diversity in Hollywood

09 Mar diversity in Hollywood

hey friends!

this is a bit of a thorny topic, but it’s an important one so I thought I’d dive in. over the past few months there was a lot of hype/outrage about only white actors being nominated for the academy awards.

there was also a study released where USA today looked at films and TV shows to determine how many speaking roles were filled by men, women, and people of color. (read it here.) the findings of this report show that the representation of women and people of color (PoC) was WAY less than their percentage of the USA population.

you might be thinking – “hey Luke, you’re a white male – why are you writing about diversity?” well, this whole thing go me thinking about how my work stacked up. so I looked at the short films I made since college to see how many main roles there were and what the breakdown of men/women/PoC was.

here is the overall breakdown:

Total Roles: 31
Men: 19 (10 PoC)
Women: 12 (6 PoC)
PoC: 16

22 out of 31 roles were either women or PoC. (and one of those 31 was me…)

and here is each project:

COMING TO
5 speaking roles: 2 men, 3 women. 5 PoC

GHOST TRACKERS
6 speaking roles: 4 men, 2 women. 3 PoC

APT 5
1 lead: 1 man, 1 PoC

THE REAL LUKE
1 lead: 1 man, 0 PoC

A MORNING WALK
1 lead: 1 man, 0 PoC

CERTIFIED
4 speaking roles: 2 men, 2 women. 0 PoC

UPDATING PAIGE
5 speaking roles: 3 men, 2 women, 2 PoC

SKYDANCERS
1 lead: 1 man, 1 PoC

THE DEAD KID SPOT
4 speaking roles: 2 men, 2 women, 1 PoC

TIME TO EAT
2 leads: 1 man, 1 woman, 2 PoC

HAWKWARD
1 lead: 1 man: 1 PoC

—

overall, the gender balance in my projects is a little bit off, but the PoC representation is higher than the national average. some of these were conscious choices, some just ended up that way. in COMING TO, CERTIFIED and TIME TO EAT the ethnic makeup of actors was a specific choice, while A MORNING WALK could have easily been cast with a woman, and HAWKWARD could have been voiced by a white guy.

it’s important to note that not only does a diverse cast better represent a diverse nation – but it also makes your films more interesting.

now diversity in crew is another thing altogether… and one where my projects would skew pretty hard to the “white male” side of things. if people are interested, I could go back and tally those numbers up as well.

-Luke