Some mentors tell you what to do. The rare ones show you who to become. Errol Gerson has spent 55 years teaching Entrepreneurial Spirit at Art Center College of Design — 6,000 plus students, and I was lucky enough to be one of them.

In this one I turn the mic around. We get into his four years inside CAA in 1999, when he stood in front of the entire music industry, said the letters “MP3,” and got told he belonged in a mental institution. We trace the same fear across every era — film to digital, the internet, and now AI — and land on the thing that never changes: the work doesn’t die, it just changes shape.

But the heart of this episode is Errol himself. A refugee from South Africa who landed in America with a backpack and nowhere to live. Seven months homeless, thirty cents an hour washing dishes, and a full USC scholarship handed to him on graduation day. He shares the water-pump story that taught him you have to give before you can receive, why he “rejects the word rejection,” and the four circles of a life that actually fits together.

This is what In the Static is about: keeping the people close who keep you going.

Write in — inthestaticpod@gmail.com. Watch the full video on YouTube.

Made by For Reel Life Studios.

New here? Welcome! Especially if Karen and Georgia sent you.

I'm Brandon Keith Osborn, director, photographer, and your host. This quick bonus episode is my hello: who I am, why this show exists, and how the letter I wrote to My Favorite Murder brought you here.

Start anywhere, but here's the map:

• Ep. 1 — Hannah Smith (The Knife): the woman who pushed me over the ledge to start this show
• Ep. 2 — BJ McDonnell: DGA director on the long road from crew to the chair
• Ep. 3 — Killah Priest (Wu-Tang): art, spirit, and building your own lane
• Ep. 4 — Shooter Jennings: legacy, the Waylon tapes, and making the thing anyway

"In the static" is that place where the signal isn't clear yet but where every artist starts. Each guest has been there. The vision comes in clear through sharing, collaboration, and lifting each other up.

Write in: inthestaticpod@gmail.com — tell me what you're making, what's stuck, what you're afraid to start. Some letters get read on air; every one gets a reply.

Watch video episodes on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@forreellife

Shooter Jennings — Grammy-winning producer, outlaw country torchbearer, and son of Waylon — sits down with Brandon Keith Osborn to go deep on Black Ribbons, the dystopian rock opera narrated by Stephen King (including how "keep bugging me" became a collaboration). Then: the thousand unlabeled sessions of his father's lost recordings, what it's like to mix Waylon's voice alone in an old studio, and the found-tape albums Songbird and Diamonds. Plus Robert Randolph, a Robbie Robertson studio complaint, Brandi Carlile, and why podcasts prove the album isn't dead. Recorded in Los Angeles for In the Static — conversations with artists, makers, and the signals hiding in the noise.

Killah Priest doesn't do small talk. He does octopuses, UAPs, simulation theory, and the kind of conversation that makes you pull over and write something down.

Priest is a Brooklyn-born lyricist, Wu-Tang affiliate, and founding member of Sunz of Man. His 1998 debut Heavy Mental is considered a classic. J. Cole called his song NASA Case "like a book" and listened to it nine times. Flea walked through his garden alone just to tell him the album was great.

We've known each other since the pandemic — I directed his music video for Heavier Mental and somehow ended up naming his album Rocket to Nebula at a bar one night. This conversation is the reunion.

We talk about Wu-Tang's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, what it felt like to be in the room when Cream was being made, why retirement isn't a word that belongs in a creative's vocabulary, and what a mimic octopus can teach you about making art for thirty years.

Oh, and we're already in space. He'll explain.

BJ McDonnell has operated camera on over 100 films. You've seen his work. You just didn't know his name.

From running around Pensacola with a camcorder and a VCR in a backpack, to steady cam on Top Gun: Maverick with an F-18 ten feet over his head, BJ built one of the most respected careers in Hollywood the old fashioned way. He paid his dues, surrounded himself with the right people, and never stopped trying to direct.

We talk about what it actually takes to make something when the budget runs out, why the best film school is a film set, writing a Slayer prison riot video with no pitch and no plan, and what it feels like to watch AI change the industry you've given 25 years to.

BJ is a DGA director, ICG Local 600 camera operator, and one of the most honest conversations we've had about what keeping the stoke alive actually looks like.

In the Static is a podcast about what keeps creatives going when they're closest to quitting.

Episode Description:

Hannah Smith is a podcast producer and co-creator of The Knife on Exactly Right Media. Before that she was a producer and host on The Opportunist. She has spent her career inside the making process, building shows, finding stories, and figuring it out in real time.

In this conversation we talk about what it actually looks like to develop a show from nothing, how you know when something is working, and what keeps you moving when the picture hasn't come through yet.

This is In The Static. A podcast about the making process — before the finished thing exists.