Source: Jason LaVeris / Getty
Social media helps creatives of all sorts to share their gifts with a broad audience. When a special talent comes around, they may even catch the eyes of the folks who can help them make their professional dreams a reality.
Source: Sean Mathis / Getty
Just this week, filmmaker Matthew Cherry tweeted a video that was created by a teenager using Musical.ly, an app that allows users to make clips featuring popular songs. Cherry was so impressed with Isaiah Howard’s innovative take on M-City J.R.’s “Addicted To My Ex” that he shared it with his nearly 60k followers with a note to the young man that he should consider a career as a director. At press time, the tweet has over 7K retweets and has been favorited more than 15K times.
A number of noteworthy filmmakers and industry professionals viewed the clip and echoed Cherry’s praise, with some taking it a step further and reaching out to connect with Isaiah. Get Out director Jordan Peele was one of them.
https://twitter.com/NickChilds/status/865368158957338625
(The Roc gif made us shed a thug tear.)
Cherry tells CASSIUS that he’s happy to see the young man getting so much unexpected attention. “Isaiah focused on creating something dope that he thought only him and his friends would enjoy and it ended up going viral…now he has people like myself, Jordan Peele, Rian Johnson (director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi) and others interested in his work.”
He hopes that the moment translates into something more significant than a popular tweet:”The biggest thing I’d like to see happen is someone hire him to create a similar video on a larger scale and pay him to direct it instead of stealing his idea and style.”
Once again, we’re reminded that “it’s just Twitter” is a ridiculous way to think of the powerful platform.
“I think young people are among the most talented people because they don’t know any better,” adds Cherry. ” I think a lot of innovation comes from having a lack of resources sometimes and I’m happy that it seems like it’s going to work out for Isaiah.”
Check out a compilation of Isaiah’s Musical.ly content below:
