Amena Brown:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to a new episode of HER with Amena Brown. And y'all, let me tell y'all something. The way that I had to just go ahead and start recording right now, because I'm already in my feelings. I know some of y'all are like, "Is she in her feelings every week?" But let's not focus on that. I'm in my feelings today because we have a guest in the HER living room that, this has been a long time coming. This has been a long time coming.
Christelle de Castro:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
So I want y'all to welcome Filipino American director, photographer, fine artist, and co-founder of film production company Ground Work Christelle de Castro. Woo woo, woo woo. That's right, come on.
Christelle de Castro:
Dang!
Amena Brown:
Yes.
Christelle de Castro:
Can I just have you present me every day when I walk out of my space?
Amena Brown:
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Christelle de Castro:
That energy is... I need that.
Amena Brown:
Yes. I think what you should also do is give this verbiage to every barista that does your order at the coffee shop. When they're like, "Oh, what's your name?" Be like, "Director, photographer," like, you need to hand them a card so they can say all of it and then be like, "Your latte."
Christelle de Castro:
Right? They're like, "Ma'am, step aside."
Amena Brown:
You're like, "No, you have to read all of this. Not just my first name, not just my last name. All of this."
Christelle de Castro:
They're like, "Ma'am, please leave."
Amena Brown:
Right. "Please get your latte and get on."
Christelle de Castro:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
"We have other customers. Get out of here."
Y'all, let me tell y'all something. The reason why I'm telling y'all this is a long time coming is because Christelle and I originally met in 2020. I actually met you, Christelle, probably weeks before this podcast relaunched. So this podcast was seasonal and I am now under the Seneca Women Network. So this podcast relaunched probably a few weeks after you and I met.
And y'all, those of you that have been following me on this podcast, remember that I was a face of an Olay campaign 2020 into 2021, and any of you that saw the video spot from that, Christelle was the director. I just want to first of all say that shoot was full of a lot of badass women, and you were one of the badass women I got to watch making that whole thing happen, Christelle. Like, yo.
Christelle de Castro:
Thank you, thank you. No, that shoot was incredible. Basically, the whole production team, we were all women. The DP, Daisy Zhou.
Amena Brown:
That's right.
Christelle de Castro:
A woman. We were very intentional with making sure that we were crewed up with women. That's kind of important. It was a campaign really about female empowerment, and so we wanted to make sure that that was represented with the crew.
Amena Brown:
And Christelle, you and I didn't get to talk about this in detail, I don't think, but I've only been directed two times in my career, and one of those was you.
Christelle de Castro:
Oh, really?
Amena Brown:
Yeah. Yeah.
Christelle de Castro:
Oh my God.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. That was a big, big deal for me. And just to let you know, the other one is Robert Townsend. You're the two directors. So I feel like-
Christelle de Castro:
I'm in good company.
Amena Brown:
Yes, exactly. You know?
Christelle de Castro:
Wow.
Amena Brown:
I'll be able to say, when you're out there winning your awards, I'll be able to be like, "Robert Townsend and Christelle de Castro both directed me," I'll be able to say. But because I have been a poetry performer so long, it's really any of my performances or sets or anything like that, most of the time I had to be self-directed a lot.
Christelle de Castro:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
So I walked into the Olay shoot with a lot of nerves because it was the first in a long time of a shoot that I was doing where I wasn't performing my own work. And it wasn't like it was hugely scripted or anything like that, we just had some different setups. And just the way you walked in to the makeup trailer, you just sat down with me and you were like, "Hey, here's where I'm thinking the vibe's going to be today. Here's what you can expect." I just immediately felt so comfortable with you, and we had a long day trying to get all that done.
And y'all, let me tell y'all something else that Christelle and the team there were doing. We were in Atlanta shooting, the client was in New York. They were watching from some element of a livestream where they could kind of see.
Christelle de Castro:
Hella livestream cameras, yeah.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, but they weren't actually there in the room. If this had been done pre-pandemic, it would've been a gang-gang of people there because the clients would've been there, everyone. But Christelle's directing me, but we're also having to wait and get clearance from the client watching. That was a lot. Can you just talk about how you and the team were navigating the complications, complexities of having to shoot that in the time that we did?
Christelle de Castro:
Oh my goodness. So that was my first commercial out of COVID. So that was the first big shoot that I got to have during COVID, and we can talk about this when we talk about the production company, but I had a lot of remote shoots. Everybody was kind of just making do with what we could with technology, and finally it was like, now we can be on set. Do you remember people were wearing hazmat suits on set?
Amena Brown:
Yes, that's right.
Christelle de Castro:
So this is how fresh it was from being in lockdown. And so yeah, beauty team was wearing hazmats. We were taking it very seriously to social distance and not get each other sick. That was the biggest shoot since lockdown. And we traveled to, I think, three cities, and obviously there were major women that were going to be in the spot, including Amena Brown, spoken word artists.
And for me, I was nervous to meet you because I'm like, "She's a star. She's an artist, and we're giving her lines. She's a spoken word artist." I don't ever know what I'm going to get when I'm meeting people, whether they're musicians or designers or actors or whatever. You never know what you're going to get that. That's just life.
Amena Brown:
Right.
Christelle de Castro:
But then you add to that somebody with a big profile and then somebody who's an artist in their own right, and then you kind of have to be the orchestrator of this thing. So for me, it's really important in my work that I get to talk to everybody before we start shooting. Ideally, in a perfect world, I like to chat with my talent before we even get on set, do a Zoom and just introduce myself or get on FaceTime with them just so that they know who I am. I'm a chill person. Just to establish this sort of camaraderie prior to the shoot.
If I don't get that, then I will always chat with people during hair and makeup just to introduce myself again. And that way, you're not meeting somebody cold by the time we start rolling. And so it was so lovely to be able to connect with you. And I was like, "Oh wow, okay. So she's cool." When we chatted, I immediately in myself felt just a relief because it was like, "Okay, so she's not going to be a diva."
Amena Brown:
Right.
Christelle de Castro:
Because you never know.
Amena Brown:
It do be like that sometimes. It do.
Christelle de Castro:
It really do be like that sometimes. I remember we had some chuckles during that shoot when we were recording the VO.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. That's right.
Christelle de Castro:
So imagine, for those listening, we had to record VO aside from lines that were being recited on set. So we took one of the rooms in the studio and we had a little microphone set up and we were recording the VO. As Amena was saying the lines, it was feeding back to clients who were in New York.
So we would do the line and then the producer would get a delayed reaction from clients because they're populating all of their notes and then she's got to tell it to us. We had some moments during that recording where we were just busting up. It was just one of those things where we would look at each other and be like-
Amena Brown:
"Okay."
Christelle de Castro:
"No, that's not what we're going to do."
Amena Brown:
Right.
Christelle de Castro:
"But that was a cute idea too."
Amena Brown:
It was just so nice in that moment to be able to look into your eyes, and there were a couple of other folks from the production team in there with us just to look at each other's eyes and be like, "Okay, so we're not going to do that, but we're going to figure out a way that we feel comfortable. Okay. All right. Okay."
Christelle de Castro:
"Fine."
Amena Brown:
"We're all going to collaborate. It's great. It's great."
Christelle de Castro:
It was very that. It was very that.
Amena Brown:
Okay Christelle, as a director, this is something as a person who just loves the form of film and that this is something that you work in all the time.
Christelle de Castro:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
And I told you I've had a lot of on-camera experience, not as much direction. What's the vibe of how you are going to navigate that? Because sometimes you have talent that is going to have script, that have a character they've got to take on. Sometimes they're going to be there I was to be themselves, but to maybe say things or have to do things that may not feel totally natural to them in the moment. So what do you feel like is the role of the director in that moment?
Christelle de Castro:
So for me in particular, and I don't think all directors necessarily have to be this way or operate in this way, but I actually see myself as an energy doula. So my job on set is to basically orchestrate the energy in the room. Not just myself and talent and whoever's on-screen, but also to make sure the crew is feeling alive, the clients are liking what they see, and they feel like their needs are being met. It's actually energy work in a interesting way.
And when I'm working with talent in particular, it is so important for me to get them to feel just like they've forgotten that there's 20, 40 plus people in the room staring at them. So I kind of like to establish just a sense of trust is so important and I don't know something that happens where we kind of click into it, but I try to keep things very light. I try to keep things very, very light. So that's kind of how I navigate it.
I feel like it's more than just saying lines and getting the script. It's so much deeper than that. It's kind of hard to explain, but I take it really seriously. And even though it might be a beauty campaign where the lines are scripted, I really try to get talent to feel it and to identify with it. And so it makes the work look and feel authentic.
Amena Brown:
I totally felt that, and especially when you're shooting for such a long day, I felt like as a director, you were paying attention to that, to the energy level of what happens when you shoot a long time and ways we can click back in to try to find the energy we can get access to there to finish out the shoot. So there were a lot of moments like that that I felt like you gave me those moments to recenter. You gave me those moments to be like, "Okay, now here's a different setup from what we've been doing. Let's think about this. Let's talk about this."
Christelle de Castro:
And it's important to hype people up as well and let them see themselves. That's so important to be like, "Do you see yourself in the shot? This is gorgeous." It is so important to touch base, because I would want to know. I would want to know how I'm looking if I was doing something really difficult. Because sometimes it just feels unnatural, the things that we're saying on screen. You know what I mean? Then you see it and you're like, "That actually looks phenomenal." It just gives you that bit of courage to keep on the path.
Amena Brown:
It's definitely a moment where you sometimes, as I felt anyway, you're on camera, you're like, "Does this look... Am I..." And you need someone to be like, "You a bad bitch."
Christelle de Castro:
Right. Absolutely.
Amena Brown:
Need someone to to be like, "Don't worry about it. It's giving bad bitch right now. You're doing great." And you're like, "Okay." Because sometimes you're there in yourself. You're not knowing how it's coming across with all of the other tools that are there, the lighting and the way the camera's shooting you, and there are angles. You don't know about all that. You're just in your own body, sometimes in your head, depending on where you are in the shoot.
So to have someone whose vision is thinking about the broad scope of that, you really impressed upon me how important it is to be directed. And I told my husband, I said, "Babe, if Christelle de Castro ever called me up someday and be like, 'Hey, I'm working on a project and I want to know if you...' I would be like, 'Okay girl, but just go ahead and email me because whatever you saying, yes. Yes. Whatever you saying, I bet I can do it. Send me that. Send me the information.'"
Christelle de Castro:
Noted, noted, noted.
Amena Brown:
Please put it down in your planner Christelle, okay?
Christelle de Castro:
Noted.
Amena Brown:
Just so you know. It just would have a lot of weight with me because I just enjoyed your expertise and your professionalism.
Christelle de Castro:
Thank you.
Amena Brown:
You had this way, and I feel like this was true of the crew overall that day too, you had this way of being like, it's firm, but it's also gentle. It's thoughtful. And we've all worked in this industry long enough. You have some experiences with people who all they know how to be is a cussing football coach. Doesn't matter what position they're in. And that's not always the energy that you might need in the moment.
Christelle de Castro:
No. Listen, I mean, we are so lucky that we get to do this for a living. I feel like this work is fun and we're lucky to do it, and we're not operating on someone's deathbed.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Christelle de Castro:
If that were the case, then maybe I could see a world in which stressing out and losing composure could be a thing because it's someone's life. But we are making films. We're making beautiful images. This is fun. Not everybody gets to do this, so at the end of the day, there's no reason to be flashing on people on set.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's take a little bit of a deeper dive into your career journey, because the experience you've had as a director, as a photographer, as a fine artist, now as a co-founder of a film production company, all of these things involve the visual arts in some regards. So talk to me about how did that journey start with you? How did you know that you had interest, skill, talent to want to explore how you could do the visual arts yourself?
Christelle de Castro:
Yes. Okay. So I'll take you through the journey. I'll try to give you the CliffsNotes of it, but it all makes sense in the end. But basically, I grew up in the Bay and in a suburb in the Bay, kind of a baby Oakland. The only thing putting us on the map was that we had a BART station that finished in our little suburb.
When I was growing up, I would watch the public access channel and the high school of my town had a 30-minute segment on that channel where all the high schoolers would make silly projects and then put it on the public access channel. Obviously as a young kid, I would always be like, "They're so cool. I want to take that class," or whatever. They were just silly projects. And then flash forward to me going to high school, I took the TV video class. Now my high school was like a poor Euphoria. Okay?
Amena Brown:
Okay. Thank you for that.
Christelle de Castro:
So all of the crazy shit that goes on in Euphoria and the very inappropriate stuff, those things were happening in my high school, just, we were not a rich high school. But I love my high school. I'm so happy I went there because it gave me so much soul and it was so fucking diverse. And we just were soulful. We didn't necessarily advance in the books, but we had a popping marching band.
We had an amazing theater program, and then we also had this TV video elective that everybody wanted to take because the football coach was the teacher of that class, and he was just super cool. And this is how bad my high school was. You could cut class and just go hang out with your friends in another class and the teachers would let you.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Christelle de Castro:
Chill in the class. Yes. It was not crazy for my TV video teacher to be like, "I'm hungry. Can somebody get me a burger at Burger King?" And then just literally put his keys up and then a kid would just drive out with his car.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Christelle de Castro:
It was wild.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Christelle de Castro:
So that was my high school. And anyway, so I took this class. Everybody wanted to take that class because it was infamous for just being a class where you could just chill with your friends, but I actually took it seriously and I had so much fun. My teacher would just be like, "Yo, you need to borrow a camera?" He created an environment, and I think because I was the only kid who actually made stuff, he was just giving me any of the tools that I needed. So I mean to the point where for one summer he snuck a computer into the back of my car so I could edit for the summer.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Christelle de Castro:
He let me take home a computer from school, which is really amazing, right? So I realized when I was 14, I was like, "I really want to become a filmmaker. This is what I want to do. I want to be a director." And I'm from an immigrant family, Filipino family. I moved here when I was five. We had a mom-and-pop grocery store that I started working at when I was 11. So it's kind of like Everything Everywhere All at Once, that vibe. I know that so well. That sort of immigrant family business hustle, that was my family to the T.
So I remember being at the dinner table saying, "I realized I want to be a director," and my dad scoffed at me. He was like, "With what money? I'm not following." And it was just like, okay, well that bubble has been popped.
But that kind of reaction was to be expected from him. And anyway, what ended up happening was after high school, at that point, my father had left our family and my mom was now a single mom with this store, and I'm the one daughter of three kids. I'm the middle child of two boys. So I was always kind of relied on to be one of the cash register girls at the store.
Amena Brown:
Got it.
Christelle de Castro:
So my older brother had to go out and make money, my little brother was too young, and then it was just me. I retained the language the most out of me and my big brother. Andrew, my little brother, didn't speak Tagalog, so I had to just be around.
Amena Brown:
Got it.
Christelle de Castro:
So not that I wanted to go to college in San Francisco, but it was something I had to do in order to take the train on the weekends to work and help my mom.
Amena Brown:
Got it.
Christelle de Castro:
So I kind of put my dream on hold. I also didn't really even have, really, any direction as to how I was going to make that happen. But what ended up happening was, I went to San Francisco State, I went with a theater and cinema double major idea. That's what I wanted to do. I quickly fucking dropped out of theater because I was like, "Bro, if this is going to be my future..." I'm like, "Why are you showing up to class with a cape on? That is just unnecessary."
And I was like, "These are not my people." I love acting, but I was like, "I don't see this being my future, so I'm going to drop that." What ended up happening was I went from, remember, my teacher was just like, "Take a computer. Take this camera." He was really involved with helping me creatively grow, to going to this school where we didn't have any video projects. My first year there, it was mostly theory. So we didn't work on anything creative. And I went on Craigslist to try and find students from other schools that I could join a project with.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Christelle de Castro:
I go on Craigslist. It's these kids going to the Academy of Art. They were shooting a commercial for a school project and they needed actors. So I tried out, I got a part, and the DP and I became besties from that point on.
Amena Brown:
Whoa.
Christelle de Castro:
And he introduced photography to me.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Christelle de Castro:
He was an incredible, still is an incredible photographer. His name is Ago. He's Japanese. He lives in Japan now. I wasn't even interested in photography at all. He just had these gadgets that I didn't understand, and the light meter, I was like, "What is that?" I would just be like, "What are these things?" And one day he was just like, "You keep asking me questions. Do you want to just try it?" And I was like, "No, what is that? That's just a weird vintage-looking thing."
And basically he ended up teaching me how to take pictures. He, again, he is an angel in my life, and he would give me film and then I would shoot through the film and then we would develop it in his kitchen, and then we would make contact sheets. And this now became the new thing that I could involve myself with that was feeding my... It was like in high school, I got to really feed my creativity through that video class, and then now I found this thing that I could do by myself.
It's instant gratification, because I shoot it and then we develop it, I get to see it. It's not shooting a video and then having to edit it. And so it just was blowing my mind, photography. And then in the next year, I got into my first group exhibition. So I was basically photographing all the kids that I was running around San Francisco with and just photographing musicians. So I was a street photographer. That was my vibe.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Christelle de Castro:
Yeah. Just the scene. I was shooting the scene and then that became my world.
I was heavily involved in gallery shows, but specifically street art. So it's lowbrow. It's very lowbrow. It's just photos of kids getting drunk. You know what I mean? That was the vibe. Cut to moving to New York, finally, when I was 24.
Amena Brown:
Whoa.
Christelle de Castro:
I moved to New York because I was working at a diner back home and I was like, "Okay, I love what I'm doing and I love photography, but how do I make money from this? I'm shooting my friends, I'm shooting bands, but how do I then make a career out of what I'm doing?" I had been printed in one magazine. I just didn't know how to take it to the next level, and I just felt like New York was the key. So I moved to New York and immediately I felt like I can't be this art girl because I'm not from an academic background.
Amena Brown:
Huh.
Christelle de Castro:
Right?
Amena Brown:
Okay.
Christelle de Castro:
Because in New York it's not about lowbrow. It's very much about highbrow, and it's very much about your masters and being able to speak about... In New York, you can lean a broom on a wall and have a little title card next to it and a written thing and people will be like, "Wow." You know what I'm saying?
Amena Brown:
That's it. That's a fact. That's a fact.
Christelle de Castro:
I just felt so outside of it. I felt like there was no way I was going to be able to compete with these people. I dropped out. I didn't get my degree. So I just felt very intimidated. And I said, "Okay, well, I'm just going to then have to figure out how to work in this field." And so then I went more commercial and I started learning digital photography. Then I started shooting for brands, and I went that way.
It was funny because in those early years when I would go to San Francisco, they'd be like, "Do you have a show coming up?" So in SF they knew me as an artist, and then here I was working commercially. And then a couple years into that, I started getting the pangs in my heart. I wanted to direct. So I started slowly bringing that back into my practice.
2013 I think was the first fashion film I directed, and then, cut to now, I'm 90, really 95% directing for work. And I still love photography. If I could have it my way I would just do it as my art practice. But I won't say no to a check.
Amena Brown:
That's right. That's right.
Christelle de Castro:
Just for the record.
Amena Brown:
Just in case anybody's listening, you can still pay Christelle for some photographs. You can still pay her for that. Okay. We don't know who's listening, Christelle. We got to put it out there.
Christelle de Castro:
It's long story, but I think the context is necessary for people. Yeah. I'm actually doing my first love. I'm pursuing my first love, and so I just feel fucking blessed to be here.
Amena Brown:
Yo, thank you for sharing that journey because the reason why I want our community here in our HER living room to hear that is because a lot of times we're meeting someone at the point we see them. We're not getting to hear all of the rough and tumble journey, all of this stuff we learn like, "Ooh, I don't really like that, but I didn't know I'd like this."
There's all of that stuff that leads a person to their sweet spot that you see them in. And I think when we look at our own lives, it's sometimes hard to think that all this stuff I've been trying to figure out could actually be leading me down the road where I'm going to end up where I'm supposed to be anyways. So I just really appreciated you sharing that journey with us.
So now take me from, now you have photography as a part of art that you're doing. You have your commercial work, you're now getting into directing. How does that transition into entrepreneurship? What was the journey like between there and we is starting a company and we is starting a company in 2020. Tell the people. Tell the people, Christelle.
Christelle de Castro:
Listen, that was humbling, the 2020 moment. Because we were forming in 2019 before any of us knew what the fuck was going to happen, right? So we were forming in 2019 and then the pandemic happened and we were like, "Oh, shit. This is a funny time to be doing this." But the wonderful thing is that we didn't have an overhead.
Amena Brown:
Right.
Christelle de Castro:
So it's me and my business partners are all in the UK. So I had the New York office, then we have a London office and an office in Bristol. We were running the New York office out of my living room. So it wasn't like we had some other rent we needed to pay. It wasn't like we had an employee that we hired on that we had a salary for. There was no really losses on our part. It was just a slow season to start in.
So that was the blessing. When that happened, we were like, "Well, the good thing is it's not really affecting us." So it was fine. And the entrepreneurship, I think I will always have that bone in my body because I grew up in a family business, and that's just where that came from. That's kind of what I'm used to.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense, especially just hearing your story coming from a family that you were also watching be entrepreneurial and how that affects your journey and what you know is possible, what is possible to do. I think that's so dope.
And 2020, it just snuck so many of us Christelle. Because the way I had the tours lined up, it was going to be a spring and a fall.
Christelle de Castro:
Oh no.
Amena Brown:
It was so many things. But to be honest, I didn't know I was going to get a podcast deal. I didn't know the Olay opportunity was going to even arrive. I mean, truthfully, I ended up getting booked at P&G's headquarters, actually. I want to say this is a week before the pandemic hit. This is when everyone was just leaving hand sanitizer out because we're just like, "I don't know, something seems like it's going on some place," kind of thing.
Christelle de Castro:
Before it became super real.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, it was like, we weren't really sure, right, and I actually did some poetry there and the Olay team was sitting in the room and they were like, "You just did a piece that sounds exactly like this campaign thing we're working on." And then the pandemic started and I was just like, "Well, I'm glad we had that conversation." That was that.
But then to your point, there were still all of these creative things that went on after that that people were like, "Okay, we can figure out some ways to film some people from home. We can figure out some ways to do these voiceovers this way." There was a lot of innovative things that I think a lot of us as creatives had to do. I love that for you and your business partners. Now, you can look back at this three years. Do y'all ever sit around and be like, "Yo, we actually made it through this?"
Christelle de Castro:
Oh, all the time. All the time. We really had to get savvy with the remote tech. We needed to get savvy with what do we need in order to produce something, and it was nuts. It's a thing I would not like to go to anymore, but I'm glad that's something that we evolved and learned through that time. But yeah. I'm curious for you and poetry and touring, you said all these tour dates got canceled. Do you find in your field it's adapting to a new world or are tours back? Are performances back for you?
Amena Brown:
They haven't come back for me fully yet, but in some ways it was kind of like the work that came to me over this past three years was all stuff for the most part that I could do from Atlanta or do from home. So a lot of it was more some collaborative type of work and obviously the podcast and you're watching me here in my husband's studio. So we just made a lot of stuff. We just made it from here.
But I am a stage person, Christelle. That's really where it's at for me. Every other thing I'm doing came from me loving writing, which led me to loving the stage. So I was starting to get to a point where I was just starting to cry because I was just like, "I don't know. Is there someplace people is and I could just go there and just say hello? Can I say a poem to y'all? Can I do a poem or something?"
So in a way, now I'm just now getting back out, taking my poems back out to open mics. That's a big part of my process. I've been trying The Moth and learning how to do that sort of storytelling form, which has been really, really good and challenging for me to figure out. So I feel like I'm seeing the touring come back for bigger name artists, which I hope means that that will happen for some of us indie-
Christelle de Castro:
Because the culture is going to-
Amena Brown:
Yeah
Christelle de Castro:
The culture's still here.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, for us as indie artists. And I think some indie artists too are kind of thinking about maybe pre-pandemic, you might have an artist like me and an artist over here and an artist over here and an artist over here, and they're all touring separately. I'm watching a lot of indie artists figure out, "Okay, maybe it's better during this time to be figuring out how we tour together, how we put three or four artists on a bill and build ourselves back up to an audience and people get more comfortable."
So I think a lot of the collaboration that came out of this time, like you said, not a time I would like to go back to, but the collaboration that we learned and the ability to just think on the fly and figure out how we can do things. I think that's a thing I hope that we keep.
Christelle de Castro:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
I also wanted to ask you about mentorship. I want to talk about this Christelle, and I want to hear your thoughts about it because sometimes people ask me, "Who's your mentor?" And sometimes I feel like I had a lot of mentors from afar. If you walked up to those people, they wouldn't be like, "I know Amena," but I would be like, "I read her books through and through and she mentored me from afar. Not at her house and not in her office."
Christelle de Castro:
Not personally. She doesn't know who I am, but-
Amena Brown:
She doesn't know me, but I watched her videos until I had her videos like memorized, and so she mentored me. So you have the experience of now as an entrepreneur, now having been in your career as long as you have, have a lot of folks that probably see you, hear your story, and are like, "Tell me everything, Christelle. Be my mentor. Be my mentor."
I want you to talk about what's the process like for you of knowing when the fit is right for you to mentor someone. And then I also would love to hear your journey, good, bad, ugly, indifferent, of finding mentors for yourself.
Christelle de Castro:
Sure. So I actually started teaching at Parsons, which is fucking nuts because I don't have my degree, right? Literally when they tapped me to teach this class, well, people listening to this won't be able to see this, but I was like this.
Amena Brown:
You were like, "Who?"
Christelle de Castro:
I was looking over my shoulder.
Amena Brown:
"To me? You're talking to me?"
Christelle de Castro:
I took the meetings and I was like, "You want me to teach this class? You want me?" But it was an intensive photo and video intensive for MFA fashion students. So it was teaching fashion designers how to think in the world of pictures and in video, which was so amazing. It's an amazing fashion program at Parsons.
But the directors of that program, they had a movement class because they were like, "Look, if you're going to design something, let's say for Amena Brown who's going to recite something at the Grammy's, she can't feel stiff. You need to know how your clothing feels." So they just thought of so many out of the box things, including this course that I taught. And I was there for four years. This is my first year not teaching anymore.
But what I realized is I really love connecting with younger people. I really love teaching. And again, it's coming from this maternal place. It's = totally coming from this. It's the same with directing. There's a level of care and there's heart. It's a lot of heart that goes into both directing and teaching for me. So I feel like I get so much out of that kind of interaction. And I love doing guest speaking for organizations for other creative students. And I've been doing, I actually have had a lot of speaking engagements this month with different organizations. I love doing that.
So I don't mentor anybody one on one, but I mostly show up for young folks in that way. When I did have a team of interns pre-COVID, I obviously mentored them, but I always find myself in the space where I'm being asked to mentor, which can get very, I guess the word would be overwhelming.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, sure.
Christelle de Castro:
In a world where you are a woman of color and you are dying for a mentor yourself. In my personal life, I don't have anybody in my family that I can lean on or look up to for financial advice. I'm the one who's going to have to take care of my family. You feel me?
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Christelle de Castro:
I'm working hard because I feel like I'm going to have to be the one to break the cycle of not having enough money in my family legacy. So it can be very tough when so many different groups of people are leaning on you for advice and mentorship. I'm always happy to do that, but I am out here fucking trying to look for a fucking mentor. It's tough out here. And I think it's, it wasn't until recently where I was like, "You kind of need to look for a mentor yourself," you know what I mean? And what about you? Do you have any mentors that you can talk to or get advice from?
Amena Brown:
I don't feel like I do Christelle, which is why I just identified so much with what you said, because I think especially some of the spaces that I've been in, there would definitely be a lot of young folks of color that would just gravitate to me. And I love it. And then I would also be like, "Ooh, who is the person that I'm going to call or email? Or Who is that?" Exactly.
Christelle de Castro:
Yes. Yes.
Amena Brown:
So I feel like when I look back at my story, there are people I can see, "Oh, that person really had an impact on the form of what I'm doing or how I decided to approach this." So I don't know if I thought back then I was being mentored, but now I can see I was, right? Like, when I think about your story about your teacher from high school, right?
Christelle de Castro:
Yeah.
Amena Brown:
I think a lot of the mentoring part that's hard too, is when some people talk about it, it sounds very formal, which I guess maybe is more of a corporate America kind of style, which for folks like us that are working for ourselves, we're just not going to have that kind of ladder experience where you're going to be like, "Here I am a supervisor at this level in the company. I would like to ask so-and-so who's a manager of this department to now be my mentor, wherein we will go to this very expensive place and they will pay for me to eat Nicoise salad while we talk over whatever this is."
Christelle de Castro:
Right.
Amena Brown:
And I feel like when you're in the creative space, you're like, "Am I supervisor? Am I a manager?"
Christelle de Castro:
But you know what? I think we need to have that. So I think what we have had probably are a bunch of angels. That's kind of how I see it. So my teacher and Ago who taught me photography, they were angels in my life. I wouldn't consider them mentors necessarily. They opened my eyes to things and they really invested, and they created an environment for me to blossom, which is I am so forever grateful for. I consider them angels in my life.
I would love to have a savvy, seasoned business woman that I can speak to who can give me grace. I'm still out here flailing, but help me see what kind of structure I need to build out into my life. Someone I can look up to and be like, "Wow, you kind of come from a similar past or whatever. Or I just adore what you're doing." But it's really tough out here. I realize often, I think more so lately, I feel like I'm out here in this world being almost forced to be more masculine and more aggressive than I even want to be. You know what I'm saying? I don't have a partner. I'm just single momming it with my dog, you feel me? I actually don't want to be a leader 100% of the time. I also want to be led.
Amena Brown:
Say that, Christelle. Yeah.
Christelle de Castro:
You know what I'm saying? Actually, it's a beautiful realization. I mean, 14, almost 15 years into living in New York City, I'm only just realizing it is actually to take a beat and open. Right now I'm in a space of, I just want to open my world up to other folks to come in and help me out because I do not have all the answers. So that's kind of where I am.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Christelle de Castro:
And there are fucking amazing women who are killing it all around us, I think it's just about, yeah, this is a great platform for me to even just say, if there's anybody listening who would like to have a coffee-
Amena Brown:
If you listening, you let us know.
Christelle de Castro:
With me and Amena.
Amena Brown:
Okay? Because whatever you saying Christelle, I want to eavesdrop on that as well. So we know you're listening. We want that. And Christelle, I think too, I just resonated so much with what you just said, especially when you are having to create a path for yourself. I have felt that a lot as a poet, because people are always like, "What? A poet? How do you live? Do you eat food? What are poets doing out here?"
And I sort of feel like I carved this lane for myself, which meant I didn't have a specific person that I could go to and say, "Hey, when you were my age and you were doing this..." It was sort of like, I would have to build that out of various sundry types of people. But I do think a part of it I'm trying to work on Christelle, I ain't got it all the way together. Maybe I never will either.
But part of it I'm trying to work on is how to put myself in spaces where I'm being poured back into and really digging into what does that look like for me? Are there conferences or retreats that would be a space where I can say, "Of all this hustle that I'm doing to make this money, what percentage of that money can I give to I'm going to go to something where I'm going to sit there and get to learn from other people," right?
Christelle de Castro:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
And sometimes that can be a space, I think, where you can catch a vibe from someone to see if you think they would be a mentor type person. One of the things that's worked for me so far, which is not technically mentoring, or maybe some people would say it is, but it's sort of having a peer knowledge share.
I have a very small number of Black women that every now and then we get on a Zoom, and one of us will be like, "I'm about to have a meeting where I have to pitch this idea to this brand. Y'all, pour into me what you think based on your industry. Pour into me what you think I should think about, what you think I should ask. What should I say? What are things I should consider as I'm preparing for this?" And we all kind of take a turn.
And so I think as creatives in some ways, we can give to each other the thing that we wish we had ahead of us. Now, the hope is when I look at you Christelle, and when I look at how far my career has come, I hope that the generations after us will have more access to mentorship. I hope to give back to the people coming after me more than was able, more than I guess I was able to receive. But in some ways, some of us weren't able to receive that because who was doing this? Like, this specific thing.
Sometimes it's like, "Oh, I just made up a lane right here. So now I don't quite have that one exact person where I can go to, but who can be that?" So I think some of it is, every time I learn something, I'm always in an episode of Black Girl Who Tries to Pretend like She's Been Places, and every time I learn something, every time I get a new contract and look in the clauses and be like, "Oh, I didn't know that could be a clause." Sometimes I might hit up a creative friend and be like, "Girl, let me tell you what was in the contract just in case you get one like this."
Christelle de Castro:
Yes, yes, yes.
Amena Brown:
So creating some element of peer sharing, which can be a little mini mentoring because sometimes my friends-
Christelle de Castro:
It's a support group, essentially.
Amena Brown:
Right. Yeah.
Christelle de Castro:
Which we absolutely need. I think that's brilliant.
Amena Brown:
They're across having the same experience as you, but sometimes they get in a room different from you or get in a room you want to get in, and when they come back and be like, "Girl, when you go in there, don't order this. Order this instead."
Christelle de Castro:
Yes. Right, right. No, that's actually so important. I was actually reading, I can't remember what book this is from, but this person was talking about having a creative group that every week for 30 minutes they would meet. And it might have even just been two people that would meet every 30 minutes. But I thought that was smart because it's kind of therapy. I speak with my therapist every single week, but how cool could it be to speak with a peer and just be like, "This is what's going on in my world. This is what's going on in my world." And it's actually agenda-based.
Amena Brown:
Right.
Christelle de Castro:
You're meeting for those 30 minutes, not just to Kiki, but you're, "Okay, what's going on? What can I help you with? Okay. Can you pour into me now?" Yeah. I think that's brilliant. Why we need to do that more.
Amena Brown:
Okay, not me wanting to invite you and figure out how we do that.
Christelle de Castro:
Period.
Amena Brown:
So I'm glad we talked about it Christelle, okay? Because sometimes for me, Christelle, some of my other friends are just in different industries from me. They're not necessarily creatives, so that will add a different element that I'll kind of feel like, "Oh, I need to explain to you this part of how this typically works," whereas someone like you would be like, "Oh yeah, no. Totally. I've been in the meetings where we were talking about that. I've looked at the contract, and we had to decide these things."
Christelle de Castro:
Watch out this, or don't let them talk you into this.
Amena Brown:
Right, exactly.
Christelle de Castro:
Yeah, yeah.
Amena Brown:
So I'm glad we talked about that so we can invite each other. That's very good.
Christelle de Castro:
Yes, exactly. So we can start it.
Amena Brown:
Thank you.
Christelle de Castro:
But I'm sure so many people who are going to be listening to this are going to resonate with wanting to find a mentor.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Christelle de Castro:
And I'm calling on all those people to comment on this post.
Amena Brown:
For sure.
Christelle de Castro:
Because maybe this can possibly start some sort of, I don't know...
Amena Brown:
It's a Match.com, but for mentors.
Christelle de Castro:
Right.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. That's what we need. It's like a Mentor Match.
Christelle de Castro:
But to your point, the retreats and all that stuff, that is something that I need to look into. I think that that's a great idea.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, at least to get started. Because sometimes that'll put you in the room with some people, and then some of it also Christelle, for me, it's sometimes I meet people that could be my mentor and I'm scared to ask them.
Christelle de Castro:
Right. So we need to do the work. Right. Because people have the audacity to ask us.
Amena Brown:
Okay?
Christelle de Castro:
Okay?
Amena Brown:
And sometimes they ask and I'll be like, "I got you. Let's meet." So it's like sometimes you don't know a person or a person might be like, "I can't meet with you every week for two hours, but call me right now. I got 30 minutes. Ask me some things. Let me know what you need. Let me look into it." Something. So also not being afraid to put the ask out there. When you do come across someone that you feel like that vibe from, don't be afraid to toss it out there to them. You never know when someone might be like, "Let's hop on a Zoom. I got you. I'll answer your questions. I got 30 minutes, so you better make that 30 minutes.
Christelle de Castro:
Right? You are so right.
Amena Brown:
Make it hit.
Christelle de Castro:
We actually need to acknowledge the fact that we are not asking as well. That's very true.
Amena Brown:
Got to get into that for sure. But yeah, if y'all want to mentor Christelle, please hit us up right now. And also, if you want to pay Christelle money, that's separate from the mentoring, but if you want to use Christelle services, you can also pay for that as well.
Okay. I wanted to ask you a very important question to close our interview, Christelle.
Christelle de Castro:
Okay, yeah.
Amena Brown:
Because when we are here in the HER living room, what I imagine is this is the place that I gather with my girlfriends. It's the living room. It's that old couch that you got on sale somewhere. It's when your girlfriend comes over and she's like, "Girl, I brought these crackers and a little bit of cheese I opened last week." And you're like, "Girl, I got a bell pepper. I got a little bit of hummus I tasted last week." And you just bring your little snacks together. It's like a little snack potluck.
I want to know when you are with your friends, when you were with your homies, what's the snack that you are bringing to this type of situation?
Christelle de Castro:
So currently I am doing keto, right? So my snacks are like, it's meat and cheese. Salami and cheddar and nuts. Technically nuts are not keto, but I'm on that proteiny vibe.
Amena Brown:
Oh yes.
Christelle de Castro:
That train.
Amena Brown:
Oh yes. Mm-hmm.
Christelle de Castro:
If that were not the case,
Amena Brown:
If we were not doing keto, okay.
Christelle de Castro:
If we were not doing that. Okay. So let me tell you what I love to eat at the movies. I get a big ass popcorn and I go to the movies by myself all the time. I have body dysmorphia because I really swear I'm going to be able to eat this huge tub of popcorn. But I get a big old popcorn, and I get plain M&Ms and I salt and butter the out of that popcorn. And then I temper the M&Ms onto the popcorn and it is delightful. And I get a big ass Coke.
Amena Brown:
Yep, that's right.
Christelle de Castro:
And it sends me into another dimension. And that snack right there is so phenomenal. And then another one I've been doing. This is all trashy stuff, okay?
Amena Brown:
I'm here for it.
Christelle de Castro:
But trashy delish.
Amena Brown:
Okay.
Christelle de Castro:
Just getting some cute organic, and you can get vegetarian refried beans, but I'll refry that up with some cheese in it, and then serve it warm with some tortilla chips and some hot sauce and some sour cream and jalapenos. That right there for a little TV binge with the homegirls. Ugh. Delish.
Amena Brown:
When you said you warmed it up, that's when I knew that we were people right there. It's two things you said.
Christelle de Castro:
Oh yeah. We warm it up over the oven.
Amena Brown:
You said you warmed it up. I needed that. When you said you tempered the popcorn with the M&Ms. The fact that you said tempered let me know that you are my people, Christelle.
Christelle de Castro:
Right.
Amena Brown:
You are my people.
Christelle de Castro:
It's exquisite.
Amena Brown:
You was like, "I'm not going to pour the M&Ms. I'm going to temper the popcorn." That's it.
Christelle de Castro:
The reason why you have to temper it, and this is very important, this is a very important step, is all of the M&Ms fall to the bottom. And so you have to just go a little bit at a time to be able to still access the M&Ms with popcorn.
Amena Brown:
Especially if it's a big tub of popcorn. You don't want all the good stuff to end up on the bottom. Wow. Christelle, fix my life today.
Christelle de Castro:
Listen, you have to try it.
Amena Brown:
Okay. Thank you. Because I'm-
Christelle de Castro:
How about you? What's your favorite snack?
Amena Brown:
I am a popcorn girl.
Christelle de Castro:
Okay. We are popcorn girls.
Amena Brown:
I'm a popcorn popcorn girl in... Okay. Okay. In all circumstances, in the movies and without.
Christelle de Castro:
Right.
Amena Brown:
I'm just a popcorn girl all the time. I air pop popcorn at my house. I just get into that. I'm getting involved in some nutritional yeast these days.
Christelle de Castro:
It's giving farm to table popcorn.
Amena Brown:
Okay? Okay? My mom was a big seasoned salt person on the popcorn. That's how she raised me. So I sprinkled a little seasoning salt on it. You shake up the bowl. That's me. Popcorn is my favorite snack. I feel as a person who would bring snacks to a thing. I mean, I am a hummus girl. I like a particular brand of hummus. I don't just want to walk in a store and assume everything's fine. It's like, if it's not the brand of hummus I've decided is delicious, then we're just not doing that now.
Christelle de Castro:
We're not doing it. Yes. It's just all or nothing.
Amena Brown:
I want to bring prosciutto into this conversation.
Christelle de Castro:
Right.
Amena Brown:
I love my husband. We've been married a very long time, and prosciutto is so delicious. Considered adding prosciutto as an additional partner to this situation. You know what I'm saying? Just considered for a second, would my husband agree to be like, "You can be married to me and prosciutto." In a world, we can do that. That's how much I enjoy prosciutto. Yes.
Christelle de Castro:
That is so funny.
Amena Brown:
Yes. Yes.
Christelle de Castro:
I do love a prosciutto moment.
Amena Brown:
Anytime I go somewhere to a restaurant and they could be like, "Lasagna, fried chicken topped with prosciutto. I'm like, "Yes, I'll have that."
Christelle de Castro:
You zero in on that word and you're like, "That, please."
Amena Brown:
I will have that. I don't care. Prosciutto and a little ice cube. Yes. That sounds great. Prosciutto. Mm-hmm.
Christelle de Castro:
Oh my God.
Amena Brown:
Yes.
Christelle de Castro:
Amazing.
Amena Brown:
Christelle, thank you so much for joining me in the living room, for bringing us these snack ideas because I needed to investigate this further. Thank you for sharing your journey with us. People are going to want to follow you. People want to know how they can give money to Ground Work so that Ground Work-
Christelle de Castro:
We love that.
Amena Brown:
... Can help them look fabulous and crispy. Tell the people how they can engage with you and your work. Tell me the things.
Christelle de Castro:
Sure. So on Instagram and in TikTok, I'm it's Christelle underscore Studio. My name is spelled C-H-R-I-S-T-E-L-L-E, underscore studio. And then Ground Work, if you want to see my website, it's christelledecastro.com. Ground Work is ground-work.co. C-O. But if you go to my Instagram, you'll get linked to all of that stuff.
And Amena, I just want to thank you so much for having me on. This was so lovely connecting with you. It's been too long.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Christelle de Castro:
And I feel so blessed that you've given me this space and that we could connect today. Yeah. It's been lovely.
Amena Brown:
You're the best, Christelle. Thank you.
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast network and partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.