Music plays a huge role in storytelling.

We created The Delorean music library because we understand the value of originality in branding. In our experience, music is integral to storytelling. Where dialogue falls short, music keeps the user engaged; where visual cues need excitement, music adds to the intensity. If you limit your creativity you essentially limit your storytelling. That’s how we see it. If your brand is going to rise in your industry, then you must engage your consumer base. Having a collection of original music at your disposal will give you a significant upper-hand.

Artist Profile Sabela | “If I Am…”

If I sing am I purely a singer?

If I dance am I purely a dancer?

If I write am I purely a writer?

If I paint am I purely a painter?

If I immerse in my art am I confined to that outlet of expression?

This begs the question of exploration. That’s what art is after all, right? Exploring the unknown — the hidden aspects of the self; the untold mysteries of mankind.

Artists are, therefore, not confined to a box.

That would be a contradiction of art itself.

To be a singer does not mean to limit oneself to singing. A singer may explore the passions of their life wherever that may lead them.

So what if a songwriter chooses to convert their sensory experiences into a song? That does not (and should not) limit how they express themselves in the future.

An artist —whether they be a singer or rapper or anything — can also be a model, an athlete, a fashionista, a painter, a banker, a politician and anything else they put their mind to.

Because, an artist is one who uses every outlet of expression at their disposal to change perspectives, to elevate the meaning of their lives, to connect with society, to discover their inner-most self. To live. 

Sabela understands what it means to be an artist.

She follows her passions and expresses herself the way she chooses to.

Sabela is a singer, but she is not solely a singer.

Sabela is a dancer, but she is not solely a dancer.

Sabela is a model, but she is not solely a model.

Sabela is an artist, and she is not confined to a box.

To our fellow artists, if you’re reading this share with your friends and follow Sabela on Instagram. We’re always on the lookout for talented artist worthy of highlighting in our Artist Profiles. If that’s you, hit us up on Facebook or contact us here.

While you may be gasping with envy at such an accomplishment, let’s back it up and recap Kylie’s journey to fame and fortune.

The 1997 baby born into notoriety and privilege, Kylie Kristen Jenner, has captivated households across America since her family’s reality show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, first lit tv screens. With thousands of fans obsessing over each Jenner-Kardashian plot twist and turn, baby, surgery, fashion style, and trend, breakup, makeup, and marriage, along with several spin-offs series, including Life of Kylie — it’s no wonder the world was ready when Kylie Cosmetics hit the shelves at Ulta.

But is Kylie Jenner the youngest self-made billionaire? That’s pushing it.

Since the infamous E! series debuted on Oct. 14, 2007, though it has continually bombed in the critic’s eye, it has soared with top ratings and remained as the longest running reality-show series thanks to the two camps; the adoring fashionistas who follow Jenner-Kardashian fashion cues and those with guilty-pleasure find their own curiosity entangled in the narratives of the rich and famous. Whether you love the show or abhor it, its success has banked the green and secured an international fan base for each of the family members including, Kylie.

Being born into a family at home in the spotlight coupled with growing up on reality-show that provided a cult following well into the millions was the recipe for Kylie Cosmetic’s ‘overnight’ success.

It’s that simple. The scene was set. The players positioned. The audience anticipating. And just like that, when Kylie Cosmetics went live on Instagram, millions of fans double-tapped to make their purchase scaling profit off the charts. Although Kylie, was already a household name in showbiz, it was the launch of Kylie Cosmetics that landed her in the history books as the youngest “self-made” billionaire.

Hmmm, so how is the privileged Jenner “self-made”?

Ours aren’t the only eyebrows raised. Across many media outlets, people are starting to question Forbes’ standards. According to Forbes, “Kylie is ‘self-made’ as someone who has built a company or established a fortune on her own, rather than inheriting some or all of it. As long as the list member didn’t inherit a business or money, she is labeled self-made.”

Unified with Forbes definition, Jenner explains that from the age of 15 her parents cut off her inheritance requiring her to generate her own wealth from that point forward. Defending her history-making title, “The self-made thing is true. What I’m trying to say is I did have a platform, but none of my money is inherited.”

Convincing?

Not in the slightest.

Forbes goes on to identify a sliding scale created in which they rank how self-made a business person actually is. The scale ranges from 1-10. For someone who has inherited everything will take their position at 1. Whereas, for someone who grew up impoverished and then overcame substantial obstacles will land at a 10, such as Oprah Winfrey.

On the scale, Forbes placed the plight of Kylie Jenner’s achievements as high as a 7, explaining that although she was born into a famous family, she has leveraged her influence to her own advantage.

Hold up.

Doesn’t that sound like Jenner should be at least at a 1 or 2? Certainly not a 7. Did she not grow up in provision, privilege, and prestige prior to 15 and then go to become a millionaire while living on-screen with her celebrity family? Sure, she became a billionaire, only after her family set her up to become a millionaire.

Let’s put it this way, Jenner cruised to the bank in a Lamborghini with no stop lights, yields, or traffic. All she had to do was hit the pedal. Whereas fellow icons on Forbes’ 400 Self-Made list started from scratch, walking their way to the bank, overcoming pot holes, reckless drivers, and the downpour of rain, followed by the scorching sun on their backs.

Take tv-legend, Oprah Winfrey. The internationally-acclaimed celebrity now was born far away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood when she birthed to a single, teenage mother in the poor rural outskirts of Mississippi. From there, she grew up with her father in the inner-city of Milwaukee. After encountering the unimaginable assault of sexual abuse, Winfrey became pregnant at the age of 14. However, this precious child did not survive its premature birth. With the weight of the world baring down upon her such a young age, she forged forward. While in high school, she landed a job in radio. By the time she was 19, she became a co-anchor on local evening news station which unknowingly became her springboard into her history-making career in day-time tv.

So, how again did Forbes decide the achievements of Jenner ranked so closely to the triumph of Oprah?

Not quite sure.

The sobering thing is… we are seeing that when society measures success and promotes one’s accomplishments over another it is actually redefining and reshaping our understanding of what it means to be history-makers and culture-shifters. Frankly, the Jenner narrative doesn’t sit well with us.

Yet, we would be amiss to not let her achievements as the youngest billionaire stir us, provoke us, and spur us onward towards our pursuits.

Landing anywhere on the scale 1-10, success is celebrated. Yet, it always comes with a chance, a shot, an open door, an opportunity. No matter how grand, privileged, accessible, or seemingly hidden, small or downright insignificant, we have all needed someone. Whether it’s been a path paved by inheritance or influence or that one long shot to talk to someone who knew a person who knew that one person who would give you 2 min. of their time- we all have someone to be thankful for. It takes a tribe to succeed, even if just one who believes, pulls, and pushes you, uplifts, and even carries you over the line, all the while they applaud.

Likewise, we will do the same, be that someone for someone.

Fortune or poverty, won’t define our future, because we believe nothing is impossible for those who dream and do. How we arrive; how we pursue, press on, forge thru, battle on, conquer above, and greet our dreams face to face will look different, feel different, be rewarded and recorded different, but it will be savored and celebrated. As Eleanor Roosevelt says,

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

It’s time to stop gasping at Kylie’s headline. Dream and do.

“Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.”

— Ray Bradbury

One thing is certain, they are enlightened.

They understand that humanity’s greatest asset is the mind; that no two individuals think identically; that we are all free to say and think, to learn and interpret, to be heard and to listen.

If you agree that our individuality is worth celebrating, spreading, and perpetuating then Respec the Mic!

Introducing your new host of Respec the Mic!, Darius Daughtry.

Dairus Daughtry is a guiding voice from the Art Prevails Project, which seeks to inspire and encourage artistic expression in its most enlightened forms.

The Art Prevails Project is a creative collective of poets, singers, writers, dancers, and performers.

Through art, they strive to teach us that it is alright to embrace our unique perspectives on life and to share those perspectives in the hopes of creating positive change on a local and global scale.

If you too believe in the power of art, first check out Art Prevails Project on Instagram.

Then join us Next Door on the last Thursday of the month for Respec the Mic! a monthly open mic night where we invite local artists to step into the spotlight to share their perspectives.

“I took off from paradise, and landed in the jungle…”

In 2017, Crooked Colours released their debut album, Vera. To us, it is a musical escape worth being cherished. Perhaps even listened to on repeat [which we have already been doing].

The opening track “Flow” is a hypnotic introduction that tricks the listener into letting go entirely.

In that first instant, Crooked Colours—the musical brainchild of Philip Slabber, Leon de Baughn, and Liam Merrett-Park of Perth Australia—dig their claws into you, luring you into a deeply hypnotic dimension.

Before you realize it, you’re succumbing to the seductive language of the jungle. Then something even more unexpected takes place…you start to energetically chase after the next beat.

This closing track branches outward, upward, and onward—whichever way the jungle chooses to spread its lush canopy…on this play-through.

The arrival of these three musicians through this debut album makes us exceedingly excited to hear more. If we could share one passing phrase with these guys, the words would undoubtedly be a product of the hypnotism they had just cast us in… As we restart their album yet again, we can only say…

“bring me down, cut me loose, I cannot quite get over you.”

Have you been to BREW Urban Cafe? Awesome spot, right! If you’ve been there then you know why the locals call it “The Hidden Gem Of Fort Lauderdale.”

Something you may not know is that BREW Urban Cafe is actually a collaboration with C&I Studios called Next Door at C&I.

During the day, Next Door serves gourmet coffee recipes handcrafted by the baristas at BREW. We also just introduced a brand new food menu created by chef Zachary Mein. Word of advice…try the avocado toast. It’s unreal how good it is. Seriously.

After 5 PM the bar Next Door transitions from handcrafted coffees to artisan cocktails modeled after the most iconic authors in modern literature.

There’s a stark difference between day and night at the bar, Next Door. Daytime is bright and productive. The smell of Wells Coffees fills the air. All sorts of young and established professionals, students, entrepreneurs, moms and dads, and local artist lounge about productively as the craftsmen at C&I buzz around shooting original content for their clients.

Nighttime is seductive and whimsical. For the most part, the same people stick around to hang out after happy hour. The main difference is that the local artists lounging during the day take to the stage to treat us to original live music after 9 PM.

A wise man once said, “Without music, life would be a mistake.”

And you know what, we feel the same way, so we created a bar where the most talented local musicians can perform original music live… and where you can listen to it for free. 

When we were young…

…we would watch old movies, stare at actors and models in photography magazines, and get lost gazing at iconic billboards. But it wasn’t the talent that we were so attracted to. It was simple for us…how did they make this? How did they make me feel what I feel?

At that moment, for most of us who work at C&I, we knew it was the behind the scenes, the crew, the forgotten ones, that we related to the most. It was where we knew we belonged.

A lot of people know our studio as an agency. It’s pretty incredible to get to work with the range of clients that we do, but when we are dreaming, we often find ourselves thinking about creating inspiring projects to change people’s perspectives.

Filmmaking is one way we do that. Our studio has made a few films in the past, but we wanted to take a big step towards making new, quality, original content. So ambitiously, in November 2017, we decided to create another film, Christmas Eve, written and directed by Joshua Otis Miller.

Christmas Eve is now available on Amazon.

It sounds fun, but it’s really not.

Making things like this, while still doing all the client work that is required of you is very arduous task. The nights were already long and the time was already short, but regardless, our love of creating always beats sleep.

The film was written in November of 2017, and on December 14th, we started production on what we knew would be a huge challenge for us. We knew it would be a challenge because our films up until this point were manageable. Two actors, one location and a good story. Christmas Eve shook everything up. We would shoot in Fort Lauderdale, New York City, and Brooklyn at several locations, with a much larger cast than ever before.

It was last minute—a producer’s nightmare—but we were doing it. In order to keep the budget manageable, we wanted to film some scenes in Fort Lauderdale, making them look like they were shot in New York. This, in itself, was a challenge that made us work so much harder to tell this story.

The one thing we knew we didn’t need to worry about was our talent. Rafael Jordan and Elisabetta Fantone would lead this film and we knew they would be flawless.

We had worked with Rafael on C&I’s first feature film Me, You, and the Road (too embarrassed to link to that film :)). We worked with Elisabetta on our last film before Christmas Eve, The River Cabin. So, it was really awesome to reunite with both of them on our biggest project to date.

To make matters even more difficult, since we were already battling a tough schedule, we wanted to score the film before we shot it. This is of course, completely unorthodox, but we had a great connection with our composer Darren McFate and we knew he would bring something incredible to the film. And instead of grabbing music from this artist or that one, we hired and orchestra, and Darren wrote and hand crafted each note.

We started with filming in Fort Lauderdale, at the Broward Center for Performing Arts, Riverside Market and our own HQ just to name a few locations. After these first few days were done, it was time to take our talents, and our gear, to New York.

If you’re anything like us, you love gear talk, so here is what we used on this film:

• Red Monstro 8k (Camera A)
• Red Epic-W 8k (Camera B)
• Red Dragon 6k (Pick ups, second unit)
• Red Scarlet 5k (Broll, Pics, second unit)
• Red Raven 4.5K (BTS)
• Angenieux Optimo 24-290
• Angenieux Optimo 30-90
• Schoeps Mk41 Sennheiser
• Mk416 Zaxcom Lavs
• Movi Pro\u2028

And of course, everything in our huge grip truck which is called “The Tom Van” named after our DP Tom Van.

Filming in NYC is where the film got really challenging. We had two days and two nights to get through the majority of the film.

Moving all this gear around, along with our favorite character “The Bike”, throughout New York was a huge challenge. Rafael was challenged to bike everywhere, and if you’ve seen the film, his character is generally rushing everywhere. Thankfully, Rafael is super fit and was ready to bike over and over and over again take after take.

One of our favorite scenes is the scene with Yolanda.

Carolyn Johnson is an actress from South Florida that we flew to NYC to do this scene, and from the moment that she stepped on the set we knew this scene would be really special. The way that she delivered the lines “I can see you Michael” really became a keystone moment of the film.

Shooting all day is one thing, shooting at night was another. And the kicker was, we were a crew of Floridians shooting in the freezing cold.

Spending so much time outside, standing on set—and for a small production like ours without trailers and stand-ins—was a big challenge for our talent. We all just pushed through.

On the last day of filming, our backs were up against the wall to get the final eight scenes. That morning, though, we knew we had a problem. When Rafael woke up, he didn’t have a voice. All of the biking, and the cold wind hitting his neck caused him to get sick and lose it. We pushed through for the rest of the day, passing him whiskey and honey to drink, hoping that his voice would return for the all the night scenes we had to do around 2 AM.

But at night, it didn’t get any better. And we had the horrible decision to make; either continue shooting the film and have a lead character without a voice, or stop filming, miss our Christmas Eve deadline and finish it…later.

We chose to stop. And it killed us.

Our excitement just died and it was a very lonely somber flight back to Fort Lauderdale, knowing that what we set out to accomplish… we didn’t.

We wanted to make it work, but our agency work was demanding our attention, and we knew chances were slim to none for all our schedules to line up again in the next few days. We had no choice but to wait a year to complete the film.

An entire year of just being…paused.

It sucked.

Projects went by, our agency work got very busy. We were shooting and editing a lot this year, lots of ad campaigns, television commercials traveling to cities across the country. It was busy. But our producers held us together, and they pushed the entire year to get us back on track. And in November we were back in NYC with more time, thicker jackets, a bigger and better crew, and we finished this film. We still had issues, of course. We got kicked out of locations, rain and snow ruined the first day of the shoot, but we made it all work. And now, finally, December of 2018, we are releasing this labor of love.

If you watch the film, there is a scene of Michael and Eve walking under all of the magical lights….it was slippery and icy as we filmed that scene, but with a few camera tricks and awesome acting, you would never know it. Movie Magic is a real thing.

Filming that last scene was unreal. To be standing there, between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, knowing that we were on the last shot—finally.

To us, our cast and crew were absolutely heroic. The ones that believed in this project before it was tangible. The ones that believe in creating meaningful projects with purpose to challenge us, inspire us to be better versions of ourselves. So much has to come together to make a film perfect, and to us, everything does because of one thing.

It’s the crew.

It has always been the crew. Not the gear, or the location…the crew.

So, while most people are looking at the Colin Firths and Meryl Streeps of a film, remember the blood, sweat and sacrifice that the crew put in to make your favorite scenes come to life and the names that you scroll over in the credits embody the same spirit as the people that work in our studio. Our work is often unnoticed and forgotten, but this—this is our love. Telling stories is always about letting the story itself shine, and that requires the storytellers to stay in the background.

True magic isn’t solely made out in front, on display…it’s built upon a foundation of effort in the shadows. It’s built upon individuals choosing to press in, dig deeper, and require more of themselves.