In March of this year, a startup called The Studio Worldwide reached out and asked us to sit down for coffee at the Soho House on the lower east side of Manhattan. In the nine years since Wright Film Co was founded, we’ve received some pretty out of the box shoot requests. Knowing next to nothing about The Studio, we headed over to Ludlow St on a rainy winter day to learn about their mission, and what kind of collaboration they had in mind.

The nondescript exterior looked like walking into a European cathedral, and would have felt similarly inside had it not been for the slow lounge music echoing quietly down the long brick stairwell beside the front desk. Our curiosity was piqued, and we went upstairs for what was the start of a beautiful series of productions which would bring us around the globe.

We sat down with Jackson Potter, one half of The Studio Worldwide who told us a bit about the project. Together with co-founder, Blake Moreno, the two had ambitious plans to start a virtual art gallery aimed at democratizing the art world via a partnership with Soho House, hosting weekly events in different cities in conjunction with the release of an artist's collection on their platform. Ten weeks, ten cities, ten artists, and each needed their story told.

“Forget the art world jargon, forget discussing the pieces. I want to tell the stories we never get to hear. ”

“Forget the art world jargon, forget discussing the pieces” Jackson told us, “I want to tell the stories we never get to hear.” Los Angeles, Miami, Lagos, Nigeria - so many backgrounds, so many stories. We sat in a quiet corner by a large window overlooking the fur shops and restaurants opening their gates in the late morning rain. The conversation lasted several glasses of cold brew. The movie was already playing out in our minds.

Five weeks later we sat down with photographer Roscoe B. Thicke III at Oolite studios in Miami, FL. Oolite is an artist residency and gallery space, an oasis for cutting edge Miami based creators atop an art deco structure in the Times Square of South Beach, Collins Ave. We prepped our microphones, our audio gear and sat down with Roscoe for a deep dive conversation in the back room of his photo studio.

The conversation ranged from growing up in a now shuttered housing project in Liberty City, later used as a key location in Barry Jenkins’ Oscar winning Moonlight, to his time in the US army stationed in Korea and around the Middle East. Having never traveled outside of Miami before enlisting, these experiences traveling the globe shaped his eye and perspective, coming into full view when joining a photography class on his military base in Seoul. The interview flew by, but only upon realizing we had been recording for three hours were we faced with the first major question of our collaboration with The Studio: how are we going to boil this down into a five minute story?

In the following months we traveled to LA, Dallas, Lagos, and beyond, getting a chance to work with boundary pushing artists, and were deeply honored to have the privilege to tell their stories. The collaboration between Wright Film Co and The Studio Worldwide continues onward to this day, and we are excited to see where the stories will take us next.