It’s 10:54 AM, I grip my cup of coffee and mentally prepare myself. I feel pretty good, despite the flutter in my stomach. Just nerves. I’m about to enter a world where my own confidence escapes me. A place I have a high level of respect for and draw inspiration from.

I walk through the door and look for World Famous on the directory. It’s located on the third floor, so I begin walking toward the elevator.

“It’s broken,” says the guy mopping the floor.

“It’s cool, should have worn my Skechers Shape Ups, I guess.” Silence. “Tough crowd?” I add, laughing a little too out loud.

I walk up three flights of stairs through another hallway and see a door with “World Famous” written across it. I take a deep breath and my heart beats faster, Okay here goes. It’s surprisingly quiet inside. Not like I imagined, no chaotic clatter of circus entertainers or anything of the sort, I guess this is a business.

Inside, I look around waiting for someone to notice me. To my left a double row of computers are set up in the middle of a large room where several people attentively click away, most with headphones on. I try to see what’s on their screens.

I see a bearded feller walking toward me, “Hello Ashley! I’m Tony.” I shake his hand, and with ease my nerves disappear. He is Tony Fulgham, cofounder of World Famous. He leads me into a small room with a couch and a coffee table set with brie, crackers and apple slices. I sit down and Tony disappears.

“Sorry about that,” he says, coming back from around a corner. “Just found out we have to put our family dog down.”

“Ah, man that’s the worst. I’m sorry to hear that.”

I start in on something about the recent disappearance of my cat and we exchange feelings on the importance of our pets. I think to myself, Okay this guy seems normal enough.

Tony Fulgham and Alan Nay are the creators of the video boutique and film production company World Famous located on Pike Street in Capitol Hill. One night at a restaurant in Seattle, Tony tells me, they scribbled the idea on a napkin (Great ideas can come from too much alcohol and they don’t always involve smuggling llamas over the border. Thanks, champagne!). Tony and his team of skilled video wizards have been creating rad content for clients like Microsoft, Nordstrom, PEMCO Insurance, The Washington Lottery and SIFF. “As an artist, when you come out of film school you’re not telling yourself I want to work for Microsoft, but I’ve learned more on Microsoft jobs then I ever did in film school. It’s fantastic!” he tells me.

I get that. Commercials are brainwashing machines! However, they are a creative outlet and creativity within them can be entertaining. If I have to watch a commercial about dryer sheets interrupting The Walking Dead, then I’d gladly watch it if it played out like a White Stripes music video or the avant-garde sketch comedy show Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

World Famous goes beyond the traditional parameters of commercial work. They are storytellers, animators, editors and filmmakers creating unique material, original musical compositions and music videos. Sort of like wonky Madmen!

Tony apologizes for the quietness and explains it’s typically not this quiet.

“Everyone is pretty busy these days finishing projects,” he says. “A lot of what we do here is write and produce, bring it back and do the edit, animation and design. It’s kind of the way things are going right now, the whole start to finish deal. I’ve moved into solely live action director and writer. It’s what I love. Writing is something I want to be really good at, but I have a long ways to go.  I would like to get to a point where I direct other people’s creative commercial and only write and direct my own stuff. What it comes down to is I’m just trying to create and entertain an honest moment that revolves around whatever it is…the lottery ticket or a computer.”

Tony mentions that while World Famous is busy most days with client workload, he strongly advocates and promotes the staff to pursue personal pet projects, a sort of “all work and no play make World Famous a dull boy” mentality. Such as a La Luz music video for “Call Me in the Day” directed by WF Producer Bobby McHugh.

Although, I’m discovering that World Famous’ work is less than dull and proof the universe is on our side sometimes. Work can be awesome and pay the bills.

I was intrigued by the World Famous Assignment List. Modeled after Miranda July’s Learning to Love You More, the WF Assignment List are a series of queues for creative staff projects, like #32 If you had a super power… or #41 Johnny goes to the store for milk and never comes back.

Tony explains, “Sometimes the videos take 10 minutes to create and sometimes they turn into more serious projects, like a music video.”

May marked the 8^th birthday of the company. I asked Tony: When did you realize the success of World Famous?

“Three days ago?”

“Really?! No way.”

He laughs. “A little over a year ago we moved in to this spot, which was a big affirmation. It’s like, Okay, we really are a company. But really getting to the point when we could finance passion works too. We’ve been paying salaries and making a living since year one, but hitting the point of why we started, for me at least – to do really great creative work for people and make enough money to do great creative work for ourselves.”

Big things are on the horizon for him. With the help of Washington Filmworks Innovation Lab, Box Walk, a short film written and directed by Tony, was able to go into production. It is a coming of age tale about a son and father, spanning over two decades.

“It’s an incentive program, we have to finance the film itself and they will give us 20% back of what we spent in Washington.”

He and a crew of 24 people set out to shoot Box Walk in Soap Lake, Moses Lake, Mazama and Cle Elum, which he mentions couldn’t have been made possible last year. “The story,” Tony states, “is complete fiction but it’s very much inspired by my stepdad. It takes place in the winter. I found an amazing location in Cle Elum that was perfect. It had everything I needed for the exteriors and interiors. Unfortunately, three weeks before the shoot, all the snow melted. Everything was turning green. I had to get in my car and spend three days looking for new locations in the only place in Washington that still had snow. It worked out, though. The film is beautiful and while they were more difficult to get to, the locations couldn’t have been more perfect.”

Tony has traveled a great deal for the company, hopefully, he says, taking another trip to Japan soon. He recently took a jaunt to Qatar to shoot a video for the ministry of education, highlighting the One Initiative program, which is improving the education system in Qatar. The government bought Microsoft Tablets for schools and World Famous shot a video for it.

“Three of us went and did it all ourselves, we didn’t have a crew at all, we were really pinching pennies, I ended up in an Islamic girl’s school. It was really interesting with bunch of 13-year-olds. No man had been there for years, I’m pretty sure. That’s what I love, getting stranded places and have weird experiences.”

A steadily growing video production company for eight years now, I ask if World Famous reached that point where they can be more selective with their jobs, only taking clients they choose to work with.

“We’ve been exceptionally lucky with good clients,” he tells me. “However, there’s been a few jobs we’ve done where the clients have been psychotic. I don’t think we’ve had to face saying no to a return client that we didn’t like, because if we didn’t like them, chances are they didn’t like us. Chemistry is a pretty powerful thing. Just balancing the saying ‘Yes’ to every job but also keeping the morale up here, making sure not to bury everybody just to make money. I don’t think you ever get to that point where you’re like Yes, No, Yes, No to clients.”

Tony takes me for a tour around the office, he brings me to the far right corner. There is a large table in the middle and a white board with idea pitches scribbled on it. My eye catches a 3D clay model replicating a scene from Alien on the top shelf.

“Oh, yeah that’s a piece from the trailer we did for 2013 SIFF.”

“Super cool! I noticed the TrollHunter model in the office earlier.”

He reaches back into the shelf and grabs a hidden clay model of a girl. I immediately recognize its origins from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.

“Too bad this one didn’t make the cut, she should probably sit here.” And he places her eyelevel on a shelf in the main room.

Tony leads me around to where the computers are and briefs me on the World Famous team. I awkwardly smile at everyone. I got some smiles back, but mostly confusion. I get that a lot – often feeling a What am I doing here? But in World Famous it feels less out of place and more, Here! I want to be here!

In front of me, large windows span across the entire room, overlooking Pike Street. Several offices boarder the perimeter. Tony takes me over to one, inside there is a large “L” couch in the corner. I comment on how inviting it appears, the guy inside the office proclaims, “That’s where Tony lays and pretends to be working!” A few steps forward and there is a kitchen where a deer statue lives and several art pieces hang. I look around and think the inside looks more like that trendy loft apartment I’ve always hoped for, than a business. There is a small sitting area where more smartly designed tables and chairs rest. My eyes move to a hefty long table by the windows. Here, the World Famous crew eat lunch together followed by a Call of Duty throw-down on Xbox.

“We eat lunch together and then blow shit up!” Tony gleefully explains.

Sitting back down in the office, a friend bops his head into the room. The conversation somehow switches to the new Iron Man movie. Tony briefly describes how his daughter has transformed into a “Marvel superhero geek.” He says, “Yeah she’s seen all the Iron Man movies, and The Avengers – I don’t know how many times. And she’s watching Marvel cartoons and she’s starting to read Black Widow comics, too. She wants to be the Black Widow for Halloween. Big step from wanting to be a Snow Leopard last year!”

“A girl after my own heart. How old is she?” I wonder.

“Twelve.”

Along with keeping busy at World Famous, and playing in the rock bank Jackrabbit, Tony is a dad and husband.  “Oh!” he adds, “I also had a short career in furniture making!”

“What?”

“Yeah, I thought it would be cool, and then I realized how much harder it was. However, I designed all the desks in here but had someone else make it. So much easier that way.” A true idea man. He adds, “You know, when I hit thirty, I was like, Shit this isn’t where I thought I was going to be at thirty. And when I hit forty I was like, Ahhh, you’re never actually at that point. Ever. Which is really freeing to know that’s no real destination. There is no arriving someplace.”

I sit back and reflect a bit, finally saying, “I agree. I’m still young, yet I get that anxious feeling like life’s not going in the direction I’d like. I feel like I haven’t accomplished that much, yet I also like to think I have.”

“What you want to accomplish will change so much, you’ll never get there. It gets to that point, at least for me, and applies to World Famous too. What do I want to accomplish now? And what resources do I have to accomplish it. Sometimes the answer to that question stays the same over a matter of years and sometimes it changes every year. Last year, I was like I want to do music videos! And I did one. But now I may want something totally different.” He turns to me then and apologizes for having to cut our time short, saying he must get back to doing final edits on Box Walk.

Andy has been patiently waiting. Andy, in fact, chimes in, “Ha, yeah Tony’s been real secretive about who sees what around here!”
To find out more about World Famous, click on these links. I DARE YOU!

http://www.worldfamousinc.com

http://vimeo.com/tonyfulgham

http://vimeo.com/worldfamous