How This Writer and Producer Creates Content That Captures the Cultural Zeitgeist

How does a pop culture aficionado ascend through the ranks of the media and entertainment industry? Sieu Nguyen, a seasoned New Yorker and a Vietnam native, began his career at Paramount as a production associate. Nguyen spent these formative months carefully logging footage, working in Adobe Premiere Pro, and digitizing VHS tapes. Although producing and editing videos weren’t part of his official job duties, he was teeming with so many ideas that he stayed in the office after hours to bring those videos to life. His tenacity and determination helped pave the way for additional producing and editing opportunities at the company.

“It was my foot in the door in the video marketing world,” he says.

Nguyen spent nearly four years at Paramount, working on shows such as Younger and Yellowstone. He also produced and edited various teases for the company’s social audience, in addition to longer editorial pieces that detailed the production of the shows.

“Every piece sharpened my writing, producing, and editing skills, making the next product better than the last,” he says.

In December of 2021, Nguyen joined the team at HBO as an associate producer. Now, he’s a writer/producer, and his professional portfolio includes eye-catching campaigns for noteworthy, acclaimed series such as Euphoria, The Idol, and Selena + Chef.

Here, Nguyen shares how his career trajectory led to the groundbreaking television network, what the creative process looks like, and how his cultural background has shaped his storytelling expertise and the way he views the world.

In early 2020, a recruiter at HBO reached out to me via LinkedIn. This led to an interview with my creative director John Wilhelmy, right as the pandemic was starting (I naively thought back then it would last only two weeks). The call was scheduled for 45 minutes, but we chatted for almost two hours. John asked me about my “media diet,” a question I had never been asked before, which opened a fascinating conversation on pop culture. We talked about Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey, and Euphoria, which is a show that I love. I’m a huge pop culture junkie, so it was a treat to talk to someone so well-versed in it. It felt like it was meant to be!

Fast forward to today, I can say that my favorite part about my job is that I get to flex a variety of muscles: ideation, writing, producing, and editing. I appreciate having creative control over my video pieces. For every assignment, I brainstorm the concept, try out my own ideas, experiment with new approaches, and receive feedback on how to best execute those ideas. Everyone on my team is so talented and knowledgeable, which makes this team dynamic appealing.

As a writer/producer on the HBO/Max Marketing A/V team, I brainstorm, write, produce, and edit promotional assets such as short-form promos, episode recaps, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and social videos. The goal is to raise awareness of our shows and films, serve our fans, and drive cultural conversations with our content. Last year, I co-led a social-forward campaign to create content for TikTok. Every project, every creative, and every round of revisions has been a multifaceted, rewarding experience.

The work always excites me because we have a top-tier content library. Every show is well-written, beautifully shot, and carries timely social messages. This helps make every project feel purposeful and creative. I feel like my work contributes a unique voice and perspective to the zeitgeist at large.

Actually, as we’re chatting, I’m finishing up the final “inside-the-episode” featurette for Hacks season three. In this piece, I dissect key themes of the episode, showcase outstanding behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and explore “breadcrumbs” throughout the seasons that culminate in the current one.

For a featurette like this, my process always starts with breaking down the interviews. We have five hours of interview footage with the show’s creators—Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello, and Jen Statsky, who are brilliant comedic minds. I screened their interviews and studied the transcripts to select the most poignant sound bites. I then wrote a script for the featurette, designing its structure by placing bites in different sections based on topics. I also broke down behind-the-scenes footage and auditioned different music tracks to ensure that the soundscape of the piece hits the right tone. Tone makes or breaks a creative—an EDM or thriller music cue likely wouldn’t work for a show like this.

For me, crafting a good opener takes the most time. You need something that grabs attention in the first few seconds—whether that be a visually striking shot or a funny interview bite. From there, everything else falls into place. I pay extra attention to transitional moments between each section, making sure they are well-timed and successful in moving the story along.

The most fun and challenging part is sound design. To make the soundscape interesting, I always populate the creative with sound effects. Picking the right sound effects from tens of thousands in our library is tricky, but I believe constant auditioning is the way to go. When you find the right “hit” to accentuate a music drop, or the perfect whoosh to accompany an action, it takes the edit to the next level.

Even though editing is an individual process, I also collaborate with other teams and people to make sure these creatives are as good as they can be. I connect with the HBO unit photography team to feature their behind-the-scenes photos, the graphic designers to punctuate these videos with graphics, and the legal team to seek approval on the footage. The creative directors, other HBO departments, and showrunners share valuable creative feedback along the way, and our operations team steps in to help deliver creatives in the right formats.

In January 2022, I produced my first long-form featurette for Euphoria. It’s the fifth installment in the Clio-award-winning series “Enter Euphoria,” offering a peek at how the show was made. In one part of this featurette, I explored the cinematography of the show. Director of Photography Marcell Rév shared in his interview that he was inspired by legendary photographer Nan Goldin. With the goal of illustrating his point, I spent a whole weekend studying Goldin’s body of work, going through numerous websites to find photographs that might have inspired Euphoria. I stumbled upon two pieces, Clemens underwater in tub and Self-portrait in my blue bathroom, that carry the same intimate feel as two shots in the series. I produced a side-by-side section in my edit to demonstrate the photos’ influence on Euphoria and pitched it to my creative directors, nervously anticipating their response to my unconventional idea.

To my surprise, my creative directors were delighted by this idea and helped me secure the rights to feature these photographs with representatives from Goldin’s team. At any part of this process, this effort could have fallen through, but we managed to license both photographs in time for the release of the piece. I was over the moon. The reception was positive; the video received over one million views on YouTube and a shorter version of it received three million on TikTok. I pitched an idea that was somewhat pie in the sky and ended up receiving an incredible amount of support from the project leads to make it a reality. That’s what I love about working at HBO. My ideas are respected, and people always try to help me execute them in the best way possible. Not all ideas will make it to the final cut, but the important thing is they’re given a chance.

I was born and raised in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese education system focuses on writing ability. I was trained in writing many different forms of essays, which translate nicely to video storytelling. Producing and editing a video, especially a long-form featurette (like my Hacks creative), isn’t too different from writing an essay. You need a good hook as the opener. You want the middle sections to flow seamlessly. You should go out with a bang. The difference is the medium, but the grammar is the same.

When I produce videos, I make sure every sound bite expands on the preceding one, driving the discussion forward instead of stalling it. Before we end a section and move on to the next, I select bites that carry a conclusive tone and simultaneously ask a new question, prompting a new “video paragraph.” Pauses in a video edit are also as important as punctuation in an essay—viewers need those breaks to properly absorb ideas. I engineer these pauses with audio breaks, music drops, and fade-in/fade-out effects. Having good control of rhythm goes a long way, and this is something I have my writing classes in Vietnam to thank.

Additionally, I think coming from a different culture helps me be aware of different perspectives. I believe that everyone who moves to the United States and builds a life here has the superpower of empathy because we have to do the work of walking in others’ shoes to fit in with a culture. Needless to say, empathy is so crucial in storytelling, and empathy helps me produce creatives that can move.

A lot has changed in the entertainment industry since I had my first job in 2017. Streaming is so much bigger now, and we have more shows than ever before. As social media becomes a more prominent part of everyday life, fans are also vocal about what they love about a show. To help make my creatives timely and relevant, I stay active on social platforms and consider their comments when producing promos. 

For example, when we worked on The Idol last summer, fans loved Jennie Ruby Jane from BLACKPINK. In my featurette “Crafting The Idol,” I included a section featuring Jennie talking about her choreography practice, which I knew the fans would love since it gave them a peek into her acting career. The fans left such positive comments, and multiple K-pop news sites quoted her interview from that piece. I love seeing the content I produce drive the cultural conversation.

At WBD, I work with very talented creatives. We’re all supportive of one another. I learned so much about sound design from my friend Kyle, who is a wizard when it comes to audio editing. Just yesterday, the project lead on Hacks, my associate creative director Jordan showed me an editing trick to improve interview coverage. I love all the moments when we sit down together at an edit station and review a cut, exchanging ideas in real-time. Nothing can beat that in-person interaction, which is why I go into the office most days. These interactions also help form lifelong friendships.

I also feel continuously supported by the leadership in my department. We’re encouraged to bring up questions in meetings, town halls, or even by the office kitchen island. There is a culture of kindness all around—and I appreciate that spirit.

I think the best way to sell yourself is to have your own creative products. It’s important to carve out time to create something—whether that be a personal project or a volunteer endeavor with a friend. The more you create, the better you become at the craft.

It’s also important to stay up-to-date with what’s happening in pop culture and entertainment. You need to know what people are loving (or not loving so much) to create content that resonates with the public.

Last but not least, go outside and make friends. Ideas come from new stories and new interactions. Look at Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner. When they started collaborating in 2020, he brought a new sound to her discography and her lyrics took his musical compositions to a whole new level. It’s a prime example of how new partnerships could inspire fresh perspectives and elevate your art.

Have you watched the concert film for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour? Something like that, but instead of Swift, it’s just me, a writer/producer at HBO. Instead of performing 45 songs in three hours (which is absolutely out of this world, by the way), I tell stories through my videos. Not different from her acoustic sets, I would throw a surprise element or two in each creative, making the crowd go wild. And just like Swift, I strive to make people feel something special when they walk away.