was a period of time where I had to leave them at home alone.

Anya Adams (08:38):

Wow.

Dominique Ulloa (08:39):

And I would come home on my lunch break. My lunch break would be like eleven o'clock, midnight, and I would run home and make sure everything was okay. I'd have dinner for them before I left. My son slept on the couch with a BB gun a lot. He became really the man of the house. And I would check on them, and then I'd come home. My mom or their dad would take them to school in the morning. I couldn't get back up at 7:00. And I would just tell them, "Make sure you don't leave without kissing me goodbye, but don't wake me up."

Anya Adams (09:18):

Yeah.

Dominique Ulloa (09:19):

I went through that for a while and then just started freelancing, going on different shows and honing my craft and getting my chops.

Fanshen Cox (09:27):

I just want to mention, that's an important point for people who are interested in editing or post production, that a lot of times, as you're getting started, you're probably going to be working these late hours because the footage comes in at the end of the day, and you're the one that's trimming the fat all night so that they can be ready.

Dominique Ulloa (09:47):

Ready in the morning. And see, pre-COVID, most production companies, they have their post production in-house and there's only so many edit bays. So in the daytime you have 10 edit bays, you have 10 editors working. And then the nighttime, you have the night shift come in and get them ready for the next day. So that's usually, they film, you process it, you make all your multi groups, you do the sound, you do all this other kind of stuff, and then you get it ready for the editors. You do string out so they can start editing all day or whatever. And they usually have like one day person that's there in the day to help, but there's a staff that comes in at night. That's more for like your production companies that do a lot of unscripted.

(10:27):

I freelanced assistant editors for a while, and then I got to affirm and pray and meditate my way into the edit chair. It was really like one of those things that, people ask me all the time, how did you do it? Because to get the bump to editor is a lot, and especially as a woman, and especially as a woman of color. All these white boys they think you don't know what you're doing and they don't take you seriously. It's hard to elevate in the post production world when you don't like Star Wars and you don't play beer pong.

Fanshen Cox (10:59):

Plus, you're the only one in the room when you do get it, right?

Dominique Ulloa (11:04):

And you're the only one in the room. You're not getting invited to happy hour, you're not going to lunch with them, they're not including you. You're just there to do your job and leave. And they're looking at, pre George Floyd, you really had to show and prove yourself as an editor. So I was blessed to have this opportunity to actually. I had just got laid off from a job that I thought was going to go on for like a couple months and ended up being they cut my assignment short by like two months.

Fanshen Cox (11:31):

Ouch.

Dominique Ulloa (11:32):

Yeah. I was going to church, and I went to go to Bible study. And then a friend of mine, he worked at a production company and he was like, "I know for a fact they're looking for editors." And through that connection, I was able to go into the editing chair. But all the time that I was assistant editor, I would write on post-it notes, "I'm an editor."

Fanshen Cox (11:56):

Yes.

Dominique Ulloa (11:57):

"I'm successful." So I always had these affirmations for years before I actually got the opportunity to edit. And then that happened. And then I started working on Court TV, doing like your Judge Maybelline, your Judge Alex, your Judge Christina, doing all that stuff. Listen, that's a masterclass in story because you have two legal cases that you have to tell in 42 minutes. One is three acts, the other one is two acts. They all have points, the story beats they have to make, and you have to do it in like five acts.

Fanshen Cox (12:34):

This is Sista Brunch with Fanshen Cox and Anya Adams. Stay tuned for more of our conversation with documentary editor Dominique Ulloa.

Anya Adams (12:52):

Welcome back to Sista Brunch. I'm Anya and we're back with Dominique Ulloa.

Fanshen Cox (12:56):

When I did my internship while I was at Cal State LA, I learned so much about all the mistakes I had made as an actor over the years by editing other people's work. And then it reinforces your storytelling skills because you get just a load of stuff, and you're the person who puts it all together.

Dominique Ulloa (13:22):

I always think about it as a way, like somebody gives you a mound of clay and it's your job to make something out of it.

Anya Adams (13:30):

Especially in reality where it's like you're fabricating a story out of-

Dominique Ulloa (13:34):

It's nothing. I always say editors are writers, we just write with pictures. That's a skill that you have to learn how to do. You have to know when to let it breathe, the comedic timing, the score, the feeling. All of those things are all, how to stay on the moment. Oftentimes, I haven't done it yet, but this is my plan coming up, is it to take the classes for directors for actors. Because learning about performance, from a director standpoint, because that's going to help in the editing day to learn the performance aspect of it. To really pay attention to when to go with the emotion, when the fall back, the breathing of the scene.

(14:17):

So it is a lot of that. It's storytelling. And let me tell you something, this is for all my people that in post production, everybody's goal as an assistant editors to become an editor, most people, right? Some people like assistant editing because you get paid a lot of money and just generally get left the fuck alone. But becoming an editor is a huge feat in itself, but it's not getting your first job, it's getting your second job.

Anya Adams (14:42):

Word.

Fanshen Cox (14:43):

Oh, okay.

Dominique Ulloa (14:44):

Because now you're competing with people who've been doing this for 30 years and you got one credit. You've done one thing. Now you're playing in a whole different ballgame. And that was really difficult for me. That was extremely difficult to make that transition. So I did a lot of digital, I did some nonprofit stuff. I was just trying to make my way. And then I was able to land a job during the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Anya Adams (15:10):

Oh wow.

Dominique Ulloa (15:10):

And what happened with that was is that it was Christmas time. And you know, Christmas time, December is slow in the industry. And so the Winter Olympics was coming along, and I got hired as an assistant editor. And then my post supervisor said, "Listen, I know you're overqualified for this. But can you just come on as an assistant because we need somebody with your experience." And it's Christmas time, so I'm like, "Yeah, yeah."

Fanshen Cox (15:34):

I'll take it.

Dominique Ulloa (15:35):

"Yeah, I'll take it, yeah."

Fanshen Cox (15:37):

Got to get some stuff for my kids.

Dominique Ulloa (15:38):

We want some Christmas trees. And so I went on and I was just bored to death. So what I did was I took a bunch of archive footage and I cut a crowd promo. And I showed it to my post supervisor and she was like, "This is super cute. Here's some scripts. Now you're an editor."

Fanshen Cox (16:01):

Go ahead.

Dominique Ulloa (16:03):

Thank you, I was able to parlay that into becoming an editor. And so my packages, I started getting packages at that point. I was doing both. I was still in charge of assistant editing, still in charge of operations, but then I was also editing packages as well. They wasn't paying me more though.

Fanshen Cox (16:20):

No, of course not.

Dominique Ulloa (16:21):

They were like, you can have the title.

Fanshen Cox (16:23):

Dominique, this is a good segue into what challenges you might have because you are the storyteller, and yet you are also beholden to the director, right? And to all the other folks working on the project. So have you noticed challenges in working with directors who don't take your thoughts or your choices for cuts seriously because of ...

Dominique Ulloa (16:50):

In general, whenever I get something, I always do my vision first. This is my vision. This is how I see it. Let me get the art out. This is how I see it.

Fanshen Cox (17:00):

Right.

Dominique Ulloa (17:01):

After I show you that first presentation, whatever you do now is just a paycheck. Okay, now I said what I had to say. You like it, you don't like it. My feelings are out. Now tell me what to do. And then from there, now it's in the director's hands. If you make it shitty, I made it good first, in my opinion. But then there's also the ...

Anya Adams (17:26):

Wait a minute, wait a minute, as a director ...

Fanshen Cox (17:29):

As a director, uh oh, here we go.

Anya Adams (17:30):

I'm going to call you on that because I think that's kind of bullshit. And I, as a director, really like my relationship with editors because I feel like it's a collaborative experience. So even though you're giving me your vision, I think together, I like to collaborate in the edit bay. So I feel like you create the base, and then as a team we move forward, right?

Dominique Ulloa (17:53):

When I say that, it's exactly that. It's creating the base. You're making the skeleton. You're making the roux, essentially.

Fanshen Cox (18:01):

And it is collaborative because it's the director's work that you're cutting together, right, in your first cut.

Dominique Ulloa (18:08):

But sometimes, for people that don't edit, you'll get a paper cut that's 30 minutes over what this 10 minutes is supposed to be. And so in that case you have to make editorial decisions.

Anya Adams (18:22):

Right.

Dominique Ulloa (18:23):

And I think that's the importance of the editors to watch everything. That's my first step. When I get into an edit and I start on a project, first thing I do is I read the transcripts because if there's an interview I want to know what they said on paper. Because I think when you're listening in conversation that you might not pick up on that may have more gravitas when you're reading it, when you go back and read people's words. So I like to go through the transcripts. Then I like to watch everything. And then after I watch everything I present what I think what it is. Unless there's some like structured script, because that is that sometimes. You come in and everything's already strung out. I've already made my selects. Here's what it is, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Then I'm like, oh, oh shit, okay, you good to go. All right, here it is.

(19:17):

But if it's like, here's the pilot or here's the project, tell me what you think, I'm going to tell you what I think. Also what a lot of directors do, I find, is they're there, they shoot, but they don't watch everything back themselves. They don't watch it until the edit. What you saw with your eyes and what comes out on camera may be two different things.

Anya Adams (19:42):

That is true. That is so true.

Dominique Ulloa (19:47):

You may think a moment is there, but it may not translate on camera. Or something that does translate on camera, you didn't even pick up in the interview, you didn't even pick up in that scene because until you saw it back, like, whoa. You do that, but then, at the end of the day, it's the director's project, right?

Anya Adams (20:07):

But I also think, like you guys see, as a director, I'm also like, oh my God, it was the day that we had like five minutes left and I need to get this last little piece or like, oh, we tried for like five hours and I came out, and you think you got it. That's what I love about editors is then you guys get all this footage. You have no emotional connection to it.

Dominique Ulloa (20:28):

None.

Anya Adams (20:29):

Only the property, so you can make that very, you can craft a piece and show the director. And they can be like, oh fuck, oh, this is great, or oh my God, in the moment there I missed this, you know what I mean? That's so awesome.

Dominique Ulloa (20:48):

Shout out to Jeanine Daniels, who's one of my favorite directors to work with. And back in the day we were working on their webisode for Black and Sexy TV. And she would just dump this footage off on me. And I would have to go through everything and make a 30 minute episode on the weekend, when I was working midnights at World of Wonder. And so I was turning these around, but one thing that she always said is that I always took the takes that she hated and made them work. She was like, "I hated that take, but I really loved the way you did it." And I always got her story. Her story the way, it may not have come out edited how she envisioned it, but the story was told how she wanted it. And that's a separate skillset in editing.

(21:39):

Story and technical editing, anybody could put together an edit for you. It takes another skillset to put out a story. And that takes a lot of creative decisions. I think it's instinct. Black people are especially, I think, attuned to that for the fact that we just have the instinct of timing, and humor, and wit, and catching things, that essence.

Fanshen Cox (22:11):

Hey, it's Fanshen and you're listening to Sista Brunch. Stay tuned, we'll be right back. (silence)

(22:33):

We're back to our conversation with the award-winning documentary editor Dominique Ulloa. Let's talk about Surviving R. Kelly. What was it like?

Dominique Ulloa (22:43):

Oh boy, that was just a very intense experience. The process was, it was six episodes, and it was six hours long. And I was on a staff of 20 editors. And it was the most Black women I've ever worked with in my life. I think it was like five Black female editors. It was a tumultuous time because the editing of R. Kelly went on as, A, the story was happening in real time. His girlfriends were still posting videos to Facebook saying they were okay, and people was looking for them in hotels. That's A. It was 54 interviews and 30 years of archival. So talk about masterclass in story. You have so many moving parts, and then you have to take it into consideration, what is emotion, what's fact, and what's slander?Because if you go into slander, you're going to discredit all the people who just poured their hearts out and told their story.

(23:42):

And one thing I have to say about that is just if you have a woman from 1994 and you have a woman from 2017, and they're are different ages, and they live in different cities, and they never met each other, but they have the exact same story, they're not lying.

Anya Adams (23:58):

Yeah.

Dominique Ulloa (23:59):

They're not lying. It was a time when the Bill Cosby trial was going on and the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. So my world was just full of just sexual assault everywhere. So every day was kind of like a [inaudible 00:24:14] take me away moment. You're just like, you're hearing these crazy stories, and a lot of it, we couldn't even show on television because it would make it X-rated.There's details that we just couldn't put out there, but this man was horrible.

Anya Adams (24:32):

How do you feel like the story that you guys told with this stable of amazing Black women, what was that working environment like?

Dominique Ulloa (24:42):

We really towed the line. And at the time I was editing Surviving R. Kelly, my daughter was 14.

Anya Adams (24:49):

Wow.

Dominique Ulloa (24:50):

So I'm telling this story from a firsthand perspective, you know what I mean? I'm telling it from a mother, and shout out to the Laronda Morris who did episode six, an amazing episode, the closing one, she's a mother. And so the backstory of Surviving R. Kelly is that when they initially did it they had a staff of all Black editors. And those editors quit because the showrunner was there and he was this white guy, and he just didn't really know R. Kelly and didn't really know the significance of it, and really tried to romanticize him at first. And then the editors all quit.

Fanshen Cox (25:27):

They quit, wow.

Dominique Ulloa (25:29):

They quit in protest. And yeah, shout out to all the editors, the first round of editors because that project wouldn't have been what it was without them. And so that forced Bunim/Murray's hand to hire a new showrunner, fire that guy, and then fill up with Black women.

Anya Adams (25:44):

That gives me the chills because-

Fanshen Cox (25:45):

Oh, I'm so glad you shared that, yeah.

Anya Adams (25:47):

That's insane. Can I just ask in this kind of sequence, you each get to edit an episode, is there a director for the overhaul kind of like series, and then you guys create [crosstalk 00:25:58].

Dominique Ulloa (25:57):

Yeah, the main director and the showrunner and everyone was Dream Hampton.

Anya Adams (26:02):

Dream, yeah.

Dominique Ulloa (26:03):

Yeah, Dream Hampton. So she's overall creative. And so she's the one on set with the interviews, but there's still a bevy of assistant editors. It goes to the show runner, it goes to the EP. It goes to the post supervisor, and it goes to story producers. Shout out to the story producers because they're keeping track of how everything is going. And so each episode we're working with our own story producer and the show runner because it's already been directed, right? It's already in the field and all these interviews and everything is done. Now the show runner, the EP, and the story producers are now making this six hour docuseries. And so that was a lot of moving parts, but there was, again, we had the slander situation where I actually got into a lot of trouble Bunim/Murray, kind of like a, who do you think you are moment when I was like, look, we can't say this because even though this person has been hurt by R. Kelly, it's irrelevant. We don't want to know how she feels about him, we need to know what happened.

Anya Adams (27:17):

Right.

Dominique Ulloa (27:18):

I got a little backlash, like who do you think you are? But they did end up taking out their sequence.

Anya Adams (27:26):

You don't regret it because you got to speak up, too.

Dominique Ulloa (27:32):

No, not at all. Not at all. Opinions and hearsay really-

Fanshen Cox (27:35):

You can't include them. You have to walk that line.

Dominique Ulloa (27:39):

If they're not pushing the story forward, it's just filler.

Fanshen Cox (27:42):

Right.

Anya Adams (27:42):

Right.

Dominique Ulloa (27:43):

And so we had to really make that distinction, is this pushing the story forward? Or is this just slander? And shout out to Astral Finnie. Astral Monique Finnie was one of the main story producers are Surviving R. Kelly. She had to really tow the line with a lot of executives and writers there who just wanted to walk over her about how the story should be portrayed. And she stood her ground. And because of that, it became what it was. You think about like post [inaudible 00:28:13], these are people who didn't even know who R. Kelly was [crosstalk 00:28:16].

Anya Adams (28:16):

Right.

Dominique Ulloa (28:17):

And to be honest, Bunim/Murray thought this was just going to be a one-off thing on Lifetime that was going to go away. They had no idea. And I told one of my coworkers, I told one of my fellow female editors, I was like, "One of two things is going to happen, either this is going to blow up and it's going to be like Emmy nominated and it's going to be amazing, or Black Twitter is going to tear this apart."

Anya Adams (28:43):

Right, yes.

Dominique Ulloa (28:44):

It's the only two things that are going to happen. Only one of two things is going to happen. But from their perspective, they're not even in that world.

Fanshen Cox (28:53):

They don't know it at all.

Dominique Ulloa (28:55):

They don't even know what they up against. They don't even know. They have no idea. And after it came out, they sent us all an email and they were like, "We had no idea." They thought it was going to be like a Making Bobby Brown.

Fanshen Cox (29:13):

Right.

Dominique Ulloa (29:14):

They thought it was going to be like an Unsung. Or they thought it was just going to be like, oh, we might get some good ratings, but this is not really, who the fuck is this? Who cares, yada, yada, yada. It turns out a lot of people cared..

Anya Adams (29:28):

Hi, it's Anya, and you're listening to Sista Brunch. Stay tuned, we'll be right back. (silence)

Fanshen Cox (29:47):

Welcome back to Sista Brunch. I'm Fanshen and we are back with Dominique Ulloa.

(29:55):

You are yet another one of our guests that not only is about the work for yourself, but also about getting other people hired. So we talked about Posted Up and Ujima Entertainment.

Dominique Ulloa (30:05):

Yes. So I am the chair of Ujima Entertainment Coalition. And what we are is a 501-C3 nonprofit for Black entertainment professionals. And when I say Black entertainment professionals, we are not a group for people of color. We are not an umbrella, all encompassing situation. This is for Black people. And we say that because one of our main objectives is to address anti-blackness. And where you may have a production company, I always pose these questions to my white brothers and sisters. If you are on a job board, you're looking to fill a position, and you get a resume by our girl named Shameeka. And if you have a knee-jerk reaction to that, you may be anti-Black. And I think that resonates with so many people because it's not necessarily that people are racist, and they want segregation, and this and this and that, it's a product of living in America. It's a product if you've watched television for the past, however long you've been alive [crosstalk 00:31:13].

Fanshen Cox (31:14):

Media has shaped, media is anti-Black.

Dominique Ulloa (31:16):

Anti-Black.

Fanshen Cox (31:16):

All of it, yeah.

Dominique Ulloa (31:17):

And you've been indoctrinated into this. So it takes a consciousness to undo. And so we're not about diversity and inclusion and hiring and everything because Black people get hired. We get hired. It's about the retention and it's about the promotion. Will season one go on to season two? Will the assistant become the associate producer? Are they going to be bumped up to regular producer, or whatever the case may be? Once they get into this environment with whatever project that they're working on, what kind of environment are they about to be in?

(31:50):

The inconvenient truth about working in Hollywood is that most people ain't from Hollywood. This is their first time being in a diverse environment. So they bring all that bullshit with them. You can't talk to one Black person in the industry without them having a story. I talk to production companies all the time in meetings, and I explain to them this is about microaggressions and anti-blackness. And I always hear, "Oh no, no, no. We would never do anything like that. That's not the people who we hire here. No, no, no, no." But I was like, "Have you talked to [Deontre 00:32:27] in the vault?"

Fanshen Cox (32:30):

Right.

Dominique Ulloa (32:31):

Do he have a story?

Fanshen Cox (32:32):

Have you listened to, right.

Dominique Ulloa (32:34):

Are you sure? Have you talked to the Black people on your staff? Do you know? Do you even know if you're doing it? One thing that I always bring up is the word, girl, and how ...

Fanshen Cox (32:45):

They love it.

Dominique Ulloa (32:50):

Jessica in accounting don't mean no harm, but all of a sudden I'm your girl. When really, I'm 42 motherfucking years old. It's a long time since I've been a girl. So now we've established that, A, your first interaction with me is based on racial stereotypes. You don't know if I was adopted in a white family and raised in Minnesota. You don't know if I relate to that hood culture at all. And then you've also set the precedent that you don't have to be as professional with me.

Anya Adams (33:19):

Right.

Dominique Ulloa (33:19):

That you have this level of comfort with me, where, girl. And it's really not done in harm. It's done in people trying to relate to you.

Anya Adams (33:28):

People trying to relate [crosstalk 00:33:30].

Dominique Ulloa (33:29):

Relate to you. People trying to, and it's like, what are you going to do, be angry? But it's like, how do you navigate that? And so it's important that we have these conversations. And so what I do with my organization is that I have curated conversations with production companies, and I get hiring managers and people who are in position to hire, and I curate members, and we get together on Zoom and we talk for two hours. This is relationship building with peers.

Fanshen Cox (33:57):

Listening, yeah.

Dominique Ulloa (33:59):

You're being opened up to a whole new talent pool that you didn't even know about. And so this is an opportunity for you to make your content better and your businesses run more smoothly. And so this is just really, you're making new friends, that's all it is. You're just making new friends. So that's what we do. 2019, we estimated that we posted 1,500 jobs.

Anya Adams (34:21):

Wow.

Dominique Ulloa (34:23):

We have 1,200 members internationally. Most of them are in Los Angeles and New York, but we have members in UK, Africa, Caribbean, and Australia. Our membership is referral only. So someone needs to bring you in. And you're not joining Posted Up, you're joining Ujima [crosstalk 00:34:39].

Anya Adams (34:39):

Which is not just for editors, it's for everyone in industry.

Dominique Ulloa (34:42):

It's for everyone. It's for showrunners down to PAs. It's for everyone.

Anya Adams (34:45):

That's awesome.

Fanshen Cox (34:46):

Are you still running Posted Up? Only because I also think there's a lot to be said for filtering out positions. So with the inclusion rider, we get people like, how do I find a line producer. I like to also be able to have a specific place for them to go where they know. So are you still running Posted Up on Facebook?

Dominique Ulloa (35:08):

Yes. It's all interconnected. All of our official stuff though is Ujima. What we've done is created a safe space for Black people to be themselves. Here's the thing, we are far away from any type of atonement or reparations or anything that the United States about to do for us. And in lieu of that, we need to help each other. In the meantime, while you're waiting for these reparations, let's start paying them to ourselves. And so that's all we try to do. We try to make it easier for you as a Black entertainment professional to get put on.

(35:47):

One thing I will say about editing and being in the entertainment business and Hollywood, and everything else like that, my career didn't start taking off really until I started helping other people too.

Fanshen Cox (35:59):

Amen.

Dominique Ulloa (36:01):

When I started helping other people, that's when my career took off like a skyrocket. And I see a lot of people who've been doing this for a long time and get frustrated. You're not making the progress that you wanted to make, and you have some big wins over here, but it's far and few between. I would ask yourself, what are you doing to help other people? How are you contributing? Because a lot of people just want to be on their selves. They got the gig. They've got two or three people that they trust. That's it, they don't really help other. And especially if you're a Black person, you got to put on, you don't want too many Black people there because they may not-

Fanshen Cox (36:39):

You want to be the special one.

Dominique Ulloa (36:40):

You want to be the only.

Fanshen Cox (36:43):

Right.

Dominique Ulloa (36:44):

Maybe your career would be a lot further if you would help somebody.

Fanshen Cox (36:47):

Yeah, that's a great note.

Anya Adams (36:47):

What a fricking great note to end on. That's amazing.

Fanshen Cox (36:53):

Absolutely. That's it.

Anya Adams (36:53):

Talk about storytelling.

Fanshen Cox (36:55):

In order for you to work you got to help other people work. And I'll just say in wrapping up too, how important it is to have you on a guest because, one, we haven't had an editor yet and it's so important. And two, that you're a mom, and that we haven't talked about that on this podcast. And obviously since this is women, and that's going to be a part of our lives. So we are so grateful to you to Dominique.

Dominique Ulloa (37:22):

Thank you.

Fanshen Cox (37:29):

That was our conversation with Dominique Ulloa. Go to SistaBrunch.com to learn more about her work and how to keep up with her on all the socials. And thank you so much for listening to the Sista Brunch with me, Fanshen Cox, and Anya Adams. Follow us on Instagram at Sista Brunch Podcast and on Twitter at Sista Brunch to catch up with us, find out what we're watching, who we're talking to, support the work of all of our amazing Black women plus guests. We're also on Facebook at facebook.com/sistabrunchpodcast. And please, please, please help us out by subscribing, and rating, and sharing, and reviewing our show wherever you get your podcasts. Our show producer is Brittany Turner. Our executive producer is Christabel Nsiah-Buadi. We acknowledge the land we record our podcast on is the original land of the [inaudible 00:38:20] people for those of us in Los Angeles and [inaudible 00:38:23] for Anya in Vancouver. Tune in next time.