A workshop series for emerging and student filmmakers with tips from professional writers, directors, and producers of documentary and narrative films.
DIRECTORS WORKSHOP SERIES: 4-20-21
Moderator: Craig Emanuel, Esq., Chair, Global Entertainment, and Media Group, Paul Hastings LLP
Participants:
- Charles Stone, film director
- Lisa Cortes, film producer, and director
- Josh Braun, Co-founder of Submarine
Play Video
Transcript:
[Music]
greetings and welcome to the march on washington film festival spring workshop series minding your business
pro tips for writers directors and producers i’m opal h bennett programming
consultant to the film festival and we’re delighted to have you with us these workshops are designed to share
vital information on filmmaking as a business and a craft from professionals in the field
march’s workshop focused on writers today we spotlight directors and in may we’ll focus on producers
films are an integral part of our work at the festival along with first person accounts from
icons and foot soldiers of the civil rights movement scholars presentations and the visual and performing arts
we rely on narrative and documentary films to help us unearth the mistold and untold stories
and strategies of the movement in the words of the great marcus garvey
a people without the knowledge of their past history origin and culture
is like a tree without roots that is the essence of our mission and
that of all filmmakers who have an interest in social justice the workshop discussions are curated and
moderated by craig emanuel festival board member and seasoned entertainment attorney
craig has been involved in the development production and distribution of hundreds of film and television
projects and he’s a juried on an array of film competitions as part of this workshop series we are
screening selected short films by past winners of the march on washington’s film festivals
emerging and student filmmaker competition the two films selected for today’s
workshop are they took them alive by emily pedersen and an act of worship by sofian khan
and nasheen dadaboy emily’s film won the grand prize in its category in 2017
and sophia and nosheen’s documentary won grand prize in 2018. first up is they took them
alive following the story of mexican student activists disappeared from their homes
and the loved ones seeking justice from the mexican government we’re delighted to have emily patterson
with us welcome emily hi thanks it’s great to be
here great to have you so so good to see you um first off please share with us how you
came to this story yeah so at the time that i started the
project i was living in mexico and i was living with a family and when the case of these 43 students who were
abducted um and killed by police disappeared rather but it’s at this point it’s assumed that they were killed
um and i just saw how the people in my immediate around me were so
devastated and affected by this event and it really came to symbolize so much of the violence that had been
happening in mexico um and the fact that it was police that abducted them was really just like the
mask came off of what so many people already had experienced and known
of how the police are so involved in the corruption um and the cartels so it was a moment of
huge social protest and i was witnessing this and um
basically a few months after they disappeared there was still no solution there was still no truth of
what had happened to them the investigation was being completely you know sort of covered up
and bungled and there were pictures of the students on all the walls of the city where i was
living and they were starting to fade away um and so i decided to travel to the
actual school where the students disappeared from um and i wasn’t really sure what i was going to find when i got there or what i
was planning to do i actually come from a photography background um so i still went there with the idea
of doing some kind of photography um and i actually ended up staying there for
about two months with the families of the students traveling with them to protests
and just documenting their search for their missing sons uncles um cousins
etc it was obviously an extraordinarily tough time for the families and basically over the
course of the next year i continued to visit them i did a crowdfunding campaign
to support the project because i initially just went on my own and you know though i was living very
frugally there with them being able to stay at the school and whatnot you know there’s only so much you can do with your own little bit of savings
absolutely um so i was able to do a crowdfunding campaign um and then about a year later when i
went to visit them again after a few other visits i found that
these international investigators who were looking into it were basically being pushed out of the country
um and i thought this was a really difficult difficult moment of many difficult moments for the families
and it was one that i didn’t feel like photographs could really do justice to because how do you photograph
an international criminal tribunal right you know looking into this and the cover-up that the government was doing
and so i started thinking a lot about video and then right around that time i happened to go to an event where
field of vision was presenting some short films they had made and field division is a platform that
produces short documentaries they fund them um and they’re they basically said during the event we’re open to work with
people who’ve never made a film before um and so that set off a light bulb in my head of
this could be a film yeah it should be a film and so i pitched to them and they were
thankfully open to the idea and we started talking and that was how it started wow that was
quite a fortuitous meeting uh the fb is uh certainly
a great group to be working with on a film with as much um
journalism as was present in in what you covered in this film and you did so quite effectively so thank
you so much for your work um i’d love to hear what’s gone on with you in your filmmaking
since 2017 and since us uh you know getting to to highlight
uh they took them alive yeah so i was really grateful for the support of the festival that was
a really special moment and just being able to be part of that was really great and it did a lot for
the film um and after that it went to other festivals it especially was screened at
a human rights festival in spain um with various times in various different cities and places
um and just to a number of different film festivals it also got some reckoning recognition at the cny film festival in
upstate new york um and since then basically i’ve the major thing i did with
filmmaking since then was collaborate with an organization called immigrant families together
which was during the trump administration the separation of families at the border which was just horrific basically
um i had started working a day job by that time because you know documentary photography and documentary video as many of us know
is an extremely difficult field to survive in especially when starting out um but i did
take time out of my just off hours at that time because i was just like
this is absolutely awful and i want to see more done about this um and was able to find this
organization immigrant families together after doing a lot of research and contacting a lot of other organizations
um finally landed on them and they were open to um doing some interviews with some of
the women who’d been separated from their children at the border um so i put out a piece
with them that was mainly for them to use to basically speak to legislators
about what was going on and it was about the women like talking about the conditions and talking about
what they went through and you know their experience of thinking they were only going to be separated from their child for a few
hours and then it was months and this really intense trauma that they went through because of all of that
so you continue to to be a witness for for folks who need their stories told that is fantastic please please keep it
up uh my last question is around similarly minded filmmakers like
yourself what tips you would give them um in looking to sustain
um doing this kind of work looking to um you know continue continue the work
um i would say my number one biggest piece of advice is to really develop trust with the people
that you’re documenting that i think is your number one job um
it takes a lot of time to build up that trust a lot of the time and it’s really just about showing up and showing up with all of your humanity
and being there for them in many ways that are not necessarily involving the camera a lot of the time
um and also giving back to the people that you’re working with i think especially if you’re working with a community
that’s been harmed in some way um something that john berger the art
critic really um resonated with me that he wrote is about how
basically if you see yourself if you’re a documentarian and you see yourself
um it’s important to see yourself not only as documenting for bringing something to
the rest of the world but documenting to help preserve the history of the people that you’re documenting for them
yes um and i think that is just a really central thing to be aware of
and to kind of center the people that you’re working with at the center of everything that you do
um thank you so much for that emily it’s super superb
advice and uh it’s so great to have you with us um i am going to go to our next
filmmaker guest and just remind everyone that your film will be playing um on our inventive platform throughout the
month uh next we have an act of worship which captures the resistance to the 2017
trump administration travel ban on muslim countries we’re honored to have co-director
sophian khan join us welcome sophia thank you for having me here hopeful it’s nice to see you
it’s good to see you too it’s been a while um so i know this story because i
remember what nasheen and ngu had begun but please share with the audience how did you come to uh making an act of worship
yeah i would almost say that i think it came to us in some ways you know i mean we were you know as as muslims filmmakers and
in america both kind of uh you know i was working on another film at the time
about afghan and iraqi interpreters who worked with the us uh soldiers and they were struggling to
get their visas and we were actually at the airport waiting for a interpreter who is going
to be coming into the country because he kind of heard rumors of the possibility of this ban happening
so so we were kind of on the ground there and nasheen had already realized that
obviously trump’s election and his some of his promises would lead to developments that you know
she wanted to be on the ground for so she was in la i was in new york we were at the airports and we were
filming as this sort of unfolded so we both kind of um you know we worked
together quite a bit up to that point and then we kind of connected about working on a
film about the band and about the resistance and that’s kind of how it came to be and
once again uh field of vision was played a role in it um firelight media where i was a
producing fellow fire light media um was partnering with field of vision on on a sort of
series that was uh first hundred days was the name of it it was a kind of quick reaction to cover some of the
things that were happening in those first hundred days in 2017. um
and that was how the film happened it happened very quickly it happened sort of uh you know our backs were kind of against
the wall just watching all this uh unfold and figuring out how to how to make a film that would sort of encompass
you know um that experience that was very chaotic yeah chaotic and uh and historic
um and you guys mentioned it uh beautifully and i and i know that um it’s now being
come become a feature length film yeah that’s right yeah that’s been the big development
with us as far as this project uh we immediately like i mean it was a great experience making something on a
quick turnaround like that and being able to release it very quickly i feel like it was uh
really important to be able to do that and that to be you know nimble and to have those partners who could be able to put
something out where a documentary is not coming out as let’s say an aftermath or you know something to comment on a
historical event but is actually part of the conversation as it’s happening so that was really important for the short film
but we realized as we were making it that you know the the scope of this was much bigger um and
we had kind of just connected with these activists who were really inspiring to us
too and and it had a lot to do with seeing a younger generation that was much you know less apologetic
you know unapologetic essentially about um you know in a way that i think for us as sort of a generation that grew up in
the shadow of 911 you know we were kind of keeping our heads down and it was like a different sort of
that that fascinated us i think um and we wanted to follow that more and then it was really important to also
you know we heard this over and over again i think from the activists of the people who were you know the civil rights lawyers
everybody who was involved in this was kind of saying look this is a much bigger story like trump is a you know
is an expression of this islamophobia but this is has a much longer you know and deeper
history so the feature project we immediately started pitching you know we had this short and it was
out there and it kind of and it felt like it it was a good calling card to say you know here’s what we can do and this is
sort of what it’s about but it goes beyond and we were lucky enough to have you know support ford foundation was our big
support for this project um and continued to you know be at our side through the last you know
few years of making it um and we’ve had a lot of other great support as well including field of vision
again coming in you know sundance institute and others so it’s like
chicken and egg has been amazing as well i mean i can go real on but it’s like wonderful to get that kind of support
and you know we’re finally now finishing the film which i feel as as a contrast to the
short which was very much in the moment and part of the conversation of that particular time i think the feature is reflecting on a
much larger scope of history and context understanding how islamophobia has
evolved in this country yeah well i i cannot wait to see it uh i was soon excited to hear
that news um because you know your short always stood out to me is as um
certainly something that could go deeper so i’m glad you both are doing so i mean last question is around
tips that you can give to filmmakers who are who are you know just starting out and uh how best to go about creating a
a documentary if you’ll make a career that that’s sustainable sure yeah i think um emily spoke very
uh wonderfully about you know that kind of connection with subjects and authenticity i think that’s a
very important part of what we do i i can speak a little bit to sort of uh thinking about that sustainability
element which is a huge preoccupation for us as we try to do this very you know somewhat difficult
work and i would say that our um you know
our story in terms of taking a short film and then expanding it i i think could be a useful for some
folks out there thinking about that you know short filmmaking unto itself unfortunately is
like not really sustainable but i think that if it is at the same time giving you an asset it’s giving you
the ability to go into a story to start to build access and trust and all
those things that are going to be crucial to making a larger project so i would kind of you know urge it may
not always be the case you know obviously there are short films that you say everything you need to say but i
think that uh it is something to keep your antenna up uh you know to to consider am i am i making a project
that could you know be a for you know help me pour into something larger um which in most cases you know
would be a more sustainable project as well so i would just sort of like throw that out there as something
that i’m actually doing something very similar right now uh with it with a short project
uh that i’ve just completed and now kind of um you know expanding it so it’s been something
that’s turned into i i you know it wasn’t something i’ve done before and now i’m finding myself doing it again so i’m just
a bit of a temple yeah yeah yeah and it’s been good it’s it’s been helpful all right to be
able to make something really solid because i feel like otherwise we find ourselves sometimes
um you know spending money out of pocket or finding some you know using our credit card you know
and i’ve been there too you know with the other project that’s right yeah right so yeah that’s that would be my
two cents for for today well we will take it and we thank you so much for sharing it
uh absolute pleasure to see you and we will be in touch i want to hear more about that project
yeah absolutely thank you for having me thank you sophian be sure to catch they took them alive
and an act of worship streaming free on inventive for the rest of this month
and now it’s my pleasure to turn things over to our moderator craig emanuel thank you
so much opal um before i start i really would like to thank
the march on washington film festival for not only giving me the opportunity to to moderate these series of panels
um but for them agreeing to do this in in in the first place i think that if
you look at what the march on washington film festival is hoping to achieve it’s to bring attention to the fact that issues
relevant to the cause of civil rights is not something that ended in the 60s but it
is as relevant today as it has been in in the past and we have a long way to go
i think for lots of us today um this afternoon in in minneapolis was
a beginning of an important next step uh and for the audience out there that i
can’t see who i know is watching these panels this afternoon i’m extremely appreciative of you taking
the time to join us i think as virgining filmmakers
you all have important stories to tell and the ability to use media to direct
content and create content that can move people and stir people’s emotions
is important and so i hope that over the course of the rest of this panel discussion and if
you follow some of the other panel discussions you’ll be inspired having heard of what
some of the past filmmakers have just described in the last 10 15 minutes to go on and tell your own
important stories and we all have a responsibility and a duty to
try and make the world a better place and filmmakers have the unique ability to present these wonderful
stories so thank you as mentioned this afternoon is the
second of a series of three panels focusing on issues relative to writers directors and and producers and
this afternoon’s panel is focusing on issues relevant direct to directors but we’re also lucky enough to have on
the panel someone who has worked for many years as a sales representative who will also discuss how the role of a sales or
producers representative can be extremely relevant and important to a director or producer when they want
to sell their movie we’re fortunate this afternoon to have on our panel two wonderful directors and
lisa cortez and charles stone iii as well as josh braun whose company submarine films has
helped many filmmakers get their work seen by audiences around the world in every media
imaginal before we start talking to our panelists i’d like to take a few minutes to briefly introduce each of our
panelists to you lisa cortez is an academy nominated emmy a winning producer and director
she is renowned for creating challenging visionary stories and empowering inclusive voices
most recently lisa co-directed the wonderful film all in the fight for democracy which
film chronicled the battle against voter suppression waged by stacey abrams lisa executive producer
lee daniels film precious in 2009 which received the sundance audience award and grand jury prize for best
drama precious was also nominated for six academy awards and won two lisa’s directorial debut the remix
hip-hop x fashion now on netflix traces the impact of street fashion and african-american
creativity on global cultural trends lisa it’s truly a pleasure to see you
again and to have you on our panel this afternoon um charles stone attended the rhode
island school of design where he received a bachelor of fine arts degree in animation in 1988.
after graduating he first worked as an animator and special effects designer for a small film production company
and from there he moved on to directing over three dozen music videos for artists such as living color
public enemy and the roots and in the process won numerous music industry awards it was
charles’s three-minute short true in 1999 which he directed wrote and appeared in
that caught the attention of anheuser-busch executives and prompted them to sign him up to
direct their budweiser commercials his memorable budweiser tv campaign
known as wassup won many awards his short film also introduced produced
impressed producer damon dash who asked charles to direct the feature film paid in full
starring mckee pfeiffer and charles also directed the wonderful film drumline which was when he and i
first met charles has recently been involved in directing a pilot for a new tv series entitled saturdays for the
disney channel featuring omar gooding and golden brooks charles thank you for taking the time
out to be with us this afternoon thank you craig um finally and by no
minutes at least josh braun runs submarine entertainment a hybrid sales and
production company consulting and strategizing on sale distribution development of
documentaries feature films and non-fiction entertainment programming as well as producing feature films
documentaries and television properties himself josh was a producer on andrew rossi’s
sundance competition documentary page one inside the new york times and was an executive producer on celine daniels
blank city as well as on david cronenberg’s oscar and golden globe nominated a history of violence josh recently
produced house of the devil directed by ty west an executive producer documentary features seamless
gramercy park hotel cat dancers shadow billionaires easy rider raging bulls
kill your idols and recently sold was an executive producer on planet green series boomtown
josh nice to have you with us this afternoon as well thank you thank you for having me um but at the
end of um us finishing the questions with the panelists we’re hopefully going to have a little bit of time
for you and the audience to ask some questions which you’re able to do by directing your questions to the producer
who will then uh through chat uh communicate them to me at the end of this discussion
um i’d like to start off by asking each of our panelists what was it about your current careers
that motivated you to want to pursue a career in the arts and how did you
get your start in such careers was there some pivotal moment or event that
crystallized you know what you wanted to do charles maybe we’ll we’ll start with you
um and in answering the question maybe talk a little bit about how true came about in 1988 and how that
helped your path in in terms of directing drumline and and paid in full well the short of it is
probably you know television and movies uh that you know inspired me but
namely lots of animation uh growing up uh whether it be japanese animation from
the 60s and 70s as well as uh bugs bunny cartoons from
the 40s that still played you know on loop on television star wars was a big influence and a lot
of stop-motion animation fantasy films and a lot of the animators the actual creators of that that i
became really obsessed with uh as a kid and thought okay i want to get into being a
special effects animator and i ultimately end up going to college or art school for animation but um those
are some of the things that really motivated me to know that i wanted to create art in the moving picture realm
um you know it’s interesting you you when we talk about true or or this short
that short film that was the first um
moving picture narrative i had ever done meaning because i had done music videos before
that in the 90s but um true was the first thing i wrote and directed
that was you know that involved dialogue and it was the thing that to be very honest and candid about
it was the first thing for me as a professional that said okay yeah
you you can do this like of all the people that i admired from you know that i still marry spielberg
corsawa spike lee and so on that uh this was this little short was
the thing that was evidence that quietly gave me permission to steamroll
ahead and and move into the feature film world and how and how did that short kind of
help you know get you in touch with you know producers so that you could get into you know paid and full and and drumline and
how how valuable was it having that short content to show your ability to
direct dialogue and narrative and and and content well um it’s interesting
because let’s see that’s the late 90s so music video directors were still this
sort of like hot sort of new commodity and you know studio and network execs would
would would continually watch certain directors you know like spike jones and
roman coppola and michael bay and dominic senna there was a myriad of
music video directors from that generation which i was also a part of so i would always get from friends of
mine or colleagues saying you should go to la and do meetings like that was the saying was always like you should go do
meetings and i knew that i was well respected in the music video business but
my work in music videos wasn’t at the level of popularity like the people like michael
bay and spike jones and hype williams were directing you know michael jackson madonna and her period
like every all that so i knew i had to design something that would be a signature of who i am as
a storyteller and you know and then true was the thing that that i created so to kind of distill it
is that i felt like i needed evidence of me as a storyteller not just through my music videos because
you could and still to this day can get hired based on the popularity of something
almost more than it’s than its actual creative sort of substance so um in this case
um true helped me to get you know agents and a lawyer such as yourself and
so on uh to move into that realm great thank you lisa um i recently read in
a variety article where you talked a little bit about how certain events in your early childhood
helped lay the foundation you know for your career in the in the film industry
um and perhaps you know you can talk a little bit about this and how you took your
first steps to becoming a storyteller and and and even perhaps how you got involved
with with leon precious well i think you know um my storytelling
is is always intimately connected to changing an american narrative
that oftentimes has demonized or made invisible
black people people of color people who are assumed you know are have been
marginalized and um you know i always think about the moment that lit a spark about the
power of representation and the power of principal defiance and
that’s um something that happened when i was in kindergarten and i came home i was very
upset and shared with my mother that i got into trouble
because i i made a picture and it had just a bunch of my family brown folks black folks
and um i was told that i did something wrong and my mother was like oh well we’re
gonna have a little visit with your teacher tomorrow um and uh i remember
i’ll never you know i’m still time traveling now as i tell the story because
you know my mother took you know five-year-old lisa and told my teacher
that i could draw whatever i wanted to and um there was no way
that uh she would allow for her to edit my creativity and i
and really i so appreciate both of my parents for for their work um with the civil
rights movement but just what they showed me and how uh the importance of art
to change narratives but but also to speak to those who would want to
restrict your voice um you know i think if i now work primarily in in documentaries
even though i am producing and looking at narrative works to direct
but for many years i was lee daniel’s producing partner and uh from monsters ball to precious
and you know i think one of the underlying instincts you know or structure of that company was to work
independently all of our projects were funded with the exception of monsters ball
by you know not by a studio we hired and gave opportunities to young
directors who would not have been approved within the system
and really created unique marketing opportunities and
international exposure for stories that were provocative and once again we’re disrupting
kind of expected narratives and introducing new ideas and
communities uh through the visual visual representation
um thank you so much josh i’m i’m truly fascinated about your your
path into the um into the film industry i i read in in wikipedia that you and your
brother started a post punk no wave band called circus smart um with with rick owler and michael jira
and then later went on to form swans and then after the breakup of that you and your brother join the dell byzantians
uh with jim jamish the filmmaker um and i’m just trying to figure out how
how did that lead you to your path of of getting involved in the film industry
it is a great question thank you so much for having me um by the way i just want to quickly say
that my bio that you read was from 2005 so there are a few more updated entries if you go to
submarine.com there’s a slightly more recent um projects i worked on but um
it’s funny because really my whole mindset was only geared towards music when i was growing up you know we had
this little sort of pseudo partridge family style family band um when i was 11 and you know we would
play neighborhood kids and you know it was just from that point forward you know um
hearing you know i mean like we were just listening to everything we were
listening like marvin gaye was like our favorite singer of all time but we also loved led zeppelin and we
loved roxy music and it was just a wide everything we were just taking it all in and that sort of led to
my goal of just being in bands and playing music i had no interest in business i didn’t go to college i
just threw it all away and said i’m moving to new york start a punk band is that too noisy because someone my
neighbor just decided to start using the leaf blower if it’s too noisy let me know and i’ll move to another
room um so yeah i mean that’s all i cared about so when i moved to new york
i just started playing in bands like everyone in the late 70s early 80s that i was friends with was in bands and
that’s all it was about at a certain point i decided to get a job because i had to pay the rent and i
found a job at a tv company called fremantle and my whole mindset was okay the thing that
i care about is the music and anything else is just in service of that um you know
ten years later i came to this realization when the band didn’t become successful even though we
did get out there we had videos and we toured and we did but we didn’t quite get there
and at a very crucial moment should i move is it really too noisy are you hearing that
is it okay uh i i think we can make it work i think it’s okay
okay so sorry about that my neighbors suddenly decide this is the moment so i about 10 years in at fremantle i
become senior vice president of sales and i just realized that i actually was
interested and passionate in this thing that i learned sort of begrudgingly
um and i made the decision to like stop focusing on music and to focus on my career in the at the
time in the television industry um but even at that point i was really more interested in film and i was like
me you know i became friends early on with people like ted hope and christine bashan and the independent scene in new
york city and um it it was sort of like my goal was to transition from
television into film and even though i kept playing you know my little synthesizer at home and occasionally played the guitar
music was sort of fading into the background and by like let’s say 1999 i made the decision
to just walk into my boss’s office and just quit with no with nothing
i didn’t have another job and if anything i just said it was tied to you know um the start of
the millennium so the day after january 1st 2000 i walked in and quit
all my friends told me i was crazy people thought it was insane i had a really good job well paying job
but i had essentially not to go on too long but i had optioned two properties at that time the
book easyrider’s raging bull to do as a documentary i’ve become very interested in documentary at that point
we’d actually done a little mini sort of marketing project for absolute with
spike lee and mary herron and chris smith where it was like a little documentary generator
and it was very rudimentary for that time but it sort of got me interested and you
know in that transition between going from fremantle to submarine i took a job producing a
series called split screen on the intent film channel with john pearson and i said i’ll take the job if i can
produce a mini documentary in every episode and so he agreed and that sort of kept pulling me into the world of docs
and shortly within the next year or two it became clear that there was a an opportunity in the marketplace that
documentaries were not perceived as valuable at that time they were perceived as
difficult to sell small educational and all the things that make you think
of like taking medicine instead of you know having fun and you know in that period in the early period of
that you know let’s say 2002 to 2005 was the turning point when documentaries
started to really become viable as you know either entertainment or has
not more than just something educational that you see on pbs with films like spellbound and super
size me and control room and march of the penguins so anyway that that’s that’s the quick version of the path
thank you lisa um one of the questions i think that young filmmakers have
is trying to figure out how do they partner up with you know producers and how does that
relationship come about and how do how does that relationship work
um and and one of the things that sometimes comes up between a producer and a director
is um conflict um you know the director i found in the years of
representing directors will sell their souls for another frame of movie and producers
sometimes have the agenda of wanting to finish the film and and get it sold um and as young
filmmakers you know you often don’t have you know the leverage and so one i’d like you to talk a little bit
about how you know as as a filmmaker you form a relationship um with a producer and maybe talk a
little bit about how you deal with the issue of conflict that invariably is going to
arise in that relationship well you know i think the secret of all
relationships is trust and and trust is something that you just don’t add water to
it’s developed over time it’s developed by showing up and um almost kind of being intuitive in
a way to get a sense of what is going to make this um the best experience for everyone
involved how can you support um the the entire team um
and it’s really listening um interrogating what is important and then
finding ways to amplify that in the process of of creation
um and i would say that uh
when conflicts come up it always comes down to the deal you know it comes down to the agreement
on one hand but it also comes down to a human factor you you typically don’t want to kind of
pull out your contract and say you have you can’t or cannot do that i
think you really always want to come back to the kind of um ground zero of why
you and your collaborators have decided to make a commitment to one another which is going to go on for
uh years um and what is the integrity of this project
that it was so important that it drew you in and everyone else unfortunately
you know if you have to look pull out agreements i would use that as the very very last
ditch effort because i think it’s then is going to um kind of so a type of discord that
doesn’t disappear that quickly um you know it is it this is more than collaborating
what we do you know it’s truly about a vulcan mind meld for the various members of your team and
that only open i think happens when you are open and trusting
and um willing to be of service um to the work first and then to your team
um thank you charles you you’ve had the experience of both working on
independent films and and studio films and and often on studio films the degree of
control that you know the the studio insist upon both contractually and sometimes in
in practices can be quite different than an independent film um you know and i’d
be curious just to hear about your experiences and your thoughts and how you had to deal with
conflict from time to time on the creative side of trying to get your vision heard
well first of all i want to say lisa like sister was she was dropping some beautiful words
there the integrity of the project there’s there’s so many things that she was saying that um i was smiling but
from the from the position of a jaded studio director uh in the sense of um
you know the challenges of working with a lot of people who all
have an agenda uh in terms of the project or or even the the the project that
they’re making um an agenda is kind of an aggressive word in a way and i don’t mean to well no i do mean to be that way because
um sometimes i i’ll speak as a as a as a director who having done studio
projects um or films is that it’s important you know to come from the
position of the work first right the idea the integrity of the idea something that
lisa was just talking about um and then making sure
that all the other parties meaning the party that is paying for it uh and going to
distribute it uh in all the various departments within that company uh or studio or network um that
they are in agreement with what it is that you and your producer um are presenting or
interpreting because again it’s in my case doing a studio film in in the cases that i’ve done they’ve been
scripts that have been sent to me i react to the script meaning the script’s already been attached to a
studio and they’re going to make this film and then so i’m a director for hire i guess you would say is a title for that
so i react to the script i pitch my reaction to the studio the studio likes my reaction and then we go forward and create my
reaction to the script to kind of play in the base level but making sure
from my point of view is to make sure we’re all on the same page and that when we move forward to take
this journey which can range from anywhere from nine months to three or four years
that we are clear and honest it’s a word that lisa used again trust
that we are honest about what we are doing and i think with studio ventures
there are two things involved and you know probably the other nuanced uh things but it’s money
and entertainment right in in the cases that i have experienced so i don’t want to speak generalized too much but
um where there’s an agenda to to to make the money back you know and hopefully to make money to
profit but also to entertain um and with that being said
especially nowadays i think in the studio system um the marketing department is
an equal if not sometimes more powerful creative entity in the
relationship of making the movie that they have now become this
you know like i go to the marketing department and i begin that discussion that relationship and
making sure that in many ways what i want to do is clear with what
they want to do so i could ramble on and on about that but it really is a thing of trust and
and being candidly clear about what we as a group are going to be doing
together and in my experiences so far i’ve had a myriad of
of interesting sort of you know just experiences paid in full my first
feature with dimension films which is known as a genre studio right scary movie uh and a myriad of other
entertaining you know genre films i told them when i pitched to them i said i’m not gonna i don’t want to do a um
new jack city like i don’t want to do a glorified version i want to do something that’s reality based
the cinematography is real and they agreed and i remember um
what’s his name um i remember the the head of the company saying well as long as people are getting shot
and things explode and he was making a joke but you know in the end i created exactly
what i said and they shelved it for an entire year because it freaked them out because they
they didn’t i guess think i was going to do what i was going do um and it eventually came out and like i
forgot like 93 screens or something like that and it became a cult hit thing but nonetheless
that was one one situation and there are so many others that i could obviously ramble on on um but
yeah it’s it’s all about the relationship it’s all about being clear um and i do want to state that
the relationship between the producer and director in my experiences changes like i have a
producing partner now tom gorai who’s done a myriad of films in his own right as a producer
he and i are working together developing projects producers i’ve worked with in the past
it’s producers who are already attached to a project through the studio they may suggest me and then i come into
that relationship so i if i dare speak for those kinds of producers they’re in the position where
they really have this relationship intimate relationship with the studio who’s paying for it an intimate
relationship with the director who is you know is helping to is to helping to realize it creatively or
render it creatively and i think that’s kind of different from you have a producer that’s with you
and you too to get though as a team and end up relating with the studio
janine i you know unless you’re a final cut director ultimately it does
have to be a collaboration and what i can say is as a lawyer who’s been
lucky enough to represent final cut directors even then it still has to be a
collaboration because ultimately everyone in theory has the same agenda
which is you want your end product to be seen by as many eyeballs as possible
and and you also have to have the ability to step back and be objective and i remember in one
particular case the studio came to my client and said look we really are struggling with the
third reel in this movie and we really would like you to consider making a whole bunch of changes
and the director came to me and said look i’m a final cut director they know what my vision was do i really
even have to respond to this and i said look ultimately making a movie is a collaboration
and a partnership why don’t you take the weekend look at the changes they’re asking you
to make put them through the system take a look at them and out of the 13 or 14 changes
they’ve asked you may agree with none of them or you may agree with two of them or three of them and going through that
process and that gets back to the question of trust and a collaboration
if you only agree to two of them and your producing partner feels you’ve been through the process to address their
concerns you’re 90 of the way they’re in kind of keeping you know in in keeping that you know
relationship um going so it is um something you know to to to think about
um lisa i wanted to ask you a little bit about um all in which which you co-directed with
liz garbers and i’m curious what was that how did that collaboration come about what was it like co-directing
um you know a project with somebody else and would you do it again
um you know i think all in was such a a dream project
on numerous levels um
i think you know the the glue with stacey abrams was when we met with her just uh
seeing that i think liz and i brought different things to the storytelling but
a concerted um perspective on on the journey we wanted
to take people on and the film you know
was made um with a very specific uh delivery date in mind so that it could
be out and in conversation uh last fall before the general election
and um so what we were able to do was to divide and conquer um and
um really capture the history but also contemporary stories
um in a very concise timeline um and so i think that was the joy
of co-directing um but also co-directing with you know with mutual respect for
what each of us brought as filmmakers but also with our own personal histories
um would i co-direct again you know absolutely um it all depends
on so many factors but i do want to lean into something that we’ve just been talking about
um and that charles was saying is ultimately in the space and you know i think we
have i’m not certain of the range of our audience it is about cream you know cash rules
everything around me so whether you’re working with a studio or you’re doing you know you have some
great investors who are supporting you there is always a responsibility to find
that very delicate balance between art and commerce you want to
make the best film a film that you know you can uh have a great return for your
investors so that they will continue to support independent cinema or that will be successful for the
studio and i think that is um you know something that we have to think
about when you look at the budget for a broad project who you cast like you know your success
has to do a lot with many factors that um affect the ultimate bottom line
and what you hope you were able to generate at a box office or sale because
certainly the landscape has changed right now when it comes to
your theatrical uh um showing thank you
josh um when when you look around on the internet there seems to be a film
festival taking place somewhere in the world every day of the week
as someone who’s involved in selling films and documentaries um maybe you could talk a little bit
about the importance of documentary if you’re a filmmaker um you know how do you choose which is
the right festival you know for you um and just talk a little bit of how you get
involved in in selling films so that the audience can get a little bit of understanding about where when will you come into the mix
sure um i do just want to give a quick shout out to tom gorai who i worked with on a film
called nostalgia and he was an incredible producer so charles you have good taste
great guy very talented and anyone this uh zoom should be in the mud and hiring
him um but anyway um yeah i think just quickly in terms of our process you know
we have a what i would describe as a boutique sales company that is primarily focused on documentary
features and series and you know is not that we don’t sell narrative
features but you know the ratio of what we sell in any given year has shifted and it’s really more towards
documentaries in the past five or six years we’ve always been known as the documentary sales company
which i love because that’s that’s my passion um we see films that submitted um
in large volumes and it’s sometimes hard to keep up but we try to see everything that comes in
um many of our films that we end up representing are through relationships and previous
producers and filmmakers that we work with in fact lisa and i worked on a project years ago
and we’re now embarking on another project soon and you know we you know we’d like to have repeat business
because we love to global relationships um you know in the end
if we sign something it’s usually on its way to a festival it’s maybe a rough cut or a fine cut or
it’s a film that’s been submitted to a festival and the easiest thing for us to consider is a film that
is about to launch at a big festival like toronto or sundown jacan and those are also being heavily sought
after by our competitors but those are the you know the sort of low-hanging fruit then there are projects that we will see
early and decide we see something here we believe in it we love it we want to help foster it so
we might come in at an earlier stage when we’re seeing you know 10 or 15 minutes of footage
rather than a whole completed cut um and of course it’s important to say it
that you know not every film is going to get into sundance toronto or can and there are plenty of other festivals
out there the real question and i think what could be valuable to those listening is
the festivals that move the needle for sales are very specific and um all the
companies out there that are doing sales are focused on those festivals a small handful
but the importance of regional festivals where is not the festival where a buyer is going to show up and make an offer on your film
but it’s so important it’s an ecosystem and what it does is create awareness and um you know
it it essentially gives the filmmaker the experience of having the film i’m talking about in normal times
obviously pandemic times it’s a whole different ball game so i’m i’m maybe saying optimistically
uh what it normally would be because i want it to return that way
but festivals are where you meet your kind of class your class of you know
2021 you know you meet up-and-coming filmmakers along the way and you become friends and have contacts and then you
collaborate later on it’s so crucial and i guess most importantly you see
your film in front of an audience and you get the feedback and the excitement of you know being part of a community
and it’s so crucial but from our sales point of view you know while there are certainly a ton of
great really important regional festivals we don’t necessarily attend those we will encourage our filmmakers to go
there but they they just don’t move the needle for us on the sales front and so it’s very
specific what we’re looking for because in the end if the buyers aren’t there the sellers aren’t there and vice versa
so it is sort of like a relatively um curated list
thank you um charles over the last probably five to ten years we’ve seen a
real growth and evolution of television um uh becoming an art form
perceived in a way i think was very different than it was even 20 years ago and as someone who started
out as you know on the feature side you’re now also doing work on the tv side from a creative perspective
um uh and just from an experiential perspective how do you find the the
difference between working in the two medium and and any thoughts you know to share with
the audience well a couple things uh yes i agree that television has really become
an amazing amazing canvas for storytelling and and uh very candid
storytelling and um so it that has inspired me to get involved in television i think
as a creator of content it’s a good place to to to go and that’s something that
myself and my producing partner tom are you know looking at venturing into
but the other reason why as a director as a as a storyteller i go is is for exercise
i mean i i recommend every feature film director directv episodic because you’re basically making a feature film
in like 15 days it’s brutal it’s really intense and it’s it’s just good cardio
like it’s like you have to know your abc’s and your multiplication tables of being a director of how to you got to learn to
be a photographer in a way of how to do shots all of that really comes into play
because it moves so fast so i love it for that um
i don’t particularly well a part of me doesn’t like that i’m coming into a
family that’s already existed you know as a feature film director you you helped to build the family you you
helped to to assemble the crew and you you come together you create together and it dissolves together
uh in um tv episodic you know i’m a substitute teacher you know you come in you make sure that
the kids know all the chapters they got to read and then you got to make the day i mean that’s a kind of a cold way of saying it
but i think there’s a reality to it because everyone i say that too in the tv world they always get a giggle and they agree
um so that kind of feels a little you know funny but um but again it’s it’s great exercise if
you’re a content creator television is a wonderful venture to uh to explore because
it’s not just abc nbc cbs box there are so many
um you know networks now to create and they’re all starting to win awards you know even
that like i remember when i think it was fox had um i was a police show
um but it with uh the actor checklist was in it but anyway it started stealing awards away from the
you know the main networks and it changed the game and obviously hbo you know dominates et cetera et cetera
so yes the tv thing is good on on multiple fun um
lisa um speaking to our audience of young filmmakers what do you
see as some of the challenges that are going to face
both young filmmakers and established filmmakers like yourself in the years to come and what are some of the things you
might recommend that people should avoid in the early stage of their careers and some of the things that they
should focus on [Music] i’m not leaning into challenges
um seriously though uh
if you have passion for this like to do what we do you need to like you
know in josh’s case to be watching films all the time and trying to make the best deal for your
clients with charles case like bringing new talent in and and
introducing you know i think of his work and i think of um you know the the actors that he
cast who now have gone on to like you know be huge huge huge but he saw
something in them so like if you are in this space if you have this bug
you stay committed you build community uh you work with what is your
unique access i think that is something to always think about when you are creating is
what is the the ip the that unique story um that you have that
nobody else has and how can you then build a community that is going to join you on
this journey to to realize your story um it’s
oftentimes i have very long days challenging days but i always think about like how
lucky i am um and how i wouldn’t i don’t want to do
anything else um and if that’s how you feel about what you are creating you will always
attract the right people maybe not in the most timely fashion but the right ones will
show up and um you will um be able to
lean into you know what your what your heart has put kind of on the
mantle um thank you josh um in the last
20 years we we’ve continued to watch change in our industry and particularly in the way
content is is viewed and and the last 12 months has perhaps been the most
pronounced when the ability to watch content you know in in a cinema has become you know a challenging
environment um when you look forward to where you think um audiences are going
to consume content um you know over the next few years and the years to come what do you think are going to become
some of the trend lines that people should look out for [Music] well i i base this answer partly on my
own um kind of evaluation of where i hope it would be and also what i sort of see and at least
part of the community that we all exist in is that it’s there’s nothing
greater and more kind of like um simple and easy than to turn on your tv
and hopefully it’s a big screen and you watch you know you’ve been just a great series that you
want to watch or you watch a movie that you’ve been dying to see that you saw an ad for
but at the same time i can’t wait to see a movie in a theater i mean i’m i’m planning to do it
this weekend or maybe next weekend that’s all i’ve been thinking about i saw one movie during the pandemic which was
tenant in a in a theater in florida that had 400 seats and there were seven people in
there but it was the best thing that happened all year and it was just so thrilling i mean i love the movie but i
also love just being able to watch it you know i probably would have loved watching you know a cheerios commercial
if that was playing you know just because it was like the experience was reminding me of like oh
this is one of the things that i really love like i kind of had i forced myself to forget
and you kind of write it off and you think you’re not going to have so so i think that other people i can’t be
the only one that feels that way and i think certainly the question then is like what would get you into the
theater you know a movie like tenet would get me into a theater any time but honestly there are other great
movies that you want to see and aren’t about the visuals but they’re about the emotion or they’re about the group experience and that often can be
documentaries um some documentaries are big and visual but others
are you know like a group mind meld in a room where you can feel people being moved
all in the same time and so i think those experiences are what people crave and particularly
after being locked up in our living rooms for you know 18 months so i think that it’s still going to i
think it’s going to look a little differently there’ll be certainly people who are afraid to go to theaters for a while
longer even after they get vaccinated i know people who are fully vaccinated who still
won’t eat at a restaurant they won’t go to a movie theater they won’t get on an airplane so it’s
going to take a little time but i think in some intrinsic way people
want to have what they had and if they can have it in some version i think it’s going to
come back well i i hope so i’m like you i like the experience of being
with people watching something and sharing you know that common experience so as soon as i’ve had my second shot on
friday i’m i’m ready to dive in um i’d like to finish um
with the last question for our panelists to you charles which is you know in the last few years
our industry has certainly tried to take steps to become more inclusive
involving issues of minorities of gender and and color um as a person of color what
challenges did this present to you early on in your career and are you now seeing um a positive
change or do we still have a long way to go
uh to give the cliff notes version of that uh answer rather um is well experiences
there were many but one that was probably the most poignant early on was when directing drumline and we were
finalizing the budget and um we needed another additional amount of
money and we presented it to the physical producer
into the studio and then the head of the studio at the time said if you want that additional
money you gotta you gotta make one of these characters white and i remember
thinking like oh i’m gonna you know go to shoot magazine and blah blah and hollywood reporter and blow this out
the water and yada yada and i i thought well uh a craig emmanuel-esque
voice in my head well look at the big picture you know what’s what’s the big
picture um and and can i still achieve what i needed to achieve um and how can i make
that work you know and and i did uh and you know the rest is i guess history of sorts um so there was there
there’s always been these little nuanced things that would happen in the industry in terms of today to get to that because
i think that’s really more important is that there are wonderful movements happening
you know um and i’m not going to be able to name everybody but from the shonda rhimes to the lena
weights um these are all big these are substantial producers
in the business both tv and in features um kenya barris and there’s again i
apologize there’s cats who even farther back that have been doing it who are names for themselves um so we are making progress in terms of
having creative voices and executive and producerial voices that
are there to help to build a foundation that is american and it’s so nutty for
me to have to say it that way but we we have to um there’s something that
has happened lately which is the you know the whole woke concept which i
appreciate because it really discusses the mindset of systemic racism you know
the nuances and the granular things that really work um together in a
cumulative manner to create you know racism in the business and that’s not you know and not just
racism uh gender bias i mean that’s it’s you know um so i find that
what is happening and what we have to be mindful of and diligent of in a very stacey abrams-esque kind of
way which is is to hold one’s feet to the fire including our own including mine um to
making sure that we get more people of color and i say people of color that’s also
uh asian american indian american uh women as well uh gay and trans uh population as well
that we get people in positions of executive producing producing
and even film crew like this just you know from the grips the gaffers uh craft services etc that
and writers oh my goodness so important the the content creators the writers that we get more people in of color
in those positions to start to actually change the roots of the tree that is the
industry of storytelling and um that that is the thing i think that is happening but again we
we have to be diligent and we have to stay on that because we’re on a roll a little bit in terms of this woke kind
of point of view and it’s not just you know well you got a black president so what’s the problem you know i mean it’s
it’s really not that it’s it’s so much deeper than that very much as we know what happened today
in terms of the verdict being a positive three three you know guilty on all three charges
it’s just a stepping stone and if we’re not diligent it means nothing so that’s what’s got to happen now i think
thank you um i am very conscious of the fact that we’re we’re we’ve we’ve run out of time i know that
we did have a couple of questions and for those who asked the questions we are going to
submit them to the panelists and they will be able to respond over the course of the next week i
really would like to take this time to thank my three panelists who gave up their time and shared some really
valuable information with us this afternoon so thank you um you know as someone who
um truly loves the business that we’re in and i’ve been working in the industry
now for more than 35 years what i can tell you if i was to give any word of
advice at all is that there’s nothing easy about this business but there’s also nothing
more fulfilling than starting off with an idea and watching it come to fruition
and don’t give up on those ideas and maybe they won’t get made this year or next year
but those great stories um are always out there and need to be told and and today we’re
lucky as i think josh said that there are more places or charles said to have content viewed
than ever before and it can be short content long content serialized content and and keep that
you know in mind i think the other thing that i would say is if you’re a young filmmaker or even if you’re a young producer a
young writer don’t try and create stories to meet somebody else’s expectations
the best stories that you have your best work is that that comes from from here and in
your heart and is something that you’re truly compassionate about um as a filmmaker you’re the
captain of the ship and you’re the one who’s going to lead the story so be passionate about what
you want to do and make things that that you um care about so again thank you to my three panelists
we really appreciate you taking the time and i’m going to turn this back over to um opal to close this session out
our thanks again to craig emanuel and to all of his panelists josh braun lisa
cortez charleston iii thank you all so much for joining us also thanks to our team at the march on
washington filmmaker bernard rodgers vernal rogers roderick johnson
and our asl interpreters be sure to join us on tuesday may 18th when the spotlight will
be on the role of producers in our workshop series minding your movie business
for more details please visit march on washingtonfilmfestival.org this is opal h bennett until next month
march on
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