Transcript: Gary Sheng and Emil Pinnock

Date: May 3, 2025

Participants

• Gary Sheng (GS)
• Emil Pinnock (EP)

Context

Discussion about potential collaboration between Alpha Schools/The Alpha Bet and Emil Pinnock's organization (Unleashing Giants) to create a specialized film school in Pasadena/Altadena, CA, leveraging the disruption caused by the Eaton Fires.

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[Emil Pinnock] which is like the number one television festival. Sundance is like the leading, you know, for films and series. First, I won a bunch of awards here when I first broke into the industry.

And now they're giving me like a global ambassadors award. And I have a keynote speak today at their fundraiser. And so I've been here like kind of shaking hands and kissing babies, you know, doing what I got to do to promote the festival.

[Gary Sheng] I love it. Well, Seems like you're a good champion for them.

[Emil Pinnock] I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you.

So, yeah, thanks for reaching out, man. You know, I'm excited to figure things out. I know that we've had a lot of conversations and I know Beef is kind of playing the middleman and having a lot of different conversations and I just wanted to kind of consolidate our thoughts.

As far as excitement for the city of Pasadena for You know, me to come in and do some things, you know, this is an opportunity.

[Gary Sheng] So fill me in because I'm, I, I realized that, you know, a lot of people are like kind of doing stuff, but like, ultimately I'm happy to like take leadership and like making sure that the conversation goes forward because it's like part of my job.

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah. Yep.

[Gary Sheng] I appreciate that. And like, there's candidly, there's people on that. Long left the team that have been around for a lot longer than I have that have less urgency for some reason to like move so Like I'm just happy to like I would love to get up to speed and then just help you move along so fill me in on The situation and like the opportunity that you see

[Emil Pinnock] Absolutely, um, it stopped me whenever if you have you need some clarity or if I'm going too long winded and maybe you have a few questions, but I'll try to do like the major bullet points of how we ended up where we are, right? So, I have a program in Pasadena that I've been running for about a decade, slightly over a decade, an eight-week film program that educates students on how to write, direct, produce, and also...

[Gary Sheng] And is that genius in the hood?

[Emil Pinnock] That is Unleashing Giants. Unleashing Giants is our company. Genius in the Hood is one of the programs that we offer.

When we offer Genius in the Hood, it's to a particular community in a particular way where we mine for intelligence in very impoverished communities, Compton and the outskirts of Harlem. And so that is a particular program. The company is Unleashing Giants, and we work with a number.

We work with a number of private schools. We work with everyone from Harvard, Westlake. I'm down to like some, uh, you know, public schools in deep Chicago.

So like we, that we, we go across, across the board. Um, what we, the work we've done in Pasadena for the decade is through our lights, camera, future program, where we go in, it's an eight week programs where you teach kids how to write, direct, produce a star and their own movies. The eight weeks are broken up into two sections.

First, they learn how to do it. In the first four weeks and the last four weeks, they take what they've learned and they make their own film. When the films are done, they're then premiered at a local movie theater.

We get a ton of press, movie posters, award ceremonies that have been hosted from everybody from Michael B. Jordan to Marvel, you name it, right? So that's the program.

Because of that relationship in Pasadena, we have a very strong hold on that city. And Pasadena Unified School District includes Pasadena and Altadena. Which is very important to note because of the conversation that we're having as far as the fires.

When the Eaton fires happened for the first time in 10 years, all the program has ceased. Private school program and public school program for a number of reasons. First, a number of the schools no longer exist.

There are schools that are completely wiped out. There are schools that still exist, but they still need renovation. So there is the effects of the fire on those schools.

They're just not completely wiped out. And then there's the fact that most of the funding now has to go to rehabilitation and rebuilding the city. And they're not going to spend a ton of money on what they consider expanded learning programs when you've got to actually rebuild the actual physical building.

So what I was saying to Chris, when I was talking to Chris there, there's a ton of opportunity to introduce new forms of education in the city of Altadena and Pasadena. You've got to remember, from the Eaton Fires, There's a thousands of kids who are displaced that they don't even have schools, private school kids and public school kids. But the two, three, the three major private schools are also being a completely burned out.

So now their parents are forced to either a put them in public school and education that they didn't really want when they first put them in private school.

[Gary Sheng] Right.

[Emil Pinnock] Or they're forced to do a home education that they don't feel that they can, that they can facilitate, whether it be because of time and they're a lawyer or whether they just because they're not an educator. Right. So there's, It's right with opportunity.

We have a film festival that we're going to do in the city of Pasadena and Altadena, where we're going to be screening 16 different films. Every single kid is from the city of Altadena and Pasadena. Why?

That's important because I can then say to you...

[Gary Sheng] So they all don't have, they basically all don't have school right now.

[Emil Pinnock] Not all, because some of the kids are placed in other different schools. So sometimes You know, there's a mixture of kids who are being homeschooled and have home education through the computer. There are different kids who have just been placed in other schools, but all of the city is like in a little bit of a turmoil and trying to figure out this whole education thing.

It's a lot of unease. What I have is with this film festival, and this is where Chris, with you guys, thought that we should do. We are building a film festival in the city of Pasadena with the students of Altadena and Pasadena.

And we are looking for a sponsor. And he said, well, I think Alpha should come in and sponsor the film festival. And we can have an activation through that sponsorship to be able to directly interact with parents and students, have marketing of the Alpha school there, have presentations, have workshops, whatever we would want to do.

We can do that because I personally, I think that that should be the location that we see the next location that would be the Los Angeles, you know, Los Angeles location that you guys are doing. I think Pasadena Altadena is right for that. And to take a tester, right, because I know Beef is like, oh, we can just open it.

We can do that. And I understand. And I love his ambition.

But I think if we wanted to take a bite size, just a little inquiry, right, we can do that through the festival. And we can also do that through summer programming, because they have a summer program location. We can do AI.

We can do an AI version of the program that I do. We could come up with something. But we can take steps to integrate what you guys do into that city, and then allow that interest into that offering to then lead into the location of us launching the actual school.

So those are my thoughts.

[Gary Sheng] I appreciate that. And so the film festival, just so I'm super clear, is lacking sponsors right now. The funding is gone because the schools are gone, right?

Other people have priorities now that maybe the initial sponsors just have to pull out now.

[Emil Pinnock] Usually the school district would be the major sponsor. So the school district just, just, just pulled out. We didn't, we didn't have to go to any other sponsors.

This is our first time having to be able to have to do that because the school district, the school district would just underwrite the entire film festival directly from the school district. So we haven't had any pushback. I mean, and look, I mean, I'm speaking kind of out of turn cause I haven't had this conversations, but knowing how much I get sponsorship for other things that we're doing, I'm not anticipating.

much of a problem of corporate organizations who don't want to align themselves with helping the Altadena fires, the kids in education. That's, it's like a darling for corporate branding, right? Like, Hey, we came in to help this.

We came in to fund this. We came in to provide this situation. Um, so I I'm very confident in that package, but if, if I could do something with someone like yourself, where it's not a one-off where, Hey, yes, you guys can come in to do this, but we're investing in this.

For a bigger vision, right? So this is not going to be a one-off.

[Gary Sheng] I think like, you know, there's some, there's some kind of, there's some visions that if they're not big enough, you won't get a billionaire to invest in it. So I think like part of why I imagine beef brought up the school and wanting to start a school was because that's what we have budget already for. Right.

We want to start, do you know what we want to start? We want to start 25 Hyper elite schools that have a deep specialty. So yes, you get your common core education through AI app, but you also specialize in something like a film, right?

[Emil Pinnock] Absolutely.

[Gary Sheng] And I imagine that you understand that that's kind of what we're looking at. And like what we would probably want to start with is like literally 10 kids, like 10 10 kids, maybe there's like two, you know, I don't know. I don't know exactly what the support structure looks like.

But.

[Emil Pinnock] Also, I totally, I totally understand the big vision thing too. So trust me, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a very much a big vision guy with you guys too. I was saying that I'm not saying that we should do one or the other.

I was saying, I thought that, that I think it should happen in some phases. And so if the, if the North star is the big vision, I think that we should hold that. And I think that we should say, this is exactly what we're going to do, how I would like to go in and to select these 10 kids.

is through the Pasadena Unified School District and also through the homeschool community. So my kids have never been to traditional school, my three children. I have a 14-year-old, a 13-year-old, and an 11-year-old.

They've never been to traditional school. So I've always been in some sort of untraditional school communities and different groups, whether It's, you know, the private school, quote unquote, homeschooling route, all different things. And my kids are excelling.

You know, my daughter is phenomenal. She wrote a bestsellers book that got a publishing deal. My son is one of the leading actors on Abbott Elementary, the number one comedy show on television.

Like, I've taken that time.

[Gary Sheng] Wait, really?

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, he is. Absolutely.

[Gary Sheng] Oh, wow.

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, my daughter, like Damon Johnson, is the one who did her deal for her. So I'm a part of this.

[Gary Sheng] Let me, let me, let me, let me push something because look, the only schools that I want to be a part of, because they're so, there are schools that are about to be legendary schools. And the only way that you can do legendary stuff is with media. And so what I would want you to have a vision for is basically to Create an attractive enough of a package where we bring this to Ted Sarandos.

And we're like, yo, Netflix should first of all sponsor the school, but also give us a great distribution deal and literally have a series. I had this vision for reality TV that's not just like film for nine months and then put something out. It's literally film for one week, put it out, film for another week, put it out.

And like at every point that it's put out, There's activations, right? And so literally, the audience is like, boom, you know, Danto student is looking for money for this film. They're basically pitching the film through this show.

And then next, next, next, by the next episode, you see that they got a million dollars in funding, right for their film, like, like, like, that's, that's My view like if you're gonna have it, it's all this is really sad, of course.

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Gary Sheng] But if you're gonna go, if we're gonna do anything, it has to be huge, has to be incredibly creative. And look, to say the least, a school that is rooted in film, all you better do something crazy related to the storytelling.

[Emil Pinnock] And so absolutely, absolutely.

[Gary Sheng] So what instead of My suggestion is instead of rushing the film festival stuff, what I would say as a leader, and I'm just riffing here, okay?

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, of course, of course.

[Gary Sheng] What I would say is like, let's pivot and be like, yo, we haven't like literally figure out the narrative, right? The narrative is pretty clear to me, actually. It's like, you're like a people's champ.

You've had success as like, forget the program, right? As much as they're awesome. You have an opportunity.

To literally start from scratch in a school where the kids are not like, literally the school is designed to create Emmy award winning, Oscar award winning, blah, blah, golden global award winning, whatever. And really whatever the school's name is going to be, that should have its own award show where like, you know, you're celebrating youth films and it becomes the Oscars for youth films. And so literally you can just from the ground up of the ashes, literally create a school that is a very, very, very powerful brand that has this in-house media team where it's like super top-notch film people, like reality show people.

And the kids are apprenticing under them.

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, I got it.

[Gary Sheng] I'm following you. And so the default internship is an apprenticeship to promote their own school, and secure sponsorship, secure distribution deals, right? Imagine the whole thing is like meta as fuck, where like, you're literally seeing them try to figure out how to get us in front of more people, right?

So it becomes like the most underdog story. Like, but just like, you know, you want you're rooting for these kids at every step of the way. And so I'm just riffing here. But like, I've thought about this for a long time. In my view, what you should want to do is create the most engaging story that people can actually plug into and basically get all of the entertainment industry to be like, yo, I want to help these kids.

Get everyone aware of these kids. Make this the best film school in the world because They're getting so much attention and then it creates this self-fulfilling loop where like because there's so much attention you and from the ground up you started with teachers like coaches that like are have actually won awards and stuff like that and then it's like boom literally they're soaking it up from from middle school how good are they going to be three years into that schooling

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, exactly, exactly. No, no, I love it. I love what you're doing, and I'm not sure if you saw the deck for Genius in the Hood and Unleashing Giants, but our board is a very dedicated board, and it's the who's who list.

So when you're saying like the internships and apprenticeships, we already have that built in. I mean, everybody from the creators of Games of Thrones to Rian Johnson, like everyone is very dedicated to the work that we do. So we have an army.

Um, that we, that we could use and quickly.

[Gary Sheng] Well, you just need some of those to be like, yo, this is a great business. Like, like I want you and look, who the fuck am I to say, give anyone advice. Right.

But I, but I'm like the way that you can, you can get them to drop whatever else they're doing is to be like, this is going to be one of the most successful businesses that they've ever been a part of. Like, that's, that's how it happened. That's how it should be framed.

Right. And then like, yeah, you, you should get creative about like the, the, the school by default, if you're leveraging the school resources, the, the, the, the in-house, essentially in-house film production and distribution agencies, if you're using these, we get it, we get upside at the school. Right.

And so you basically have like a self funding loop where like the top films Literally feed the, keep feeding the school so it can keep operating. So you don't have to be reliant on government grants as much, even though like, yes, if you can find a grant, great. But like, what you want to do from the start is thinking about like the self-sustaining loop, where like you're incentivized to find kids that can create hit films and stuff like that.

So that's, that's also just directly in line with like the philosophy of, you know, Joe, Joe wants to see Doesn't have to be right away, but eventually self-sustaining schools that like produce excellence, produce the goats, produce, you know, like Timothy Chalamet says, you know, he wants to be one of the greats. And like, I know for a fact, because I talked about it with Joe, he loved that speech. And I love that speech too.

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah. You got it. Well, look, I'm interested.

I want to move this forward. Malcolm Spellman, my partner, like I told you, that just did Captain America and Falcon and the Winter Soldier. We just created the spinoff to Snowfall, who I'm going to cover my first national magazine with him last month.

He's so hype about this. Jimmy Criss, who came with me, who's our partner in that, they're really excited. What I would need to do would be very helpful.

It's the same kind of powwow how you're just saying, like, we're just riffing right now. It's to actually be in a space where we can, like, put this stuff down to where, like, you know, I can really present it.

[Gary Sheng] Well, this being recorded is why. I'm really good at using AI to turn this conversation into, like, the beginning of, like, a proposal. And by the way, like, the principle that I want you to, like, Adopt, because that's what I'm trying to adopt because that's also how I'm evaluating school opportunities for Joe, is specificity, focus, tight scope.

So look, let me get even the tightest scope I can imagine based on what we talked about. Imagine a film school where the first film project and the only thing that the kids are working on is stuff that promotes the story of the school Yeah. I think like the meta element of it of like the students.

Like even like. Like there's a lot to think about of like how are the students selected? How are they?

How are you determining beyond like their standardized? You know, measures of math, science, etc. Like how are you determining who is doing well versus other kids, right?

I think there's a lot to figure out. But. Making it like such a unique, interesting, like almost like a meme of like, this is the LA fire school that is like birthed from the ashes.

That is like reclaiming the narrative about what happened. And also like, I don't know the kids' futures. I don't know.

I don't know what the narrative, I think that's something to meditate on and like discuss, but like making it really simple, what the motive is. What is the grand narrative of this school? Seems like a great next step.

And then just figuring out, it sounds like you have a lot of different raw ingredients in terms of relationships, skills, people that are already a fan of what you've had done in the past. How can you alchemize that? Welcome to my lecture.

You are directly incentivizing yourself to pick the best possible narratives that can be sold on Netflix, right? Can be sold to Amazon Prime, whatever it is.

[Emil Pinnock] Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Got it.

Got it.

[Gary Sheng] So before we hop, I wanted to give like other examples, because like, this will be the first film school that we would support if we supported it, right? Another one is another one that we're exploring is doing a Elite golf school. 10 middle school kids that are fucking amazing at golf.

A traveling school where they're basically, they have a camera following them around as well. And maybe, maybe part of the school. What the?

I do a lot of everything. Appreciate it, appreciate it. Someone was complimenting me for being confident.

That's pretty funny. I guess he just liked my swag. I don't know.

So actually, look, as I'm riffing, look, every school that we want to launch, Emil, we want a team dedicated to filming almost everything. Of course. I mean, I don't have to convince you of that, right?

[Emil Pinnock] No, absolutely.

[Gary Sheng] And so, dude, what if your school had an HQ in Altadena, etc.? But imagine your school had the crazy model where once you've picked your kids, and maybe it is a high school thing because you're a little bit older, right? And you think you'd be more independent, you could travel more alone.

Imagine it is more of a high school thing. where you can deploy maybe with the help of like someone that they can apprentice under. Maybe it can be middle school, I don't know.

But I think it's a little easier when they're a little bit older. But imagine, okay, we're going to start with like, let's say, in the next year, probably three, four schools, right? Imagine your school being the school that is covering all the other schools.

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, I got it.

[Gary Sheng] And like the power of the two hour learning is that you can do it anywhere.

[Emil Pinnock] You can you can do it anywhere.

[Gary Sheng] And so it's like literally a traveling school. What's that? That like, for example, one of your students could be traveling with the traveling golf team, right now we're going to create and then we're also going to have a traveling basketball team.

Right.

[Emil Pinnock] Right. So like, wow.

[Gary Sheng] And so your, your film kids are almost like, like, almost like Mormons deployed onto like a mission where they're just traveling and like, that's not the best metaphor. But like,

[Emil Pinnock] I got you. I'm following you. I understand you're saying that.

[Gary Sheng] Yeah. And so like, look, whatever it is, it just has to be like, holy fucks. I cannot believe they thought about that.

That's so genius. Right?

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah. Yeah.

[Gary Sheng] And then so basically, imagine this school. Following the fucking greatest story ever told, which is young people becoming the great leaders of our future, right? And like literally from the ashes creating a golden age, right?

Like that's how I feel about like our society. Like there's so much stuff that's wrong, including whatever failures that led to the fire. But like the next generation, Who would be taking leadership in owning their own story, covering the stories, building optimism, creating self-reinforcing loops of optimism, enrollment, growth, action, right?

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Gary Sheng] And anyway, just riffing here, but like whatever it is, like I said, needs to be epic so that it's such an easy yes as an experiment.

[Emil Pinnock] I love it, I understand.

[Gary Sheng] So the division, That I am leading is called alpha bet, because all I care about is placing strategic, honestly not that expensive bets that could pay off a thousand or a million X, literally. And the only way that you can do a thousand X, million X, Multiple is if you invent a new category of creation.

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with that. You're preaching to the choir now, for sure.

You have to. That's the only way.

[Gary Sheng] You have to be so creative that you literally invent a whole industry, which is like activation TV slash middle school or high school kids following the most interesting stories in the world and getting high school credit while doing it. And then, you know what I'm saying? That's so mind-blowing that that could be part of the future of education, you know?

[Emil Pinnock] Right, right, right.

[Gary Sheng] There's like so many meta stories in there as well about the fact, you know, all that. So I think that we should definitely get on a call, maybe like 1 p.m., like I said, on Monday, maybe with your partner. 1 p.m. Central if you're free. I'm also, I have some availability on Sunday as well, in the mid-afternoon.

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, absolutely, man. I'm glad Beef brought this to us, and I'm glad that he saw the vision to see what we're doing, and I'll make sure to bring my people on.

[Gary Sheng] And like, look, you know the NIL stuff for sports?

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, I'm actually doing an NIL television series right now, me and Malcolm, the guy just saw you from Captain America.

[Gary Sheng] Okay, well, look, imagine your school getting a cut of the NIL, like, of the schools that you're helping do, right? But also, You should treat like your own students, like talents that you want a piece of the upside on because they're generating such valuable stuff. Right.

Look, this is not my expertise. I'm like more on the higher strategic ideas guy level, but like, I feel like you could figure out the right business model for this.

[Emil Pinnock] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Cool.

Yup. Sounds good, man. Well, I appreciate your time and insight, brother, for real.

[Gary Sheng] I appreciate you.

[Emil Pinnock] All right. We'll talk soon. All right.

[Gary Sheng] Talk soon.