Part of it was a passion for filmmaking in general. But I never went to school for that, so obviously trying to break into that industry proves somewhat tough. I decided to leave Yahoo and take some time off. I had been there for seven years, which in internet time, is a lot, it’s like dog years. So I took some time off, travelled, lived in Munich. Then I came back and started enrolling in courses through City College in San Francisco, the Bay Area Video Coalition. I started doing my own little side projects. What I realized was that fictional filmmaking was nice, but what I really love is telling stories. I just got a call one day, and it was the guy who I report to now, and he said, “I heard you’re doing this freelance stuff. We’re looking for a video producer, would you like to come on board?” I got really lucky.

You’ve mentioned that you’ve attended a lot of workshops and continue to do so to help improve your production skills. Can you talk about how the MediaStorm workshop has been part of your development?

What I learned is that stories can breathe. Listening to the audio and determining how what you’re hearing and what you’re seeing tie together so that the story breathes. And by ‘breathing’ I mean you feel what is being said and what’s being shown, as opposed to being told what’s being said and what’s being shown. That was an eye-opener for me.

What do you do to let a story breathe?

It depends, I think a lot of people think it’s about pacing. The person says something and you just hold that for a second. I think for me though it’s in how I capture the visuals. When someone is talking I always incorporate a dolly shot that just sort of flows with what the person is saying, or a jib shot to just hover around the person. I try to avoid the typical news stuff like panning and tilting. I just cringe on those shots. It’s not just pacing, it’s more in the visuals.

The thing that Brian Storm said that I’ll never forget was, “Why should I care?” And that definitely resonates to this day. In features you just get as much as you can as quickly as you can. Why am I getting this shot? Am I getting this shot because I’m just getting it or because it’s making a difference in the story? In the back of my mind I always hear Brian say, “Why should I care?”

In the Advanced Multimedia Workshop you’re paired up with other media professionals to produce a piece. What was that collaborative process like for you?

One of the things that I thought going into the MediaStorm workshop was that I was going to be way under-qualified, because the two people that were on my team were an AP photog, Evan Vucci, and a photo editor, Bernadette Tuazon. So I thought, oh my gosh, I’m going to bring absolutely nothing to the table. But when you collaborate on something you realize, as a team, you all bring something to the table and each person has something the other doesn’t and you need to feed off that. I was really good at video, and not so good at photography. These guys, they knew photography, so it was such a good mix. Learning from each other is just as important as learning from the workshop itself.

In your workshop group you helped produce the piece, “An Apollo Legend.” What were the big takeaway points from telling that story?

I think that my biggest key takeaway was how you have one idea for a story, and then you end up finding something completely different. We wanted to portray it as the first American Idol, or the first You’ve Got Talent, or You Can Dance. Essentially, the Apollo Theater is that. No one thinks about it because all these shows like American Idol are very popular. We were going to try to make that story, but what we found in our subjects was that they themselves were the story. And that was the key takeaway. You can tell a story when there’s good contrast. Not antagonist or protagonist, but just people keep doing the same thing with different outcomes regardless. So we got really lucky. We went in with one idea, and we came out with a different one altogether.

One of your current projects is Yahoo!’s Second Act video series. In the season two opener we meet Ernestine Shepherd. Can you tell us a little bit about her and her story?

I work with two producers, and they do a really good job of scouring magazines, newspaper articles, the internet, trying to find stories that are unique. We find something like 15, 20 stories – once we make a few phone calls that becomes 4 or 5. Once you hear them tell their story you’re going to know whether or not it’s going to translate on video, and she was definitely was one of them. The way she speaks, she speaks like a grandmother, but she looks like she’s someone’s sister. She’s definitely fit. It was a no-brainer to shoot her. One thing we were concerned about was, how are we going to capture the visuals, close ups of her body, we were always trying to figure out what the shot was going to look like. The idea is, there is grace and beauty in what she does and that’s what we were trying to convey.

Any tips or advice you’d offer to people getting started in multimedia?

Make mistakes. I think that’s the best way to learn. There are going to times when you don’t hit record, the audio is going to be bad, and I guarantee you won’t do it again. So don’t be afraid to make mistakes. The second thing is, practice. You shouldn’t wait for the next story to try something new – you should go try it. Interview your significant other, put together a day-in-the-life-of, so the next time you get a story, you’re prepared. And I guess the third thing is don’t be afraid of technology because it’s not going anywhere. You’re going to have to learn it otherwise the bus is going to drive by.

Ricky Montalvo’s Website: http://rickymontalvo.com