When the industry is a hot mess, fairy-tale moments are just that: outliers. However, as traditional paths into the film industry erode, this is the Cinderella story we all need.
David Kalema is a first-generation Nigerian-American who worked his ass off as he aspired to something he didn’t fully understand and wasn’t sure he could do, but kept plugging forward until it started to make a kind of sense. It’s also the story of the fairy godmother Industry Standard, an annual competition that snapped his ambitions into focus and gave him a career-launching, nine-month residency in documentary post production.
I love stories like Kalema’s, but he doesn’t really need me to tell it; he’s also a touring performer with The Moth who has won multiple grand slams. You can read his extraordinary storytelling in “Dreamscape,” which IndieWire is proud to publish for the first time. (LINK)
Still, the turning point is striking: When he got the nod from Industry Standard, he was 31 years old and 24 hours from losing his apartment. Yet Kalema insists that he would have carved his way into the industry even if he’d never heard of the program at all.
“If not for Industry Standard, I would’ve found a way to AE (assistant editor), whatever that scale of the project would’ve been,” Kalema said. “But it would’ve taken me much longer to get to a place like Library Films or to be in the rooms that I’ve been in the last year had it not been for Industry Standard.”
A Program That Lowers the Ladder
Industry Standard isn’t a training program or an internship. It’s for people who already have post-production skills but need someone, as founder Jennifer Sofio Hall puts it, to “lower the ladder.”
Its roots go back to when Hall was managing director at MakeMake Entertainment. Facing pressure from client surveys about the company’s diversity profile, she posed a simple question to founder Angus Wall: “Can we just cut to the top of this problem and start creating some jobs for people?”
Netflix, which had an overall deal with MakeMake, supported the idea and covered salary costs that allowed a resident to rotate across the company’s verticals. Hall later moved to the UK in 2022 and left MakeMake, but Netflix asked her to continue the program.
Residents also receive mentorship around their roles as well as the soft skills essential for industry success. Hall prioritizes candidates who are already active in the documentary community, whether by volunteering at festivals or supporting nonprofit film groups.
By 2024, Industry Standard opened its first formal application process: 350 applicants competed for five slots (three assistant editors, a post producer, and an archival producer). For the 2025 cycle, more than 450 people applied; Hall is currently reviewing 52 finalists for seven slots across editorial, post, motion design, archival research and producing, color, timing, and sound. She is also in talks with Avid and Getty to expand opportunities.
“This is not being trained on the job,” she said. “It’s not something you can dip in and out of over the course of a week. You’re in this constant state of learning and absorbing. You have to kind of have your faculties on all the time and that takes a tremendous amount of mental and emotional energy.”
Persistence Behind the Break
That’s Kalema. He’s been shooting and editing since 2018, when he founded Coin Flyp Media to direct and edit digital shorts about the personal challenges of pro athletes, but he’s invisible on IMDb. He was also an NCAA athlete at Amherst College, captain of a Division III National Championship team, and graduated cum laude.
What I really love isn’t Kalema’s backstory, or Industry Standard’s magic-wand moment of earning an assistant editor residency at Chris Smith’s Library Films that led to a full-time job. I’m also not going to argue that he’s an everyman because if you take even a moment to scan “Dreamscape,” it’s clear he’s not.
What really impresses me is all the other stuff that led to achieving his dream: a path that’s persistent, random, and doesn’t make a lot of sense. That’s what anyone can relate to, and certainly what the industry now has to offer.
Nimble by Nature
He’s nimble. That’s hard to define, because it isn’t a singular activity. Nimbleness means adapting to whatever comes at you, being willing to work within uncertainty, and turning that into forward motion. It also means you can live with a whole squirming bucket of uncertainty; In entertainment, it might be the most valuable talent of all.
“I think a lot of being nimble is putting yourself out there and meeting people, not when you need them, but to kind of follow through on your passions,” he said. “If you really like a film and you’re going to a film festival, tell people you really like their work or tell people that you’re really interested in the path that they took. I’ve always put myself in a position where I have to learn, where I’m forced to learn. I’ve never been scared of the experience that I don’t have.”
That’s the throughline that will let Kalema continue his journey, not the fairy godmother.
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