This interview appears in the May 2021 Issue of The Open Doors Review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The full interview will be available by Podcast. Subscribe on Apple podcasts (iTunes) so you don’t miss it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie Flavell is a video maker and creator that has made YouTube her medium. Her videos are immersive experiences that cover a range of subjects from life in Italy, to cooking, to travel and exploring the country, to poetry and reflections. Each episode she posts transports the viewer to an almost fairy tale reality, with careful attention to detail, sound effects, music and a consistent focus on finding the beauty and magic in every day expereinces. They hearken back to a cinematic past while always remaining quintissential \u201cKylie.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We talked about some of the difficulties of following your dreams, the satisfaction when it pays off and how the fairytale always comes with witches and dragons. However, that\u2019s all part of the adventure. The following excerpts have been edited and our full conversation can be found on the podcast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lauren: What was it about Italy that made you want to give up the career you were building in Australia and move here with no exact career in mind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: I suppose I wanted to live in a way that felt more cinematic and more poetic and I found that every year that I\u2019ve been here (by now it\u2019s been on and off for about 10 years of living in Italy) so yeah it\u2019s definitely become that sort of fairy tale for me but when I say fairy tale I mean even the low moments are a fairy tale – the wicked witch and the Dragons!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lauren: They\u2019re part of the fairy tale too – you need to have the lows in order to have the highs!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: The hero\u2019s journey, you know that traditional narrative where you really are slaying the dragon and \u201cfighting off the wicked witch\u201d and all of that even if the wicked witch is just your expat anxiety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lauren: I do agree that you find what it is you\u2019re looking for. So if you are someone who thinks nothing works out, that gets confirmed over and over. And if you look for the beauty in the world, then you might be someone who moves to Italy to be surrounded by beauty and then within that context find even more and more wonderful things around you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: I think any foreign country I\u2019ve moved to – it just amplifies whoever you are as a person. So that\u2019s always something that I say to people who are considering moving to a foreign country: whatever you are it will be amplified so just to keep that in mind! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lauren: That\u2019s so interesting because so many people want to move to escape themselves and the truth is they will be even more themselves if they go. You\u2019re kind of stripped bare in a foreign country. Do you think that if you had stayed in Australia you would have made such a creative life for yourself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: I suppose I\u2019ve just always had a real innate sense of adventure and I just really respond well to living as an expat – I love the challenge, I love the stimulation, I love that sense that you are, I don\u2019t know, perhaps it\u2019s a sense that you are in a constant state of growth, right? And of course people can grow and evolve in their home country but for me it really works to be living in a foreign speaking country. It makes me constantly alert and aware of my flaws and my growth and that\u2019s how I love to live, I suppose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lauren: You like the challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: Yes! But that said I mean I suppose I was always doing a million projects back when I was in Australia as well and so I was already in a creative role. I think some people write to me and they\u2019re doing something that they hate in their home country and then they have this idea of moving to italy to follow their passion. I was, I suppose, I was already pursuing a passion – it was one of my dreams to run a magazine and interview people around the world. It was a business magazine that I was editing and I was writing long feature articles and one of my first loves is writing so I really loved that. But then I achieved what I wanted to achieve there and then I was wanting something more. The more for me was saying, \u201cOK can I be creative and also be living in a place that is very sensual and very ancient and very stimulating culturally?\u201d So that was the missing piece for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I asked Kylie why she chose film over any other creative medium that she\u2019s passionate about \u2013 writing, poetry, photography \u2013 and she told me the story of how her first job in Italy was hosting a TV show in which she traveled across the country, conducting interviews. But she was frustrated by the slowness of the production, of making compromises on her artistic vision. Ultimately, the production company sold the show but didn\u2019t pay up, leading to some long, drawn out legal battles with no satisfying conclusion. This was her response to the challenge: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: I just thought the whole thing might be easier if I teach myself to do every single person\u2019s job on the set and then I will have the flexibility to go and do what I want without having to try and convince others. I just thought when I was kind of screwed over by this production company, I thought, Right I\u2019ve got two options here. I could really wallow in self pity and think \u201cAh how unfair is this!\u201d but I thought, No I\u2019ll just see this as: that was my film school and I put it down to a really great year of learning.
Then in a way it worked out really well because I think all of that injustice and that drama sort of pushed me to learn every single role and then it sort of set me up to then have really great flexibility because I could travel the world with all of my film equipment on my back and I found opportunities I wouldn\u2019t have had otherwise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lauren: Your ability to take total creative autonomy over the film medium, I think is is very rare. You\u2019re totally in control of the videos that you make. Would you be willing to work with a team again or have you found your groove on your own?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: I guess I\u2019m not in a position financially where I could take on someone as an employee and that\u2019s a lot of responsibility and I think I like the fact that I only have to be responsible for me. I know that I\u2019m a survivor you know how it is like I know that having \u20ac2.00 in my bank account – it doesn\u2019t scare me anymore. Or having to work 80 hours a week -that doesn\u2019t intimidate me or get me down. So yeah, I\u2019m not opposed to working with others but then when I\u2019ve gone back and done little projects where I work for the team – Oh my gosh I forgot how much time is wasted and how expensive things are. When I\u2019m working on my own everything\u2019s a lot more authentic in terms of being able to conduct more intimate and personal interviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lauren: What\u2019s your aim with your YouTube Channel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: I suppose what I wanted to do with You Tube is – because I started in TV and then went to YouTube – I wanted to bring the production quality of TV with the authenticity and intimacy of YouTube and and combine the two. I want to create a community of people who are bit freaky like me but it\u2019s certainly not really the recipe for success. If you want to be followed on Instagram or YouTube or anywhere on social media, you probably shouldn\u2019t take the path I\u2019ve taken!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lauren: Can you tell me about a time when you almost gave up on this dream of being able to make your videos exactly as you wanted?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: Oh there\u2019s just… so many! I suppose putting yourself online with all the negative comments is really difficult and if you add not being able to pay rent and really being in financial difficulty and then also having your dream, your professional dream not work out and then feeling also alone because maybe you haven\u2019t you got a support network around you. You think, \u201cI\u2019m putting my heart and soul into it and it\u2019s something that gives me a sense of purpose – I believe in what I\u2019m doing!\u201d But it can be hard.
A lot of people say that you just need to find your passion and that\u2019s the hardest part but I don\u2019t believe that because I found it, I\u2019ve always known what makes me happy and what I\u2019m passionate about but I think there are lots of other steps that you have to overcome before you can make the whole puzzle work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lauren: What do you think is worse: The inner demons (self doubts) or the outer demons which are often online trolls leaving hateful comments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: I think they are one and the same really, because oftentimes people are saying stuff in the comments and messages that you\u2019ve already considered yourself or a lot of the time what they say has absolutely no element of truth at all. It can still get to you and you need to be really really strong at working out that detachment and not seeking applause and not seeking any kind of validation from the outside which is kind of counterintuitive because… isn\u2019t art made to be shared?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lauren: Often people don\u2019t even get to the point of putting what they\u2019ve created out there and it\u2019s true you\u2019re going to get some negative comments but you\u2019re also going to get some positive ones from places you never expected. You know if you put yourself out there, if you are vulnerable, you are at least also exposed to the positive reactions too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: I think one of the the best and worst things about You Tube is that it rewards frequency and this has been a constant battle for me. But I have just bowed down to the monster of YouTube and said, OK fine I\u2019m going to play by your rules and publish every Friday. And while I\u2019ve hated that it\u2019s also been incredibly good for me creatively because it doesn\u2019t matter if I think it\u2019s perfect or if I think it\u2019s ready, I just have to finish it and I have to start something new every seven days. That frequency of production means that I am forcing my brain, and my heart I guess, to get a lot faster and say, \u201cJust have confidence in that\u201d or \u201cThis is the way you\u2019re doing it this weke and that\u2019s that,\u201d or \u201cThat\u2019s the segment you\u2019re going to choose, that\u2019s the sound bite, that\u2019s the color grading, the music and I know that I\u2019ve learned a lot from that because I have this self imposed deadline every Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: I think often what works for me is, I have my times where I\u2019m reading widely and I\u2019m getting inspired but I don\u2019t really follow people who are doing stuff that\u2019s quite similar to what I\u2019m doing. So I will follow people or consume work by people who are doing totally different things from me. I think if I were to, I don\u2019t know, follow someone who is in a very similar environment to me and kind of with the same tone, it just can get a little bit difficult to really have clarity of creative voice.
I do think if you\u2019re still at this stage of thinking, \u201cI\u2019m not quite sure if I found my creative voice or I\u2019m not quite sure if my tone is really my own,\u201d then it\u2019s good not to follow people who are doing exactly the niche that you want because I just find you gotta be really strong person to not accidentally copy other work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lauren: You need to give yourself room to grow and to believe in your message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: the easiest thing that you\u2019re going to be able to maintain over the long term is something that is really authentic to you and and not even even if you find that your voice is is not as as as beautiful or as exciting as someone that you really admire like one of your creative heroes but that\u2019s fine.
The thing that is really going to help you endure is when you get to that point where you\u2019re not inspired by other people\u2019s work, you\u2019re actually just really hearing your own voice and you say, \u201cI know my tone and I know what world I want to create and what sentiment I want to create and this is this is me.\u201d I think once you find that, that\u2019s wonderful.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kylie: For a long time I was just doing the work that pays or that gets you the experience or that teaches you something and and so finally being at the stage where I can wake up and kind of follow my desires or my curiosity and let that dictate what I film and what I put out to the world, I mean that\u2019s something I\u2019ve just longed for my whole life and I\u2019m finally at that point and I feel really really grateful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can find Kylie Flavell on YouTube and Instagram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This interview appears in the May 2021 Issue of The Open Doors Review. The full interview will be available by Podcast. Subscribe on Apple podcasts (iTunes) so you don’t miss it! Introduction Kylie Flavell is a video maker and creator that has made YouTube her medium. Her videos are immersive experiences that cover a range of subjects from life in Italy, to cooking, to travel and exploring the country, to poetry and reflections. Each episode she posts transports the viewer to an almost fairy tale reality, with careful attention to detail, sound effects, music and a consistent focus on finding the beauty and magic in every day expereinces. They hearken back to a cinematic past while always remaining quintissential \u201cKylie.\u201d We talked about some of the difficulties of following your dreams, the satisfaction when it pays off and how the fairytale always comes with witches and dragons. However, that\u2019s all part of the adventure. The following excerpts have been edited and our full conversation can be found on the podcast. Interview Extract On choosing a creative life Lauren: What was it about Italy that made you want to give up the career you were building in Australia and move here with no exact career in mind? Kylie: I suppose I wanted to live in a way that felt more cinematic and more poetic and I found that every year that I\u2019ve been here (by now it\u2019s been on and off for about 10 years of living in Italy) so yeah it\u2019s definitely become that sort of fairy tale for me but when I say fairy tale I mean even the low moments are a fairy tale – the wicked witch and the Dragons! Lauren: They\u2019re part of the fairy tale too – you need to have the lows in order to have the highs! Kylie: The hero\u2019s journey, you know that traditional narrative where you really are slaying the dragon and \u201cfighting off the wicked witch\u201d and all of that even if the wicked witch is just your expat anxiety. Lauren: I do agree that you find what it is you\u2019re looking for. So if you are someone who thinks nothing works out, that gets confirmed over and over. And if you look for the beauty in the world, then you might be someone who moves to Italy to be surrounded by beauty and then within that context find even more and more wonderful things around you. Kylie: I think any foreign country I\u2019ve moved to – it just amplifies whoever you are as a person. So that\u2019s always something that I say to people who are considering moving to a foreign country: whatever you are it will be amplified so just to keep that in mind! Lauren: That\u2019s so interesting because so many people want to move to escape themselves and the truth is they will be even more themselves if they go. You\u2019re kind of stripped bare in a foreign country. Do you think that if you had stayed in Australia you would have made such a creative life for yourself? Kylie: I suppose I\u2019ve just always had a real innate sense of adventure and I just really respond well to living as an expat – I love the challenge, I love the stimulation, I love that sense that you are, I don\u2019t know, perhaps it\u2019s a sense that you are in a constant state of growth, right? And of course people can grow and evolve in their home country but for me it really works to be living in a foreign speaking country. It makes me constantly alert and aware of my flaws and my growth and that\u2019s how I love to live, I suppose. Lauren: You like the challenge. Kylie: Yes! But that said I mean I suppose I was always doing a million projects back when I was in Australia as well and so I was already in a creative role. I think some people write to me and they\u2019re doing something that they hate in their home country and then they have this idea of moving to italy to follow their passion. I was, I suppose, I was already pursuing a passion – it was one of my dreams to run a magazine and interview people around the world. It was a business magazine that I was editing and I was writing long feature articles and one of my first loves is writing so I really loved that. But then I achieved what I wanted to achieve there and then I was wanting something more. The more for me was saying, \u201cOK can I be creative and also be living in a place that is very sensual and very ancient and very stimulating culturally?\u201d So that was the missing piece for me. Why Film? Choosing a creative direction I asked Kylie why she chose film over any other creative medium that she\u2019s passionate about \u2013 writing, poetry, photography \u2013 and she told me the story of how her first job in Italy was hosting a TV show in which she traveled across the country, conducting interviews. But she was frustrated by the slowness of the production, of making compromises on her artistic vision. Ultimately, the production company sold the show but didn\u2019t pay up, leading to some long, drawn out legal battles with no satisfying conclusion. This was her response to the challenge: Kylie: I just thought the whole thing might be easier if I teach myself to do every single person\u2019s job on the set and then I will have the flexibility to go and do what I want without having to try and convince others. I just thought when I was kind of screwed over by this production company, I thought, Right I\u2019ve got two options here. I could really wallow in self pity and think \u201cAh how unfair is this!\u201d but I thought, No I\u2019ll just see this as: that was my film school and I put it down to a really great year of learning. Then in a way it worked out really well because I think all of that injustice and that drama sort of pushed me to learn every single role and then it sort of set me up to then have really great flexibility because I could travel the world with all of my film equipment on my back and I found opportunities I wouldn\u2019t have had otherwise. Lauren: Your ability to take total creative autonomy over the film medium, I think is is very rare. You\u2019re totally in control of the videos that you make. Would you be willing to work with a team again or have you found your groove on your own? Kylie: I guess I\u2019m not in a position financially where I could take on someone as an employee and that\u2019s a lot of responsibility and I think I like the fact that I only have to be responsible for me. I know that I\u2019m a survivor you know how it is like I know that having \u20ac2.00 in my bank account – it doesn\u2019t scare me anymore. Or having to work 80 hours a week -that doesn\u2019t intimidate me or get me down. So yeah, I\u2019m not opposed to working with others but then when I\u2019ve gone back and done little projects where I work for the team – Oh my gosh I forgot how much time is wasted and how expensive things are. When I\u2019m working on my own everything\u2019s a lot more authentic in terms of being able to conduct more intimate and personal interviews. Lauren: What\u2019s your aim with your YouTube Channel? Kylie: I suppose what I wanted to do with You Tube is – because I started in TV and then went to YouTube – I wanted to bring the production quality of TV with the authenticity and intimacy of YouTube and and combine the two. I want to create a community of people who are bit freaky like me but it\u2019s certainly not really the recipe for success. If you want to be followed on Instagram or YouTube or anywhere on social media, you probably shouldn\u2019t take the path I\u2019ve taken! On Not Giving Up Lauren: Can you tell me about a time when you almost gave up on this dream of being able to make your videos exactly as you wanted? Kylie: Oh there\u2019s just… so many! I suppose putting yourself online with all the negative comments is really difficult and if you add not being able to pay rent and really being in financial difficulty and then also having your dream, your professional dream not work out and then feeling also alone because maybe you haven\u2019t you got a support network around you. You think, \u201cI\u2019m putting my heart and soul into it and it\u2019s something that gives me a sense of purpose – I believe in what I\u2019m doing!\u201d But it can be hard. A lot of people say that you just need to find your passion and that\u2019s the hardest part but I don\u2019t believe that because I found it, I\u2019ve always known what makes me happy and what I\u2019m passionate about but I think there are lots of other steps that you have to overcome before you can make the whole puzzle work. Lauren: What do you think is worse: The inner demons (self doubts) or the outer demons which are often online trolls leaving hateful comments? Kylie: I think they are one and the same really, because oftentimes people are saying stuff in the comments and messages that you\u2019ve already considered yourself or a lot of the time what they say has absolutely no element of truth at all. It can still get to you and you need to be really really strong at working out that detachment and not seeking applause and not seeking any kind of validation from the outside which is kind of counterintuitive because… isn\u2019t art made to be shared? Lauren: Often people don\u2019t even get to the point of putting what they\u2019ve created out there and it\u2019s true you\u2019re going to get some negative comments but you\u2019re also going to get some positive ones from places you never expected. You know if you put yourself out there, if you are vulnerable, you are at least also exposed to the positive reactions too. The creative beauty of restriction Kylie: I think one of the the best and worst things about You Tube is that it rewards frequency and this has been a constant battle for me. But I have just bowed down to the monster of YouTube and said, OK fine I\u2019m going to play by your rules and publish every Friday. And while I\u2019ve hated that it\u2019s also been incredibly good for me creatively because it doesn\u2019t matter if I think it\u2019s perfect or if I think it\u2019s ready, I just have to finish it and I have to start something new every seven days. That frequency of production means that I am forcing my brain, and my heart I guess, to get a lot faster and say, \u201cJust have confidence in that\u201d or \u201cThis is the way you\u2019re doing it this weke and that\u2019s that,\u201d or \u201cThat\u2019s the segment you\u2019re going to choose, that\u2019s the sound bite, that\u2019s the color grading, the music and I know that I\u2019ve learned a lot from that because I have this self imposed deadline every Friday. How to find your voice while dealing with self doubt Kylie: I think often what works for me is, I have my times where I\u2019m reading widely and I\u2019m getting inspired but I don\u2019t really follow people who are doing stuff that\u2019s quite similar to what I\u2019m doing. So I will follow people or consume work by people who are doing totally different things from me. I think if I were to, I don\u2019t know, follow someone who is in a very similar environment to me and kind of with the same tone,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[80,79,74],"tags":[104,25,10,82,103,9,15],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-language","category-interviews-with-creators-in-italy","category-may-2021","tag-creativity","tag-interview","tag-italy","tag-italy-literary-magazine","tag-kylie-flavell","tag-literary-magazine","tag-open-doors-review"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions\/628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.opendoorsreview.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}