Today we’d like to introduce you to Alec Pinkston.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I went to school in Las Vegas to study Hospitality. After a couple of years managing restaurants in Chicago, I quit and started bartending suddenly earning twice as much money working half as many hours. I used my new found free time to start writing and shooting and editing sketch comedy. It was something I have done in some form my entire life and eventually, I found some willing accomplices who became great friends and we just cranked out new work constantly for about four years, shooting four or five different sketches every other weekend, trying to find our voices. Most of the videos weren’t great, some are now unwatchable, but each one was slightly better than the previous and it taught me a lot of hard lessons.
Eventually, I was connected to a legitimate director named Seth Henrikson via a writing partner and a craigslist ad. Seth was starting a hybrid production and post studio called Odd Machine and wanted more comedy on his commercial reel. I had zero production knowledge but a heap of ideas so it was a nice symbiosis. During this period, I would stay up most nights until sunrise writing and editing. Eventually, I saved enough to quit bartending and take the leap to LA to transition into shooting pilots instead of sketches. It was like grad school, expensive but educational. Opportunities finally opened up but the boom and bust of freelance were starting to drain me. Commercial production was paying the bills and eventually, I soon found myself launching an Odd Machine LA office and getting more responsibility with each project until they offered me the EP position in Chicago. Coming back to Chicago working full time in a studio that had everything you would ever need to film ANYTHING was an incredible feeling. I worked on a new pilot each year until we finally got some traction with Senataur by winning the Project Greenlight contest last year. I know I’m going to drive myself mad this winter working on that project but it’s a great break from the commercial content.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Definitely not. Without having gone to film school it was up to me to push myself and learn new skills. Always trying to explain myself to friends and family who were working 9 to 5 buying houses and having kids while I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to manage a dozen projects at various stages of production. Once I left for LA, there was no safety net and it is an extremely competitive field, especially for original content. You can spend so much time before you ever make a dime (if ever) on passion projects but I’ve always made time for mine and other people’s efforts even though it can really stack up on top of an already busy day of client projects.
There are certainly days that I don’t understand why I can’t just ‘clock out’ but without scratching the itch of developing my own projects I would probably go crazy. There is so much to do behind the scenes to birth a project and so many moments that make you doubt yourself but when something comes together even better than you imagined all of those doubts wash away. Then it’s just a matter of trying to get it in front of the right people which is an even bigger mountain than the one you just climbed to finish the project. We started the Senataur project as a web series about our character (an exiled alien centaur politician who is running for president) and we were totally swallowed up by the madness of the election and closed the project and were about to move on. Fortunately, our hail mary finish was submitting a pitch to Project Greenlight and it turned out to be just the beginning instead of the end.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Odd Machine – what should we know?
Odd Machine is a production and post-production company that starts and ends with the idea that we never compromise on quality and only hire people who are extremely passionate about what they do. I know that is a chest-beating thing to say that probably sounds cliched but I’ve witnessed it blossom over the last ten years and it’s been incredible to see it develop. We have slowly grown, piece by piece to cover every aspect of production through post including color, audio, graphics, and animation. Our crew is 90% the same on every single shoot and it makes my job so much easier because this group has been through so much together already. Our sets are very calm and positive atmosphere because it isn’t much you can throw at us that we haven’t already dealt with in some form or another. The level of teamwork and camaraderie is unmatched on any other set that I’ve been a part of and that translates into better work. We have had so many instances where we over-delivered on the budget because our people have a lot of integrity and pride in their work and an attention to detail that is borderline manic.
As a producer, it can make budgets really tough to manage sometimes but at the end of the day we are driven to make the work as good as we possibly can regardless of the constraints of the budget or schedule and that’s a product of developing your employees and freelancers into the roles that they aspire to achieve. We invest in anyone who has the right attitude and motivation, everything else can be learned with experience but you can’t teach tenacity, you can only focus it. We have fostered an environment where our crew, stage, and infrastructure are tools for any member of our team to use to create whatever they can imagine. Having a creative space like that where smoke is always coming out of the chimney 24/7/365 attracts and retains great talent at any position. All of this was absolutely crucial to being able to develop Senataur into something legit, especially once we made it to the finals.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
First off my parents have always been 100% behind my creative endeavors from a very early age and that is something that takes so many forms but has given me a lot of confidence and patience. Seth and Chris, the Odd Machine founders have given me the physical tools and encouragement to make those dreams a reality and without crossing their paths there is no telling where I would have ended up. There are too many teachers to name, at every level, who deserve credit for helping turn little sparks into flames for anyone who ends up in a creative field, without them the world would be a much more boring place
Contact Info:
- Address: OM POST- 900 N. Franklin Ave. Suite 850 Chicago, IL 60610
OM STUDIO- 3144 W. Carroll Ave. Chicago, IL 60612 - Website: www.oddmachine.com
- Phone: 312-624-9292
- Email: alec@oddmachine.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alec_pinkston/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheOddMachine/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/theoddmachine
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