Today we’d like to introduce you to Helen RY Sun & Laura Malatos.
Hi Helen & Laura, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
LAURA: We’re a writing-filmmaking duo based in LA, but we were actually born 5,000 miles apart in Seattle and, as Helen says, “literal Moscow, Russia”. But we found our way to each other while attending USC and have been ride-or-die roommates ever since.
HELEN: Which is where our professional journey in music video production started. Laura already had a strong filmmaking background doing commercial and narrative work and had been featured in like 50+ film festivals with some major hitters like Cleveland and SIFF.
LAURA: And Helen was doing marketing at Vans Warped Tour and working round the clock for different artists and I think we were both generally impressed by the other and wanted to work together and so music videos were where we overlapped creatively. And we ended up having one of our projects featured on Country Music Television and in Rolling Stone magazine, and I think that’s when we really saw a strong future together as production partners.
HELEN: But then production shut down during the pandemic and threw a bit of a wrench in our plans. During that time, though, we assembled our first virtual writers’ room for our comedy web series, DOOMED, to satisfy our creative compulsions. We discovered an overwhelming love for TV writing and world-building and began developing a joint portfolio. We have since reworked DOOMED into a half-hour sitcom, and in 2023, the pilot secured a broadcast spot on UK’s KMTV, Sheffield Live!, and NVTV, as well as streaming spots on Roku.
LAURA: After our first project together, we started working on everything together from writing screenplays to music videos and shorts to social media marketing consulting, and it’s been a really fun and kind of unhinged ride. At one point, we found ourselves transforming our living room into an underground bunker, and then two months later, we were staging medieval fights in the California mountains, all while becoming skincare influencers.
HELEN: And then, in a more practical step forward, this past March, we were accepted into the 2023 BLACKLIST X WIF Episodic Lab, and the 2023 WIF Fellowship, which we’re in now, and that’s been a really amazing opportunity to connect with some incredible women and grow as writers.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
LAURA: I think navigating the entertainment industry is a pretty bumpy road to begin with, but on top of that we were hit with COVID early on in our journey, and then right as we were getting our footing again, the industry ground to a halt with the writers strike – so the last few years have definitely been a whirlwind.
HELEN: We’ve been really lucky having each other though, because as a duo you always have someone to help keep you motivated and support you through the ups and downs. During COVID, we were living together so we got to be each other’s bubble. At the time, we’d been breaking into music videos, which is a really fast-paced world, so it was pretty jarring going from that to everything being at a standstill. But we eventually found writing as this great creative outlet – it helped keep our spirits up and kind of saved our sanity during the lockdown days.
LAURA: Yeah, I do think another element of that though was that we ended up getting really attached to some of the projects we dreamed up. Both in that they were our first scripts and because they’d come from this sort of creative, safe haven in an otherwise uncertain time. And so early on, sometimes a script would get some traction but then hit a wall, and it was tough to move on from it. Now we have a better gauge on when to stick with something and when to pivot. There was definitely a learning curve in getting used to how this industry works, but constantly being able to pivot has been really valuable for us. We’re still so determined to see every project through but realize now that there’s no use getting stuck on a stagnant script cause you’ll just miss out on all the new stories that you could tell.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
HELEN: We mentioned a bit about this, but we started out as a production duo on commercials and music videos, with Laura directing and myself producing. It was a great training ground, but eventually, we found that type of commissioned production work wasn’t as fulfilling as bringing our own ideas to life, so we ended up transitioning to writing narrative screenplays in the comedy space.
LAURA: And prior to that I came from the narrative shorts space and was making purely dramatic films at the time, so I initially assumed I’d loop back around to that genre. With Helen though, from day one we’ve had a pretty banter-y dynamic and that ended up naturally shaping our work. Now, we pretty exclusively write comedy scripts and have a lot of fun pulling from our own real-life quips to try to create witty dialogue and pack it with sarcasm.
HELEN: We also have a pretty morbid sense of humor so ended up finding our niche in the dark comedy space. That genre was a way for us to explore both taboo topics (e.g., death, illness, addiction) and universal themes (family relationships, finding yourself) through a more unfiltered lens. As we’ve honed in on our writing style, we also found ourselves executing very dialed-up worlds that feel close to our own but are a bit more colorful and whimsical and lend themselves really well to the dark comedy genre.
LAURA: In terms of what sets us apart from others, while both of us are driven by art and creativity, we share a very holistic, business-oriented approach to the entertainment industry. Even early on with music videos, we were always seeking to fully understand the artist’s brand and integrate our work into their broader career vision rather than just execute a one-off project. Now, with our focus on writing and independent film production, that big-picture mindset continues to guide our process. We’re always-always thinking about a project’s full life: who our audience is, how it fits into our brand, and how the smaller project fuels our greater ambitions. Being on the same page about the importance of all of those elements and having an equal drive to explore them has been so motivating and has definitely helped drive our career forward. But in general, we keep feeling so lucky to have found each other as creative partners, and being a duo is probably our biggest strength. There’s a lot of highs and lows in Hollywood, so having someone to lean in on the lows and share in the wins makes the world of a difference.
HELEN: Yeah, being production partners has always made a lot of sense to us – no film is made by one person, so having a dedicated directing/producing duo with a singular vision at the head of every project makes the work that much easier. But it’s in collaborating on writing together that we feel so fortunate to be in this together. Screenwriting can be such an isolating experience at every point: from coming up with an idea to doubting every concept and every word to being occasionally rejected or misunderstood by the industry. But in a partnership like ours, none of those stages feel lonely; they just feel like a shared adventure. And from a craft perspective, every idea automatically has a sounding board and every draft automatically gets a “rewrite” since two brains are working on it at the same time. It’s like double the editing and three times the scrutiny, which in turn makes us that much more confident in the finished product, which is so crucial in an industry that’s otherwise full of uncertainty.
Contact Info:
- Website: createdbytheduo.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/helen_ry_sun/ || https://www.instagram.com/lauramalatos/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheWritingDuo
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@createdbytheduo
