Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon Walker.
Hi Brandon, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am originally from Houston, TX, and I grew up in a single-parent home. I spent a lot of my childhood not really knowing what I was good at outside of sports. Once I got to high school and dealing with the weight of college and just life as a whole, I found myself making bad decisions and ending up in situations that could’ve EASILY ruined my life. But I had a theatre teacher who cared about me when I didn’t care about myself.
I started taking part in 24-hour theatre events and school plays and began to find myself as a creative. I ended up not going to college after graduation and interned at my church making videos for the youth. A year later I started my 3-year journey at seminary here in Dallas, TX until I ultimately decided to move to Los Angeles. I spent the next 2+ years learning and falling in love with the world of Film/TV. From writing scripts with my homie to PA’ing on sets and seeing how this big machine we call “Hollywood” works just really showed me my purpose. That’s when my company “Fifty Two” was born.
Growing up in church and wanting to be in entertainment brings its own set of issues. There’s always a conversation of compromising my faith for a “secular” industry, but despite the backlash, I knew where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing. And despite my time in LA being cut short and moving back to Texas, I knew I had to keep going.
Because Dallas hasn’t ever been known for its creativity and culture. But in the last couple years, I’ve started to see that change and I think it’s my responsibility to be a pioneer in establishing the reputation that Dallas can hold its own creatively just like an LA, Atlanta, Miami, New York, and my hometown Houston. To help lead the charge in lifting up our artists and bringing more Film opportunities here and doing that through creating relationships and having conversations through my podcast. Dallas deserves the chance to win.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The road to greatness is never easy; 95% of the journey is uphill. You are constantly feeling the urge to slow down or give up to go find a smaller hill. The mindset you have to have to fall down and get back up over and over again, thinking that might’ve been the last time you’ll fall is insane. It’s LITERALLY the definition of insanity. But there are certain things worth losing my sanity for.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We are a new brand that’s focus outside of creating film projects is to create a community. A community of creatives in Dallas that want to shut down gatekeeping and see the new wave of artists win. This all started because of an article that I read about the “World’s Loneliest Whale,” and this whale is the last of its kind. Animal specialist have been trying to pair that whale with other whales but haven’t been able to because whales communicate through song. The closest whale to the this whale is a blue whale, but they can only sing between 10-40 Hertz. This one whale sings at 52 Hertz, so no matter how close other whales are to it they can’t hear him because he communicates on a different frequency level. And after reading that, I immediately thought to myself, “That’s what it’s like being a creative.”
We understand the struggle of friends and family not understanding the “why” and wanting you to just find a job that’s “stable” and despite how many times you tell them why this is your dream; it just seems to fall on deaf ears. This is who our community is for. Creatives who want to grow and be the best of the best and want to be around people who just get it. Whether it’s through our films, our podcast, or events/workshops we want people to know that there is other people in this world who can hear what they are saying. That you are not the last of your kind, there’s other Fifty Two’s out there.
What are your plans for the future?
We are in the early stages of our film projects, that range from documentaries to scripted content, and also getting ready to start organizing some events throughout the city to start building our community. The Fifty-Two Podcast is also growing, and we are bringing in all types of artists to come in and just have raw and authentic conversations about the journey.
We really wanna change the world, but we gotta start with Dallas first.
Contact Info:
- Website: fiftytwofilms.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandonj_walker/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@fiftytwofilms/videos
Image Credits
Chris Odom
Aaron Romero
