Today we’d like to introduce you to Oli Netzler
Hi Oli, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Growing up, I wanted to be a musician like the rest of my family, as they are heavily involved in the music industry. Like my cousins Alex Aiono who’s acting now for Disney and HBO, Luke who’s touring with Bruno Mars, my older brother Keanu who is an opera singer, I wanted to get involved. Went through piano lessons, choirs at church and at school, teach myself the guitar, learn music theory through Youtube, the whole works.
In high school, I attended at the Salt Lake School for the Performing Arts. I signed up almost all of the music classes. By my junior year, I had a hole in my schedule and needed to fill one more class. So I randomly picked the film class that was taught by Jeff Hill (Who teaches at Copper Hills High School now). I honestly didn’t think much of it going into the class, just thought it was going to be an easy A, but ended up really falling in love with the class. So I took the class again my senior year.
After I graduated, I got myself a camera and kept working on my skills. I go serve an LDS mission to Sydney, Australia and worked on my camera skills out there as well while I was serving the people. When I finished my mission, I continued on working with football camps, Giant Skillz Athletics, and did their camp highlights whenever they were in town. Then did some individual work for athletes and their highlights, did some of the schools sports teams in the valley and their social medias, and many photography work as well. Felt very confident with my work that I saw job openings for BYU’s sports media team Last year in June. I applied multiple times for different sports at the school, but was declined each time. I honestly wanted to give up and think about going to college.
But I saw an application for this production company, Tusitala Productions, with Talia Thompson. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to apply. My brother Keanu sent me the application and encouraged me to apply, and his support and some of my closest friends, David Mapa & Feki Tongaofa, supported me as well. I got accepted and started right away. Since then, it has been the best decision I’ve ever made. Currently, I just returned from Serbia starting another project and also I’m the social media manager for one of our pages for our up and coming documentary, Pacific Roots: Our Football Legacy, managing it with my social media director, Sami-Jo Diaz. Working with Talia, Ori Media, and the rest of the crew has been nothing but a blessing and has helped me strengthen my talents into the film world. I hope to go far in this business and I know under Tusitala Productions, I can get far.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
After coming home from my LDS mission, it was really rough to what I had come home to. Not to get into any details, but my family and I went through a lot of things. It was really getting tough through it, but they didn’t give up on me and my girl Lina really helped me get through it all. When I first started with the production company, I was working a night job, 12 hours Sundays-Tuesdays. I was hoping that I can stick the job long enough, but the constant sleep schedule change between 2 jobs wasn’t making it work. So I gave up the night job to pursue my film career.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
With Tusitala, I started off as a production assistant. Then I help did some of the soundtrack recordings for our film Pacific Roots: Our Football Legacy with Tennessee Suesue. Such as doing some of the guitar, drums, and ukulele instrumentals for the soundtrack. I’m the social media manager for our upcoming documentary, Pacific Roots: Our Football Legacy. I manage on creating and organizing content for our social media pages. Planning and coordinating with my director and the team on what we content we need going down the calendar. Currently, I just returned from Serbia starting another project
What the team and other people know me for as being energetic and funny. I like to have fun and give good energy to everyone as they give to me. It’s not easy getting things done when you don’t have good vibes. Makes it hard for myself, and makes it hard for everyone else. And people know me for my music. Still helps me with my work, and connecting with others. I always love to take as much time as I can to jam out with anyone and everyone. I don’t care if you don’t know how to sing. As long as you are having fun, that’s all that matters to me.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Taking risks is really important to me. Through out all the hard ship me and my family went through recently, I took a lot of risks to make sure their taken care of first, as much as they did for me as well. I remember one time when doing school safety security at West High School, I was the only one making money at the time. I got desperate sometimes that I took home some of the packed lunches from the cafeteria to make sure they got fed too. At the time, it was tough that both of my brothers didn’t live in Utah at the time, so I buckled down and did everything I could. In my samoan culture, family is everything and I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now if it wasn’t for their efforts and sacrifices they’ve done for me. I’d do anything for them.
Sometimes in life, you got to give a lot to receive more. You never know when you’ll receive what you deserve, but as long as you stay humble, keeping working your butt off, and do it with right intentions, Heavenly Father will come through. He blessed me and my family in ways I can’t thank him enough.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.pacificrootsfootballfilm.com/
- Instagram: @pacificrootsfootballfilm, @cbpicture (work account), @olitheabove (personal account)
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oliva.aiononetzler
