Desert Island Studios

Dawn

All right, go ahead and introduce yourselves.

Ashley

Hi, I’m Ashley Song, and I am one of the owners of Desert Island Studios.

Joe

I’m Joe Bowden. I am the other owner of Desert Island Studios.

Ashley

You’re the original owner of Desert Island Studios.

Joe

I’m Joe Bowden, and I am the original owner of Desert Island Studios. Oh, it sounds like I’m not the owner anymore.

Ashley

He’s still the owner of Desert Island Studios.

Joe

Still the owner with me? I think the first one. The other owner. Thanks for the note, though.

[Laughter]

Dawn

Tell us about the studio.

Ashley

So, Desert Island Studios is a production facility. We also have a production company that operates out of the space. We are in the 10,000 square foot facility right now. And, it was founded on this idea that we could provide more accessibility and affordability to film resources for artists and independent filmmakers, especially people from underrepresented backgrounds. So that’s the history of the studio.

Joe

Yeah. Desert Island Studios technically started in 2016. But we’ve actually been growing this idea for almost a decade. The idea of, and I can’t do it without talking about membership, because that was the beginning. It was the core, the whole concept of Desert Island Studios was designed to make filmmakers fail more quickly and easily. Because when I was making films, and starting out and bartending, it would cost me $2,000 to make a film. It would cost me six months to save that much money, and then the film would suck. So the whole purpose is to provide space for people to, like, suck faster and then, you know, and then get through it to the next level and also experiment and that kind of stuff.

Dawn

How did it evolve to become more than just a studio?

Ashley

Basically, the studio evolved when I showed up. I met Joe in 2017. He actually hired me to act in a music video of his and he talked about this studio that he was building at the time. The location that he was operating out of was in the inner southeast, where Kann is now actually. And he was busting down a wall to expand the space.

And I learned a little bit more about the business that he was running. And I kept kind of like armchair quarterbacking the business, sort of like peeking over his shoulder and saying, you should do this. You should try this. You should reach out to this person and eventually, we continued working together. And a couple of years later, he asked me if I wanted to go into business with him, which I still maintain is the best business decision that he made.

Joe

Definitely.

Ashley

The jury’s still out for me, but it was a really good decision on his part.

Joe

Conned her into it.

Ashley

No, no, no.

Joe

The long game.

Ashley

We’re a good team. And then, you know, we eventually moved into the space on North Tillamook. And then a couple years after that, we moved into this space here. So over time, you know, I feel like our relationship is a great microcosm, an example of what the spirit of Desert Island Studios is, which is that you’re really stronger together.

You’re stronger when you build community. You’re able to have a better reach when you connect with other people who share the same ethos and, philosophy that you do around the stuff that you create.

Dawn

I see the incredible amount of work that has gone into building both the literal space and the sense of community you’ve established here. What has the journey been like to get to where you are now?

Joe

The journey has been, it’s been hard. To be honest. You know, we’re not a company with a lot of money. We didn’t start out with a lot of money. When I first started this company, it was myself and a 200 square foot office. And that was almost ten years ago.

And the space has got bigger. And then we brought more people on. And then the ideas got bigger because of that. But yeah, I mean, outside of some grants and stuff like that, we’ve never had any investors or funding in that kind of way. So it’s been maximum effort.

We basically identify what kind of deficit we have, either it’s like time or money or whatever, and then we fill that deficit with calories, and that’s essentially our ethos.

Ashley

It’s a totally grassroots company in many respects. I mean, it’s just been me and him working. He was building the studio. The overhead grid, the cyc wall, that’s like labor. And thankfully we have, you know, people in our community too, who came out and and helped us. And then it’s just me at a desk, at a computer, answering emails and phone calls.

Dawn

How did you come up with the name?

Joe

Desert Island Studios is a combination of two things which make up like our ethos as a company. One is, you know, basically in the early 2000, when I was sort of coming up in the art and music scene, nobody cared about Portland. Portland was just was sort of off the map. And the result of that is that it was kind of like a petri dish.

It was like this wonderful place where people could make art, and there was very little judgment and like no competition. And everybody was really supportive and caring. And, you know, everybody went to everybody else’s shows, regardless of the genres of music or whatever. And so, so it felt like a little island, you know, off the coast of America in a way where all these, like, weirdos were doing stuff.

And so that’s a big part of the Desert Island ethos. And the other comes from that idea of like, what are your top desert island films? Like top five favorite films. And the concept behind that is greatness. So, Desert Island Studios is care and collaboration combined with the strive for greatness.

Dawn

What do you want the space to feel like for folks?

Joe

I want people to come in here and feel, inspired, like, there’s, like, we work with a lot of people, you know, based on our rates and the community. So we work with a lot of people whose, this is the first time in a studio, and I love seeing that reaction.

Like, when people come in, they’re like, whoa, this is art or magic or like, anarchy. We can do whatever we want in this space. And, I just love that. That’s how I want people to feel.

Ashley

When people come to Desert Island Studios I want them to feel a sense of curiosity. I want them to feel safe. Safety is so important to me in this industry because I think historically, the media industry has unfortunately sometimes been known as a really toxic work environment. And that is just I’m just not interested in that at all.

And I really feel like part of what we’re trying to build here is a healthy alternative to that. A place where you can get a lot of work done, where you can stay highly creative and highly motivated without having to deal with some of the things that I think people in our industry have dealt with – workplace abuse, terrible bosses, being reprimanded for not knowing things.

I want it to be an environment where you can learn without fear of judgment.

Dawn

Can you talk about all the work that went into this space?

Joe

Yeah. This space, basically, we had to make an emergency move from our old space, and we negotiate a deal for this space with the owners of this building. And they were incredible. And they were incredibly gracious. But when we moved, we didn’t have any money, so we kind of had to throw calories at it.

And so for about, you know, about a year, me and a contractor built everything out in this space. The cyc wall, both cyc walls, the grid, the sound wall, the floor. We had to redo the whole floor, which took months and months. And. Yeah, and most of that was totally unfunded.

Dawn

What are you most proud of about the space?

Joe

I would say I am most proud when I come into Desert Island and there’s a lot of people here doing stuff – when there’s a shoot in studio B, when there’s people prepping camera in the conference room, when there’s shooting in the studio, when, one of the companies in the back, you know, are humming away on their computers and doing stuff – and just the life and the energy and the feeling of being in motion is, amazing.

And that’s what I feel most proud of.

Dawn

Do you think you ever imagined that you would end up in this position with this space?

Joe

When I first started, I couldn’t have imagined, how things would have grown to where they are and how things sort of turned out. Because I don’t really think like that. I like to, make plans and, you know, come up with, big ideas of conceptually where we want to go.

And then I kind of just keep my head down and and show up every day. That’s like my main thing. And then sometimes you just look up and you’re like, well, we’re so much further. My dad used to say, you can move a mountain, stone by stone. And so that’s something I think about a lot.

Dawn

Tell us about the services you offer.

Ashley

So some of the services that we offer at Desert Island Studios are rental of the facilities. The studio behind me, clients can rent for their commercial shoots for their brand shoots, or whatever. We also do offer affordable rates for independent creatives in off hours, just so that they have accessibility to the studio. If they want to rent a studio for a personal project or a photo shoot or something like that.

And then we also offer production services. So Desert Island Studios is also a production company, and we’re a very soup to nuts production company. We have been hired to consult on projects in development, look at scripts, work with writers to develop their projects. We’ve worked with agencies and commercial clients to develop, create and execute on their commercial shoots.

We kind of do a little bit of everything, so that’s kind of one of the things that’s so great about the studio is not only do we have this great team in place that knows how to work production, but we also have access to this wonderful asset, which is the studio facility.

Joe and I, we both have a background in the service industry. We both worked in bars for many years, and so our number one thing that we bring into the work that we do is coming from a place of service. We’re always trying to serve our clients. We’re always trying to serve the people who come in, the artists that come in looking for time in the studio, looking for advice.

And that’s kind of the place that we come from. When talking about the studio.

Dawn

What are you working right now? Anything that you’d like to share?

Ashley

We have so many projects that we’re working on right now. We have three films, original narrative features in development that are at various stages. One film just went to Tribeca to pitch for a $1 million project production grant. We have documentary, a couple of documentary films that are currently in various stages of production and post-production. And then, of course, me personally, as a producer, I’m always sort of collecting scripts and just waiting for when the match ignites that project into the next stage of production.

That being said, we also consistently work with non-profits like Friends of Noise. We’re doing some video content for them, and we take any bids from agencies or production companies that are just looking for help with their production. Their project.

So not only do we work on narrative films and documentaries, but we also do commercial work as well. So any brands or clients that are looking for commercial work, they can come to us and we’re able to not just execute on an idea, but also create the creative concept for the project as well.

Ashley

One of the things that’s really important to us here at Desert Island Studios is that we’re constantly giving back to the community, and one of the ways that we do that is through our programing. We’ve been really fortunate to have support from the Oregon Film Office, from the Portland Office of Events and film from other organizations, especially nonprofits like Outside the Frame.

We’ve kind of all come together to create programing that we can then offer back to our community members. For example, Top Secret Club was a table read series that, actually a feature film in development emerged from that, then went to Tribeca, which is really exciting. One of the programs that we run is called Damn Good People, which is a staffing concierge service for mid-level filmmakers from underrepresented communities.

And then we also have the Level Up workshops, which we just recently launched. It’s a series of educational workshops about different aspects of the industry that we are offering to people at varying levels of their career.

Dawn

What is your hope for filmmakers and filmmakers of color?

Ashley

My hope for filmmakers from Portland, especially filmmakers of color and from other underrepresented and marginalized communities, is that they can come to this place and feel like they have a creative home. My biggest dream for them is for Portland and honestly, Oregon filmmakers to have a place that they can stick their roots down and really grow as artists. Too often I see a lot of films that film in Oregon that come from other places, and I’m really, really interested in investing in the artists that come from the space that we’re in, that are telling their stories here and just need a platform and a space to tell those stories.

And it makes me really sad when artists and filmmakers feel like they have to go somewhere else to do that. So I’m trying to kind of fill that need with with this studio.

Dawn

Anything else you’d like to share?

Ashley

Basically, Desert Island Studios is really cool, but also you are invited. It’s not just for me.