Produced By February | March 2017

PRODUCING A VERITÉ VIDEOGAME p. 40

PRODUCEDBY THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE PRODUCERS GUILD OF AMERICA // FEBRUARY | MARCH 2017

GALE ANNE

HURD

“It was one of those experiences where not only do you surprise the audience, but you shock yourself.”

winner

best animated feature NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW

winner

best animated feature CHICAGO FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

winner

best animated feature ATLANTA FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

winner

best animated feature

SAN DIEGO FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

winner

best animated feature INDIANA FILM JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION

winner

best animated feature UTAH FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

winner

best animated feature AUSTIN FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

winner

best animated feature IOWA FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

winner

best animated feature HOUSTON FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

winner

best animated feature HAWAII FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

CHOOSE INNOVATION. CHOOSE KUBO.

2

winner

best animated feature

NEW YORK FILM CRITICS ONLINE

winner

best animated feature

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS ®

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

THE WASHINGTON DC AREA FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

winner

best animated feature BOSTON ONLINE FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

winner

BAFTA AWARD NOMINATION

BEST ANIMATED FILM “A GLORIOUS ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT. Deeply moving. A visual wonderland of beauty and genuine big-screen magic.”

best animated feature LAS VEGAS FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

winner

best animated feature PHOENIX CRITICS CIRCLE

winner

best animated feature

S COTT M E N D E L S O N , F O R B E S

FLORIDA FILM CRITICS CIRCLE

winner

best animated feature ONLINE FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

winner

best animated feature CENTRAL OHIO FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

from the heart. for the heart.

For more on this extraordinary film, go to www.FocusFeaturesGuilds2016.com

©2016 FOCUS FEATURES LLC AND TWO STRINGS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

winner

best animated feature CHICAGO INDEPENDENT FILM CRITICS CIRCLE

PRODUCEDBY FEBRUARY | MARCH 2017

PHOTOGRAPHED BY KREMER JOHNSON PHOTOGRAPHY

THE COVER: GALE ANNE HURD

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

28 THE COVER: GALE ANNE HURD

9 FROM THE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

How a movie producer translated her skills into cable TV’s biggest hit.

40 STREET LEVEL HISTORY Vassiliki Khonsari pioneers the verite video game.

The circle expands.

10

51 TAKING FLIGHT Passion and ingenuity fuel the making of acclaimed doc The Eagle Huntress.

58 ACES MATTER With HD production on the rise, clear standards are more important than ever.

SHORT TAKES

Dancing with the stars

24

It was the year of...

13

OPEN DOORS Boosting the signal for inclusive stories!

46 THE FINAL STAGE Vic Kaplan closes the book on 40 years in television.

22 AWARDS SEASON’S GREETINGS

ON THE SCENE Producers Guild Awards 2017

64 FAQ: THE PRODUCERS MARK 66

MEMBER BENEFITS

67

NEW MEMBERS

What’s in a name?

68

MARKING TIME

70 THE BEST ON-SET PHOTO OF ALL TIME

14

COMING ATTRACTIONS

16

ABOVE & BEYOND

18

MENTORING MATTERS

Developing a career

20

GOING GREEN

Double shot Queen of green

COVER PHOTOGRAPHED

BY KREMER JOHNSON PHOTOGRAPHY

6

PRODUCED BY

SHAWN LEVY, p.g.a. | DAN LEVINE, p.g.a. | AARON RYDER, p.g.a. | DAVID LINDE, p.g.a.

DENIS VILLENEUVE

ERIC HEISSERER

BRADFORD YOUNG, ASC

SYLVAIN BELLEMARE

CLAUDE LA HAYE BERNARD GARIÉPY STROBL

PATRICE VERMETTE PAUL HOTTE

JOE WALKER, ACE

“EVOCATIVE, MYSTERIOUS AND REMARKABLE. ‘ARRIVAL’ IS

THE BEST FILM OF THE YEAR.” THE ATLANTIC | CHRISTOPHER ORR

PRESIDENTS Gary Lucchesi

Lori McCreary

VICE PRESIDENTS, MOTION PICTURES David Friendly Lydia Dean Pilcher

The Coca-Cola Company salutes Fellow creators of moments of Happiness.

VICE PRESIDENTS, TELEVISION Tim Gibbons Jason Katims VICE PRESIDENT, NEW MEDIA John Canning VICE PRESIDENT, AP COUNCIL Jethro Rothe-Kushel VICE PRESIDENTS, PGA EAST William Horberg Kay Rothman TREASURER Christina Lee Storm SECRETARY OF RECORD Gale Anne Hurd PRESIDENTS EMERITI Mark Gordon Hawk Koch NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Vance Van Petten REPRESENTATIVES, PGA NORTHWEST Darla K. Anderson Sophia Kim NATIONAL BOARD Michael Ambers Fred Baron Carole Beams Gary Bryman Carrie Certa Karen Covell Tracey E. Edmonds Melissa Friedman Donna Gigliotti Richard Gladstein John Hadity Marshall Herskovitz

OF DIRECTORS Pamela Keller Kiran Malhotra Megan Mascena-Gaspar Kate McCallum Chris Moore Bruna Papandrea John Peterman Charles Roven Peter Saraf Hayma “Screech” Washington Harvey Wilson Felicia Wong

EDITOR Chris Green

PARTNER & BRAND PUBLISHER Emily S. Baker CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ajay Peckham

COPY EDITOR Peggy Jo Abraham

PHOTOGRAPHERS Kremer Johnson Photography, Noah Fecks ADVERTISING Ken Rose 818-312-6880 | ken@moontidemedia.com MANAGING PARTNERS Charles C. Koones Todd Klawin Vol XIII No. 1 Produced By is published six times a year by the Producers Guild of America 530 Wilshire Blvd.

Suite 400 Beverly Hills, CA 90211 310-358-9020 Tel. 310-358-9520 Fax

1411 Broadway 15th floor New York, NY 10018 646-766-0770 Tel.

www.producersguild.org

8

PRODUCED BY

FROM THE N AT I O N A L EXECUTIVE DI R EC TOR

THE CIRCLE EXPANDS Change often comes slowly. But it comes.

I remember attending my first Producers Guild Awards (at the time called the Golden Laurel Awards) in 2000. To put it kindly, the show was not ready for prime time. But with a lot of thought and effort, we retooled the event into a must-attend night of entertainment and celebration. Today the Producers Guild Awards are seen as the most reliable predictor of Oscar gold, and frankly, we can’t keep up with demand for tickets.

This year the PGA’s awards season has expanded. In New York, the Guild put together its first-ever awards reception on the east coast, hosted by a club that’s been an institution in New York for over a century, The Players. A week later, the Guild’s AP Council organized its own first-ever awards reception in Burbank, to celebrate all members of the producing team from award-nominated productions. You can find photos from both of those events on pages 24-27.

These events happened on different coasts, but their effect was the same: bringing more PGA members and recruits—our Awards are one of the best recruiting tools we have—into the spirit of celebration represented by the Producers Guild Awards. It’s true the Guild has to set limits on who takes the stage when the winners are announced, as well as on who’s able to join us in the room for the event itself (more on that in a moment). But that spirit of the Awards is limitless—you find it wherever talented PGA members gather to honor the best among them, above and below the line, on the west coast, east coast and everywhere in between.

This year the Awards became a victim of their own success. The unavailability of our usual

venue in Century City required us to book the Beverly Hilton for our 2017 event. Both venues are equally spectacular, but the Beverly Hilton is several hundred seats smaller. The smaller venue, coupled with the increased demand for tickets have led, unfortunately, to some unhappy members.

That’s why next year, the discounted tickets sold to PGA members will be made available to interested members on a lottery basis, rather than first-come, first-served. This way, every interested member will have equal opportunity to purchase tickets. In 2018 and beyond, we’ll keep expanding the circle of the Producers Guild Awards as far—and as fairly—as we can. Whether this year or next year, we can’t wait to celebrate the best of our profession with you.

“In 2018 and beyond, we’ll keep expanding the circle of the Producers Guild Awards as far—and as fairly—as we can.”

Vance Van Petten

PRODUCED BY

9

SHORT TA K E S

IT WAS THE YEAR OF… PGA MEMBERS SPENT 2016 LOOKING TO THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Q:

What piece of entertainment content were you most excited to discover in 2016, and why?

ELAINE SPOONER Content designer, FoxFast

My choice is the film La La Land. It’s unique, original, a joy to watch and an impressive feat from the creators, cast and crew. It’s the best example of Hollywood filmmaking in 2016.

10

PRODUCED BY

DAN KUBA Post producer, Idiotsitter

Friday Night Lights. Was not expecting much out of the show and was pleasantly surprised to find that it has much depth and that it is still a relevant show 10 years after the fact.

PAUL McAFEE Post-production supervisor, Huge, Inc.

Google Earth VR. It’s like crack.

Standing in an unknown valley of Mammoth Lakes, I was transported back 20 years to camping trips of my youth. VR/AR/MR are going to change our engagement with the world.

F O R

Y O U R

C O N S I D E R A T I O N

TWO OF THE BEST PERFORMANCES OF THE LAST TWENTY YEARS “

” .

ERIK DAVIS, FANDANGO

“AS

GOOD AS SCREEN ACTING GETS .”

CHRIS NASHAWATY, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

H H HH

HHHH

H H HH

HHHH

H H HH

HHHH

SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS ®

WINNER BEST ACTOR

DENZEL WASHINGTON

WINNER

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

VIOLA DAVIS

BE S T ADAP T ED S CREENP L AY

AUGUST WILSON

BEST ACTOR

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

DENZEL WASHINGTON “ THE

VIOLA DAVIS

POETIC STORYTELLING IN ‘FENCES’ IS A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH.” GLENN WHIPP, LOS ANGELES TIMES

FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF SCREENINGS, VISIT PARAMOUNTSCREENINGS.COM

Montreal Sudbury Toronto

Vancouver

Albuquerque

Hollywood

Follow The Yellow Case Road Through the Land of Clairmont Camera.

We Have Film, Digital, and Toto Too!

www.clairmont.com

O P E N D O ORS

ON THE ROAD TO SUCCESS the pga’s producing workshop unlocks the power of diversity.

Written by Tori Kyes and Sasheen Artis

W

ith Hollywood scrambling to address last year’s #Oscarssowhite controversy and audiences shifting from broadcast networks to streaming and cable television, the need for more diversity in front of and behind the camera has become more than just a “hot topic”–it’s now imperative for our bottom line. For 14 years, the Producers Guild of America’s Diversity Committee has been at the forefront of this issue, helping to train emerging and mid-level producers in the art of pitching, packaging, financing and marketing with its Power of Diversity Master Workshop, among numerous other initiatives. The intensive eight-week program offers master classes with some of today’s top producers as well as one-to-one mentoring. Tori Kyes, a recent graduate of the program, shared her experience and the impact it has made on her career.

Last year, my friend Tim Cruz brought the script Hopeful Soul to my attention. The poignancy of the story and its relevance to today’s societal issues ignited a spark, so we submitted it to the PGA Power of Diversity workshop in hopes it would get the jump start that it needed.

Hopeful Soul is a feature-length drama about an at-risk white teenager who seeks safety in the black community and the culture of gospel music, set among the racial tensions of 1967 Detroit. Even though both Tim and I are both fairly experienced in the industry, I strongly felt the Power of Diversity workshop would give us a leg up in helping to shape and prepare a story with diversity at its center. As unnecessary deaths due to police brutality, burgeoning race riots and the surprising election of a President who has fueled a race-driven diatribe continued to unfold around us, this story and the global mission of diversity in film became more and more important to us.

Because of the PGA Power of Diversity workshop, we’ve learned invaluable techniques and met a variety of phenomenal people, all of whom helped us refine our pitch and story, ultimately allowing us to raise $15,000 for production, receive firm interest from an A-list director, secure distribution through Smith Global / SONY and attach Andraé Crouch’s famed music producer to score the film. I can honestly say that none of this would have been possible without the tremendous support and guidance of the PGA Power of Diversity workshop and our amazing mentors.

TORI KYES

TIM CRUZ

Like Tori and Tim, the Power of Diversity Master Workshop—which is conducted free of charge to participants—can help you prepare your project for the marketplace. To apply, visit www.pgadiversity.org. The final deadline is March 13 and only 10 applicants will be selected. We look forward to your submissions! ¢

PRODUCED BY

13

C O M I N G ATTRACTIONS

PGA WEST FEBRUARY 25, 2017 NON-SCRIPTED JOB FORUM Bring your resumes. Bring lots of them. Thanks to the format we affectionately call “speed dating for the producing team,” this is your chance to log valuable face time with a variety of company reps and potential employers from the non-scripted television world. After all, you never know where that next job is coming from…

FEBRUARY 26, 2017 PGA OSCAR PARTY The Guild’s Annual Oscar Viewing and Recruitment Party provides producers and team members an opportunity to gather, celebrate the year in film and, not least, introduce potential members to the Guild. It’s a fantastic way to enjoy the movies’ biggest night while networking with your peers, enjoying tasty refreshments, and bringing new faces into the PGA family.

Even if you can’t make it, best of luck in your Oscar pool... we’re pulling for you!

MARCH 18, 2017 SEMINAR: FINANCING YOUR INDIE FILM The PGA Education Committee is proud to present this panel, which emphasizes the need for exploring and understanding global sources of film financing. Equity is king – and finding and closing it is the key component to funding every film. The event will cover topics including crowdfunding (donation & equity), presales, sales estimates, tax credits and rebates, co-production companies with financing, and goods & services deals.

Top: PGA members gather for a job forum.

Middle: Members and guests enjoy the PGA’s 2016 Oscar Party Below: The panel of experts for the Women’s Impact Network’s Pitch to WIN event.

PGA EAST FEBRUARY 26, 2017 MASTER CLASS: LIGHTING FOR INTERVIEWS For producers who want to learn to light their own interviews, this four-hour event (part lecture, part handson workshop) will teach particiapnts about different types of lights used for interviews, how to choose the right lighting kit and accessories, and lighting safety.

PGA SOUTHEAST FEBRUARY 18, 2017 WOMEN’S IMPACT NETWORK “LEVEL UP” MENTORING BREAKFAST Bringing to Atlanta the “mentoring roundtables” so popular at Produced By conference events, this event provides members with straightforward career advice from seasoned professionals. Each of the event’s tables will feature a pair of mentors, with no more than 10 attendees at each table. Different roundtables will cover such topics as pitching and promoting, financing, and distribution.

14

PRODUCED BY

PGA MEMBERS: For more information or to RSVP for events, please consult producersguild.org.

CASEY AFFLECK THE MOST HONORED PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR

A MASTERPIECE

“

” .

WINNER

WINNER

NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW AWARDS I

N

C

L

U

D

BEST ACTOR

I

N

NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS

G

CASEY AFFLECK

I

N

C

L

U

D

I

N

G

BEST ACTOR

CASEY AFFLECK

WINNER CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS I

N

C

L

U

D

BEST ACTOR

I

N

G

CASEY AFFLECK

W I N N E R

GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD ® D

CASEY AFFLECK

WINNER

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTOR

CASEY AFFLECK BOSTON SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS

SOUTHEASTERN FILM CRITICS ASSN.

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTOR

“NO FILM THIS YEAR HAS MOVED ME MORE.” WINNER WINNER WINNER WINNER WINNER CASEY AFFLECK NEW YORK FILM CRITICS ONLINE

CASEY AFFLECK DALLAS-FORT WORTH FILM CRITICS ASSN.

BEST ACTOR

CASEY AFFLECK BOSTON ONLINE FILM CRITICS ASSN.

BEST ACTOR

HAWAII FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

CASEY AFFLECK

CHICAGO INDEPENDENT FILM CRITICS CIRCLE

BEST ACTOR

GOTHAM AWARDS

CASEY AFFLECK SAN DIEGO FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

W I N N E R CASEY W I N N EAFFLECK R WINNER WINNER “TOGETHER AND KENNETH LONERGAN HAVE MADE WINNER WINNER WINNER WINNER WINNER A DRAMA OF RARE POWER.” WINNER BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTOR

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTOR

BEST ACTOR

LAS VEGAS FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

CASEY AFFLECK

CHICAGO FILM CRITICS ASSN.

A

WINNER

CASEY AFFLECK ATLANTA FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

M

WINNER

WINNER BEST ACTOR

A

WINNER

WINNER BEST ACTOR

R

BEST ACTOR

PHOENIX CRITICS CIRCLE

DETROIT FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

KANSAS CITY FILM CRITICS CIRCLE

BEST ACTOR

WASHINGTON DC AREA FILM CRITICS ASSN.

WINNER BEST ACTOR

CASEY AFFLECK ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

WINNER BEST ACTOR

CASEY AFFLECK ST. LOUIS FILM CRITICS ASSN.

WINNER BEST ACTOR

UTAH FILM CRITICS ASSN.

AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF CINEMA & TELEVISION ARTS

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

WINNER

WINNER

WINNER

WINNER

WINNER

WINNER

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

WINNER

WINNER

WINNER

WINNER

WINNER

WINNER

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

CASEY AFFLECK

BEST ACTOR

ONLINE FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

BEST ACTOR

INDIANA FILM JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION

F O R

Y O U R

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY

BEST ACTOR

FLORIDA FILM CRITICS CIRCLE

BEST ACTOR

LONDON CRITICS’ CIRCLE

VANCOUVER FILM CRITICS

BEST ACTOR

AUSTIN FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

BEST ACTOR

DENVER FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

WOMEN FILM CRITICS CIRCLE

BEST ACTOR

GEORGIA FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

BEST ACTOR

IOWA FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

OKLAHOMA FILM CRITICS CIRCLE

BEST ACTOR

S E AT T L E F I L M C R I T I C S SO C I E TY

BEST ACTOR

NORTH CAROLINA FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION

HOUSTON FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

BEST ACTOR

NATIONAL SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS

BEST ACTOR

NEVADA FILM CRITICS SOCIETY

C O N S I D E R A T I O N

KENNETH LONERGAN

MATT DAMON, p.g.a. | KIMBERLY STEWARD, p.g.a | CHRIS MOORE, p.g.a. | LAUREN BECK, p.g.a. | KEVIN J. WALSH, p.g.a.

AmazonStudiosGuilds.com

A B O V E & B E YON D

WHAT’S IN A NAME? PGA VOLUNTEERS DON’T HAVE TO BE NAMED STACY. (BUT MAYBE IT HELPS?)

T

his month we highlight volunteers with a tale of two Stacys! Although they may share a name, each has left an individual mark on the PGA. Stacy Hope Herman has been a member of the PGA since the merger of the AAP and PGA in 2001.

An early member of the PGA East chapter, she contributed to the first set of PGA East bylaws and served as the very first PGA East Financial Officer. “In the beginning I volunteered because I believed in the Guild’s mission and wanted to see the PGA East chapter grow and succeed. Today I want to give back to the Guild that has nourished my career in the past 15 years. I’ve gotten

A

STACY BURSTIN

16

PRODUCED BY

most of my jobs either directly or indirectly through PGA members, and I have made lifelong friendships through volunteer work.” Today Stacy serves as the Co-Chair of the PGA East Events Committee and sits on its Advisory Board. Her past involvement includes service on the Recruitment and Mentoring Committees, as well as on the AP Council Board of Delegates. When not volunteering, Stacy works primarily as a VP of Production or Line Producer in the nonfiction space. Lately she has been developing projects for the on-demand market in both fiction and nonfiction.

10-year member of the PGA, Stacy Burstin currently serves on the New Media Council Board of Delegates.

“I enjoy participating in PGA events in a variety of capacities. My involvement can depend on my work load, my interest in a given subject or if I simply want to work with the people putting the event together.” She has produced panels including “Women Producing Animation” and contributed to the VR Seminar at the past Produced By Conference, as well as co-produced a successful YouTube/PGA mixer at the YouTube Studios in Playa Vista, alongside fellow NMC board members. Stacy is the liaison for the NMC Board with the Online Video Committee and a member of the International Committee & China Task Force. “I feel it is our responsibil-

STACY HOPE HERMAN

ity,” she says, “as members of the PGA, and especially speaking as a New Media Council delegate, to be active and to make our time beneficial to other members. When I volunteer, I look for opportunities that provide exposure in areas I might not be familiar with as well to people that I would usually not directly connect with … I cannot emphasize how important it is to get involved with the PGA in some way—you will receive much more in return than any amount of time you invest volunteering.” When not volunteering, Stacy is based at her Playa del Rey production company, Eevolver, Inc., which she co-founded. Currently Eevolver is working on its first animated film, The Land of Sometimes, with Ewan McGregor. ¢

The best just got better

GREAT CHOICE OF RECORDING FORMATS | NEW ARRI LOOK MANAGEMENT SUPER FLEXIBLE ON-SET MONITORING IMPROVED IMAGE QUALITY | FUTURE-PROOF FOR HDR AND 4K

ARRI ALEXA SXT. TRULY CINEMATIC.

www.arri.com/alexa/sxt

M E N TOR I NG M AT T E R S

DEVELOPING A CAREER LEARNING TO IDENTIFY THE STORY YOU WANT—AND GO AFTER IT Written by Kia Kiso

I

have more than 90 credits as an AC/Loader, Telecine Colorist and VFX Coordinator, but eight years ago I heeded my lifelong calling to produce. Since then I have shepherded award-winning videos, promos for CBS and launched two feature documentaries on Netflix. In 2013 I joined the PGA because I knew of its many benefits, and I wanted to be part of a community of like-minded creatives. Currently I have focused on building my production company to develop fictional content, with an aim at creating compelling and unique stories in order to make the world a better place.

When I applied to the 2016 PGA Mentoring Program, I had just walked away from the option on a book into which I had put a lot of time and resources. I was disappointed and wished I could have saved the project. The experience led me to realize that development was an aspect of producing I was less familiar with. I was looking for expert advice on how to assess opportunities, set up a project for success, handle relationships with authors, lawyers and talent, and run a production company.

Thankfully the PGA Mentoring Program paired me with producer Ken Atchity. I was thrilled to be matched with Ken for a lot of reasons, among them his industry experience and teaching background. However I admit, I was especially attracted to his philosophy—“I believe in the power of stories to change the world.”

Our first connection was an in-person, 90-minute meeting, in which he gave me feedback on a particular project of mine. Ken had some great advice about pitching—if a project tackles potentially controversial or delicate issues, Ken advised weaving some well-researched statistics or facts into the pitch to send the message that the material wouldn’t suggest a problem for the network and lead to a premature no. He wrapped up the meeting saying I could contact him about the project at any time, even after the mentorship ends. Very generous. Since that first meeting, we’ve had a pivotal phone conversation during which he suggested I was in a great position to go after an option I was very excited about, helping me to design a strategy on how to move forward quickly—starting with enhancing my relationship with the rights owner.

He’s been ready to answer any questions by email. Even as recently as this morning, we were in touch to discuss a lunch I was preparing for with a writer who wanted to work with me.

Ken has been wonderful. He celebrates my triumphs and brainstorms solutions to my challenges. I am very grateful for his willingness to participate in the Mentoring Program and to the Producers Guild for providing it. ¢

18

PRODUCED BY

“I was looking for expert advice on how to assess opportunities, set up a project for success, handle relationships with authors, lawyers and talent, and run a production company.”

Hollywood 323.956.5391

Atlanta 770.333.9280

New Orleans 504.736.2177

New York City 718.706.9610

GOING GREEN

QUEEN OF GREEN RAISING THE BAR FOR SUSTAINABLE FILMMAKING ON QUEEN OF KATWE WRITTEN BY Christian Jean

“C

hess helps us solve problems. It teaches us to make a plan.” Wise words on the perks of playing chess, from coach Robert Katende (David Oyelowo), in producer Lydia Dean Pilcher’s recent film about survival and dreams, Queen of Katwe.

Pilcher and director Mira Nair, longtime collaborators, are both firmly committed to sustainable filmmaking and were keen to raise the bar while producing Queen of Katwe. The film, based on a true story, charts the improbable rise of chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga) from the slums of Uganda to international stardom. On screen, the film is a kind of love letter to Uganda. But behind the scenes, it was a love letter to sustainability and the environment.

From on-set waste diversion (like donating used and surplus

20

PRODUCED BY

resources) to comprehensive recycling rules and strict vendor requirements, Pilcher’s team estimates they reduced over 40,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), the internationallyrecognized measure of greenhouse emissions. Results like that aren’t accidental. “Making a plan,” as Oyelowo’s Katende opines about chess, is also the key for producers with ambitious green goals. And Pilcher notes planning must begin right from the start. “You’ve got to anticipate everything before it happens. It’s something that you want to put out there from the beginning, so people understand that there’s going to be an expectation.”

So from the minute she hires a line producer, Pilcher is also working on building her “Green Team,” a group that develops sustainability initiatives. The group is communal, open to anyone who wants to join and, Pilcher points out, “helps identify who

Opposite: Ugandan sound mixer Moses Bwayo.

Left: Producer Lydia Dean Pilcher with cast member Madina Nalwanga and chess champion Phiona Mutesi.

Below: Plan for Katwe chess academy designed with sustainable measures.

your ambassadors are right away.” Throughout production, Green Team members meet to discuss what’s working, what isn’t and what they can do better. They are the bishops, knights and rooks of green filmmaking.

But the royalty of sustainability on set is the “eco-supervisor.”

It’s a relatively new role and one that Pilcher has come to value greatly. She explains, “We need someone who is really connecting the dots and working with the departments, who can make sure everything is on track. The eco-supervisor is also an educator, making sure relevant environmental information reaches everyone.

Because, Pilcher adds, “What we’re talking about, on the immediate level, is the carbon footprint that we’re trying to reduce. But on the bigger picture, we’re changing behavior.”

On Queen of Katwe, Pilcher and Nair brought in eco-supervisor Emellie O’Brien. O’Brien then got to work training four environmental stewards in Uganda and South Africa, setting up carbon calculation procedures and implementing green systems for department heads to execute. Pilcher is particularly proud of the stewards, sharing, “We picked people who were on some kind of environmental career path and interested in what we were doing.

Because rather than just hiring [O’Brien] to do the whole job and then go back to America, we actually were expanding the knowledge, expanding the craft of eco-supervision on sets and leaving people behind who had a methodology to do it.”

What a production leaves behind—its impact on a host community—is a fundamental concern in Pilcher’s philosophy of sustainable filmmaking.

To that end, the Queen of Katwe Green Team actually sought opportunities to support local communities. Pilcher describes a situation in Johannesburg, South Africa where a township of 3,000 people was being supported by just 15 portable toilets; access to water was also a pressing issue. So the production started a

GOING GREEN

bio-sanitation pilot project to install composting dry toilets and gave the township some big water towers to harvest rainwater.

Pilcher adds, “We worked with the elders in the community to pick something that they were onboard with and felt good about administering.”

Pilcher’s philosophy that film productions have responsibilities to the communities in which they work is also a collaborative one.

She explains, “One of the things I think is important to do is to listen. On Queen of Katwe we were in these areas for very long periods of time. As we built relationships with people, we organized community meetings where people could talk about what their priorities were and what would mean the most to them.”

In Uganda this took the form of supporting a new chess academy in a sustainable environment. One of Robert Katende’s long-term dreams, the academy will use chess as a platform to enhance abstract thinking, creativity and innovation. The Queen of Katwe Green Team, in association with a qualified local vendor and The Centre for Research in Energy and Energy Conservation at Makerere University, organized plans for the installation of 10 bio-latrine toilets that can be used both by the school and the local community. It’s known as the Queen of Katwe Legacy Project.

As for the production itself, in Uganda over 300 pounds of leftover food was turned into 280 meals served to local residents.

And nearly 60% of the production’s waste was diverted. Pilcher puts that in context. “We didn’t have to compost in Uganda because everybody took all the extra food. If it didn’t go to people, it went to animals. Nothing was left, nothing was wasted, no food went to a landfill.”

In South Africa over 90% of the production’s waste was diverted, including construction from a partially-built church. The set was struck after shooting, and all its raw materials were donated to the local community. All told, between Uganda and South Africa, the Green Team estimates over 37,000 water bottles were saved and more than 4,000 pounds of resources were donated, including 1,300 meals.

Reaching these levels of achievement requires a lot of discipline, and Pilcher says leadership starts from the top. She stresses, “There are certain departments that you absolutely have to have on board. When you hire the caterer, when you hire craft service, you absolutely have to say, ‘It’s non-negotiable that we’re not having plastic water bottles. We’re not having plastic utensils or plates.

Everything has to be compostable, recyclable.’ When people want the job, they’re willing to agree. And then they have to comply.”

In the endgame, Pilcher says success in sustainable filmmaking is really all about setting good goals, because you can’t do everything. “But you set a list of achievable goals that you think you can accomplish, and that’s what you focus on. And if you achieve those goals, then that’s your success.”

Christian Jean is a freelance writer, director and producer. He is the founder of Bon Accord Picture Company in Los Angeles. ¢

PRODUCED BY

21

AWA R D S IN REVIEW

DANCING WITH THE STARS LOOKING FOR AN ANTIDOTE TO 2016? YOU FOUND IT ONSCREEN. Written by Jeffrey McMahon

W

e all know the slogan by now: “F*&% 2016.” Yes, it was a strange and challenging year in many ways, but we would be severely remiss to not acknowledge and celebrate the year’s numerous triumphs in film and television. It would be unfair to call these works silver linings or glasses half full – this year brought us phenomenal work from the best artists and craftspeople working in our business.

In the movies and on TV it was a year of self-reflection, of learning where you belonged in the world, from the identity crises facing the characters in Moonlight and Westworld to Lion’s Saroo and Pixar’s Dory, who literally found themselves.

The ladies of Hidden Figures and the men of Hell or High Water battled for respect, while the artists of Atlanta and La La Land struggled to find their dreams. And antiheroes carving their own paths were everywhere, from President and First Lady Underwood to Saul Goodman to Deadpool himself.

So onwards and upwards! What’s past is prologue, and with 2016’s gifted storytellers continuing to work at the top of their collective game, the best is ahead of us.

22

PRODUCED BY

AWA R D S IN REVIEW

PRODUCED BY

23

ON THE SCENE

GAGA FOR LA LA PRODUCERS GUILD AWARDS – BEVERLY HILTON HOTEL, JANUARY 28

The night may have ended up where the pundits predicted, but the route it took to get there was anything but expected. Coming on the heels of a tumultuous week of political events, the 28th annual Producers Guild Awards delivered a bevy of surprise winners and heartfelt speeches before ultimately crowning the producers of the crowd-pleasing original musical La La Land with the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures. By the time producers Marc Platt, Fred Berger and Jordan Horowitz took the stage to accept the honor, the capacity crowd had seen the PGA’s top television series honors awarded to a pair of rookie shows (Netflix’s Stranger Things and FX’s Atlanta), its awards for documentary and long-form television both go to treatments of the O.J. Simpson trial (O.J.: Made in America and The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story) and James Corden’s instant, off-the-cuff repackaging of Hugh Jackman’s introductory speech for Milestone Award honoree Tom Rothman. And unsurprisingly, political sentiments were never far from the proceedings, evident in everything from presenter John Legend’s passionate defense of American ideals in the face of the recent immigration ban, to the Guild’s selection of Disney’s pointed social allegory Zootopia as the year’s top animated feature.

Producer Marc Platt accepts the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for La La Land.

Visionary Award honoree Megan Ellison (left) with presenter Kathryn Bigelow.

Presenter Justin Timberlake goofs with fellow presenter John Legend and Chrissy Tiegen on the red carpet.

Presenter Nicole Kidman with husband Keith Urban PGA Presidents Lori McCreary and Gary Lucchesi Milestone Award honoree Tom Rothman with presenter Hugh Jackman

An evidently pumped Shawn Levy accepts the Norman Felton Award for Stranger Things, flanked

by Ross and Matt Duffer.

24

PRODUCED BY

Presenter Thandie Newton with nominee Juila Louis-Dreyfus (Veep)

ON THE SCENE

Producer Mark Burnett (kneeling) and team celebrate The Voice’s win for Television Competition Series.

Dustin Hoffman announces the night’s final winner.

Selznick Award honoree Irwin Winkler (left) with cinema eminence David Picker

Presenters Common and Dev Patel on the red carpet

Presenter Mahershala Ali

Presenter Taraji P. Henson

The producers of Stanley Kramer Award honoree Loving: Ged Doherty, Oge Egbuonu, Colin Firth, Peter Saraf, Sarah Green, Nancy Buirski

PGA President Emeritus Hawk Koch with presenter Kerry Washington

Nominees Dan Levine (Arrival, Stranger Things) and Aaron Ryder (Arrival)

Norman Lear Award honoree James L. Brooks Presenter Janelle Monae with Moonlight director Barry Jenkins and producer (and nominee) Adele Romanski

Backstage with presenters Casey Affleck and Rami Malek Presenter Sarah Paulson

Presenter James Corden Presenter Keegan-Michael Key checks his messages.

Presenters Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro share a laugh onstage.

PRODUCED BY

25

ON THE SCENE PRODUCERS GUILD AWARDS – BEVERLY HILTON HOTEL, JANUARY 28

Arrival director Denis Villenueve and guest

Presenters Amy Adams and Octavia Spencer

Presenter Jeff Bridges

Presenter T.J. Miller

Clark Spencer accepts the feature animation award for Zootopia.

Nominees Lauren Beck and Kimberly Steward (Manchester by the Sea)

Nominee Pharell Williams (Hidden Figures) with guest Helen Lasichanh

Event Chairs Donald De Line and Amy Pascal on the red carpet with PGA National Exec Director Vance Van Petten

PRODUCING TEAM MIXER, MOVIOLA, JANUARY 26 The PGA kicked off its awards season on the west coast with a mixer honoring the producing teams for its Award-nominated projects. Attendees represented the entire spectrum of the producing team, including executive producers, story producers, post producers, VFX producers, production managers and production coordinators. Nominees mixed freely with Producers Guild members at Moviola’s production facility in Burbank, moving to tunes spun by DJ Danno and snacking on tasty Mediterranean inspired appetizers. Hosted by the Guild’s AP Council, this was the first event of its kind for the PGA.Thanks to all those who helped make it a success, in particular organizers Megan Mascena Gaspar, Melissa Friedman, Pamela Keller and Jethro Rothe-Kushel.

Board member Megan Mascena Gaspar addresses the crowd while PGA President Gary Luchhesi looks on.

26

PRODUCED BY

Producing team members Kimberly Austin, Rachel Klein, Bradley Glenn, Marah Olsen

Networking at Moviola

ON THE SCENE NOMINEES BREAKFAST – SABAN THEATRE, JANUARY 28 PGA members and their guests packed the Saban Theatre for the PGA’s traditional prelude to its biggest night, as producers from each of the ten Zanuck Award-nominated motion pictures joined moderator and PGA President Gary Lucchesi for a riveting discussion about the vision and tenacity required to produce a great film. Those in attendance got to hear Marc Platt (of eventual Zanuck Award winner La La Land) share the emotional payoff of screening the just-shot dailies of his film’s instant-classic freeway traffic jam opening number for the exhausted but inspired performers, as well as Donna Gigliotti’s (Hidden Figures) tough-as-nails negotiating stance to ensure just compensation for the talented trio of actresses at the heart of her film.

Todd Black (Fences) adds his signature to the event poster.

Marc Platt (La La Land)

Julie Yorn (Hell or High Water) answers a question.

Donna Gigliotti (Hidden Figures)

Fellow nominees Iain Canning (Lion) and Adele Romanski (Moonlight)

EAST COAST NOMINEES RECEPTION – THE PLAYERS, JANUARY 19 For the first time, the PGA celebrated its 2017 Producers Guild Awards nominees on the east coast with a pre-awards party at The Players club in Manhattan. The historic mansion provided a spectacular setting for members and nominees to schmooze while listening to inspiring remarks from PGA East Chair William Horberg, The Players President Michael Barra, and PGA National Executive Director Vance Van Petten. PGA President Lori McCreary closed the night with a rousing toast to the nominees.

PGA President Lori McCreary, PGA East Chairs Kay Rothman and William Horberg, Board member Donna Gigliotti and Assoc. National Exec Director Susan Sprung

Journalists Lese Dunton (New Sun) and Yvonna Russell (Huffington Post) enjoy the evening.

Nominees Tamara Rosenberg and Nina Krstic (O.J.: Made in America)

Franklin Cumberbatch (left) chats with fellow PGA member Amita Patel (center).

The Players VP Nichole Donje and board member Janet Jenness offer support to a party reveler.

Cheers!

PRODUCED BY

27

THE COVER

GALE ANNE 28

PRODUCED BY

R

EADERS, WE’RE BREAKING WITH PRECEDENT HERE. TO THIS POINT, PRODUCED

BY HAS NEVER IN ITS 17-YEAR HISTORY PUT AN INDIVIDUAL SUBJECT ON ITS COVER TWICE. WE THINK IT’S A REASONABLE POLICY. AFTER ALL, THERE ARE ALWAYS NEW AND TALENTED PRODUCERS COMING ON THE SCENE FOR US TO COVER. BUT THEN THERE’S GALE ANNE HURD.

HURD

Hurd appeared on the cover of Produced By’s fourth issue, way back in the spring of 2001. At the time, she was an acclaimed motion picture producer, having blown the doors off the business in the 1980s and ‘90s with modern classics like Aliens and the first two films of the Terminator franchise.

In that interview, Hurd ruminated on her experiences in the business to that point, including her apprenticeship with low-budget impresario Roger Corman and the challenges she faced as a member of the new vanguard of female producers—a cohort that included Laura Ziskin, Lauren Shuler Donner and industry trailblazer Debra Hill. That group would ultimately lay the groundwork for the rise of Marvel Comics as a force in movies—at the time of the interview, Shuler Donner’s X-Men had been a hit, Ziskin was gearing up for production on Sam Raimi’s first SpiderMan, and Hurd herself was soon to bring Ang Lee’s Hulk to the screen.

But if Gale Anne Hurd had stayed in the superhero movie game, it’s not likely she’d be on the cover of this magazine for a second time. While maintaining her profile as a feature producer, she dipped a toe into television, getting back to her classic genre-story roots to develop a horror series for AMC based on a cult-hit comic book she’d long admired. Originally conceived as an attempt to capitalize on the network’s strong Halloween ratings, The Walking Dead proceeded to rewrite the cable television record book, and propelled Hurd down an entirely new and unexpected career path.

Photographed by Kremer Johnson Photography

PRODUCED BY

29

COVER STORY: GALE ANNE HURD

Today Gale Anne Hurd is enjoying one of the most gratifying second acts the producing business has ever seen. And based on the interview that follows, we’re happy to report that the 21st century TV producer is just as candid and incisive as the 20th century movie producer was. Of course, Gale Anne Hurd is still producing movies in 2017, and there’s no telling what other platform(s) she’ll set her sights on. Check our cover in another 16 years and we’ll have the rest of the story for you.

RATHER THAN GOING ALL THE WAY BACK OVER YOUR YEARS WITH ROGER CORMAN AND JAMES CAMERON, WHICH WE’VE COVERED BEFORE, COULD WE PICK UP THE STORY WITH THE YEARS BEFORE THE WALKING DEAD? TO WHAT DEGREE WAS TV EVEN ON YOUR RADAR IN THOSE YEARS, SAY, THE MID2000S? In the mid-2000s, the landscape was beginning to shift, but I was still focusing almost entirely on a feature deal at Paramount.

Producing TV series, at that point anyway, was not something that I anticipated. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure what it was that a non-writing TV producer actually did on a series!

RIGHT. And other than a premium cable, like HBO, no one really thought of TV as being the source of some of the most compelling scripted content, with top actors, writers and directors. I thought of television as being the home of standard legal, medical and police procedurals. But as I saw more and more people, including our former PGA President Mark Gordon, finding huge success in television, it was clearly a medium worth exploring. Perhaps it would provide an opportunity to explore the kinds of genre stories that I’ve always loved but with a greater focus on creating compelling characters.

My development executives maintain strong relationships with their counter-

parts at various studios, networks, and production companies to find out if there’s particular content they are looking to develop. The feedback that I got was that AMC (which at the time we all thought of as the home of Mad Men and definitely not a network that would do genre) was

To me, television is even more demanding.

The directors rotate through, but as the producer, you have to gear up to shoot a short film every eight days.” looking to launch a show in their block of horror-genre programming, Fearfest, which ran during the two weeks leading up to Halloween. The little-known fact was that

this block actually garnered better ratings than Mad Men! AMC was really astute for realizing that they had a big audience of genre fans watching their network. How could they keep them there? How do they keep these fans coming back after Halloween?

So with that intel, we needed to pitch a genre story that would be the basis for a character-driven, serialized horror drama.

I’d been reading The Walking Dead comic book since it debuted in October, 2003. I had inquired before and the rights weren’t available. This time when I called CAA, they told me that the last person who had optioned them was Frank Darabont. And it just so happened that Frank Darabont was a close friend. He and my husband, Jonathan Hensleigh, had worked very closely together on the Young Indiana Jones TV series in the early 1990s, for George Lucas.

I picked up the phone and called Frank and said, “Frank. The Walking Dead. Let’s do it.”

What I didn’t know was the backstory.

Frank, under his overall deal with NBC, had developed a pilot script that they passed on. It had been submitted to and passed on by every other network. I told him, “Look, I know that AMC is looking to launch a genre show.”

Frank was initially resistant saying he’d been down that road and didn’t want to do it again, but then he came around.

That summer we went down to San Diego Comic-Con to meet Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead comic’s creator, who at the time was still living in Kentucky. In the fall, all of us, including executive producer David Alpert, went in to AMC and pitched the idea of adapting The Walking Dead for cable.

I’M CURIOUS, HOW DID THE SCRIPT AND THE STORY CHANGE FROM THE VERSION DEVELOPED FOR NBC? The early version had a lot more action, and the plot played out a lot faster. But AMC said, we want this to be a slow burn.

We want this to be even more about character. You don’t need to burn through the story.

PRODUCED BY

31

COVER STORY: GALE ANNE HURD

RIGHT. That was certainly much more in Frank’s wheelhouse. Frank turned in the script to AMC by late November 2009. In December they asked Frank to write an additional script so we’d have two episodes, which Frank did. Shortly thereafter, Fox International met with AMC and said that they were interested in establishing a new paradigm for launching television— essentially, a global launch. Traditionally up until that point, series that aired in the U.S. wouldn’t air overseas for months and months, often six months or more.

And Fox said, “No, we want to launch internationally, within a week or less [of the U.S. premiere], but we need more than just a pilot. That’s when we ended up with the six-episode first season order. It wasn’t cast contingent. There really were no significant contingencies.

I GUESS THAT’S THE VIRTUE OF WORKING IN CABLE AS OPPOSED TO THE BROADCAST NETWORKS? BROADCAST HAS A REPUTATION OF BEING EXTREMELY HUNG UP ON CASTING. Yes. I think that’s very much the case. At the same time, it’s not just that AMC got lucky. Look at the foresight they had to get behind both Jon Hamm and Bryan Cranston playing characters very different from those that TV audiences had seen before.

SO AS A LIFETIME FILM PRODUCER, WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO FIRST FIND YOURSELF IN THE TV PRODUCER’S CHAIR? It got easier as I came to see the a television network very much like a film studio. In TV, there are seasons when you launch a series, just like there are summer tentpoles in features. Basically I was able to parlay my film experience and come up with analogies to help me understand television.

I’D LOVE TO HEAR SOME OF THOSE. Well, for instance, the series had a launch date. In features, I’d often been given a

32

PRODUCED BY

release date long before I started a production. In fact you may have a release date before you’ve even got the first draft of a script. If I hadn’t experienced that before, I think I would have been terrified. But with The Walking Dead, at that point we already had a couple of scripts and everyone was happy with them. I have a history of producing films very efficiently. On The Terminator, we started shooting in March, 1984 and the film was in theatres that October.

THE ROGER CORMAN TRAINING ALMOST COMES IN EVEN HANDIER IN TELEVISION, I IMAGINE, THAN IN FILM. Absolutely. When you put a cast together in features, that may be for just one film, but now we’re entering our eighth season of The Walking Dead; we start shooting in May. In fact, 801 will be our 100th episode.

MADE YOU THINK THAT THEY WOULD BE THE RIGHT PEOPLE FOR THE JOB? Well the wonderful thing is that we’ve had the same fantastic line producer, Tom Luse, since the very beginning. We did shoot the first episode like a pilot.

We shoot a typical episode in eight days, and we shot the first episode in 14. There were a few different crew members on the pilot, but for the most part we’ve kept with the same crew, certainly since our second episode. Tom (a loyal PGA member, I might add) has gone back and forth between features and television, and he knows the Atlanta crews. He could very much speak a language I understood and his guidance was absolutely essential from the very beginning. We’ve had the same location manager, Mike Riley, since the very beginning, and his insight and

“WHEN WE SENT THE SCRIPT OUT TO AGENTS FOR ACTORS TO READ, WE FOUND OUT LATER THAT THEY WERE SAYING, ‘OH MY GOD, MY CLIENT ISN’T GOING TO WANT TO DO THIS ZOMBIE SERIES.’” If we had gotten the wrong lead—if we hadn’t cast Andy Lincoln—there may not have been a second season. It’s so important to get not only the right cast, but also the right crew. Television really is a family.

We’re together for six months and then we reunite again season after season.

IN TERMS OF PUTTING TOGETHER THAT CREW, WHAT

knowledge also have been essential. I think locations are more challenging in television than in a feature, because you really don’t know where the season may go, creatively, when you start production.

We’ve got somewhat of a guide in the comic book, but not entirely. You need to make sure that you headquarter in the right place for a 16-episode series. You don’t want to find out three episodes in

COVER STORY: GALE ANNE HURD

that you should have based 40 miles in the opposite direction.

THAT’S FOR SURE. VERY FEW SHOWS ARE AN INSTANT, OBVIOUS SUCCESS RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE, BUT WALKING DEAD WAS HUGE FROM THE BEGINNING. WHAT’S THAT FEELING LIKE, REALIZING THAT YOU’VE GOT A HIT ON YOUR HANDS? It was totally unexpected. When we sent the script out to agents for actors to read, we found out later that they were saying, Oh my God, my client isn’t going to want to do this zombie series. There was a great deal of reticence in the industry to take the material seriously. People assumed it was going to be niche and appeal to a very narrow audience. We were hoping for ratings that would be close to or on par with Mad Men. If we managed that, we hoped we’d get a second season order.

But the genre experience that Frank and I had, played a role, because we knew—and AMC agreed—that given our October premiere date, the most important exposure for fans would be at Comic-Con in San Diego. Television was already represented there but not to the same extent that it is now. It was still perceived as more of a launching pad for features. But given that our show was an adaptation of a comic book—and that year Kirkman was going to be awarded the Eisner Award at Comic-Con—it was important to promote the show properly to a potentially skeptical crowd. At the time, U.S. audiences primarily knew Andy Lincoln from Love, Actually, which is not exactly the obvious precursor to “genre southern sheriff.”

Because genre fans care so deeply about the material that they love, if we had gotten the casting or adaptation wrong, they would let us know. If our promotional material hadn’t worked, it would have been almost impossible to create positive word of mouth. There we all were, sitting on the stage in Ballroom 20, absolutely terrified as to how the fans would react to our sizzle reel. When they cheered and wanted us to play the trailer again at

the end of the panel, that’s when we all looked at each other and exhaled. Rather than immediate elation, it was relief first, then absolute joy.

Joel Stillerman from AMC was on the panel, and we announced that The Walking Dead was going to have an international launch … Fox International had brought their global press to a special breakfast and to the panel. That was a real game changer.

The closest thing I can come to describing what it felt like was when Jim Cameron and I went down to Hollywood Boulevard and watched The Terminator play on its opening night. It was one of those experiences where no one has very high expectations, and not only do you surprise the audience, but you shock yourself.

THAT’S GOT TO BE VERY GRATIFYING. Marketing is one aspect of being a producer that doesn’t get enough of the spotlight. You’re not just there making sure that the creative is right and that you’re on schedule and on budget. Whether it’s a film or a TV series, it’s so important to make sure that it’s marketed properly and that you understand how important the fans are, because without them, you have nothing. If no one’s watching, you don’t get to keep doing it. So we’ve always been very, very, very, very involved, all of us who are producers on The Walking Dead.

At the same time, even although the comic book fans are the ones with the greatest degree of want-to-see, we also needed to expand beyond that. I think at the time, the comic was selling maybe 30 or 40,000 copies a month, and that was not going to be enough to launch a television show and keep it on the air.

IN THAT CONTEXT, THE SHOW’S LICENSE TO STRAY FROM ITS SOURCE MATERIAL SEEMS LIKE AN ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT DECISION. From the very first season, we’ve had characters that did not exist in the comic book, like fan favorite Daryl Dixon. We’ve killed characters that are still alive in the

comic book and we have characters still alive who are dead in the comic. That immediately changes the dynamic. We also love dropping in “Easter eggs” for the comic book fans, sometimes by bringing the comic book to life, panel by panel. At the same time, you don’t want people to be able to refer to a particular issue of the comic book and know exactly what’s going to happen in an episode.

WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP LIKE WITH THE SHOWRUNNER? IS IT IN SOME WAY ANALOGOUS TO THE PRODUCER’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DIRECTOR IN FEATURES? Yes. Absolutely. That’s absolutely the proper correlation.

THAT SEEMS LIKE ANOTHER WAY THAT FRANCHISE FILMMAKING IS FAIR PREPARATION FOR TV PRODUCING. THIS ISN’T THE FIRST TIME YOU’VE BEEN THE PERSISTENT PRESENCE ON A STORY WHERE THE CHIEF CREATIVE RESPONSIBILITY— THE DIRECTOR OR SHOWRUNNER—MIGHT ROTATE TO DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Right. Likewise, with franchises, you have to go in expecting that there’s going to be a sequel and knowing where that sequel is going to go as you are writing and producing the current picture. It’s the same way for a serialized drama. We need to know the character and plot arcs for future seasons in order to set up the right conflicts and relationships for the current season.

WALKING DEAD HAS BEEN A GAME CHANGER IN SO MANY WAYS, BUT WE CAN’T IGNORE THAT IT’S THE FIRST SHOW TO LEVERAGE ITS PASSIONATE FAN BASE INTO NOT JUST A PREQUEL SERIES, BUT ITS OWN FREESTANDING TALK SHOW DEDICATED TO THE SERIES. Once again, give credit where credit’s due: AMC had the idea for a talk show. When

PRODUCED BY

33

PHOTO COURTESY AMC/GENE PAGE

COVER STORY: GALE ANNE HURD

Gale Anne Hurd discusses a scene with cast member Cliff Curtis on the set of Fear the Walking Dead.

Talking Dead launched, it was only a half hour, but it turns out that fans wanted more, and the show is now an hour. AMC also deserves credit for finding the perfect host in Chris Hardwick. When the cast or producers are on the show, we all have to sit there like Cheshire cats so as not to give anything away when Chris or the guests make a guess about what’s going to happen on the show.

Talking Dead also significantly increases the demand for content. A typical show will shoot EPK behind-the-scenes footage that’s used for the DVD or for online content. For Talking Dead, we have to create exclusives—both behind-the-scenes content, as well as sneak peeks. Denise Huth, one of our producers, and I review and approve all that content. It’s a lot of extra work, but because we’re so involved, all of our behind-the-scenes materials are

34

PRODUCED BY

“IT GOES TO SHOW YOU THAT OLDSCHOOL FILMMAKING STILL WORKS, ESPECIALLY GIVEN THE AMOUNT THAT OUR CAMERA OPERATORS ARE SHOOTING HANDHELD.” consistent with the dramatic story that we’re telling. We don’t want to cross the line and have footage that panders to the audience or that demeans characters or crew members, and we never want to give too much away in any of the EPK footage.

That’s a constant challenge.

Yesterday I sat down with our unit publicist and we talked about what days we should have EPK on set. And when they get here, what sequences should they should they cover? It’s very much part of

N ER A H TH H. T E NO AC R MOST A Y BE JURETT P

LE. A R DERD E T U EA GR RT LA FO

se ver nkey i d of tur ustry d l a r , g o a w mittin up ind y l l era e per eauco your dale t i l r b h g re Wit ions, f e and filmin Laude e t ur at L O, I loc struct e mak er For ngle.

AG C I w a a at CH infr tives, n Gre every cen tion i from n i A at AIC uc — d l d AM e J a o , t ON pr ption xpec ATI NT A e e L RP exc he un ick GA SU t fl See y.org / n sun

E NIC

LY

, ITA

, FL

H AC

E OB

VE

AN MP

PO

Z

E, A

N STO MB

TO

A AD

N

O DS

HU

N , CA BAY

A

T, M OR

P CK

RO

Y

S, K

HIL

RC

U CH

N OW LD

IL

AZ , BR

M

EA

TH

SPA

H NIS

A IER

RIV

ON AZ

COVER STORY: GALE ANNE HURD

what a producer does on a show like The Walking Dead. I don’t know if it’s typical for TV, but that’s what I do on a feature as well.

SO ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT EQUATION, HOW HAS BEING A TELEVISION PRODUCER CHALLENGED YOU AND EXPANDED YOUR SKILL SET AS A PRODUCER? I refer to TV producing as a marathon and feature producing as a sprint. I mean, look at the shooting schedules. We do 16 episodes of both The Walking Dead and now Fear the Walking Dead. My new series, Falling Water, was 10 episodes. So to me, television is even more demanding.

The directors rotate through, but as the producer, you have to gear up to shoot a short film every eight days. Eight days for 40 some-odd minutes of content. When you consider a movie is 90 or 120 minutes, that would be like shooting a feature film in 16 to 20 days.

WHICH, TO BE FAIR, IS SOMETHING YOU’VE ALWAYS KNOWN HOW TO DO.

rary HD cameras are tiny. No, they’re huge and they’re heavy! [laughs] It’s great to be retro!

Exactly! That’s where the Roger Corman training is so valuable. TV is hugely challenging, but it’s also incredibly fun. You go to work knowing that there is no going over schedule. I mean, you’ll find very few studio films that shoot on schedule with no reshoots, but we get eight days. That’s it. No reshoots. And the level of scope on our shows is pretty significant.

RIGHT. BEFORE YOU GO, I WANT TO TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT FALLING WATER AND GETTING THE CHANCE TO DISCOVER A WHOLE NEW WORLD AGAIN. CAN YOU SAY A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE STORY AND WHAT DREW YOU TO IT?

YEAH, THEY’RE CINEMATIC SHOWS, BY ANY STANDARD. We still shoot The Walking Dead on film.

We shoot on Super 16.

A VANISHING BREED. Fear the Walking Dead is shot HD. But it also goes to show you that old-school filmmaking still works, especially given the amount that our camera operators are shooting handheld. Super 16 cameras are much smaller than HD. You’d think the technology would mean that contempo-

Sure. I had a general meeting with Blake Masters and he pitched me the concept that we’re all connected through our dreams. What if very powerful dreamers existed and they could leave their dreams and enter yours? I thought that was a powerful premise. Blake told me that he and Henry Bromell (Homeland and Homicide: Life on the Street), who has since passed away, had written a spec pilot script during the writer’s strike in 2007-08.

He dug it out and sent it to me. I read it and immediately told him that I had some notes but I’d love to meet to discuss where

PHOTO COURTESY AMC/GENE PAGE

Producer Gale Anne Hurd gets a laugh out of cast member Andrew Lincoln while on location for The Walking Dead.

COVER STORY: GALE ANNE HURD

the show could go as a series. Soon after, he and Henry came in for a meeting. They were excited to expand the world of Falling Water and I was captivated, because it was all new to me. Then within a week and a half, just before we were going to meet again, Henry passed away. It was such a shock that we put Falling Water on the shelf. About a year or so later, Blake called up and told me he’d spoken to Henry’s widow Sarah, and since Falling Water was such a passion project of Henry’s, she’d given us her blessing to take it out. By this time I had an overall deal with Universal Cable Productions, so we took it to Dawn Olmstead and Kate Fenske and they loved it. The first director we went out to, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who had directed 28 Weeks Later and Intacto, read the script and came on board to direct the pilot.

Juan Carlos, Blake and I were on the same page, creatively and visually. The work that had really inspired Henry and Blake was by Haruki Murakami, the remarkable Japanese novelist. Bringing the world of Falling Water to life visually was a challenge, but Juan Carlos came in with a look book that blew everyone away. The timing was ideal because USA Network had just launched Mr. Robot successfully and they wanted something else that might appeal to the same audience. The premise of Falling Water is that we’re all dreaming individual tiles of a larger mosaic, and if you can stand back and see the mosaic, perhaps you can change the fate of the world.

VERY MUCH IN THE VEIN OF THE EXISTENTIAL, SEARCHING GENRE SHOWS WE’RE SEEING TODAY LIKE WESTWORLD AND MR. ROBOT . BLACK MIRROR IS ANOTHER ONE. THESE SHOWS SEEM TO BE WILLING TO REALLY QUESTION THE MOST BASIC PREMISES OF TV NARRATIVES.

WELL, NOW I’M CURIOUS. IT SOUNDS LIKE THE SHOW IS

Well, I hope it goes into a second season! [laughs] ¢

The show delves into the power of the human mind and our connections to each other that haven’t been explored before.

AND OBVIOUSLY THAT’S TERRITORY YOU’RE LOOKING TO EXPLORE. WHERE DO YOU HOPE IT GOES?

PHOTO COURTESY AMC/GENE PAGE

Gale Anne Hurd (bottom row, second from right) on location in Georgia with her Walking Dead family.

38

PRODUCED BY

Stages · Offices · Post Production · Screening Rooms

13 Sound Stages from 3,200 sf. to 16,300 sf.

Newly Renovated Executive and Production Office Space On-Lot Café and Cast & Crew Catering Screening Rooms featuring Digital, 3D and 4K Projection

More than a Lot!

Campus-Wide Internet Access with 1 GB Fiber Lines

888.960.3456 to learn more

5300 Melrose Ave · Hollywood, CA 90038 · www.RaleighStudios.com 877-17

STREET LEVEL

HISTORY

Producer Vassiliki Khonsari (right) and partner Navid Khonsari of iNK Stories

40

PRODUCED BY

PRODUCER VASsILIKI KHONSARI BRINGS A DOCUMENTARIAN’S SPIRIT TO THE “VERITE GAME” 1979 REVOLUTION .

Written by Justine Neubarth | Photographed by Noah Fecks

“I

would never consider myself a gamer,” says Vassiliki Khonsari, PGA member and executive producer of the groundbreaking video game 1979 Revolution: Black Friday.

“Sacrilege!” her partner, the video game director Navid Khonsari, teases as he types vigorously at his computer. We are in the sleek, light-filled Brooklyn office of iNK Stories, the duo’s narrative media production studio. In another corner, an employee pops in and out of a virtual reality headset. Vassiliki laughs with Navid, then grows serious. “I think that’s part of my strength,” she says, straightening in her chair. “Navid is very much a gamer and comes from the gaming world. And what we pride iNK Stories on is being able to have this fresh perspective from fresh eyes and being able to push the limitations of technology.”

1979 Revolution is an adventure game set amidst the tense, gripping days of the Iranian revolution. Combining the action of a video game with the narrative heft of a documentary, it’s one of the first entries in a genre that Vassiliki and Navid have titled “verite games.” Players must navigate the decisions that an everyday citizen of Tehran— in this case, an aspiring photojournalist—faced during the civil unrest surrounding the ousting of the Shah and the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The game, available for download in a variety of places including Steam and the App Store, has been nominated for three New York Game Critics Awards, including Best Game of the Year and was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the top 10 games of 2016.

Vassiliki studied both cultural anthropology and film as an undergrad, which led her to the University of Manchester for a master’s degree in visual anthropology.

Following school, she said she was “lured”

into the documentary film industry, where she cut her teeth on “bread and butter” pieces for TLC like Paramedics. One of the first feature documentary jobs she landed was as an assistant director of a film about the video game Street Fighter II. The project introduced her to both gamer culture and the “monstrous disasters that can take place” in documentary filmmaking: the film’s sound was stored in a building across from the World Trade Center and was destroyed on September 11, 2001. iNK Stories was formed in 2006, and more documentary projects soon followed, including Pindemonium, about the cultish world of Olympic pin collectors, and Pulling John, about professional arm wrestlers. Vassiliki served as a producer and director of photography on the first film and directed the latter. The experience both films provided—that of dipping into an odd little subculture—proved to be invaluable. “Coming from the background of cultural anthropology, it was always very inspiring for me to step into these microcosms,” she says. “These little worlds that people create and organize themselves around.”

Navid’s background is in AAA video game direction, including several iterations of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

After working on both documentary and smaller video game content together, Vassiliki and Navid were looking to access different audiences and observed the tremendous power of games to do just that. Navid grew up in Iran until the age of 10, when his family left for Canada following the revolution. When, as an adult, he traveled to a small village in southern Iran, word caught on that “a guy from New York” was visiting … who just happened to be the only Iranian headlining name in the Grand Theft Auto credits. As Vassiliki tells it, “A line formed

of these small kids who wanted to meet him and talk about the game. It was really profound to see what impact games make as a cross cultural platform.”

Early 2011 brought the Arab Spring. As the demonstrations unfolded across the Middle East and North Africa, Vassiliki says “you felt like you were limited” in the documentaries and news stories that were coming out about the vast social movement. She and Navid were searching for spaces where audiences could interact with the real events that were going on around them. “What if you were to throw someone into the fire of revolution?” she remembers thinking. “What would they do?”

And the idea for 1979 Revolution was born.

Initially the idea was met with both excitement and resistance. “Some publishers,” says Vassiliki, “were very open: ‘We are not ready to handle anything remotely controversial.’” But the pair felt that it was the right story at the right time, and they further incubated the idea at the Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Lab. Navid’s roots gave them access to plenty of primary sources, and they also felt that enough time had passed to explore what had been, for many, a painful and violent period.

“There was a huge exodus that took place after the revolution,” Navid tells me. “So the next generation has been born in the United States and Germany and Canada, and they’re kind of at an arm’s length from understanding. And rightfully so, because their parents had to escape their homeland, so it’s not something that they want to talk about.” A video game, they felt, could be a good way to bridge that understanding between the generations.

For Vassiliki, a first-time producer of a large video game project, the initial step in developing the game wasn’t much different than that of a feature documentary: a huge amount of research and

PRODUCED BY

41

The Producers Guild of America Wishes To Thank All Who Helped Make

The 28th Annual Producers Guild Awards A Night To Remember

event chairs donald de line & amy pascal

Stage Manager Doug Neal

Event Coordinators levy, pazanti & Huff

public relations 42 west

co-producer audrey hanson

musical curator Zen Freeman

Director Jim Piccirillo

sponsorships diane salerno six degrees global

Show Manager Andy Tyler special segments producer Hans Bardenheuer Script Supervisor Judi Gray Mabern art direction rachael sackett Graphics Haydon Lane

lighting equipment prg brian edwards video vpp sound delicate productions Floral Design R Jack

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDRES PEREZ-DUARTE/INK STORIES

STREET LEVEL HISTORY

Vassiliki Khonsari (center) watches a take for 1979 Revolution alongside team member Richard Peasey (additional writing) and lead cast member Farshad Farahat.

IN RESPONSE TO THE RECENT EXECUTIVE ORDERS REGARDING IMMIGRATION, INK STORIES IS DONATING FEBRUARY’S PROCEEDS FROM 1979 REVOLUTION SALES TO THE ACLU. STANDING IN SOLIDARITY WITH IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES—INCLUDING NAVID KHONSARI AS WELL AS MANY OTHER IRANIAN NATIVES FROM THE STUDIO’S PRODUCTION TEAM AND CAST NOW LIVING IN THE U.S. ON VISAS OR AS CITIZENS, SOME OF WHOM WERE AT VARIOUS TIMES REGISTERED AS REFUGEES—INK STORIES HAS DOUBLED DOWN ON ITS CONVICTION THAT OUR NATION’S DIVERSITY MAKES US STRONGER.

outreach to the Iranian community “across gender, across religion, across political ideology.” But there were plenty of other new skills to acquire.

In particular, she says, she had to wrangle budgetary considerations that would have never popped up when shooting live action or documentary, like the unique costs of adding additional main characters. “You have to start with motion capture.

You have to design a character build.

You have to have the concept art.

3-D design is expensive in terms of memory, in terms of art and in terms of building it.

They also wanted the story world to look as authentic as possible, beginning with the motion capture portion of the design. Initially, Navid wasn’t thinking too hard about the actors that they would be using for “mo-cap.” “I was just thinking of it in a technical way, like no one’s going to see their faces because they’re wearing these spandex suits,” he tells me. Vassiliki, however, pushed for an all-Iranian cast; this paid tremendous

dividends, Navid says, when it came to “the nuances, the mannerisms and the details.”

They shot all of the game’s motion capture—the equivalent of a feature-length script—in four days in Los Angeles. Despite the brutal schedule, Vassiliki calls it a pivotal moment for the cast. “Each of the actors had experienced the revolution to some degree in their personal lives, whether firsthand or as echoes through their family. […] And you know, of course there are limited opportunities for a lot of these actors, who are sick of playing terrorists or prophets.” They were later able to use the same actors for the characters’ voices.

The iNK Stories team next turned to the challenge of artwork. In an industry that doesn’t often veer from what Vassiliki calls the “existing template of most games, which is, ‘I’m a big buff white guy with a shaved head and a machine gun,’” this proved to be a distinct challenge. Crafting the “naturalistic look” of an everyday, 18-year-old Iranian who “isn’t super

PRODUCED BY

43

STREET LEVEL HISTORY

buff” was, in Navid’s words, “a huge responsibility.” Explains Vassiliki, “It’s hard to redirect artists to unlearn what they’ve done so many times over. That’s really the challenge. You work in an industry where people are rewarded for doing fine work in one direction.”

But the possibilities of the project far outweighed the challenges. Vassiliki hopes to continue to revisit history through the lens of the everyday citizen, not just the “top down” overview favored by so many documentaries. And she wants the genre to reach as many people as possible. “Part of our mission in making verite games is making it accessible for the global citizen,” Vassiliki says. “We localize in Turkish, very specifically because of what’s going on right now in Turkey. We localize in Farsi. French. German. Spanish.”

They see the genre having social implications domestically as well. One time period they are considering for a future verite experience is the volatile years of the late 1960s and early 1970s in America. “I think we’ve become complacent over the past 30-odd years,” Navid tells me. “It’s time to start giving people the idea that revolutions were taking place. People actually took to the streets in this country in that time. You think of it as something that happens ‘over there,’ but it’s happened here, and it might need to happen again.”

Vassiliki has been buoyed by both the overwhelmingly positive response to 1979 Revolution and the variety of audiences it has reached. “It’s not just mere novelty, this idea of making decisions,” Vassiliki says. “There’s a valid story to it. It resonates with people.” iNK Stories has received accolades from everyone from “deeply, deeply moved and overjoyed” Iranians to a Christian gaming organization called GameChurch, which named 1979 Revolution one of its top picks from 2016. It was also featured in a UNESCO working paper titled “Empathy, Perspective and Complicity: How Digital Games Can Support Peace Education and Conflict Resolution.”

44

PRODUCED BY

STREET LEVEL HISTORY

The game has also done very well among female players. “Incredible,” says Navid. “Two to one, women over men are engaging with 1979.” As one of a handful of female producers in a heavily male-dominated industry, Vassiliki is eager to bring more women both in front of and behind the screen.

“For the first time, publishers and people who are looking at the demographics are realizing that female gamers are a growing population and that they’re here to stay,” she asserts. “They can only benefit from this, by making more female-oriented content. And by doing that, you have to have more people.

There has to be a movement to bring more women—not only behind the

cameras, but also in the development process and the execution process.”

The project’s reception was not universal; perhaps most notably, the Iranian government banned the game. Iran’s National Foundation for Computer Games called 1979 “anti-Iranian,” while its director said in a press release that “games like this can poison the minds of the youth and young adults about their country.”

The response put the studio on high alert. “We had one of the guys who was working on the game here under an alias,” Vassiliki says. “A number of people who provided really crucial research, content and personal photos had to remain nameless to avoid jeop-

Director Navid Khonsari (standing) works with cast members Bobby Naderi (kneeling), Ray Haratian (on back) and Omid Abtahi (right), on a stage at motion capture facility House of Moves in Los Angeles.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDRES PEREZ-DUARTE/INK STORIES

ardizing their safety in Iran.”

But for the time being, iNK Stories will continue to explore the Iranian revolution through game experiences.

Their next project is titled BlindFold, a virtual reality experience set in the universe of 1979. Again, the player embodies the part of a photojournalist (although a different one from the protagonist of 1979) who is being held in Evin Prison and is charged with making propaganda against the state.

Vassiliki partnered with both Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists, who helped provide research for the VR experience.

Vassiliki and Navid see this approach—combining verite with virtual reality—as the new frontier. “There are an incredible amount of possibilities [in] creat[ing] virtual reality experiences that are actually narrative driven.

It’s literally the one area people haven’t jumped into because they haven’t figured it out,” Navid says. “But,” adds Vassiliki, “we’ve teamed up with the right partners. Really nailed down the tech. We’ve gone through the school of hard knocks, really cracking this cinematic, interactive narrative.” They have several more projects looming on the horizon that they aren’t quite ready to divulge, but they are excited about pulling in more partners from outside of the video gaming world—from both the nonprofit sector and Hollywood.

Like Vassiliki, I do not consider myself a gamer—my fast twitch gaming muscles only get me as far as the pinball that came with Microsoft XP. But I downloaded 1979 Revolution onto my phone and have been playing it all over New York—on the couch, in cafes, on the subway during my morning commutes. It is especially then, when I am simultaneously crossing the Manhattan Bridge and on my phone walking along Tehran’s Sharheza Avenue, that I think of Vassiliki and Navid, tucked in their studio in the shadow of the bridge’s overpass, creating the next form of revolutionary media. ¢

PRODUCED BY

45

THE FINAL STAGE The Dean of Sitcom Line Producers, Vic Kaplan, Reflects on 40 Years On Set. Written by Chris Milliken Photography by Jared LaPine

46

PRODUCED BY

O

ver the decades, producer and PGA member Vic Kaplan has been on hand for some legendary moments in television. From his early days bringing copy to Peter Jennings’ news desk to producing stand-up specials with Robin Williams and sitcoms with Garry Shandling, Ellen DeGeneres and Louis CK, Kaplan has enjoyed a storied career as a producer, filled with iconic and groundbreaking television and lots and lots of funny shows. From his office at his latest show on the lot at Hollywood Center Studios, he shared some reflections on an expansive career in TV production.

Currently producing Disney’s KC Undercover, Kaplan says he has finally arrived at his last show.

Ironically, given the breadth of his career, Undercover is only his second children’s show--in the years leading up to it, he produced just about every other flavor of television.

Kaplan began his career in New York, where after graduating from New York University with a degree in TV production (where his path sometimes crossed with fellow students Martin Scorsese and Michael Wadleigh), he began working at ABC News as a desk assistant to Peter Jennings. He recalls sometimes crawling on the newsroom floor during live broadcasts to bring the anchor his copy. Subsequently, he moved on to various live TV productions in New York—concerts, news, soap operas and sports broadcasts.

He admits that at times he wasn’t sure of his trajectory in the early days, remarking that he “took lots of jobs, lots of opportunities, didn’t know what I was getting myself into ... I just wanted to see what it [was] like.” He jokes that in terms of selecting projects, he caught the instant gratification bug long before it became part of popular culture. He’d jump to new projects from week to week and “didn’t have time to reflect” on a direction. Although his early interest was in sports, opportunities pulled him in other directions, “like a great wave.” Fortunately, he found his work in live events to be a useful calling card; so much material at the time was shot and broadcast live or with minimal editing.

Kaplan fondly recalls the work culture of the era.

Working in production “was about the community and being able to mesh with others.” Producers we were consistently helping each other in the 1970s— Kaplan often enjoyed the security of having his next job lined up before his current gig ended. He laughs, “I didn’t think there was going to be unemployment!”

His experience in live TV led to producing comedy, which turned out to be a prelude to a career in the

genre. He produced the live sketch show Friday’s, the early competitor to Saturday Night Live, which featured Larry David and Michael Richards as well as great music from the era. The show was a perfect fit thanks to Kaplan’s experience producing live TV. But he admits that a live sketch show came with its fair share of challenges, as the volume of material to learn in a week made for some tense days on set. But as he says, “That’s what live TV is about.”

Eventually he made his way to the West Coast after a visit to Hollywood, where he recalls his jaw dropping at the number of shows in production.

After speaking with ABC, he worked out a move to Los Angeles after almost going into live sports broadcasting in New York. But LA’s own abundance of live programming provided a good feeling that he could sustain his career.

Indeed his “major calling card” of live television experience opened doors to producing a range of music, sketch shows, late night TV, and stand-up specials in the 1980s. He produced music specials for HBO with bands like Fleetwood Mac and stand up specials with Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Lewis and Dennis Miller. Producing those events, he learned the essential importance of making sure the venue was familiar, comfortable and a place where “you know you’re supported.”

A slew of sitcom pilots also came his way in the 1980s and from those, “the first show to really blossom” was the innovative, genre-busting It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. Kaplan calls it one of the most enjoyable series to work on, recalling that “Garry made me laugh every day.” He also praises the unique nature of the show and Shandling’s artistic vision which he says “was remarkable.” His collaboration with Shandling wasn’t limited to the sitcom; Kaplan returned to produce The Garry Shandling Show: 25th Anniversary Special, a program modeled after The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson specials. On that show, the character Larry Sanders was born.

More TV comedies followed, with sitcoms in the 1990s like ROC, Get Smart and Ellen. Brought on to the second season of Ellen DeGeneres’ sitcom as an executive producer, Kaplan recalls it as a show which had “great expectations.” In the third season, those expectations were fulfilled when he produced the show’s historic coming-out episode, “The Puppy Episode.” “There was a lot of trepidation around what [the episode] was going to be,” both at the network and throughout the industry, and of course, “there was a lot of emotion” on and around the set. But he remains proud of his role in holding the show together during

PRODUCED BY

47

THE FINAL STAGE

the experience and of the Peabody Award honoring the episode. The producer keeps a framed picture of Ellen and the show’s writers in his office, with the text of the episode’s script on the frame. In an office that’s sparsely decorated, it stands out.

After Ellen, Kaplan continued shooting pilots and sitcoms until landing at Louis CK’s HBO’s multi-camera venture, Lucky Louie in 2006. Kaplan admits he expected to retire after what he anticipated would be something as unique and funny as that series, which he calls “one of the funniest shows ever done.” It looked to be a fitting end to his skills and experience after decades of comedy and live TV. Lucky Louie was, he says, “hardcore multi-camera” filmed in front of a live audience, “with sets that were raw like The Honeymooners.”

Unfortunately, Louis CK was a few years away from making his stripped-down conception of the sitcom stick, and Lucky Louie didn’t make it to a second season.

Kaplan admits to coming out of semi-retirement to work on his previous show and KC Undercover. Today he’s producing the final season of the latter series, having a good time working with a collection of writers he’s known since the ‘90s.

Reflecting on his work, Kaplan readily offers some insights into what’s made him effective at the job. He calls it a matter of gathering the right personnel, which in turn provides a good deal trust. “The team that you bring in as a producer,” he says, “the entire crew, people who are fabulous at what they do … [they] help bring your confidence.” A great crew “brings the best to the table and they’re there to collaborate.”

Kaplan is frank but optimistic—a frequent combination among producers— about the challenges that come with producing any project. “Looking back, you go through periods of time where you don’t think you’re going to make it. You think that a project is not working out, and all of a sudden there are these positive forces that all come together and make a success out of an experience that you didn’t think was going to work out.”

Kaplan has seen a multitude of changes in television over so many years. What has

48

PRODUCED BY

Vic Kaplan (center) meets with members of his day-one team, painter Rick Webb and medic Andrew Spackman, at Hollywood Center Studios.

changed the most? Beyond the obvious evolution of technology and style, he recalls the benefits that come with a smaller, more intimate producing community, with its culture of forwarding jobs to colleagues when they needed the work. But there are changes that Kaplan readily welcomes, like the fact that a whole TV series can be available at one time; he loves binge watching.

Similarly, he is excited about the incredible variety of contemporary content produced over so many platforms and agrees to the notion that we are in a golden age of TV. Across the ever-changing aspects of production, technology and style, Kaplan views a few things as constant features of successful producing. From multi-camera sitcoms to live specials to projects for the internet, Kaplan calls “enthusiasm and hope” the essential ingredients in producing nearly anything. And of course, another constant is passion for a project— the fact that “You love doing it,” he summarizes and “You hope that it’ll be the next big thing.” As a producer, working with a writer who has created something unique and special, it’s “doubly exciting” when the show does become a hit.

For those navigating their early steps in Hollywood, Kaplan offers a seasoned perspective. “It’s hard to be judgmental when starting out,” he observes. “Opportunities will present themselves in different ways.”

As much as anything, he suggests, a career is about being open to fate. “In the end, it’s impossible to know where you’ll end up. It’s about meshing with the universe and seeing how your personality meshes with others,” as well as understanding how you affect your collaborators. And of course, practical knowledge is essential.

Arm yourself with a grasp of the basics of producing different types of shows—for instance, what they typically require as far as locations, hours, and personnel.

But there’s no mistaking the centrality that people—the relationships and trust—hold in Kaplan’s account of his own career. “The people that I met carried me through it.” Recounting his trajectory, even Kaplan seems surprised at the volume of unexpected memories of projects and people that continued to pour out--specials, writers, colleagues, moments with colleagues. “There’s a great connective tissue that’s there,” he smiles, “You can’t see it. But it’s there. It’s a pot of stuff that ended up a career.”

This final stage of his career has also brought other unexpected gifts that come with decades of working in the industry.

He loves seeing familiar names on credits, like production assistants he hired on Ellen now producing shows themselves, calling it “one of the finest moments, feelings that I have…It pays the job back.” ¢

San Francisco isn’t just a city. It’s a genre.

Filming in San Francisco gives you more character for your budget –with up to a $600,000 rebate for productions. filmsf.org 415-554-6241

REMIXED p. 42

DIRK GENTLY REVIVED AND

PRODUCE DBY AUGUST | SEPTEMBER

vember 2016 PRODUCED BY October/No

CEDBY U PROPD RODUCEDBY

ANYTIME. ANYWHERE.

NETFLIX FOR LATINOS? P

ONGALO TAKES SHAPE p. 50

BER MERICA // OCTOBER | NOVEM THE PRODUCERS GUILD OF A THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF

THE OFFICIAL MAGAZI NE OF THE PRODUCERS

2016

GUILD OF AMERICA //

AUGUST | SEPTEMBER

2016

PRODUCED BY: DIGITAL @

BRUNA PAPANDRE A

William Horberg

PRODUCERSGUILD.ORG

5 volume xii number

LET’S GET SOCIAL

WILLIAM volume xii number 4

HORBERG

play a long, patient “Sometimes you have to time has come.� game for an idea whose

B RUN A

PAPANDREA

“Movies with wome n at the center have always made mone But the industry needs y. constant reminders of that.�

Advertising Info: Ken Rose at ken@moontidemedia.com or 818-312-6880

PRODUCED BY

49

KEEPING CRITICS HAPPY Strength in experience, diversity and partnerships.

Aqua-Aston Hospitality has over 50 properties and nearly 10,000 rooms across five distinct brands designed to suit any lifestyle, taste or budget. aqua-aston.com Aqua - 1.866.940.2782 Aston - 1.866.774.2924

WELCOME HOME

PROVIDING DISTINCTIVE EXPERIENCES

FOR THE SAVVY TRAVELER IN EVERYONE

WHEN CLEAN & COMFORTABLE IS ENOUGH

YOUR PIECE OF PARADISE

Acclaimed Documentary The Eagle Huntress Challenged Societal Convention, the Elements and a Brutally Tight Budget.

By Chris Pfaff

PRODUCED BY

51

TAKING FLIGHT

IT WAS A SINGLE IMAGE, BUT ITS PURITY AND ICONIC BACKGROUND LED TO A QUEST THAT WOULD HAVE MADE MARCO POLO BLUSH. MOST DOCUMENTARY PRODUCERS START A PROJECT WITH A SINGLE STORY THREAD THAT EMBODIES A LARGER NARRATIVE. IN THE CASE OF PGA MEMBER OTTO BELL, IT WAS A SINGLE PHOTO ON FACEBOOK THAT LED TO HIM BOARDING A PLANE TO OUTER MONGOLIA TO CHASE THE SUBJECT OF HIS FIRST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE, THE EAGLE HUNTRESS, WHICH WAS RECENTLY NOMINATED FOR A PRODUCERS GUILD AWARD. THE STORY, WHICH TRACKS A 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL’S GENDER-BUSTING PERFORMANCE AS A RECORD-BREAKING EAGLE HUNTRESS, THE FIRST WOMAN IN HER TRIBE’S CENTURIES OF TRAINING MASSIVE EAGLES TO HUNT FOXES FOR THEIR VALUABLE PELTS, HAS CAPTURED THE SPIRITS OF AUDIENCES WORLDWIDE AND IS A TALE OF DOCUMENTARIAN PASSION AS WELL. “I saw a Facebook post that led me to a photo essay on the BBC’s website. That was Asher Svidensky’s incredible photos of Aisholpan, the girl who would become the center of my life for more than a year,” says Bell, who was working at the agency Ogilvy’s branded entertainment unit when he first alighted on the idea of making a film about Aisholpan. “I was so taken with the story of Aisholpan and the photos. I immediately looked up Asher on Facebook to talk to him about making a film.” Turns out his

52

PRODUCED BY

instincts were correct: The journalist who wrote up the piece, William Kremer, later attended a screening at the London Film Festival with his mother. “He told me that photo essay was the most-trafficked page, outside of breaking news, on the entire BBC site for all of 2014,” Bell reports.

“I had been making documentary-style shorts for seven to eight years,” he continues, “and I was finally ready for a project without client interference or ‘brand objectives.’ At that time, I had gotten into the habit of looking at everything I read, or saw, through the lens of a film, even while walking down the street.

“I was profoundly moved by the images that Asher took. They were beautiful—like paintings. There was a more objective part of me that felt they had the ingredients for a good film. Photos break apart for me.

I was looking at the background and I saw these incredible stories within the images.

Outer Mongolia is the most remote part of the least-populated country in the world, so the logistics of even contemplating a film production were incredible.”

After contacting Svidensky, Bell had a Skype session with him and shortly thereafter boarded a plane to Mongolia.

He was filming at the time in Egypt with a cameraman, Chris Raymond, and brought him along with Svidensky in tow.

Bell, who produced the filming portion of the film himself and acted as director, soon found himself in the Altai Mountains in the northwest part of Mongolia.

“I said to Chris Raymond, ‘I cannot pay you.’” Bell recounts. “We had been filming a commercial in Cairo, and Chris, me, and Asher went for the first trip. From a production point of view, it’s an unforgiving location. Tough place to logistically set up a shoot. You fly into Ulan Battar, the capital city, from Beijing or Moscow. You land there and you have to wait a few days.

Aisholpan’s region is Ulgii—and Ulgii is the provincial capital. Only two flights a week go to this little town, via a twin-prop plane.”

On one occasion, Bell had to leave 200 kilos of the gear in a locked room at the Ulan Battar airport, as the twin-prop plane could not take off with passengers and the gear.

“The first location was so spectacular—with purples and reds in the sky at sunset and Aisholpan training with her father’s eagle. The eagle is part of the largest species of golden eagle in the world.

They have 7 to 8-foot wingspans; they are massive and prehistoric in scale. I thought that this was an exotic setting overall. And of course, Aisholpan has this beautiful presence, with an angelic face and a strong profile.”

Finding the family required driving around the steppe where the nomadic hunters set up their ger, or yurt. The hospitable tribespeople, who are quite used to welcoming rugged individualist tourists and amateur photographers, welcomed Bell with some hard cheese and tea and told him where to find Aisholpan and her family.

“I was hoping that the family would be alright with me filming.

I should not have worried, as they are used to having a few intrepid tourists making their way to their door. Nurgaiv, the Dad, was really cool with the whole idea, and he then said to me, ‘Well, we will steal an eagle for Aisholpan this afternoon.’”

Bell had only a narrow window in which to capture the pivotal scene where Aisholpan secures her eagle, as the birds only have a few days after being born before they start to leave the nest.

“I had thought that I would capture this moment, which became the centerpiece of the first act,” Bell recalls, “and I thought I would get a sizzle reel to show to financiers. And then this moment with the baby eagle happened. We had to jump on it. So I went into planning the production and mapping out how we were going to shoot it. It was happening that afternoon. This is where I am happy being a producer and director. It works seamlessly together.”

Things got interesting when Bell and cameraman Raymond, who is afraid of heights, approached the cliff face where they had to capture the eagle-snatching scene.

Producer and director Otto Bell (center) with Aisholpan (L of center) and siblings, as well as cameraman Christopher Raymond (back).

TAKING FLIGHT

COURTESY OF ASHER SVIDENSKY

“Chris wouldn’t climb up the cliff. He had a C-300 camera at the time. I drew out the scene on a notepad. I put Chris at the bottom of the cliff to get my wide shot– my safety–of the whole experience. And the nest itself was shot by Asher with me doing sound over his shoulder with a Xoom recorder. Trouble was, Asher had never shot video before—only stills. I said to him, ‘Just turn your Canon 1-D to video and keep focus and keep it sharp.’ He and I went up the hill with the family and there was this outcrop of rocks and this ledge, and we nearly killed ourselves getting onto the ledge. I found this GoPro camera at the bottom of my rucksack and I put it underneath Aisholpan’s cardigan sweater to get those POV shots where you feel like you’re inside the nest. So in total we shot the scene from three angles. The whole thing was one take —12 minutes. I had the mother eagle circling overhead, and mind you this is our first afternoon filming so we didn’t have our

rhythm down yet, we hadn’t worked out the translation flow so we were just purely observing this amazing feat.”

After the first visit, Bell realized that he had to capture the landscape of this remote part of Mongolia more thoroughly and called his longtime collaborator, Simon Nibblet, the primary DP on the film.

“I knew I needed a birdseye view and needed to get airborne to show the landscape from above. I had produced and directed films with Simon for about eight years. We have done 10 to 12 productions together shooting in a wide range of locations, from Uganda to Vietnam to Hokkaido, Japan. Simon is a real inventor and a pioneer of drone photography. Years ago he used model helicopter parts to build one of the first drones capable of carrying a RED camera. He made me a 9-meter crane that is based on a ship mast, which folds away into a snowboard bag. That is how we got those swooping aerial shots we got.”

Nibblet also helped create a tracking rig out of the aging van the crew used to get around—literally roping open the side door to get an unobstructed view for their Ronin Steadicam rig. In the 300 hours of footage shot, Bell and his team used a hodgepodge of cameras, which ran from Sony A7s to the Pocket Blackmagic to the principal camera, the RED Epic. The team also used a C-300, Canon 1D and GoPro. Principal photography wrapped in February, 2015.

Aisholpan’s victory at the annual eagle hunting festival, where she beat 70 men and set a record in one of the categories, was shot over two days and became a turning point in the narrative of the film, stunning the male hunter elders of the village and the crew alike.

“I had shot two rounds of interviews with these elders, on two different visits,” Bell continues. “Even though there had been a handful of eagle huntresses over the centuries, Aisholpan was unique in her

PRODUCED BY

53

DISCOVER THE NEW

UNIVERSALSTUDIOSLOT.COM A PRODUCTION TOOL FOR FEATURES

TELEVISION

COMMERCIALS AND MORE

@UNIVERSALSTUDIOSLOT

BLACK MESA

GREATDIVERSITY IN OKLAHOMA

37% CASH REBATE Majestic mesas and ancient mountains. Windswept prairies and shifting sand dunes. You’ll find it all in Oklahoma, where 12 eco-regions form America’s most diverse terrain. You’ll also find a skilled crew, a film-friendly atmosphere and expansive industry infrastructure all within convenient driving distance of Oklahoma’s two metropolitan cities.

Scene 1 -

Scene 2 -

BOATHOUSE DISTRICT

NATURAL FALLS

Scene 3 -

Scene 4 -

LITTLE SAHARA

TALLGRASS PRAIRIE

Scene 5 -

Scene 6 -

TALIMENA

GREAT SALT PLAINS

VISIT www.Oklahoma.film

54

PRODUCED BY

CALL 800.776.FILM

TAKING FLIGHT

Aisholpan and “Whitewings”

COURTESY OF ANDREW YARME

region and her tribe and had outshone everyone else. These elders put on their ceremonial furs and sat down with me, and they would tell me about traditional women’s duties and how no woman should ever be an eagle huntress.

I noticed them all saying ‘Jokk,’ which means ‘no’ in Kazakh and built a montage in my mind that ended up in the final film. When she won the tournament, they all came up with excuses for her performance, like ‘Oh, her Dad’s a great coach; her bird is exceptional,’ but they refused to believe she could be a real hunter without having hunted during winter. That was what I needed to capture.”

In a traditional sports-related documentary, the film might have ended with a natural moment of victory, in which the athlete holds up the trophy, and the picture fades to black. Bell wanted to ensure that the real victory in his film would be Aisholpan successfully hunting in the bone-chilling Mongolian winter. And as fate would have it,

his funds were running out.

“Aisholpan’s major milestones in her chronology dictated my production schedule. I had no choice but to use my own life savings ($80,000) to fund the shoots. I needed to capture the winter scenes, and in addition to knowing how brutal the weather would be, I was suddenly faced with the reality that I had no funds whatsoever to return to do this shooting.”

Bell turned to colleague Doug Scott, who referred him to Morgan Spurlock, who stepped up when the project was most in need.

“I was literally out of money. I had never been in money troubles ever, and I was depressed. I had been carrying this film every day. I was staring at the ceiling, and really worried about finishing it. It was a dark time. I cut together the first 10 minutes of the film and sent a link to Morgan in an email, and he got back to me the same day.”

Spurlock not only brought Bell into his company, Warrior Poets, to cut the film, but also

PRODUCED BY

55

COURTESY OF ANDREW YARME

introduced him to financiers and to producer Stacey Reiss as well as Spurlock’s sales agent at CAA to help shop the film. Bell also discovered Martina Radwan, a documentarian who had adopted children in Mongolia and was shooting there, to get scenes of Aisholpan with her school chums and pro-

56

PRODUCED BY

vide some verité footage that captured the quotidian aspects of life in the most remote part of the world.

Says Bell, “Warrior Poets did incredible work on smoothing out footage and doing synched sound. Everything was translated.

The nat sound—it took months for us to do.

We had a team of people, led by Stacey in Kazakhstan—ten translators whom we fed constant information. Morgan put together a great team, and it was great to have women on what is clearly a women’s film.

Sharon Chang and Stacey were fantastic.”

Spurlock also helped pull off a coup,

TAKING FLIGHT

father sink into the snow and cross frozen lakes.

We would have to run ahead of them in order to capture real moments, and they were amazing to work with, due to their incredible determination.”

The film’s transformation from ethnographic passion project to global empowerment favorite was clear in audience responses, starting with Sundance 2016.

Sony Pictures Classics, which bought the film, has seen results from strong word of mouth.

They were not alone in their interest; Fox bought the rights to remake The Eagle Huntress as an animated film.

“Chris Wedge, head of Blue Sky Studios, saw the same photo I did on the BBC site and he started developing an animated version. He heard about our film at Sundance and saw me and said ‘Let’s talk.’ So I am helping provide background for his film. It’s in safe hands to keep Aisholpan’s message of female empowerment in there. I don’t mind whether people see the doc and or the animated version. Whatever guise it comes in, I just care that young girls and boys hear Aisholpan’s message. I don’t care about the carrier.” ¢

COURTESY OF ANDREW YARME

Top left: The crew prepares to grab a tracking shot.

Bottom left: DP Simon Niblett, camera assistant Ben Crossley and producer/director Otto Bell with their 9m, 25kg crane.

Below: Ben Crossley and Otto Bell prep their drone for takeoff.

when Daisy Ridley, already one of the most visible actors on the planet thanks to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, saw a cut of the film before its Sundance premiere and signed on to do the narration. “Daisy Ridley made the film easier for the younger audiences to track along,” says Bell. “She is far more than a name on the poster for us.”

With the financing secured, Bell could return to Mongolia to film the final hunt scenes. Shooting was almost impossible during the day where it warm up to minus 25 Fahrenheit, while at night it would go down to minus 40-50 degrees. He had scheduled five days for the shoot; it would end up taking 22. The cold created interminable response times. “You had to wait for warmth so you could get four to five minutes out of a battery or ensure that your hand would stop sticking to the tripod.

We would strike every day, from this little village on the Chinese border and go 10-15 kilometers in every direction looking for these blooming foxes, and then when the sun went down, we would race back to the village. We’d sing songs around the fire at night to stay warm.”

Continues Bell, “We could go days without seeing a fox, and we would watch Aisholpan and her

PRODUCED BY

57

58

PRODUCED BY

ACES The Academy’s Color Management Standard Belongs on Producers’ Radar. written By Michael Goldman | Illustrated by kelsey elliot rom Glenn Gainor’s point of view, the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) is a topic producers of all categories need to include in their dossier of technical subjects worth understanding for the simple reason that what used to be called “filmmaking’ is now a multi-format, multi-platform art form. Therefore, he suggests, those responsible for assembling the people and resources necessary for generating quality content for delivery on this new industry landscape— producers—need every advantage they can get in terms of literally getting everyone on the same page.

“We’re not just making a movie for the big screen, but for streaming and hard-disc formats and even for high dynamic range [displays],” explains Gainor, a longtime PGA member and head of physical production at Screen Gems. “ACES allows for consistency across many deliverables known today and new ones to come. As more people shoot in a manner that allows greater manipulation in the post-production process, it’s more important to understand the intended look, and that’s what [ACES helps achieve].

It’s like shooting what we used to call a ‘fat negative.’ You want as much information available for the post-production process so the movie can live in all formats.”

So what exactly is ACES and how does it help filmmakers achieve this goal? ACES is the free and open source color and digital file management system that began life as a project of the Academy’s Science and Technology Council about 10 years ago. Over

PRODUCED BY

59

ACES MATTER

the last two years, ACES 1.0 has officially rolled out as a device-independent workflow management standard meant to be incorporated into pipelines so as to permit color, file, and metadata consistency and control throughout entire productions, from the start of principal photography through final mastering and everything in between.

Andy Maltz, Managing Director of the Academy’s Science and Technology Council and project director for the ACES initiative, says the notion essentially was to come up with what he calls “a replacement” for the long, stable workflow infrastructure that existed across the industry during the film era when film lab methods were typically similar everywhere, ensuring consistency in processing and image quality. During the rise of the digital era, no comparable industry standard workflow rose up to take over. Instead a wide range of proprietary and constantly shifting methodologies became the norm.

ACES, he explains, was designed to put an end to the Wild West nature of digital production workflows caused by the advent of a seemingly endless number of different camera formats by simplifying the management of those different formats through the use of a common color space format to work in. The goal was to enable consistent color management through an entire production so that all principals could be confident they were viewing identical imagery, while futureproofing productions by ensuring masters of such high quality that their properties would be suitable for display technologies of the future—a particularly important topic these days with the emergence of higher dynamic range (HDR) display technology that is likely to only improve in coming years.

On the technical side, there is a lot more to the various components of ACES, which combined make up what is called the ACES Viewing Transform—the way that ACES files can be viewed on calibrated monitors. The various Viewing Transform components essentially deal with how to convert data to ACES color

60

PRODUCED BY

space, how to apply ACES data to shots, how to render or convert that data and then more or less how to spit it out in the correct viewing format for different kinds of monitors in different kinds of color space formats.

But the ultimate point for a producer or manager to understand is that ACES is intended to be the digital equivalent of “an original film negative to return to and scan at a higher resolution,” in the words of

“So we finish and archive films in HD, or sometimes 4K, which looks great on current devices. But in five to 10 years, HD could look as bad to us as VHS does on high-resolution devices now. But if the industry adopts ACES and captures in the highest resolution available and archives in this resolution-independent way, this is our best solution to ensure that our content is future-proof, that it will look as good in the future as it does today.”

ACES IS INTENDED TO BE THE DIGITAL EQUIVALENT OF “AN ORIGINAL FILM NEGATIVE TO RETURN TO AND SCAN AT A HIGHER RESOLUTION.” Lori McCreary, CEO of Revelations Entertainment and currently serving as one of the PGA’s Presidents. Thus ACES content is intended to be suitable for long-term archiving—content mastered and stored as uncompressed files at the highest dynamic range and color gamut possible, encoded to be unpacked and displayed on any foreseeable display technology. That’s a crucial point in the producing world, McCreary suggests.

“Today we typically capture at higher resolutions than we can finish on due to storage and cost restrictions,” she says.

As noted, the technical nuances surrounding ACES—what it is (basically a suite of image-encoding specifications or “bits” of the picture; the various transform definitions and guidelines, what most people more commonly think of as look-up tables or LUTs; and various other tools) and what it is not (a software application or required or forced “look” to be applied to content, taking creative control away from filmmakers) can be confusing to those outside of the technical disciplines. And while some producers, like Gainor, supervise post-production and are

ACES MATTER

keenly aware of these kinds of technical issues, many other producers, of course, train their focus in other areas and do not have, or for that matter, need or wish to have that level of technical expertise.

This begs the question, “What is the proper way for the producing community to wrap its arms around the ACES initiative and figure out its proper role in their daily work?”

“Does every producer need an intimate working knowledge of ACES? No more than they typically needed to know how to thread a film camera back in the film days or know how to operate a color correction system,” says Maltz. “But they do need sufficient knowledge to be able to hire the right people. So they need the same level of understanding they need to hire cinematographers and colorists and everyone else. They need to know how to ask the right questions when a workflow is presented to them. As with anything else related to a producer’s work, it can be boiled down to knowing things that impact time, money and the quality of the product. ACES can touch on things related to all those areas in a positive way.”

Topics like future-proofing, standards, and file management were not major issues for producers in the film era, Maltz adds, because the film-based workflow was steady and standard for the better part of a century, and everybody worked, more or less, the same way. Today however, that has changed, and so producers tend to be more knowledgeable about such topics. In that sense, experienced producers suggest that maintaining knowledge of how ACES can impact productions, as well as of the costs, benefits and consequences of transitioning to an ACES-compliant workflow, pipeline, vendor or facility, is very much in keeping with traditional producer responsibilities. “[As a producer], I’m charged with figuring out how to tell a story using cameras and lights and sets and finding the best crew and locations and looks, so that when my studio president greenlights a project, it is in the best form possible,” Gainor says. “[At Screen Gems] we’ve inte-

62

PRODUCED BY

grated ACES in 10 films now and continue to improve our ACES workflow. We’ve been employing the ACES workflow in every feature we directly produce since we shot No Good Deed [2014] on the [Sony CineAlta] F65 camera. That was our first 16-bit, 8K RAW capture. It was important to start down the path of ACES with that movie, because the new cameras have so much latitude and give filmmakers so many options that we wanted to make sure that decisions made on set by the director and cinematographer were translated with their intentions in mind all the way through the post-production process.

ACES allows us to lay down looks in a non-destructive manner—in other words, not baked in, so that all technicians who come across the material, from visual effects craftspeople to color-timers, will understand [the filmmakers’] intentions.”

And that is a key point, because one common concern in the creative community is that ACES somehow “locks in” looks or by implementing it, forces producers to tell creatives how to make their movie. Gainor, McCreary and other producers who have used ACES say that is not the case, and indeed, it was not designed for that purpose. Rather, Maltz describes ACES as being “about the plumbing,” meaning “you can run anything through the pipes that you want—in terms of creative looks, there are no practical restrictions and ACES protects content in a non-proprietary way for the widest variety of display options.”

In other words ACES describes, essentially, how image data from different camera sources can move to a common color space for the purpose of doing color correction, but not for purposes of how you creatively apply that color. The intent is to ensure whatever creative approach is taken, it will look its very best on the highest-end monitors available today and tomorrow. Gainor suggests that in modern workflows, the ACES approach can help prevent productions from being “boxed in,” in fact.

“Actually, there is tremendous latitude the filmmakers can apply later,” Gainor

says. “What I love about ACES is that filmmakers have the ability to dial in specifically to what they intend the final product to be but without baking in colors that may not work once the film is fully edited, since you never know if a critical transitional scene needs to be perfected one way or the other.”

As part of its ongoing initiative to roll out ACES, the Academy is offering various resources and events to educate and promote the system’s capabilities to the creative side of the industry. Among other things, they are suggesting that producers follow a series of best practices on ACES-compliant productions. Those best practices include meeting early in a production’s life cycle with all key stakeholders to get everyone on the same page regarding which technologies are going to be utilized and how the workflow will be designed, what the deliverables will be, and discuss and plan solutions for any tools or facilities within the workflow that may not yet be fully ACES-compliant. Dozens of major hardware and software companies and major vendors around the world in all categories are already part of the initiative, and hundreds of feature-film and television productions have already been made using ACES-based workflows. But whenever there are reasons for the inclusion of non-ACES elements in the workflows, most experienced vendors and experts will be well acquainted with various work-arounds.

Also recommended is a process of taking time to educate any participants in the process who are new to ACES, building time to test the workflow and pipeline into your schedule, and insisting that all monitors and displays being used by principals to view critical imagery be properly calibrated.

Meanwhile the Academy runs an evolving portal for ACES information at www.ACEScentralcom, where you will find a community forum to post or answer ACES questions, a link to an ACES YouTube channel for demos and information, an ACES event calendar and an ACES product planner list. ¢

The 9th Annual Produced By Conference will take place June 10-11, 2017 at 20th century fox

map image: Š OpenStreetMap contributors

P G A AT YO U R SERVICE

FAQ: THE PRODUCERS MARK those three little letters have a lot backing them up.

WHEN I SEE P.G.A. AFTER A PRODUCER’S NAME IN A MOVIE’S CREDITS, WHAT DOES IT MEAN? It means that according to the rules of the Producers Guild’s certification process, that producer performed a major portion of the producing functions on that particular motion picture.

DOES THE P.G.A. AFTER THE PRODUCER’S NAME MEAN THAT THE PRODUCER IS A MEMBER OF THE PRODUCERS GUILD? NO. A producer does not need to be a member of the PGA to receive the “p.g.a.” designation after their name. In many cases, the sets of initials you see in movie credits (such as A.S.C. and A.C.E.) indicate membership in an organization.

The Producers Mark is different. It’s a certification mark; its purpose is to designate that the producer has met an officially recognized standard of performance on that film.

IF A PRODUCER DOESN’T RECEIVE THE P.G.A. MARK FROM THE PRODUCERS GUILD, WHAT HAPPENS TO THEIR PRODUCING CREDIT? Nothing. The Producers Mark doesn’t control or affect the “Produced by” credit in any way, nor does it invalidate that credit by its absence.

WHAT IMPACT DOES THE P.G.A. MARK HAVE ON AWARDS? Determinations for the Producers Mark and for producer award eligibility are determined at the same time and via the

64

PRODUCED BY

same process. In addition to the PGA, AMPAS, HFPA and BAFTA all rely on the PGA process to guide their decisionmaking. However the final selection of nominees is always at the discretion of the organization giving the award.

Overwhelmingly, these organizations concur with the PGA determinations, but occasionally, the decisions diverge.

WHAT’S THE PROCESS? The process is initiated by the copyright owner of the film. After the postproduction process has commenced, but 4-6 weeks before credits are locked, the owner submits a film for consideration via ProducersGuildAwards.com.

Within 2-3 weeks, the PGA sends out eligibility forms to every producer credited as “Produced By” or “Producer” on the film and sends confidential verification forms to a wide variety of third parties associated with the production of the film: the director(s), writer(s), department heads, company executives and key crew members.

Once forms have been returned, the PGA convenes a panel of arbiters, each of them active and experienced producers with numerous (and recent) credits, typically in the genre or category of the film under consideration. (i.e., If the film is a major studio tentpole, we try to utilize arbiters with considerable experience in making those big-budget studio pictures.

If the film is a smaller indie movie, we rely on producers familiar with that type of production, etc.) An initial arbitration panel typically has three arbiters, though in rare circumstances two are used.

The arbiters review all materials

returned to the PGA by the producers and third parties, with all personal names and company names redacted, so that arbiters can arrive at a judgment based on the testimony provided rather than the name recognition and perceived reputation of the producers.

Following the determination, the PGA staff informs the producers of the decision.

Producers who object to the decision have five days to notify the Guild of an intent to appeal. After giving producers the opportunity to add to or clarify their testimony, the PGA will convene a new panel of arbiters. All appellate panels consist of three producers. If the initial decision was unanimous, the appellate panel will consist of one producer from the original panel and two new producers; if the initial decision was not unanimous, the appellate panel will consist of three new producers. The decision of the appellate panel is final.

SO WHEN ARBITERS ARE LOOKING AT THESE FORMS, WHAT ARE THEY SEEING? The eligibility form filled out by producers asks them to indicate their level of responsibility for a variety of producing functions spanning development, preproduction, physical production and post-production. The form also includes a free-response section for the producer to more fully elaborate on the specifics of the production and their role on the film. The verification forms filled out by third parties typically ask the respondent questions related to the nature of their collaboration with the credited producers.

P G A AT YO U R SERVICE

(For instance, the verification form for editors asks the editor to designate which producer(s) consulted with the editor regarding dailies, gave notes on cuts or participated in screenings.)

WHO SELECTS WHICH ARBITERS VET THE CREDITS OF WHICH MOTION PICTURES? That determination is made by the PGA’s Director of Legal Affairs and Arbitrations in consultation with the National Executive Director.

WHAT IF THE PGA SELECTS AN ARBITER WHO (UNBEKNOWNST TO THEM) IS BIASED AGAINST A GIVEN PRODUCER OR FILM? The Guild takes proactive measures to prevent that from happening. Prior to convening the panel, the PGA provides all producers with a list of potential arbiters. Producers are free to strike any arbiter for any reason. Such arbiters will not be empaneled for that particular film. Furthermore, all arbiters are asked to affirmatively state that they have no interests in the films to be arbitrated that might result in a biased judgment. Even if all of those hurdles are cleared, an arbiter will be removed from the process if they or the PGA administrator feels that bias is affecting their judgment.

WHY CAN’T THE PGA BE MORE TRANSPARENT ABOUT THE PROCESS? We maintain the strictest confidentiality around the identities of the producers, third parties and arbiters involved because such confidence is the only

p.g.a. way we can hope to get accurate and truthful information. Many producers are powerful figures in this industry and this might put pressure on third parties and arbiters to achieve a desired decision.

Keeping those identities confidential is the only way to maintain the integrity of the process.

participate, we can’t force them to submit for certification.

The Producers Mark also is recognized by the WGA, DGA and SAG-AFTRA. The PGA has agreed not to license the Producers Mark for use with any combined credit (e.g., “Directed and Produced By …”)

ONCE A PRODUCER’S CREDIT IS CERTIFIED WITH THE P.G.A. MARK, IS THAT CERTIFICATION APPLIED PERMANENTLY TO ALL OF THE PRODUCER’S FILMS?

WHO DOES THE PRODUCERS GUILD REPRESENT?

No. A Producers Mark appended to a producing credit applies to that film only. It represents the nature of the work performed on that film alone and does not “carry over” to future productions.

WHY DO SOME FILMS CARRY THE P.G.A. MARK, BUT NOT OTHERS? The Producers Mark is voluntary. Each of the major studios—Universal, Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount and Fox— has signed a contractual agreement to submit their films to the Guild for credit certification, as have The Weinstein Company, Lionsgate, DreamWorks and DreamWorks Animation, Lucasfilm, Marvel, MGM, New Line and Pixar. If an independently owned film elects not to

The PGA is composed of over 7,500 professionals working in motion pictures, television and digital media throughout the United States and around the world.

HOW IS THE PGA DIFFERENT FROM ITS FELLOW GUILDS? Unlike the DGA, WGA and SAG-AFTRA, the PGA is not a labor union. This means that we can’t go on strike, set wage minimums, or negotiate collective bargaining agreements on behalf of our membership. As we are now the largest professional trade organization in the entertainment industry, the PGA provides numerous benefits for its members, including educational and training events, employment opportunities, social and networking functions, and a collective voice that represents and protects the varied interests of producers and their teams, including the Producers Mark. ■

PRODUCED BY

65

P G A AT YO U R SERVICE

MEMBER BENEFITS ■ Discounted registration for Produced By Conference and Produced By: New York.

■ Vote on Producers Guild Awards and receive discount tickets to the event, as well as DVD screeners for awards consideration.

■ Admission to special PGA pre-release screenings and Q&A events.

■ Full access to PGA website including events, calendar, social networking tools, members-only video library.

■ Eligibility for PGA Mentoring Program.

■ Listing of contact and credit information in searchable online roster.

■ Arbitration of credit disputes.

■ Eligibility for individual, family and small business health care options through Producers Health Insurance Agency.

■ Free attendance at PGA seminars.

■ Access to PGA Job Board, online resume search, employment tools and job forums.

■ Wide variety of discounts on events, merchandise, travel.

■ Participation in the Motion Picture Industry Health, Welfare & Pension Plan.

■ Complimentary subscription to Produced By.

ADDING UP HIDDEN FIGURES p. 72 PRODUCEDBY December | January 2017

PRODUCEDBY THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE PRODUCERS GUILD OF AMERICA // DECEMBER | JANUARY

KEVIN FEIGE volume xii number 6

KEVIN FEIGE “I’m on the movie’s side.

Which is also saying: I’m on the audience’s side.”

SEE THE DIGITAL EDITION PRODUCERSGUILD.ORG LET’S GET SOCIAL

Advertising Info: Ken Rose at ken@moontidemedia.com or 818-312-6880

66

PRODUCED BY

P G A AT YO U R SERVICE

NEW MEMBERS The Producers Guild is proud to welcome the following new members, who joined the Guild in November and December, 2016.

PRODUCERS COUNCIL Jeff Balis Tracey Becker Rick Benattar Erin Brady Peter Brant Barry Brooker Samuel Brown Peter Burrel Anthony Cabral Peg Cafferty Chris Clements Joshua Colon Vin Diesel 1 Michael Disco Mary Donahue Elizabeth Dorosin Christine Fry Jeanette Gardzelewski Wayne Godfrey Carla Hacken 2 Chad Hammes Sean Hanish Eric Hayes Erika Heymann Robert Horowitz Melissa Jacobson Paul Jaconi-Biery Jay Kleckner Rosanne Korenber Mark Korshak Dawn Krants

Casey Krehbiel Kristel Laiblin Nathaniel Lipp Tobey List James Lopez Matthew Malek Timothy Marlower Steven McGovern Matthew Morrison Jon Mugar Silvio Muraglia John Murphy Barbara Muschietti Dylan Nelson David Nicksay Carsten Oblaender Molly O’Rourke Sascha Paladino Jonathan Pare Marc Reid Gingi Rochelle Roma Roth Stephanie Schwam Michael Sherman Cas Sigers-Beedles Aditya Sood 3 Tiffani Thiessen 4 Nigel Thomas Joe Van Ek Marina Viscun Ellen Wander Lindsey Weber 7

Julie Weitz Stan Wetlieb Mark Wolper Greg Yolen Lauren Zalaznick

Betsy Nolte Paul Porter Megan Robertson Joshua Spencer Breven Warren Shirley William

1

NEW MEDIA COUNCIL Anna Bressanin Kesila Childers 5 Marcos Cline Eric Galler Alesia Glidewell Erika Kramer Chris Kwon 6 Jeffrey Markowitz Marissa Messier Hiram Norman Joseph Smith Gordon Whitener

AP COUNCIL ASSOCIATE PRODUCER/ PRODUCTION MANAGER/ PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR Kelly Bumford Frank Covino Aaron Drane Phil Guidry Matt Hause David Manigault Scott Moore 6

SEGMENT/FIELD/ STORY PRODUCER

2

Shaunte Dunston 7 Amanda Keller Carly Segal

PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Kiaira Blackwell Lorie Carter Jimmy Revis Grace Sin

3

POST PRODUCTION Nantale Corbett Mark Haapala Drew Sawyer

VISUAL EFFECTS

4

Laia Alomar Heather Jennings Kerry Jospech Clayton Shank Aaron Sprecher

5

PRODUCED BY

67

P G A AT YO U R SERVICE

MARKING TIME The Producers Guild proudly salutes the following whose credits have been certified with the Producers Mark. This list includes films released in December 2016 and January 2017.

Certification via the Producers Mark indicates that a producer undertook a major portion of the producing duties on the motion picture.

20TH CENTURY WOMEN Megan Ellison, p.g.a.

Youree Henley, p.g.a.

Anne Carey, p.g.a.

ASSASSIN’S CREED Jean-Julien Baronnet, p.g.a.

Frank Marshall, p.g.a.

Patrick Crowley, p.g.a.

Michael Fassbender, p.g.a.

COLLATERAL BEAUTY Michael Sugar, p.g.a.

Bard Dorros, p.g.a.

Anthony Bregman, p.g.a.

Kevin Frakes, p.g.a.

Allan Loeb, p.g.a.

FENCES Scott Rudin, p.g.a.

Denzel Washington, p.g.a.

Todd Black, p.g.a.

THE HOLLOW POINT William Green, p.g.a.

Aaron L. Ginsburg, p.g.a.

Andy Horwitz, p.g.a.

A MONSTER CALLS Belén Atienza, p.g.a.

OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY Scott Stuber, p.g.a.

Guyman Casady, p.g.a.

Daniel Rappaport, p.g.a.

PASSENGERS Neal H. Moritz, p.g.a.

Stephen Hamel, p.g.a.

Michael Maher, p.g.a.

Ori Marmur, p.g.a.

ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY Kathleen Kennedy, p.g.a.

Allison Shearmur, p.g.a Simon Emanuel, p.g.a.

SILENCE Martin Scorsese, p.g.a. & Emma Tillinger Koskoff, p.g.a.

Randall Emmett, p.g.a.

Irwin Winkler, p.g.a.

SING INCARNATE Jason Blum, p.g.a.

Michael Seitzman, p.g.a.

Janet Healy, p.g.a.

Chris Melendandri, p.g.a.

SOLACE LA LA LAND Fred Berger, p.g.a.

Jordan Horowitz, p.g.a.

Marc Platt, p.g.a.

LIVE BY NIGHT Leonardo DiCaprio, p.g.a. & Jennifer Davisson, p.g.a.

Ben Affleck, p.g.a.

Jennifer Todd, p.g.a.

To apply for producers mark certification, visit us online at producersguildawards.com.

68

PRODUCED BY

Beau Flynn, p.g.a.

Thomas Augsberger, p.g.a.

WHY HIM? Shawn Levy, p.g.a.

Dan Levine, p.g.a.

Help Us Enrich Children’s Lives with the Gift of Music!

501(c)(3) Public Charity

RAEF provides musical instruments to underpriveleged children, disabled veterens and their families at no cost.

Grammy Winner Count Basie Young Artist Instruments ®

Grammy Winner Kenny G Young Artist Saxophones ®

Kid’s dream of playing a musical instrument The Rheuben Allen Education Foundation helps the dream come true.

rheuben.org 1978 Del Amo Blvd. Unit “A” Torrance, CA 90501-1333

THE BEST ON-SET PHOTO OF ALL TIME

DOUBLE SHOT

L

adies and gentlemen, we give you cover subject Gale Anne Hurd—producer, writer, impromptu camera double, and clearly, all-around badass.

It’s the fall of 1985, and we’re on the set of Aliens, Hurd and director James Cameron’s second collaboration, following the blockbuster success of The Terminator the previous year. Hurd arrived that day under the impression she’d be putting out fires rather than putting down an extraterrestrial bad guy. But as every producer knows, you never can predict what any given day on set is going to ask of you.

“It blew people’s minds,” recalls Hurd, “when Jim Cameron asked me to come in and do a close-up of a shot in which the character of Vasquez, played by Jeanette Goldstein, is shown shooting an alien in the air vent. She had never fired a handgun before and had the recoil wrong, so Jim had me double her. And there I am in military fatigues with a gun in my hand, shooting the alien!”

We suggest our readers take note and add it to their (always endless) lists of stuff a producer needs to know: how to deliver story notes; how to create a budget; how to look at dailies; how to blow an alien’s head off. Special thanks to Valhalla Entertainment for sharing the pic with us and giving us the perfect bookend to our cover. ■

We know what you’re thinking. “Best of all time? No way. I’ve got an on-set photo way better than that.” If that’s the case, we dare you to prove it. Submit it to BOSPOAT@producersguild.org. Before you submit, please review the contest rules at producersguild. org/bospoat. Because no matter how great your photo is, we have no desire to get sued over it.

70

PRODUCED BY

WINNER

THE DARRYL F. ZANUCK AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING PRODUCER OF THEATRICAL MOTION PICTURES PRODUCERS

Fred Berger Jordan Horowitz Marc Platt

14 BEST PICTURE ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS ®

INCLUDING

CONSIDER THIS

LionsgateAwards.com