Produced By June | July 2017

HACKERS ARE TARGETING YOUR PRODUCTION. HERE’S HOW TO FIGHT BACK. p. 76

PRODUCEDBY THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE PRODUCERS GUILD OF AMERICA // JUNE | JULY 2017

JORDAN

PEELE

The fact that we hadn’t had a horror movie about race for 50 years isn’t just a symptom of the problem – it’s part of the problem.”

“EMMY VOTERS: PAY ATTENTION. “AMERICAN GODS” IS BRILLIANT, “TV’S WTF MASTERPIECE”

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The Daily Beast

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IndieWire

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“UNFAIR TO EVERY OTHER SHOW ON TV”

“GORGEOUS, UNSETTLING, IRREVERENTLY FUNNY”

Inverse

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OUTS TANDING

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STARZ and related channels and service marks are the property of Starz Entertainment, LLC. American Gods © 2015 FremantleMedia North America. All Rights Reserved. PBR-4819

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JILL SOLOWAY Creator & Executive Producer, Transparent & I Love Dick

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PRODUCEDBY

THE COVER: JORDAN PEELE

FEATURES

DEPARTMENTS

46 THE COVER: JORDAN PEELE

20 FROM THE PRESIDENTS

The guy is so funny, it’s scary. Or is it the other way around?

24

Mike Tollin extends his winning streak with Chuck.

27

70 21 ST CENTURY WOMAN

The times may change, but for Anne

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Carey, the thrill of great stories remains the same.

90 FAQ: THE PRODUCERS MARK

OPEN DOORS

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MEMBER BENEFITS

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NEW MEMBERS

Present and future

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MARKING TIME

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104 THE BEST ON-SET PHOTO OF ALL TIME

Changing the percentage

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The spirit of service

ABOVE & BEYOND

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In a lonely place

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76 STANDING UP TO CYBER THREATS

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MENTORING MATTERS

It’s time to update the production workflow for our cloud-connected world

Immersion learning

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GOING GREEN

84 HIGHER GROUND A producer’s guide to High Dynamic Range (HDR).

PHOTOGRAPHED BY KREMER JOHNSON PHOTOGRAPHY

JUNE | JULY 2017

Big green apple

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COVER PHOTOGRAPHED

BY KREMER JOHNSON PHOTOGRAPHY

ON THE SCENE Meet the candidates!

PRODUCED BY

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FROM THE PRESIDENTS

THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE Written by Gary Lucchesi and Lori McCreary

W

e can each remember the first time we sat down at the table in the PGA conference room as Board members. We were flattered to have been asked to run for seats on the Board by our colleagues, but at those initial meetings, we had little idea of what to expect.

What we discovered was a group of people—some of them friends, some whom we knew by reputation, many who were complete strangers—who were singularly committed to bettering the professional lives of their peers. The tone set by President Marshall Herskovitz was adopted by everyone present, leading to discussions that were thoughtful, deliberative, often passionate but always respectful. Working in this business for decades, we had of course been part of plenty of meetings driven by big egos and participants’ desires to hear themselves talk. The PGA Board meetings were different. Egos were checked at the door, and the center of discussion was never the people at the table, but always the needs of the Producers Guild and its members.

Those first meetings demonstrated to us that this was an organization worthy of our time and energy. It was work we could be proud of. We joined committees, and even started one or two of our own. We carved out time in our schedules to make phone calls, take part in working groups, review proposals—whatever the Guild seemed to need that we could provide. Ultimately, the rewards of that work have far surpassed our contributions, whether it be found in the PGA’s steadily growing membership, the adoption of the Producers Mark, or (most of all) in the fuller appreciation of the complexity of our business provided by the perspectives of members from our Associate Producer and New Media Councils.

In recognition of that transformative power of Guild service, we’ve asked three outgoing Board members to reflect on their own service to the PGA, and offer insights and advice to fellow members who might follow in their footsteps.

20

PRODUCED BY

Gary Lucchesi

Lori McCreary

FROM THE PRESIDENTS

FRED BARON Producers Council

MEGAN MASCENA GASPAR AP Council

DEBORAH TODD New Media Council

When I mention PGA events, my wife always says, “You have to go—those are your people.” My PGA colleagues are the people I truly enjoy being around. Whether you’re in the Producers, AP, or New Media Council, there is mutual respect and an exchange of ideas that is impossible get anywhere else in the entertainment business.

The things I’m going to miss about the Board aren’t so much the “big initiatives” we support at the PGA, like the Producers Mark. What I’m going to miss is the stuff that I don’t get to hear about otherwise—what’s going on in new media, all the amazing things the Guild is doing in New York, the seminars and workshops that are being planned. I hear about all that stuff and it makes me wish that the PGA was as active and accessible when I was coming up in the business. I could have used it then.

Young producers need it today.

That’s the spirit in which I sat down at the board room table, every time—this is my chance to give back. “What can I do to help?” “How can I get involved?” Those are the questions that served me best in my time on the Board, and they’ll serve the Board members who come after me just as well. Get involved. Join the committees. Jump in. Enjoy Gary and Lori; don’t be afraid of Vance. You’re sitting at that table because your peers thought you could help your profession. Your peers were right. All you have to do is say “yes” when you get the chance.

Having now served two 3-year terms on the AP Council Board of Delegates (including three years as Chair) and on the National Board of Directors, I am terming out. The PGA Constitution requires Board members who serve two consecutive terms to sit out a year before running again. Will I? You bet!

I’m a joiner, always have been. It’s in my family’s blood. We also tend to rise to leadership positions – mostly because we are highly opinionated and can’t keep our mouths shut. I’ve been in the PGA for 15 years – helping on the Events and Diversity Committees most of that time, but it was not until serving on the Boards did I understand the power of the Guild – both the history and the potential in its future.

There are many ways to get involved in any region – including Education, Events and Employment, along with a host of other committees. I would say to any member that committees are the place to start. Meet other members, see how things are run. The time commitment is only what you can spare, and varies by committee project and the time of year.

The Board requires more of a time commitment. You don’t want to miss a meeting, because there is always a lot happening. The PGA, with its treasure of producing talent, wants and needs to be part of the conversation – protecting the Producer credit, our product in the marketplace, our benefits options and our professional well-being.

At the New Member Breakfast in May, one attendee said the reason they joined was for “collaboration, community and credit.” I could not agree more.

Good morning, producers! As we start a new term in 2017, I’ve been asked to say a few words as an outgoing Board member. Let me assure you that if you volunteer with the Guild, you’ll look back on your involvement as the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Your contributions as a Board member will improve our guild in ways you can’t yet imagine. Didn’t run for a Board seat? No problemo!

For those of you who are thinking, ‘I coulda been a contender,’ there’s still time to get involved! After all, tomorrow is another day.

So, I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse: Get involved and enjoy the benefits of giving and receiving. I know what you’re thinking: ‘Ms. Todd, you’re trying to seduce me, aren’t you?’ As if! I promise you, if you give freely of your time, the relationships you develop in the Guild will be priceless. Volunteer. Mentor. Pitch in and help at events for your council. Go ahead, make our day.

Incoming Board delegates, you’re about to jump into the middle of works-in-progress, and you’ll have the chance to start initiatives of your own. There will definitely be times when you feel like you’ve been thrown into the deep end of the ocean. Just keep swimming! With the contributions of your time and exquisite brainpower, you can help take the PGA to the next level, even to infinity and beyond.

To all PGA members, we love making personal connections, so if you’re visiting San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York or DC, reach out to your fellow council members and plan to meet up. We’ll get together. Have a few laughs.

Finally, to the New Media Council, I wish I knew how to quit you, but even though I’m terming out, I’ll be back. Because, honestly, you complete me.

PRODUCED BY

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PRESIDENTS Gary Lucchesi

Lori McCreary

VICE PRESIDENTS, MOTION PICTURES David Friendly Lydia Dean Pilcher 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

#NotToBrag but producers shot a TV series in Des Moines and stayed for another—and we don’t even have tax credits.

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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, Michael Neveux, Ricky Rhodes The Coca-Cola Company salutes Fellow creators of moments of Happiness.

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CHANGING THE PERCENTAGE The Disability Film Challenge means exposure and jobs for an underrepresented population.

Written by Nic Novicki and Sasheen Artis

For information on future events or to become a volunteer or mentor, visit www. disabilityfilmchallenge.com or contact Nic Novicki at nic@disabilityfilmchallenge.com. ¢

24

PRODUCED BY

NIC NOVICKI

Disability Film Challenge Workshop hosted by SAG-AFTRA in NYC

PHOTOGRAPH BY LIBBY GATLIN

As someone with a disability, I created the Challenge to give aspiring filmmakers the opportunity to showcase their work and provide them with meaningful exposure leading to increased job opportunities. The film challenge is a weekend-long competition in which filmmakers write, produce and complete an original three to five minute film, integrating story elements that acknowledge disability and include at least one person with a physical or cognitive disability.

To expand our outreach this year, we joined forces with Easterseals Southern California, the leading nonprofit organization supporting people with disabilities.

Now known as the “Easterseals Disability Film Challenge,” we were able to produce shout-out videos with Scott Silveri (Speechless), Danny Woodburn (Seinfeld), David Koechner (Anchorman), and James Keach (Walk the Line) and went to Facebook Studios for Facebook Live with RJ Mitte (Breaking Bad). We ran workshops in New York and Los Angeles and traveled to film festivals and universities to promote the Challenge. To date, CBS Entertainment Diversity, SAG-AFTRA and Dell have also committed to the Challenge as sponsors.

Winners of the challenge will be mentored by top industry professionals like Scott Silveri, Amy Brenneman (The Leftovers), Randall Park (Veep), casting director Pam Dixon (The Green Lantern), and CBS Entertainment Executive Vice President for Diversity, Inclusion & Communications, Tiffany Smith-Anoa’i. Winners also will have their films screened at the TCL Chinese Theaters during the Academy Award qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival in August and receive a Dell mobile workstation or Dell 2-in-1 computer.

Numerous success stories have come out of the Challenge. We’re proudest that SAG-AFTRA’s Performers with Disabilities committee reported booking union jobs off of exposure during our promotional campaign, thus moving the needle on diversity hiring and changing the percentage of our representation in the media.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY ROBERT OLIN

A

lthough roughly 20% of the population has some form of disability, representation of people with disabilities in the media lags far behind its realworld numbers. PGA Diversity Committee member Nic Novicki founded the Disability Film Challenge in 2014 to change that percentage.

Nic started out as a stand-up comedian and has performed in several comedy tours for the troops in Europe, Africa and the Middle East through Armed Forces Entertainment.

He has produced, written and acted in over 40 movies and TV shows. As a champion of inclusion, Nic presented at the White House’s Lights! Camera! Access! 2.0 Disability & Media Summit in December 2016 and serves as a mentor for Veterans in Film and Television and the PGA Power of Diversity Master Workshop. Nic reports on this year’s Challenge and its new partnership with Easterseals Southern California.

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PRODUCED BY

5/9/17 10:42 AM

A B O V E & B E YON D

PRESENT AND FUTURE The Service PGA Volunteers Contribute Today Is Shaping Careers— and The Industry—For Years to Come.

I

f you know Deb Calla, you know that diversity is one of her core values. As Co-Chair of the Diversity Committee on the west coast for 14 years, she developed and, for ten years, helped run the Power of Diversity Master Workshop, which has become one of the most respected educational programs in today’s industry.

The Diversity Committee is also closely involved with the Media Access Awards, which honors members of the entertainment and broadcast industries for their efforts in promoting awareness of the disability experience, accessibility for people with disabilities, and the accurate depiction

A KAREN COVELL

of characters with disabilities. Deb also co-launched and co-chaired the PGA Women’s Impact Network (WIN) with Lydia Dean Pilcher in 2013. When asked why should people volunteer for Guild service, Deb replies: “Because the PGA is a great organization. You can make lasting friendships, find alliances and participate through the Guild in the present and future of the industry.” When Deb isn’t busy making the PGA a better Guild, she produces content for film and TV and works as a script consultant. She also teaches script development and producing in various parts of the world.

s a member of the Guild for the last 14 years, Karen Covell has made the most of her time in the PGA. She’s been a member of the AP Council Board of Delegates for four years and currently sits on the National Board of Directors. Karen created the popular “On the Lot” networking lunches, which brings together PGA members who work in the same location, but who otherwise may not know each other.

She also devised and oversaw the creation of the Members Resource Library. (Check under the “Members” tab on the PGA website!)

With a small band of volunteers, Karen has worked to add more than 100 documents for members to reference online. She also

DEBORAH CALLA

volunteered for the first two Produced By Conferences and sat on the Special Finance Committee. Karen also hosted the multiunion (SAG, DGA, PGA & WGA) Women’s Committee screening of the The Hunting Ground with the filmmakers and conducted a post-screening discussion about how the film is reorienting many colleges’ approach to sexual assault. Why does Karen volunteer? “I volunteer because I believe in the Guild and its place in the industry to make a difference with issues I’m passionate about.” When Karen is not volunteering for the Guild , she co-produces docs, shorts and live events, and is currently packaging a feature film. ¢

PRODUCED BY

27

ICG MAGAZINE

THE INTERVIEW ISSUE

IN PRINT OR YOUR FAVORITE DEVICE!

Experience ICG Magazine’s High-Profile Filmmaker Interviews, Stunning Imagery, and In-Depth Features on the latest Productions & Filmmaking Trends SUBSCRIBE ONLINE AT ICGMAGAZINE.COM

BIG LITTLE LIES

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION I N A L L C AT E G O R I E S ©2017 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO ® and related channels and service marks are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

R I S K TA K E R S

EMBRACING OBSESSION When it comes to working with producers, there’s no substitute for passion.

KEVIN TUREN PHANTOM FOUR FILMS | BEVERLY HILLS, CA EXECUTIVE PRODUCER ALL IS LOST MEDITERRANEA PRODUCER ARBITRAGE 99 HOMES

EVERY PRODUCER HAS AT LEAST ONE “MOVIE THAT CHANGED MY LIFE.” WHAT’S YOURS, AND WHY? I’ve always loved movies within movies. The Bad and the Beautiful, with Kirk Douglas, made a real impression on me when I saw it in college. I was watching about two movies a day on Turner Classic Movies. 8 ½ was another one. Day For Night. Hearts of Darkness. I always knew I wanted to work in movies. I just didn’t know in what capacity, or how I could find my way in. Those movies gave me a direction I could go in.

WHAT’S THE MOST RECENT PROJECT YOU’VE BACKED? WHAT GOT YOU EXCITED ABOUT IT? I just finished a film called Assassination Nation, written and directed by Sam Levinson. I think it’s just totally brilliant. It’s incredibly ambitious; it feels like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I’ve tried to come up with comps for it. Honestly, I couldn’t find any.

WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIAL QUALITIES YOU LOOK FOR IN A PARTNER? I’m always looking for partners who have a strong point of view and an active inner life, who are working on things that they deeply care about. A good sign is if they’re available to talk about it at any time of day or night—they’re obsessed with telling the story as well as possible. I’ll take that passion over skills, experience, connections, all the rest.

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PRODUCED BY

WHAT’S THE BIGGEST RISK YOU’VE TAKEN ON A

PROJECT? When I made Arbitrage, I was at a real pivot point in my career.

I had just left my job at an established company and all my eggs were in that basket. If it hadn’t worked out, I probably would have been out of the business. We had so many factors working against us, but the movie did really well critically and commercially, so I got to stick around and keep making movies.

WHICH ARTISTS WORKING TODAY ARE CARRYING THE TORCH FOR THE KIND OF STORYTELLING THAT’S MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU? I did 99 Homes with Ramin Bahrani. His belief in and commitment to that story was inspiring. I loved Sean Baker’s Tangerine; I can’t wait to see his new movie. Moonlight was incredible. Those stories showed me something I hadn’t seen before. The key is that above all else, they’re entertaining first, and their “message” emerges out of that. Like Stanley Kramer said, the best films are the ones that do both.

WHAT’S THE QUICKEST WAY TO MAKE SURE YOU WILL NEVER BACK THE PROJECT I’M PITCHING YOU? I hate when people are chasing the marketplace. That never works. It never feels fresh—it just feels like you’re trying to imitate something that someone already else did more successfully. ¢

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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION I N A L L C AT E G O R I E S ©2017 Home Box Office, Inc. All rights reserved. HBO ® and related channels and service marks are the property of Home Box Office, Inc.

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C O M I N G ATTRACTIONS

PGA EAST JULY 12 SUMMER RECRUITMENT PARTY The PGA East invites members and their selected guests to come together for an evening of fun and camaraderie at its Summer Fling mixer. Because our members are the Guild’s best ambassadors, this party serves as the PGA’s key recruitment event on the east coast. Members are encouraged to bring guests who are qualified professionals and strong potential PGA applicants. Volunteers will be close at hand to answer any questions about PGA membership.

AUGUST 10 NON-FICTION JOB FORUM PGA Job Forums give members of the producing team the opportunity to log vauable face time with producer and potential employers. Sometimes described as “speed dating for the producing team,” the format is designed to give PGA member maximum possible exposure to a variety of companies and productions in a specific format. This summer’s job forum will focus on opportunities to work in or connect with producers of non-fiction programming.

PGA WEST JUNE 24 MORNING COUNCIL MIXER 30 PGA members (ten from each council, no guests) will come together for a unique, small group networking experience to be held at the PGA office in Beverly Hills.

This bi-monthly mixer represents a great opportunity to meet fellow professionals working in different fields and formats. Bring your questions, your business cards and enough of an appetite to savor a tasty continental breakfast. Look for reservation/RSVP information in a forthcoming weekly online newsletter.

AUGUST 26 PGA DODGER DAY The PGA’s longest-running tradition continues! PGA members and their families are invited to head out to Dodger Stadium to cheer on the hometown nine as the pennant drive heats up in earnest. This year, the PGA will watch the Dodgers take on the Milwaukee Brewers. (No guarantees that Clayton Kershaw will be on the mound that day, but our collective fingers are crossed.) Look for reservation announcements in the PGA Weekly Newsletter as the summer heats up.

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

34

PRODUCED BY

Top: Produced By Conference attendees at the Saturday reception.

Above: Producers Guild Awards mixer honoring producing teams.

Below: PGA East members enjoy the General Membership Meeting.

Bottom: PGA Dodger Day, 2016

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

IMMERSION LEARNING The PGA Shadow Program is Open for Business.

Written by Elisa Rothstein

L

ike many savvy producers, PGA member Pamela Keller learned that success in Hollywood actually depends on the perfect balance of contacts and experience. Primarily a producer of multi-camera comedy series for Disney, Keller saw the writing on the wall when single-camera comedies began to take over. To stay on top of her professional game in a rapidly changing market, Keller knew she needed to expand her skill set but struggled with how to make the transition. Enter the PGA Shadow Program, under the auspices of the Mentoring Committee and spearheaded by PGA Board Member Carrie Lynn Certa.

“Carrie mentioned it, and I volunteered to be the guinea pig,” says Keller, who submitted an application for the fledgling Shadow Program. “I wanted to connect with a single-camera comedy producer so I could see any differences and just close the gap in my knowledge. I wanted to be able to say, ‘I feel like I have a good handle on how to do this.’”

Keller was also interested in working with a female EP and couldn’t believe her luck when she was paired with Erin O’Malley on the Fox hit, New Girl. “It was beyond my wildest dreams to have a strong woman to shadow on a single-camera comedy for a network,” Keller continues. “I mean, that’s like … jackpot!”

For two weeks, Keller got to be a fly on the wall during prep, shoot and post. “Erin is an Executive Producer, but she also directed simultaneously, and was prepping another New Girl episode and a pilot. I didn’t want to get in her way, so I kind of stood in the back, kept my head down, and I watched.

I went to their table read and to their production meetings. I went on scouts, and I went to their shoot. I would sit in video village and talk to the script supervisor. It was like doing total immersion in a different language.”

Keller also had a front row seat to an unexpected show: “It was wonderful to see a strong woman command the respect of everyone—mostly men, some of them her seniors—and do it in a compassionate way. The way she would interact with people was a pleasure to watch. I watched her just kill it.”

Keller’s biggest takeaway from the Shadow experience? “I now feel secure as a professional that I could work on a single-camera comedy, no problem.

I mean, I was thinking, ‘It’s a hit show, a network show with adult actors,’ and I guess my perception was that it was going to be a lot more different than it was. The biggest surprise was my personal revelation, like, ‘Oh, I can do this!’”

Thanks to the success of this first Shadow Program experience, other PGA members may soon be discovering they can do it, too. If you’re interested in providing a shadow opportunity to another PGA member, please contact Carrie Lynn Certa at ccerta@ursaproductions.com. ¢

Pamela Keller (center) receives guidance from shadow mentor Erin O’Malley (right).

“It was wonderful to see a strong woman command the respect of everyone—mostly men, some of them her seniors—and do it in a compassionate way.”

PRODUCED BY

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39

GOING GREEN

Left: Cast member Eric Stoltz talks green production on the set of Madam Secretary.

Above: Script supervisor Jennifer Capra (left) and producer Mindy Fila share Sesame Street’s digital script with Big Bird.

BIG GREEN APPLE NYC Film Green Pilot Program Kicks Off This Summer.

WRITTEN BY Claudine Marrotte and Christina Delfico

N

ew York City’s Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) has tapped PGA Green to advise on the creation of “NYC Film Green,” the groundbreaking sustainability initiative that recognizes and encourages film and television productions to go green.

NYC production is unique because our back lot is part of a living, working city. For productions to be successful we have to interact directly with the community. That proximity creates added challenges, making it particularly important for PGA members to build strong relationships with the city.

With that in mind, in 2016, PGA East Committee members welcomed the new MOME Commissioner, Julie Menin, in a faceto-face meeting where she was briefed on PGA efforts across the board, including diversity and anti-piracy initiatives as well as PGA

40

PRODUCED BY

Green’s work to help the media industry go green. During the meeting, PGA Green highlighted production efforts to reduce waste, showcased the GreenProductionGuide.com toolkit, and spotlighted productions like Madam Secretary and Sesame Street, which are working hard to create sustainable sets.

Seeking to address the environmental impact of increased TV and film production in NYC and inspired by PGA Green Committee’s leadership on this issue, Menin hosted “Greening our Screens: Encouraging Sustainable TV/Film Production Practices in NYC,” a roundtable discussion with industry leaders and local government officials to discuss the goal of increasing sustainable film production practices in New York City. The result was a constructive and actionable conversation about how New York City could work with industry leaders to encourage best practices and industry

GOING GREEN

standards for sustainable television and film production.

NYC Film Green was born from conversations with various industry stakeholders following the roundtable discussion and with the support of key sustainability leaders, including members of PGA Green.

“There is currently more filming activity in New York City than ever before,” announced Menin. “While this provides countless reasons to celebrate, we also want to be mindful of how this impacts our environment on both a local and global scale. NYC Film Green makes New York the first governing body in the country to implement a sustainability program for the entertainment industry. We believe it will make a significant and quantifiable positive impact and pave the way towards industry-wide adoption of eco-friendly practices.”

Michael Stricks, co-executive producer of Divorce, enthusiastically endorsed the initiative: “As we were looking to establish some energy-saving, environmentally friendly practices on the production of Divorce, we learned about the NYC Film Green pilot program from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. By partnering with them and PGA Green, along with the assistance of the HBO Community Impact team, we were able to place an ‘Eco Production Assistant’ on the set of Divorce to implement environmental sustainability one step at a time.”

NYC Film Green is a voluntary designation program that is currently in the pilot phase and will be opening enrollment to scripted episodic television and feature film productions that shoot at least one day in New York City during summer, 2017.

Productions that enroll in NYC Film Green must participate in a number of sustainable practices in order to receive the “NYC Film Green” designation. They will be utilizing the greenproductionguide.com carbon calculator which was co-created

by PGA Green and its studio sponsors. Core practices required to receive the designation include: • Tracking and making a plan to reduce the production’s carbon footprint • Waste diversion, by means of donation or resale of usable items

• Practices to increase recycling on set and clearly identifying how to sort landfill, organic waste and recyclables • Reduction of transportation-related emissions by renting fuel-efficient cars when available and encouraging crew to use public transportation • Implementing a plan within the production’s lighting department to reduce power and electricity use • Providing opportunities to educate crew and staff on the importance of responsible eco-behavior, as well as training on sustainability best practices It starts with waste reduction awareness and education. Once producers realize the potential savings of going green and learn which eco-vendors meet their show’s zero waste goals, it becomes easier to get the green ball rolling. As Sesame Street’s coordinating producer, Mindy Fila states, “Make goals. Start with reducing paper or removing single-use plastic water bottles. Don’t try to do 20 things right out of the get-go, because you will be overwhelmed, especially when the main focus is always making great quality content for the show.”

Shipping and paper costs are cut when scripts go digital, while excess food can be donated locally to feed the hungry. The key is to plan ahead for the end use of waste in each department and to communicate to all involved that the production is going green.

Earth Angel’s eco-supervisor, Emellie O’Brien, states, “Sustainability in film production has mostly taken place at the studio level. This program is critical for the expansion of sustainable production beyond the studio level, because the local infrastructure needs to be in alignment. Largely recognition-based, NYC Film Green will engage people in friendly competition to build momentum for running sustainable productions.”

Line producer Stephanie Longardo at Sesame Street says she actually found that the green initiative reduced the budget. Her message to others: “Don’t be afraid of it, just do it. It’s not going to negatively affect your bottom line; it’s only gonna help. It is just not as hard as you think it’s going to be. You can’t go wrong.”

Lori McCreary, PGA President and an executive producer of the CBS hit show Madam Secretary, believes the “NYC Film Green” designation will showcase the work of green productions and allow producers, cast and crew to take even more pride in their efforts.

“I encourage every producer to green their sets,” she declares. “It’s easy and the right thing to do.”

For your next scripted film or television series shooting in New York City, join MOME’s initiative and be a part of reducing our industry carbon footprint.

To learn more about NYC Film Green and to enroll your production, visit nyc.gov/filmgreen. ¢

PRODUCED BY

41

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ON THE SCENE MORNING MENTORS PGA HQ, APRIL 20 & MAY 4

Producer Todd Lieberman listens to a fellow PGA member’s question. Left: moderator Dan Halperin

Mentoring producer Stewart Lyons shares insights from his career, next to moderator and Mentoring Committee co-chair Meta Valentic.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY MEERA JOGANI

This Spring, the PGA Mentoring Committee presented two sessions of its Morning Mentors series, with Mandeville Films & Television principal Todd Lieberman (Beauty & the Beast, The Fighter) and Stewart Lyons (Breaking Bad). In these intimate breakfast discussions, a dozen PGA members get to meet and speak with mentoring producers in an intimate, small-group setting. Participants gain insights into the current state of the industry and learn inside tips to help navigate the challenges of film, television and transmedia development and production.

THIRSTY THURSDAY/MEET THE CANDIDATES MIXER (WEST), THE DISTRICT, MAY 11

New Media Council delegates Jenni Ogden and Valerie Johnson-Redrow with candidate Jim Stewartson

Candidates for delegate seats address the attendees.

44

PRODUCED BY

AP Council Chair Jethro Rothe-Kushel welcomes the attendees and Board candidates, alongside New Media Council Chair John Canning (right).

PGA members pack The District for Thirsty Thursday.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY JETHRO ROTHE-KUSHEL (TOP ROW) AND JOHN HEINSEN (BOTTOM ROW)

PGA candidates for the Boards of Delegates teamed up with Thirsty Thursday for a special “Meet The Candidates” reception in Beverly Hills. Part of the famed Crustacean restaurant group, The District by Hannah An delivers a modern take on Vietnamese cuisine and provides catering for film sets, meetings, and a central location to shoot. The candidates shared which the Guild and industry issues that matter most to them, giving fellow attendees an up-close look at how they might get involved in the PGA.

ON THE SCENE OPENING SESSION, POWER OF DIVERSITY MASTER WORKSHOP PGA HQ, MAY 15

PHOTOGRAPHED BY MEERA JOGANI (LEFT) AND SASHEEN ARTIS (RIGHT TOP & BOTTOM)

The PGA Diversity Committee (West) kicked off its annual eight-week intensive program which offers master classes with some of today’s top producers and pairs PGA members with emerging and mid-level producers for one-on-one mentoring. Participants learn the art of the pitch, budgeting, financing, distribution, marketing and the latest trends in new technologies. PGA National Executive Director Vance Van Petten opened the night with insightful remarks on our industry and the power of telling diverse stories.

Diversity Committee Co-Chairs Deb Calla and Charles Howard lead the initial Workshop session.

Workshop participants pose with Diversity Committee mentors and National Executive Director Vance Van Petten following the initial Workshop session.

Power of Diversity Master Workshop participants in high spirits.

Back row: Albert Fernandez, Brian McLaughlin, Eugene Rhee, Paula Wood.

Front row: Maeyen Bassey, Emily Gipson, Lavetta Cannon, Zara Meerza, Batoul Ibrahim, Kimmie Kim, Melissa Wong.

MEET THE CANDIDATES MIXER (EAST), LIGHT IRON, MAY 15

PHOTOGRAPHED BY ARIANA TAFTI

Board hopefuls from the PGA East met with future constituents last month at Light Iron, which has hosted this event for several years. Candidates who attended in person offered brief personal statements, while those who couldn’t attend sent statements to be read by their colleagues. The mood was excited about the future of the PGA, with many speaking to the theme of “One Guild.” At the end of the evening, PGA East leadership gathered to bid farewell to Program Director Patrick Gerety, who leaves the Guild staff after seven years of outstanding work.

Departing PGA East Programs Director Patrick Gerety (center) gets a warm send-off from fellow staffers Mitzie Rothzeid and Kevyn Fairchild (far left & right) and PGA East Chairs Kay Rothman and William Horberg (near left & right).

Board candidate Colin Fitzpatrick introduces himself.

PRODUCED BY

45

THE COVER

Jordan

PEELE

Photographed by Kremer Johnson Photography

Producer/writer/director Jordan Peele takes a seat at Good Luck Bar in Los Feliz.

46

PRODUCED BY

T

HE POST-STUDIO

We don’t want to jinx his

ERA OF HOLLYWOOD

chances at joining that select

FILMMAKING CAN

group; at this point, he’s

CLAIM A SELECT

only got a pair of produced

BUT DISTINGUISHED

features to his credit. But

TRADITION OF SKETCH COMEDY

Jordan Peele is looking

PIONEERS WHO WENT ON TO

like an awfully good bet to

SIGNIFICANT ACCLAIM AS FEATURE

become the next essential

FILMMAKERS, A GROUP THAT

filmmaker to emerge from

INCLUDES MIKE NICHOLS, BEN

the sketch trenches.

STILLER AND BOTH SIDES OF THE

The specs all check out. By

MEL BROOKS/CARL REINER DUO.

the conclusion of the five-

READERS ARE FREE TO SPECULATE

season run of Key & Peele on

PRECISELY WHAT MAKES SKETCH

Comedy Central, Peele and

COMEDY SUCH FERTILE GROUND FOR

partner Keegan-Michael

CREATIVES WHO ULTIMATELY FIND

Key were widely hailed as

THEIR FULLEST EXPRESSION ON THE

the finest pure sketch comics

BIG SCREEN. IF WE HAD TO GUESS,

of their day, capping their

WE’D HAZARD THAT THE TIGHT

show with a deserved Emmy

CONTROL OVER EVERY ASPECT OF

Award for Outstanding

PRODUCTION THAT SHORT-FORM

Variety Sketch Series. His first

STORYTELLING REQUIRES SIMPLY

feature, 2016’s Keanu, was

PROVIDES AN ACCESSIBLE EARLY

essentially an extension of

MODEL FOR DISCOVERING AND

his television work, featuring

EXECUTING A GREAT IDEA. IF YOU

Peele and Key in onscreen

CAN DO IT IN FOUR MINUTES, WHO’S

roles and director Peter

TO SAY YOU CAN’T DO IT IN 90?

Atencio behind the camera.

PRODUCED BY

47

I

t’s fair to say that no one saw the next step coming. Whereas most of Peele’s sketch-to-movies forebearers—Nichols being the chief exception—continued to lean on their established chops and expand their comic sensibilities to the

bigger screen, Peele took a sharp left turn toward his earliest passion, horror films.

Moreover, for the first time, he stayed behind the camera, making his feature directorial debut without the help of his own onscreen skills. Whatever questions may have lingered over those choices, they were resolved by the time the lights came up. A pitch-perfect synthesis of horror and social satire, shot through with his sketch work’s characteristic attention to genre detail and unsparing insight into the racial tensions of 21st century America, Get Out opened to universal critical praise and sensational box office, becoming 2017’s first must-see, word-of-mouth movie phenomenon.

Already, audiences are bracing for the next salvos, appetites whetted by the announcement of a planned slate of features from Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, promising to tackle social issues through the genre-film lens. In that effort, he’ll have the continued backing of his Get Out company partners, Universal Pictures and fellow PGA member Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions. Readers can look forward to hearing more about it during Peele’s headlining “Conversation with” session at the 2017 Produced By Conference, a discussion moderated by outspoken fan and TV legend

Producer/writer/director Jordan Peele (standing) on the set of Get Out with cast members (from left) Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Allison Williams and Daniel Kaluuya.

48

PRODUCED BY

PHOTOGRAPH BY JUSTIN LUBIN

Norman Lear.

COVER STORY: JORDAN PEELE

SO, BEFORE YOU CAME OUT HERE, WHAT DID YOU THINK A PRODUCER DID? WHAT WAS YOUR IDEA OF WHAT A PRODUCER WAS? I still don’t know that I know the answer to that question. [laughs] But I thought a producer was the person who provided the money for a film. And I knew from the Oscars that the producers accept the award for Best Picture, so they must be important. It wasn’t until coming here that I realized there’s a wide spectrum of types of producers and producorial responsibilities. And now, to me, it’s sort of code for “make the project happen, and make it better.”

HEY, THAT’S ABOUT AS GOOD A ONE-SENTENCE SUMMARY AS WE’LL EVER PRINT. SO EARLY ON, WHO DID YOU SEE DOING THE JOB OF PRODUCING THAT MADE YOU THINK, “THIS IS AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO WORK,” OR, “THIS IS THE GUY THAT’S MAKING IT HAPPEN?” Well, we had great showrunners, Jay Martel and Ian Roberts, at Key & Peele. At the time, Keegan and I were just starting out as producers ourselves, so it was a very symbiotic relationship.

Even before that, on MADtv, there was a guy named Dick Blasucci. I really, really liked him and his producing partner at the time, Lauren Dombrowski, who passed away maybe 10 years ago of breast cancer.

She and Dick were probably my biggest mentors as a producer. But Lauren and I had even more of a connection and friendship. Just on a personal level, she’s the one who helped me quit smoking. She saved my life. But also she was someone who I felt genuinely supported the artistry that I was trying to bring to the table at that show. And I think that was tied up in her having a certain anti-establishment sense, which I think is an important producorial quality, because the best projects are always the ones that are pushing boundaries of some sort. She was somebody that really cherished the artist and the craft.

HOW DID YOU INTERNALIZE THOSE VALUES AND BRING THEM TO THE WORK YOU WANTED TO DO? KEY & PEELE CLEARLY WASN’T CONCEIVED AS “JUST ANOTHER SKETCH SHOW.” THERE WAS INTENT TO IT. HOW DID THAT INTENT PUSH THE SHOW TOWARDS WHAT IT WAS GOING TO BE? I think sketch is one of these art forms where if you’re not pushing the boundaries, you’re not doing it right. It needs to earn its “shortformedness.” Sketch is a temporary thing, and that sort of opens up the door to take big swings, to push into areas that seem uncomfortable and still make it work.

Key & Peele was about satisfying what

So by the time Key & Peele came along I was starved to establish a more distinct comedic voice within sketch comedy. And of course we utilized the best techniques that all of our favorite shows used, from In Living Color, SNL, Mr. Show. For us, it was about boiling all of our favorite things down into what was essential about them and then taking that and applying it to what we knew worked for us.

We wanted to redefine what racial comedy was. Redefining or broadening what is thought of as the African-American identity was important to us. Because we felt like we hadn’t seen the “Black nerd” expressed in any way at all. And this was right as Obama was coming into office … I mean, he’s the king Black nerd. Looking at it from a different direction, Keegan and I

“I’M TRYING TO EXPLORE REPRESENTATION AND GENRE, AND TO EXPLORE STORIES THAT INVOLVE UNTAPPED VOICES, UNTAPPED IDENTITIES. IT TURNS OUT, THOSE AREN’T CRUTCHES. THEY’RE ACTUALLY WHAT THE WORLD WANTS RIGHT NOW.” I wasn’t getting (or what I never got) from the MADtv process. MADtv wasn’t my show. It was somebody else’s show. And so there was this feeling of needing to fit my comedic sensibilities into “the box,” the format.

also had this sense that we’d never seen a sketch show that really executed the genres it parodied with exact precision.

We wanted to make absolutely sure that if we’re doing a Les Mis parody, it looks and feels like Les Mis. If we’re doing a rap

PRODUCED BY

49

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Sundance Now’s boundary-pushing short film series is back for a second season

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

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COVER STORY: JORDAN PEELE

video it looks and feels like a rap video.

Our director Peter Atencio really helped us cultivate that and realize that vision.

He took each sketch as its own short film. Our whole plan from the very beginning was that we wanted this to be like the holodeck [from Star Trek: the Next Generation]. It had to be a sketch comedy holodeck. When we walk onto the set, we want it to look and feel like we’re in that world, in that genre. So that was an ideal we came into the show with and it was the reason we picked Peter, because he’s a chameleon. He had been doing this show called The Midnight Show at UCB, where he had been working on a smaller scale but executing these high production values for that level. We were also very slick with our schedule and budget. We would design the season, from the start, as a season so that we could spot the red flags and say, “Look, we’ve got seven sketches here that will cost as much as an entire episode. So what we have to do is maybe take three of these and then fill these episodes out with sketches that are just as funny, but maybe they don’t break our back.”

So the whole process was very strategic, looking at what we could achieve and adjusting our artistic accordingly. Which is something I did with Get Out as well.

Coming into it as a producer allows you to be steps ahead of the pitfalls, allows you to know how to use the monetary limitations … not to bypass them but literally use them to make the movie better.

I HEAR THAT FROM PRODUCERS TIME AND TIME AGAIN, HOW ULTIMATELY GRATEFUL THEY ARE FOR THE LIMITATIONS. THE THING THAT YOU GET WHEN YOU HAVE TO SCRAMBLE IS BETTER IN THE END THAN THE THING THAT YOU HAD ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BACK IN THE DAY. That’s right. Because it’s mock inspiration, right? Basically, the more correct choices you make on a project, the better. So if you look at every roadblock or every chal-

The more correct choices you make on a project, the better. So if you look at every roadblock or every challenge as an opportunity to make another correct choice, then those limitations become exciting.”

lenge as an opportunity to make another correct choice, then those limitations become exciting. That’s the only way to do it, I believe, because it’s so easy to get caught up in the idea that something “needs to be this way.” You hit this limitation and your brain checks out or short circuits, and you get stubborn. But a lot of what improv teaches us is, “No, those can be gifts.” And, of course, the best are experts in this. I mean, I always go back to Steven Spielberg and Jaws and Bruce—the shark that barely worked but ended up bringing us the best monster movie of all time, because Spielberg was able to convert it into the terror of what was underneath the water as opposed to the horror of seeing it head-on.

COULD YOU TALK A LITTLE MORE ABOUT THAT? WHAT WERE SOME OF THE “GIFTS” YOU RECEIVED ON GET OUT ?

Pretty early on in the prep process for the film we were going to shoot here in Los Angeles. We were scouting here, but then due to a circumstance we were no longer going to get the tax rebate that we were counting on. So all of the sudden, we had to change locations and go someplace that had a better rebate. Now this was a month before we were going to shoot, really three weeks or a month into prep.

And almost on kind of on a whim, I chose Alabama. Because we had to make a decision. I figured, they don’t have thousands of projects there like New Orleans or Atlanta so maybe we’ll be able to get our choice of crew and everything here. It presented a whole series of challenges because the film infrastructure there wasn’t too developed, although it’s improving, certainly. But it was hard to get locations; people didn’t have any contacts. [good ol’ boy accent] “What? You want to make a Hollywood film here?” But at the end of the day, I can’t imagine having shot it anywhere else. All those square pegs in the round holes ended up shifting how I thought about the world of the movie.

Just take the house, for example. It was originally written as a mansion, with the

PRODUCED BY

51

COVER STORY: JORDAN PEELE

privileged angle as more of a foreboding presence. The house was going to loom over him. But of course, we couldn’t afford the mansion. So we had a more normal house … Still a beautiful, idyllic house with a lot of space and a sense of privilege. But it doesn’t have that looming presence, and I think the movie is better for it.

OH, COMPLETELY. YOU’RE NOT TIPPING YOUR HAND THAT WAY. THE COMFORT THAT YOU FEEL IN THAT ENVIRONMENT IS SUCH A HUGE PART OF THAT FIRST ACT AND THE SETUP FOR WHAT’S COMING. The same thing is true for the family itself. The parents, Dean and Missy … in the original script they were more stuffy, stereotypically WASPy, less down to earth. But when Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener signed on, it helped me evolve the characters into really these seemingly warm, liberal, intellectuals. I mean, what would the film have been if it wasn’t that?

RIGHT, EXACTLY. IT’S SO MUCH MORE SUBVERSIVE THAT WAY. For every single role cast, I looked at it less as me teaching the actor how to be the character I wrote and more like bringing the character and the actor towards one another. Like, what is Caleb Landry Jones’ version of Jeremy? That’s another character where the original conception was this normal sort of overeducated, cocky, preppy guy. But Caleb has this real “creepazoid” factor. So that’s when I realized, “Okay, Jeremy, he’s not the dude I originally thought. He’s more of the kid who probably tortured animals when he was younger.” So we moved towards that.

Almost all the characters were that way, I would say, with the exception of Chris and Rod. That casting was pretty straight down to exactly what I had planned the characters to be like.

RIGHT. WELL, I MEAN, THEY’RE THE “NORMAL GUY” ANCHORS OF THE STORY. THEY’RE NOT

52

PRODUCED BY

THE ONES SURROUNDED BY THE GENRE ELEMENTS THAT YOU’RE PLAYING WITH. BUT JUST TO SORT OF TRACK BACK A LITTLE BIT AND TALK ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROJECT, AFTER KEY & PEELE WRAPPED, AND EVERYONE IS WONDERING, “WELL, OKAY, WHAT NEXT?” HOW IS GET OUT WHERE YOU GRAVITATED? BECAUSE I’M SURE EVERYBODY WAS EXPECTING YOU TO KEEP GOING IN THE COMEDY DIRECTION. Yeah, well, I’ve been a fan of this genre for so long. To be honest, making horror films was my first dream before I discovered comedy. So that was always kind of bubbling up. In 2008, after MADtv, I went into this period of my career where I really got to ask myself, “So, what’s next?

If I could do anything in the world what would I do?”

So in that state, I started writing a wide variety of projects, just with the goal of getting better as a writer. Those sort of gestated for awhile. After a couple of years, Get Out just sort of rose above the rest as the thing that was the most ready.

So by this time Key & Peele had started.

Towards the middle of shooting Key & Peele, I had a general meeting with this guy, Sean McKittrick at QC Entertainment, and I sort of pitched Get Out offhandedly.

He said, “I want you to write that script.

Let’s write it. We’ll buy it.”

So I wrote it, and then kind of realized halfway through writing it, “Hey, I’ve got to direct this too. No one else can do this.”

So the reality of it was, knowing that this was coming and was something I really, really believed in, that was the reason I told Comedy Central, “We’ve got to end the show.” The last two seasons of Key & Peele we did one after the other. It was a grind. By the time Key & Peele was over we shot Keanu and then I went straight into Get Out. But people would always ask me, “How come you stopped Key & Peele?

You were on top! Why would you walk away from that?” And my answer was always, “Well, I think when people see this

movie they’re going to wish I had actually been doing this for the past 10 years.”

SO HOW DID THE MONEY COME TOGETHER? DID SEAN FINANCE IT? QC took it on to fully finance it. I developed the script with them and/or for them. About eight months to a year later, they were putting their feelers out for a partner. There were several production companies that we went to. Some of them just plain didn’t get it and told us to fuck off. But Blumhouse, they really got it. It was a perfect match. I mean, what an amazing brand for a horror thriller to go out under, and what an amazing track record they have of utilizing their Universal slots and working with Universal marketing for wide release.

If it came down to it, QC was prepared to finance it. But it was a perfect strategic alliance. As soon as Blumhouse came on, their infrastructure really helped provide me with a lot of stability as a first-time director.

SOMETHING PRODUCERS ALWAYS TALK ABOUT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF “CASTING THE CREW” AND FINDING YOUR DEPARTMENT HEADS AND FINDING YOUR PRINCIPALS. HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT THAT PROCESS? It came together in what I would imagine is a fairly typical way. You get a bunch of recommendations, you look at their work and you see who’s the best and who’s available. So Toby Oliver is my DP; he’s a guy who had done such beautiful work, just a great reel and very consistent aesthetic. Also, he’s from Australia, and the way they work in Australia really trains the cinematographers to work on lower budgets, so they work faster.

INTERESTING. BRUNA PAPANDREA TALKED TO US AT LENGTH LAST YEAR ABOUT HOW THERE’S REALLY STRONG GOVERNMENT BACKING FOR LOW-BUDGET FILM IN THE

PHOTOGRAPH BY JUSTIN LUBIN

COVER STORY: JORDAN PEELE

Jordan Peele discusses a scene with Bradley Whitford on the set of Get Out.

AUSTRALIAN SYSTEM. That’s right. So one of the ways I was looking at this was that we needed to populate this movie with talent that’s better than what we can pay them. [laughs] So we found our way to Toby, who has paid his dues pretty hardcore in Australia but is a relatively fresher presence here, trying to build his U.S. portfolio. So I’m basically getting a super-experienced DP for a little bit less than what one might think we would have to pay to get somebody with that talent. The same with the production designer, Russell Smith. He’s a guy who has worked on much bigger-budget films but who was at a place where he wanted to do something smaller. So it felt like he was willing to come down a couple of steps to do this film.

That was the approach all across the board—everybody involved, along with being brilliant at what they do, was looking at some reason that they might be willing to do something a little below their pay grade, whether it was because they believed in the project, or they were

looking for something like this on their resume for some reason or just because they fundamentally “got it.”

IN TERMS OF “GETTING IT,” THE TONE OF THE FILM IS REALLY PRECISE. IT HAS TO WALK A FINE LINE IN TERMS OF GIVING YOU THE STUFF YOU EXPECT FROM A GENRE HORROR STORY, PLUS A KIND OF SOCIAL COMMENTARY ANGLE THAT CAN’T GET TOO HEAVY OR ELSE YOU LOSE THE FUN OF IT. HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT THAT THE FOLKS YOU BROUGHT ON INHERENTLY UNDERSTOOD THAT BALANCE? OR IS THAT MORE LIKE SOMETHING THAT YOU FELT YOU WOULD BRING TO IT, GIVEN THE PEOPLE WITH ENOUGH SKILLS TO EXECUTE THE THING? It felt more like the latter, honestly. I mean that’s my role, right? And as I would continue to talk about the film in

terms of what it is and what it’s not, over the course of that, people arrived at a better idea of what their role in it is. But, to be honest, there weren’t a lot of reference points I could give.

RIGHT. I WAS JUST THINKING THAT. Yeah. So I can give them an idea, like, “This is The Stepford Wives. This is Scream. This is Shining. This is Halloween.

This is Night of the Living Dead.” I want to take pieces from all of those things, but most importantly, I want the thing to feel real. I think the part that I knew I couldn’t necessarily count on anybody to fully wrap their head around was the proportion of thriller to comedy. If it’s one notch more comedic, it’s a totally different film. It’s a parody. And if it’s one notch too serious, then all of the sudden we have something that may just be too upsetting and hard to watch. So that balance was something that I knew I had to be very careful about.

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COVER STORY: JORDAN PEELE

DID YOU DO A LOT OF REHEARSAL WITH YOUR CAST IN TERMS OF GETTING THEM TO HIT THESE NOTES? HOW MUCH LEEWAY DID YOU GIVE THEM TO FIND THEIR “ZONE,” GIVEN THAT YOU HAD TO HAVE A PRETTY GOOD IDEA OF THE BULL’S-EYE YOU WERE GOING FOR? I had conversations with all of them before we got to Alabama. They came out probably a week before we shot. There was one day and night where Catherine Keener suggested we all go to a house and just sort of get to know each other.

She had done that with a project before, and it turned out to be really a great decision. Basically, we were just hanging out with the family, and you can sort of see and feel the actual dynamic between the actors develop. That continued to inform me as to who the characters were to each other. So by the time we were in front of the cameras, we had done a lot of the building of who the Armitages were.

It was quite collaborative in that way, having that lead-in.

IT’S GOT TO BE HUGELY VALIDATING, THE SUCCESS OF THIS FILM. STEPPING BACK A LITTLE, WHAT DO YOU TAKE FROM THE FACT THAT, HEY, IT TURNS OUT THE AUDIENCE WAS ACTUALLY READY FOR THIS MOVIE AND READY FOR THIS STORY, WHICH IS NOT SOMETHING ANYONE WOULD’VE NECESSARILY PREDICTED EVEN A FEW MONTHS AGO? It’s very validating, very inspiring. I feel like, in the future, as a writer or a filmmaker, I can do what I did with this one, which is write my favorite movie that doesn’t exist. But also as a producer, it helps inform and validate what I’m trying to do with Monkeypaw Productions, my production company, which is to find ways to explore representation and genre, and to explore stories that involve untapped voices, untapped identities. It

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turns out, those aren’t crutches. They’re actually what the world wants right now.

Because these are the stories we’ve been neglecting for many years.

So the big lesson for me is that you can commit to leads in films that aren’t established celebrities. You can commit to the type of stories that never would’ve been thought of as producible five years

YEAH! IT’S AMAZING, THE PARTS OF THAT FILM THAT ARE NOW INGRAINED IN THE COMMON CULTURE. Exactly. And it’s because the storytelling is so perfect that it transcends what we think is “okay” or “allowed.” That’s another reason I love horror.

“WE’RE IN A TIME THAT’S BEING LED BY FEAR. THAT MEANS WE’RE IN AN ERA WHERE WE NEED TO DEAL WITH OUR FEARS. THE BEST WAY TO DO THAT, FOR ME, IS HORROR/SCI-FI/ COMEDY.” ago. And if you take those bold leaps of faith and trust your instinct and trust that the reason story is such a powerful art form is because when it’s good it’s just good, the conventional wisdom doesn’t matter. If the story is really great, people will turn out for it. I mean, you look at The Exorcist, which is maybe the most successful horror movie of all time, a massive and deserved phenomenon. And it has some of the most depraved, crazy moments in the history of Hollywood.

I HAVE TO SAY, YOUR TIMING IS WEIRDLY PERFECT. I MEAN PRETTY MUCH BY ACCLAMATION, YOU WERE THE BEST “OBAMA” OF THE OBAMA ERA. BUT NOW THE OBAMA ERA IS OVER, AND JUST IN TIME FOR THE ELECTION YEAR, YOU’VE MOVED INTO HORROR. [laughs] That’s right. We had a laugh and now it’s time to quake in our boots.

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DOES IT MEAN SOMETHING DIFFERENT TO YOU TO BE DOING SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS STORYTELLING, WHETHER IN HORROR OR IN COMEDY, NOW AS IT DID TWO YEARS AGO? It does feel more important now. And specifically because we have an administration that used fear as a tool to get its power. To me, when that happens it means we’re in a time that’s being led by fear. And so that means we’re in an era where we need to address our fears.

We need to deal with our fears. The best way to do that, for me, is horror/sci-fi/

comedy. It’s with these genres where it’s expected for us to get into these uncomfortable areas and to enjoy those uncomfortable areas. To me, genre is one of the most transformative and important aspects of storytelling. I feel like the fact that we hadn’t had a horror movie about race for 50 years—let’s say, since Night of the Living Dead—isn’t just a symptom of the problem—it’s part of the problem.

We haven’t been able to invite white people to see the world through the eyes of a black man who has fears. I mean, that’s empathy. That’s walking a day in someone else’s shoes. And when we don’t

have that, we’re going to be coming at the conversation from two different places.

We’re not going to be able to understand each other’s point of view.

Now black America has watched many films through white people’s eyes, and we cheer for Liam Neeson. We love ourselves some Bruce Willis. But the opposite hasn’t happened as much. And I think it’s important that it happens in not just dramas and slave narratives and stories we have a comfortable distance from but that it happens in fun movies that take place right now.

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Good Sport MIKE TOLLIN EXTENDS HIS WINNING STREAK WITH CHUCK .

Written by Spike Friedman Photographed by Michael Neveux

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GOOD SPORT

MIKE TOLLIN’S OFFICE AT THE MANDALAY SPORTS MEDIA HEADQUARTERS IN THE HILLS OF THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY IS LESS A WORKSPACE AND MORE A SHRINE TO SPORTS HISTORY. Tollin works below a display case of signed baseballs from an array of Hall of Famers and American presidents. On another wall, he has the game on, even at noon on a Wednesday.

Buried in bookshelves next to his desk are bits of memorabilia connected to his beloved Philadelphia Phillies and the team’s lightning-rod, 1960s star, Richie Allen, whose story he says he wants to tell more than any other. This is a project he’s been dreaming on for decades and working on for years, one about which he says, only half jokingly, “Once I’ve told this one, I’ll be done.” He has Sixers memorabilia from the only sports championship he got to celebrate as a child. He has pictures of his family with the families of his childhood heroes.

He has custom memorabilia from the sets of Summer Catch and Radio, which he directed, posters of most of his feature films including both Chuck and The Zookeepers Wife, his most recent releases, which mark a return to scripted film for Tollin. The contents in the room are personal and meaningful. The memorabilia he surrounds himself with wasn’t acquired on eBay and it isn’t for show. Tollin lives his connection to his work, and his work has a profound connection to sports.

Tollin’s earlier work was more varied, his focus split between what he referred to as the twin pillars of stories about sports and youth culture. Working with his former producing partner, Brian Robbins, Tollin brought shows such as All That, Smallville and Arli$$, and movies like Wild Hogs, Varsity Blues and Hardball to the screen. But after the two parted ways amicably a decade ago, Tollin’s work came to focus on narratives based on sports.

In an effort to stay ahead of the market forces that were changing the models that Tollin had been operating under, he partnered with kindred spirit and powerful

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ally, Peter Guber, to form Mandalay Sports Media, five years ago. That meant scripted films, television series, documentaries and branded content all with an eye toward sports. “Brian and I had always been crossover artists,” Tollin observes, “But now with the diversification of media, there were only more worlds to cross between.”

Tollin’s work has made him a powerful enemy as well. His office has only one piece of memorabilia turned backwards, away from where he works. “It’s out of protest,” Tollin explains, then shows me the piece. It’s a letter that he sent first to Donald Trump, in the wake of his ESPN 30

working with Trump. “Back then, Trump was desperate for any publicity,” he recalls, “and we were making a weekly show about the league, and he was great fodder. We’d go up to the box and there was Ivana, and he’d play to the camera and be colorful. We spent a lot of time together. And it was a little creepy but it was both business and a little seductive.” Despite this connection, when he set out to make the documentary, Trump initially stonewalled Tollin. After Tollin told 30 for 30 producers Bill Simmons and Connor Schell that they may not have Trump, they were undeterred and told him to keep pursuing it.

“WITH LESS RELIANCE ON ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE, THERE’S MORE ROOM FOR AUTHENTIC HUMAN STORYTELLING.” for 30 documentary Small Potatoes: Who Killed The USFL? The answer to the titular question was Trump, and he was none too pleased. In Trump’s words it was, “a third rate documentary—and extremely dishonest (as you know).”

But Tollin wasn’t just taking uninformed potshots at the now-president. He had worked with the USFL when he was just coming up as a producer, and that meant

Though Tollin’s instinct was to pull a Roger and Me and track down Trump at one of his golf courses, he got lucky. A story by John Genzale in the Sports Business Journal about the upcoming 30 for 30 slate caught Trump’s eye. The next day the phone rang; Trump was ready to go on camera. Tollin rolled every moment they had of Trump—including his inevitable storm-out, in which Trump refers to the

GOOD SPORT

Above: Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber in a scene from Chuck.

Right: Liev Schreiber steps into the ring as Chuck Wepner.

whole endeavor as “small potatoes,” giving the film its title. The producer got what he needed to tell his story and pissed off the future president of the United States all in one fell swoop.

The anecdote is a testament to the twin hallmarks of Tollin’s work, his authenticity and his tenacity. Both are on display in his most recent feature, Chuck.

Chuck tells the true story of Chuck Wepner, a former mid-Atlantic heavyweight contender who went 12 rounds with Muhammad Ali. If that story sounds familiar, it’s because it served as the loose basis for Rocky, and Wepner’s having to live with being the basis for a more popular, fictionalized version of himself is the crux of the film. “Chuck’s interesting be-

cause at its core it’s the myth of narcissus,” Tollin muses. “He is the rare man who gets to see his own reflection as a fictional character.” Heightening this is the film itself, in which Chuck is played by Liev Schreiber, a reflection of a reflection. “I mean, the character Rocky Balboa has been inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame. And now Chuck’s seeing Liev play him too.”

The journey for Chuck’s story to reach the big screen was an arduous one. Tollin acquired the rights over a decade ago, after reading an article about Wepner. “The great thing about Chuck, here’s a guy who was nicknamed the Bayonne Bleeder, a punching bag on the way up for big-name fighters.

But today he’s 77. He works out every day.

He’s still telling the same stories with the

same sharpness. There’s real joy to share this with him and not do it in his memory.”

The film also lines up with Tollin’s notions about how and when to fictionalize a true story. There are of course the obvious practical questions about whether the needed footage exists. But there’s also the question of how iconic his main character is. Do people have an image in their head of the subject of the film? If that character is Coach Carter, you can cast Samuel L. Jackson. But if that character is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? There’s no actor who can play that role without being distracting.

In some cases this has led to a hybridized approach within his projects. The ESPN miniseries The Bronx Is Burning mixed archival footage with performances from

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Oliver Platt as George Steinbrenner and John Turturro as Billy Martin to tell the story of the Yankees 1977 World Series run and the turmoil that surrounded it.

Chuck was envisioned the same way, a blend of real footage and new material.

However, when the opportunity to assemble a straight documentary on Wepner presented itself under the 30 for 30 banner, Tollin took it. This meant reenvisioning Chuck (then being

developed under the working title The Bleeder) as a fully scripted film. They next got Schreiber attached to what wound up being a 12-year journey, while in partnering with Avi Lerner and Millennium, they found an unlikely but receptive match. Ironically, the documentary hews closer to the structure of a more conventional feature. But in the final cut of Chuck, the last real boxing scene sits at the end of the first act.

With less reliance on archival footage, there’s more room for authentic human storytelling.

Chuck, like its subject, is scrappy but with considerable and unexpected staying power. In many ways it’s a small film that reveals its true intentions gradually, behind a set of great performances. While it works on the big screen, it also fits in the living room and seems a good bet to recoup its bud-

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“THERE IS THAT QUALITY TO SPORTS THAT WASHES OVER YOU. YOU KNOW THE STAKES. YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE ROOTING FOR. THERE ARE REAL CONNECTIONS.” get on the strength of cable and streaming deals. Within a shifting media landscape, this can be a model for bringing a hungry audience the type of stories that Tollin is most interested in telling.

To this end, Mandalay Sports Media, in partnership with IMG, has announced a 10-feature slate of scripted and documentary films about sports. “The middle ground where we used to make movies like Varsity

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Blues or Coach Carter has been shrinking,” Tollin recognizes. In spite of those structural changes on the business side, his belief is that there is still a clear audience appetite for these narratives, even if the audience is more localized. The first film under the IMG deal is an adaptation of Chad Harbach’s best-selling novel The Art of Fielding, to be directed by Craig Johnson.

“It’s fun though,” Tollin is quick to

share. “I have a partner, Pete Guber, and even though he’s a decade older than me, he’s so tech savvy. He plays this role with his teams. Peter goes to the games and looks at the experience, the entertainment value, how the team is positioned in the community. So he’s a great strategic partner for me when we talk about how to do a project.” Guber’s passion for these stories helped shape the slate of films Mandalay is going to produce.

The inherent tension that lives at the heart of any sports movie is that unlike sports, which are never-ending unscripted dramas, a film (whether scripted or not) has to have a prescribed ending. When I ask Tollin about this, he admits to being increasingly detached from games themselves. “For me, sports? It’s a commonality.

It’s a universal language. I love using sports as a backdrop, not so much because of the inherent drama, but because of the universality. The intergenerational qualities. It’s the fabric of our society.”

He pauses, then adds, “Clichés happen for a reason. I used to sit with my grandfather in his retirement home. And at 7 o’clock he’d ask me to wheel him in his wheelchair over to the radio. And he’d turn it on. And he’d sit there and fall asleep listening to the Phillies game.

This is before Harry Callas, even. It didn’t matter that they were usually 20 games out of first place. But there is that quality to sports that washes over you. You know the stakes. You know the good guys. You know who you’re rooting for. There are real connections.”

For Tollin, sports are a conduit to the type of stories he wants to tell. When I ask him if he thinks of himself as a historian, given his tendency to shed a light on under-remembered stories like Chuck, Radio or his potential Richie Allen film, he demurs. “Storyteller is an overused term now,” Tollin reflects, “but I do like to expose a certain kind of story. And many of them have a historical component to them. I like to think these stories are illuminating, inspiring … thought-provoking, if we’re lucky. But sometimes they’re just clean fun.”

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CENTURY WOMAN

THE TIMES MAY CHANGE, BUT FOR ANNE CAREY, THE THRILL OF GREAT STORIES AND CHARACTERS REMAINS THE SAME. Written by Justine Neubarth Photographed by Ricky Rhodes

W

hen I asked Anne Carey, independent film producer and president of production at Archer Gray, how her job had changed over the course of her multi-decade career, I suppose I was expecting a sweeping response studded with words like “the internet” and “Amazon” and also “Netflix.” But given the question, she considers for several moments—she is nothing if not thoughtful— and then responds that no, at its heart, her job hasn’t transformed much at all. “Where the money comes from has maybe changed, the number of distributors, and the ways it’s distributed has waxed and waned,” she explains. “But I think to some degree, to me, it’s remained pretty much the same: You find a great piece of material or what you believe is a great piece of material. And you begin the process of creating centripetal force.”

For Carey, who is behind beloved features like Adventureland and The Savages, and more recently Diary of a Teenage Girl and 20th Century Women, creating that force—and crafting a narrative—is at the core of what she does. The daughter of a schoolteacher (her mother) and an army doctor (her father), it was a requirement to always be reading a good book (her mom’s rule) and to always be able to tell a good dinner table story (her dad’s). “Out of that,” she says, “came a love of storytelling.”

And sure, she concedes that where the storytelling happens has morphed a bit, or as she puts it: “Television has become where people sit and talk, and movies have become where people in tights blow stuff up.” She points to shows like Transparent, which “15 years ago would have been a movie.” Still, her process has remained consistent. She parses it out: “You work with a filmmaker who’s got their idea, and you help them figure out the version of it that the world is interested in, and you have to do that at the right price point. And you have to have great roles. That part hasn’t changed at all.”

A product of the Midwest and “rust belt cities of grit and good food,” Carey initially studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art. There she began making shorts of her own, working with a friend on “Stan Brakhage-type movies.” In order to study film as a major, she applied to transfer to USC, UCLA and NYU. She got into all three, and then in addition, she got into a car accident. “It was like a sign from God that I shouldn’t have a car,” she deadpans. And so, New York it was.

Upon graduation from NYU as a film/writing major, she took a string of “completely unremarkable jobs,” including waitressing and writing “horrible” alliterative marketing packages for MCA TV. (The one perk of that gig: calling Lew Wasserman and giving him

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21ST CENTURY WOMAN

Producer Anne Carey (center) on the set of Can You Forgive Me? with executive producer Pamela Hirsch (left) and makeup department head Ma Kalaadevi Ananda.

the Nielsen ratings every morning.) On the side, Carey wrote screenplays, but they were, in her own words, terrible. “I was undisciplined,” she admits.

The big break came when she landed a position as the assistant to Phyllis Levy, the in-house book scout at William Morris.

Levy, a Radcliffe grad and “a classic kind

of New York woman”, hunted down manuscripts from New York publishers and literary agents and sent them out to William Morris’ A-list clients. “We probably covered about 400 books a month,” Carey recalls.

“We had a reader for comedies, a reader for thrillers, a reader for women’s fiction.”

From Levy (who herself had champi-

oned One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest back when she was just a publishing assistant at Viking Press), Carey learned how to look for movies within books. “It was really, I felt in some ways, my graduate school experience.

It was very hands-on, and you could see what was going on in theater and TV and packaging. It was all at your fingertips.”

Carey still considers whittling a movie from a book to be one of her great strengths. She looks for decisive endings because, “If the book doesn’t have a movie ending, your movie will never have an ending.” Period. She also reads for castable parts, highly specific worlds and simply for “stories that I am interested in.” Admittedly, that “seems very basic, but it’s very true.

You live with these things for a long time.”

Recently, she lived alongside 2015’s Mr. Holmes for quite awhile, having optioned the 2005 novel upon which it was based, A Slight Trick of the Mind, before publication.

While Carey self-deprecatingly describes her early attempts at writing as “lazy,” even she will admit that she is a “pretty good” reader. So good in fact, that when Levy departed William Morris, they placed Carey in charge of the literary development department at just 27 years old. After a year, she felt that she had gotten the most that she could out of the experience. She wanted to be closer to film production. She didn’t want to be an agent. And so she left.

Carey notes a somewhat prophetic letter that her father had recently dug up in his house. She had sent it home during her very first month at NYU. It read: “New York’s going okay. I think I’m figuring out this film school thing. I met a kid named Ted Hope. He’s likely to be a friend.”

She had met Hope, now the head of production for Amazon Original Movies, during her first class on her first day at NYU. Right around the time that she left William Morris, Hope, along with fellow producer James Schamus, was starting up the production company Good Machine.

Once they had gotten a first-look deal at Fox Searchlight and they could pay Carey (“I wasn’t someone who could be in the film business and not earn money.”), she joined them as their head of development.

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Eventually she produced her first film, an adaptation of The Laramie Project for HBO. From the time it opened its doors in 1990 until its acquisition by Universal Pictures in 2002, Good Machine was a force in independent filmmaking, championing features like The Ice Storm and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. “It was a great, great, great group of people,” Carey says. “One of the things I always say to students now when I teach is this idea of ‘the independent producer’—it doesn’t mean that you’re alone.

You can’t really produce alone. I think I’ve had great partners, whether it was Phyllis Levy or the people at Good Machine, who were just great collaborators.”

In the midst of Good Machine’s rise, Carey also had children. Now that her sons are grown—one is out of the house, and one is a teenager—she’s eager to speak to the delicate balance of being a mother and handling a producing career. “I would tell anybody who asks that it’s hard. Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s not hard,” she warns. “Find the balance that works for your family. Like, I didn’t ever want to come home and have my kids be asleep, so I’d have my kids take a nap and then we’d all have dinner at 8 o’clock. Whatever works for your family still works for your family, and don’t worry about what other people tell you should work for your family.”

She remembers calling up the offices of Good Machine even on her way to the hospital to give birth to her first son and telling them offhandedly to read a script that she thought was good. When she came back to the office a few months later, she discovered that they hadn’t just read the script but had optioned it, for no other reason except “They felt like ‘if she’s calling on the way to the hospital, she must be really serious.’”

Carey sighs. “It was never made.”

Carey arrived at Archer Gray, a production company founded by venture capitalist Amy Nauiokas, in 2013, with a “sort of Willy Loman suitcase full of movies.” In the four years since, the company has produced seven films, and Carey is now working on the upcoming Can You Ever Forgive Me, starring Melissa McCarthy, directed by Marielle Heller and with a

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Anne Carey hosts sons Nico and Jack on the set of The American. Right: video assist Mickey Bergstrom

screenplay by Nicole Holofcener.

I asked Carey about the importance of buoying women in the industry throughout their careers. “I don’t know that I’ve actually set out to help women filmmakers more than I’ve set out to help any other filmmakers,” she responds after another thoughtful pause. When she produced The Diary of a Teenage Girl at Archer Gray (in conjunction with Caviar and Cold Iron Pictures), she greatly enjoyed the singular atmosphere that arose from the sheer abundance of women on the set, including the line producer, the first AD and the second AD. “There’s something about that that I think is lovely, because I think it’s a different environment.” But Carey observes, she felt like she could also help men be better artistic partners as well. “I think the men need to evolve,” she suggests. “I think the women are fine. We have the skills, we have the talent, we’re equal. I actually think we should start concentrating on fixing the men.”

“I want to be clear: Many men get it,” Carey continues, pointing to filmmaker Mike Mills and her experience producing last year’s acclaimed 20th Century Women. For Carey, who believes it is her “responsibility as a mother of two boys to raise evolved sons,” the mother-and-son story resonated with her, as did the late-‘70s period. “My mom knew many of those same kind of women, in the same kind of era. I felt like I had two possible contributions to make in this, in that I had been both this side of the story and I had been that side of the story.”

She had worked with Mills on the script development for his first feature, Thumbsucker, and she spent a lot of time— a few hours every other Sunday for a couple of years— developing the 20th Century Women script with him. “A lot of it is just listening to him and helping him talk,” she said. “Mike talks to a lot of people and has a lot of influences, but I was excited to be invited into that process. It was super rare and intimate.”

And when it’s all said and done, Carey views her job in straightforward fashion: “It’s fun making movies. It’s not coal mining.” Her husband is an editor at the Wall Street Journal, and he provides a nice foil to her film life (or as she puts it, “He laughs at my fake world.”) And his line of work gives her additional insight into just how dramatic the news is in this particular moment in time. “It’s very hard to get people away from the news right now, right?” she tells others. “For something to be more interesting than the news, it has to be pretty interesting … We have to make things that resonate.”

And while so much has changed, much remains the same. The current discourse reminds Carey of when she was in art school and film school in the 1980s. “I remember thinking about Reagan and Koch and New York and thinking, ‘I just need to make stuff that chips away at that.’

And I think now is a really exciting time to make movies that, without being overly heavy-handed, improve the conversation and improve the dialogue.”

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Standing Up

To Cyber

Threats Time to update the production workflow for our cloud-connected world

WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL? Every day in the news we hear about new cyber-crimes. Many of these crimes affect us personally and directly. The Anthem Blue Cross breach of millions of customers’ identity data included those of us insured through the MPIPHP. These breaches are rarely explained, but the vast majority trace back to an employee within the organization who is used (wittingly or unwittingly) to access or infect the company information.

WHAT’S SO SECRET AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO ME? Our productions are targets of many types of threats, from random ransomware blackmailers to leaky insiders to content pirates. The damage however is not necessarily limited to the commercial value of the production. The damage can include the identity theft from employees, the creative reputations of our artists and the personal reputations of our cast.

WHAT PRODUCTION ELEMENTS HAVE BEEN (OR SHOULD BE) CONSIDERED CONFIDENTIAL?

Written by Lulu Zezza Illustrated by Christine Georgiades

We have always considered scripts, contracts, designs, callsheets, dailies, continuity stills, raw publicity stills, employee payroll and health records as confidential. Personal contact information on the crew list, including emergency contacts and medical information (e.g., allergies), is protected confidential information. Even so, this information is frequently shared amongst crew members—some who need it, some who may not.

Works in progress, particularly early stages of the writing and design process, are extremely confidential, even more so if they are rejected concepts that could misrepresent the goals and aspirations of the artists and the production.

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STANDING UP TO CYBER THREATS

HOW HAVE CURRENT WORKFLOWS PUT THAT INFORMATION AT RISK? Today we have a plethora of tools to make us more productive. Smartphones, tablets and laptops allow us to take our work anywhere, while cloud applications allow us to share with anyone. And yet, most of our systems for securing our productions work only within the confines of our physical (or as we call them, “practical”) work spaces. We tend to apply the same logic to protecting our digitally created and stored information. Unfortunately, there are many unknown and misunderstood weaknesses to our defenses.

MORE OBVIOUS: Someone takes pictures with their smartphone and posts them on social media. LESS OBVIOUS: Someone turns their smartphone into a mobile hotspot and uses it to transfer media from the AVID. MORE OBVIOUS: Someone forwards an email containing their callsheet to paparazzi. LESS OBVIOUS: Someone opens a personal email with ransomware embedded, infecting the office server and everyone connected to it with data-locking malware.

MORE OBVIOUS: Someone’s personal and not-backed-up computer becomes corrupted and loses all their work in progress. LESS OBVIOUS: The employee’s work product leaves along with them at wrap instead of that work product remaining in the company’s possession.

We are inventing smarter systems to share information, such as Filetrack, Scenechronize, 5th Kind, Pix and Aspera.

These do help limit the promulgation of documents and videos to unauthorized recipients but only when we, or our crew, actively move those documents or videos into or via those systems. None of these protect our information outside of their applications.

HOW CAN WE UPDATE THE WORKFLOWS TO BE MORE SECURE FOR OUR CASTS, CREWS AND COLLABORATORS? It starts with providing education and a new standard of excellence for our crew.

Systems for information management and security have met with remarkable

resistance in the production community.

There are numerous root causes of this resistance that can be turned into solutions.

Filmmakers are by nature, miracle workers. They are creative, independent, self-reliant and generally self-taught. They pride themselves in learning new and better solutions every day. But they resist learning new systems which they have not discovered for themselves. Planning and setting up systems to protect data is not on their agenda—they need to be reviewing sets and props and camera setups. But if they can be included in finding the solutions and in planning the implementation, they will be vested in the plan.

a false notion of ownership of the IP that is in direct contradiction of every production employment agreement. Crew resist storing their work on the company systems because they often believe (incorrectly) that it belongs to them. Contractually, none of this work product should be repurposed on another company’s production except that the industry relies on their accumulated experience. Currently, the general practice is for crew members to determine what work product they ‘share’ with their producers, typically only the ‘finished’ versions they want to be evaluated or used. Thus, the crew curates what the producer gets to use—despite not necessarily knowing what

“EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT AND POLICY OVERSIGHT SHOULD GO TO A PERSON TRAINED FOR THE TASK. THIS MEANS A NEW DEPARTMENT WITH A NEW DEPARTMENT HEAD.” Filmmakers are team players; they understand they are an essential part of a group effort. The information created on a production—creative, mundane and personal—is under constant threat. The cast and crew are the only combatants to protect that information. As a team working together with a plan of defense, they can protect that information—the same way they work together to execute the shooting schedule and the creative vision.

Filmmakers are hoarders of their work product. Producers rely on experienced crew members to bring their accrued knowledge, which may include accumulated intellectual property from prior productions. We engage crew with pertinent past production experience to create new and surprising methods and results. This industry-wide reliance has resulted in generally lax enforcement of work product (IP) collection and storage by production companies.

It has also created, amongst crew members,

the production needs. All too often, months after wrap, producers will search in vain for information they need for reshoots or marketing or chain of title backup. We need to address this paradigm, and acknowledge that while the crew should take with them what they have learned, it should be the production company that determines what materials are appropriate for a crew member to keep, rather than the crew member determining what copies to provide to the production company.

Filmmakers are soldiers with an inherent respect for the chain of command. The role of information management typically has been handed to the youngest and most computer-savvy PA in the production office or occasionally to a local “IT guy.”

These are crew at the bottom of the chain of command and often have little training in information security beyond setting a password on the wifi network. Producers and UPMs need to recognize the complexity

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of this responsibility, engage someone with appropriate training and give that person “department head” status.

Beyond education, there are a few basic means which can begin to create a safer information environment. These alone do not provide a total solution, but they make strides in the right direction.

A first, simple and inexpensive action is to create a production-specific email domain and issue production email accounts to any crew member who will be creating information or accessing production information and media.

This provides several basic layers of security: • The likelihood of a phishing email scam (which tricks the recipient into opening links or attachments which contain malware) reaching the new single-purpose emails is very low.

• The emails can be managed and backed up easily. In fact, if a crew member returns for a pickup shoot, their email can be reactivated and all their correspondence from principal immediately available to them.

• Crew member access to the production systems such as those mentioned above can be limited to their production email account and easily disabled (along with the email account) when they wrap.

• Production emails provide an audit trail to track attachments sent and to whom.

• If there is the unfortunate case of a lawsuit and email correspondence is subpoenaed, it may be limited to only the production email versus pulling in the personal emails of the subpoenaed crew.

A second simple action is to provide a production-managed, enterprise-quality file sharing system. These services function just like the consumer versions of Box or Dropbox that most of our crew are accustomed to using, but provide a means to limit access and sharing permissions.

A third action, slightly more involved, is to set new policies regarding personal phones and computers, providing an

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alternative to relying on crew bringing their own devices (“BYOD” for short). BYODs are probably the greatest threat to information security in film production. Remember, the phenomenon of using personal phones and computers is relatively new and we managed to provide them, when necessary, before they became so cheap that every crew member had their own. Unfortunately, we came to rely on our crew BYODs before they became the powerful data broadcasters they are now. Fifteen years ago, if a producer was asked to provide a crew member with a device that could stream live HD video from the set to their social media page, the likely response would have been, “Are you crazy!?” But today, every crew member with a new smartphone has that ability.

Logically, no personal smartphones should be allowed in sensitive work areas, e.g., the set. By providing company-managed devices (computers, tablets and smartphones) to crew who are using them to create material for the production, share information with other crew and record information such as continuity on set, the company can control the services and applications the devices access.Company-managed devices can be kept up to date for anti-virus, firewall, drive encryption, backups and remote tracking or data wipe, if lost. They can be connected to the company-shared file system so photos and other data can be stored directly and instantly to the system.

A fourth step—another simple one—is to set up separate wifi service with limited access to office networks such as the office server and printers. Wifi network passwords should be known by very few people and never posted on the wall. A separate guest wifi with no access to the production network can allow visitors to check email and browse the web. Ideally, a production will limit access to the office network (server and printer) to hardwired ethernet connections. The wifi should access the internet only.

SPECIAL WARNING: Watch out for securing the office network printer-copier.

Printers can now scan and email docu-

ments to anyone, anywhere. Printers are also access points for hackers to enter the network—an innocuous security weakness in the middle of the office.

More solutions are important and necessary but become more complicated and require information management and security training. So bring on the appropriate personnel to set it up and manage it!

This means a new department with a new department head, but in this era of constant evolution the producer and the crew cannot be expected to be current with information threats and solutions. Some responsibilities under the purview of the “Information Management” department may be delegated out to crew who are already handling them, even unbeknownst to themselves.

Data assets (documents and media saved in digital format) might be managed by a production secretary and/or an art department coordinator and assistant editor. Fixing the printer jams and resetting the wifi router might be handled by the office PA. But the overall setup, equipment management and policy oversight should go to a person trained for the task.

These further solutions include (but as our contracts are wont to say, are not limited to): • Providing a single-sign-on secured network. Practically, this means just one username and password for crew to access all the production applications. For the information manager, it enables a single place to manage crew access to the various applications such as their production email, file sharing account or other company-provisioned software.

• Providing device registration for network access. For the crew, this provides faster access to systems like the office network. More importantly, unregistered, i.e., unknown devices cannot access sensitive information.

• Providing endpoint

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management control to computers, tablets and smartphones. For the crew, this means that their devices’ access to applications and external ports is limited to company-approved services. It also means that the device is monitored and can be remotely locked or wiped if it is lost.

• Providing endpoint controls rather than air-gapping to sensitive networks such as editorial. (Air-gapping: to isolate a computer or network from the internet.) Unfortunately, air-gapping makes the activities on that system invisible. In an air-gapped editing room, a person might use their smartphone as a mobile hotspot without leaving a record of data exported.

HOW MUCH SHOULD WE BE SPENDING? AND HOW MUCH ARE WE SPENDING ALREADY? There are added production costs related to securing our information, but they are less than one might imagine. Productions are already budgeting for computer and phone allowances and office networking.

New costs might include: • The Information Manager—a new department head, commensurately compensated.

• The domain name (nominal) and email accounts for those who are creators/ contributors/users of information.

Note: crew who are recipients only of production notifications, such as callsheets and even scripts, do not need email accounts. Secure methods of sharing can be used to send them these docs without granting them access to the production’s network. Email accounts run $8 to $40 per month, per person, depending on the added services such as office applications and endpoint management controls.

• Data backup services to provide continuous backup of production devices and servers. There are many

providers and prices range depending on amounts stored and numbers of devices backed up.

• Enterprise-level file sharing services.

There are numerous providers, and a production may wish to use more than one based on the different types of storage and sharing. 5th Kind, Pix, Dax and MediaSilo offer secured media sharing. Scenechronize, Egnyte, Box Platform, Citrix Sharefile, Dropbox Advanced and Enterprise offer secured document sharing. Some of these services are already part of common production practice.

WHAT ARE THE DOWNSIDES OF DOING NOTHING? We used to resist upgrading our operating systems because the upgrades would be buggy and incompatible with our software; they might slow us down for days, weeks and even months. Today, not upgrading your operating system is the equivalent of leaving your home’s front door wide open while you’re away on vacation. There is a battle taking place, day in and day out, between the cyber-crime world and the rest of us. It is invisible until it affects us personally and directly.

It is extremely likely that our computers and phones are infected right now, until the next update to our anti-virus or operating system.

We need to accept as a community that the same threat applies to our own productions. Graeme Wood’s quote from 2009 has only become more true since: “Change has never happened this fast before, and it will never be this slow again.”

Not taking on this challenge subjects our work to piracy, blackmail and fraud, and our personal identity to reputation and credit destruction. If that isn’t scary enough, consider the potential regulatory sanctions. As storytellers, we sometimes consider ourselves outside the normal rules and norms applied to less creative indus-

tries. But in fact, all those rules and norms apply to us as well. There are regulations that protect the information we collect about our employees. These regulations are strict in California and they are draconian in Europe. In fact, the new EU regulations, which will go into effect in May 2018, assess fines of 4% of gross worldwide revenue or 20 million euros, whichever is greater, for the misuse of EU resident personal identifying information. While our infringements may be small, a regulatory action against one of our productions can have far-reaching consequences.

WHAT ARE SOME SIDE BENEFITS OF ADOPTING SAFER METHODS DURING PRODUCTION? Adopting a designed and managed information system can provide more than just information security. It can provide many production efficiencies. The most obvious is that wrap can be a continuous process during the course of production. If all documents and media are already stored within the production shared file system, then they are already ‘wrapped.’ Eliminating all the personal storage of information and consolidating it into shared secure systems enables rapid dissemination of information to those who need it. Finding information is made easier, and restoring it to crew for pick-up shoots can be instantaneous.

IF NOTHING ELSE, LET YOUR APPROACH TO SECURITY BE GUIDED BY THE FOLLOWING WISE WORDS: It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.

—Leon C. Megginson We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

—Albert Einstein Join the battle to protect yourself and your productions.

Essential allies: The Content Delivery and Security Association (www.mesalliance.org/communities/CDSA) provides free guidelines.

Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (www.mesalliance.org) hosts industry informational conferences.

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HIGHER GROUND A Producer’s Guide to High Dynamic Range (HDR) Written By Debra Kaufman

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See for yourself: a side-by-side comparison of (left) Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) and (right) High Dynamic Range (HDR).

W

hen PGA member producer Declan Baldwin signed on as line producer for the pilot of Amazon’s Z: The Beginning of Everything, he learned he would have to deliver an HDR master. “I didn’t really understand what it was,” he says. “Our initial reaction was, ‘That sounds complicated.’” Because currently only Amazon and Netflix routinely ask for an HDR master, most producers have no experience providing one and likely have a tenuous grasp on what it actually is.

Baldwin quickly got an education in the basics from Amazon post-production head Aaron Lovell, who walked him through the pipeline. Next, he made a stop at post-production house LightIron, where executive director of business development Megan Marquis, spelled out what Baldwin and the crew needed to do. “She took the fear out of it,” he says.

“THE RESOLUTION ISN’T AS KEY TO THE LOOK OF THE IMAGE AS COLOR AND DYNAMIC RANGE.” HDR, the abbreviation for High Dynamic Range, provides more contrast in the image, producing whiter whites and blacker blacks and resulting in more detail in highlights and low lights. Wider color gamut, which is paired with HDR, offers many more and more saturated colors. Together, the look has been described as three-dimensional and very real.

Is anyone watching HDR? Producer Erin Smith, when faced with delivering an HDR master for Man in the High Castle, recalls the team was skeptical if anyone would actually see it that way. Roundabout Entertainment senior color scientist, Jerome Dewhurst, says we already do. “We’re now seeing consumer displays,

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HIGHER GROUND

whether they are computers, phones or tablets, that are significantly brighter and show a wider color gamut than the professional reference monitors used for Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) video mastering,” he says. “Arguably we have HDR displays already in circulation, but we’ve been watching SDR-mastered content on them.”

Produced By spoke to producers, cinematographers, a colorist and two color scientists who have shepherded HDR projects to completion. This is what we’ve learned.

START IN PRE-PRODUCTION Dewhurst points out that, “From a producer’s perspective, it is possible to start thinking about HDR before post-production. For example, if you’re shooting with an ARRI Alexa, using an HDR monitor on set, it allows you to better visualize the dynamic range the camera inherently captures more clearly than can be done with conventional SDR displays.” When Smith’s team first talked about HDR, she says, “We were in a bit of a conundrum as to how it would work, how much it would cost and how people would see the benefits.” First stop for her was the post houses where she saw HDR images which “blew us all away”—and started planning ahead.

Cinematographer Tobias Datum, who shoots Mozart in the Jungle, learned he would deliver an HDR master and asked to shoot with the ARRI Alexa. “The color science is superior,” he says. “The emphasis was on having 4K resolution, but I found the resolution isn’t as key to the look of the image as color and dynamic range.” He also spent time in pre-production with Technicolor senior color timer Timothy Vincent, who had already had a lot of experience finishing HDR masters.

Vincent says that it’s not uncommon for producers or cinematographers to ask about HDR during pre-production. “They are trying to get their bearings on a new delivery and what they’ll need,” he says.

His advice: First, because HDR shows more details, the cinematographer has to pay close attention on set to what’s outside the windows. “In SDR, the windows are usually blown out, but not in HDR,” says Vincent. “The results can be terrible if, for example, you see out the window and it’s a different location or time period.”

Cinematographer Tim Orr, who shot the pilot for Z: The Beginning of Everything, agrees. “I had to be more aware of the highlight detail,” he says. “Since it’s a period show, if there were elements outside the window that we didn’t want to see, I couldn’t depend on blowing the window out. I just had to assume that if I could see it with my eyes, I’d see it later.” Orr’s observation speaks to Vincent’s second piece of advice. “Look at the RAW footage more often, especially if you have things you don’t want to see outside the window,” says Vincent, who adds that he doesn’t think there’s a need for an HDR monitor on set. “If you see it in the RAW, you’re going to see it.” [Editor’s note: Many producers use RAW as a shorthand description even when the format is not technically RAW footage. e.g., Amazon’s series store their data as LogC format (see sidebar) in ProRes 444 at 12 bits.]

At Technicolor PostWorks NY, CTO Joe Beirne advises a production to account for HDR in the aesthetic planning for the show, involving the director, cinematographer and scenic designer. “Ideally, you would do hair and makeup and camera tests through both the

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HDR GLOSSARY HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE has been captured for years by film and by an increasing fraction of digital cameras.

With HDR, images can be displayed brighter and show more detail in both shadows and highlights at the same time, resulting in an image much closer to what human beings actually see.

WIDE COLOR GAMUT, although distinct from HDR, comes paired with it. As the term suggests, it offers a greater range of colors, covering a wider spectrum with greater saturation. SMPTE REC. 2020 covers a wider color gamut than either Rec. 709 (Standard SDR TV) or P3 (current Digital Cinema.)

DOLBY VISION is a proprietary version of HDR that differs by using dynamic metadata to “talk” to a Dolby Vision TV set and automatically adjust the content to the appropriate light levels for that display. This HDR version also specifies 12-bit color depth and allows for a peak brightness of as much as 10,000 nits. (A standard SDR TV is calibrated to 100 nits.)

RAW FOOTAGE is unprocessed data directly from a camera’s image sensor, with no video processing.

LOGC FORMAT is a format similar to RAW, which appears without a display LUT (Look-Up Table) applied to it. It’s a very robust format, with uncompromised dynamic range, often favored by producers for TV workflows, due to its file size being considerably smaller than that of pure RAW footage.

HDR 10 is an open standard, created by a consortium of device manufacturers (including Sony and Samsung) to work around Dolby’s proprietary system. It supports 10-bit color and is generally mastered with a peak brightness of 1000 nits. HDR+ is an initiative of Amazon and Samsung, incorporating dynamic metadata into the HDR10 open standard.

HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma) is another HDR flavor, this one created by the BBC and NHK and intended to support HDR in live broadcast. It uses the traditional gamma response of television for the lower end of the tonal scale and switches to logarithmic encoding for the brighter part, and so has some compatibility with existing production and consumer equipment.

PQ CURVE—The Perceptual Quantization curve draws on research into human contrast sensitivity and attempts to make most efficient use of available bit precision to avoid noticeable quantization artifacts in an encoded HDR image. Both HDR10 and DolbyVision encode HDR images in PQ values (SMPTE ST 2084.)

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HIGHER GROUND

SDR and HDR pipeline,” he says. “I would try—in a modest way—to find a way to allow cinematographer and DIT to review HDR on set or at the color facility during the shoot. Where possible, take versions of the cut as it evolves and “flip” it into HDR space, just to put eyes on it. At a minimum, as early as possible in post finishing, start looking at HDR, even if there is no HDR master (yet) on your delivery schedule.”

SHOOTING AN HDR MASTER The main requirement for an HDR master is a camera that can shoot RAW or LOG footage. Such cameras include the Sony F65 and the RED ONE, though the most frequently used is the ARRI Alexa, which was utilized on Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle, Z: The Beginning of Everything and Man in the High Castle among others. ARRI CEO/President Glenn Kennel notes that the ARRI Alexa cameras have always captured HDR, with 14.5 stops, slightly more than film captures. “Every Alexa camera is HDR ready,” he says. “HDR is about getting more out of the camera and allowing creatives more range to work with.”

“ARRI believes that HDR is a game-changer in terms of delivering higher quality TV programming,” he adds. “It’s much more impactful than going from HD to 4K. It allows the creative people to take the dynamic range they were already capturing and move that from the set to the screen.” Cinematographers, for example, enjoy the extra creative possibilities of being able to capture HDR and its wide color gamut. Datum reports that the third season of Mozart in the Jungle starts in Venice, Italy on an overcast day. “In the HDR version, there is so much more definition and gradation in the clouds that the image feels almost three-dimensional,” he says. “It brings out so much more texture, especially in the highlights. There’s a lot of dynamic range, which looks spectacular.”

Dailies during production become especially important. “I always advise producers to do a test, taking first-day dailies and timing selects in SDR and HDR,” says Vincent. “Then they can know right away what they’re dealing with.” Producer Bald-

win notes that, “Most cinematographers, at least the ones I worked with, are excited about shooting in RAW.” As a producer, he says, he always wants to know the value for the storytelling. “I’m a fan of the format that best serves the film, although we defer to filmmakers,” he says. His caveat is that shooting data-rich RAW footage resulted in higher costs for storage cards, as well as somewhat greater effort to back it up. But Baldwin understands the rationale behind HDR; Amazon, he says, is “thinking about the future.” As people see HDR images, they become converts. Producer Smith reports that her post producer liked it so much that he now has an HDR monitor at homeand “absolutely loves it.”

HDR IN POST Although most of the post-production focus for HDR is in the color correction suite, Technicolor PostWorks’ Beirne has seen how HDR impacts the way edits read. “Your attention doesn’t always carry through the cut in the same way in the HDR grade,” he says. “In a traditional Hollywood style of filmmaking, the edits are meant to be invisible. An HDR finish ideally doesn’t change that, but your eye may be drawn to an unexpected part of the frame as the scene dynamics change.” The solution, says Beirne, is always to be “sensitive to the cut.” “Higher dynamic range, both within the frame and within the sequence, gives increased power to the filmmakers and adds additional scope to post,” he says. “It’s both a challenge and opportunity to do more perceptually. Account for HDR throughout the process and everyone will benefit.”

Whether the HDR or SDR master is created first depends on the flavor of the HDR master being created. For Dolby Vision, the colorist starts with HDR, says Vincent, and if the end result is HDR10, he starts with the SDR version. Vincent says he prefers to start with SDR “because most people are watching the SDR version. You can do two independent grades with independent color decisions,” he says. Beirne believes there is merit in both approaches. “But when you have a chance to do the HDR grade first, we found that we learned a lot and were

able to carry that through into the SDR version,” he observes. “If you do the HDR grade first and it’s carefully accounted for by everyone in the process, the creative vision of the project is established there.”

Occasionally, a project gets an HDR master after the fact. That’s what happened to Manchester by the Sea, acquired by Amazon, which then ordered an HDR master.

Cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes had shot in RAW, thus “banking” a potential HDR version later. Neither Technicolor’s Vincent nor Declan Baldwin (a producer on Manchester as well as Z) wanted to create a version that felt dramatically different from the SDR version; this movie was a case when HDR’s eye-popping colors were not appropriate.

“My philosophy is that whether you watch in SDR or HDR, you should get the same emotional response,” says Vincent. “HDR is a heightened version, but it doesn’t have to feel heightened. I will dial it back and keep coming back until it feels the same.”

IN CONCLUSION Despite first-time concerns over the creation of an HDR master, Smith says her experience was “pretty smooth sailing.”

The only major change, she says, was “doing the two frame-by-frame color timings,” adding “that requirement might change in the future.” Although Baldwin still has misgivings about the necessity of an HDR master, if it’s a requirement, “embrace it fully and turn your attention to the experts.” After all, he notes, “There are many post houses already doing it. It’s quite manageable and really not that scary.”

Beirne provides an analogy. When archaeologists discovered that the classic Greek marble statues had been painted, artists such as Rodin thought it was impossible. “They thought of the white marble as the beautiful thing,” he says. “But those great marble sculptors painted the statues to make them look like people. People have felt that HDR was like painting the marble—that it isn’t really necessary. But what we’ve discovered is the opposite. In many if not all cases, it’s the highest quality you can get. To have this really rich original has turned out to be very important.”

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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

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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. ■

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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.

© F. Gaviña & Sons, Inc.

Son and grandson of Don Francisco, Pedro and Michael, sourcing coffee in South America.

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Look for Don Francisco’s Coffee in bags, single serve and cans at your grocer.

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 March and April, 2017.

PRODUCERS COUNCIL John Ambros Ray Angelic Howard Barish Thomas Barrack Josh Berman Adrienne Biddle Montgomery Blencowe Kimberly Boyd Ian Bricke Phakiso Collins Joe Connor Scotty Curlee Tim Daly Viola Davis 1 Terry Dougas Jeffrey Englert Morenike Evans Walter Fanning Nick Fitzhugh Philip Fleishman Charlie Fonville Tom Ford Saul Friedman Patrick Gardenhour Peter Geist David Greathouse Will Greenfield Brandon Gregory Greg Gugliotta Alan Helene Natalia Henderson Lawrence Jonas Marc Joubert Courtney Kemp Russ Kendall

Christopher Lemole Richard Lopez Kelly Mendelsohn Marc Morgan Alexandra Moss Carthew Neal Larry Nealy Natalie Osma Chuck Pacheco Hutch Parker Eric Paulen Jennifer Pelphrey John (Jay) Peterson Jason Prisk Matt Ratner Harrison Reiner Stacey Reiss Juan Rivero Alexander Rodnyansky Kim Roth James Rouchard Mark Schneider Jonathan Schwartz Erin Shea Osnat Shurer Ginger Sledge Frank Spotnitz Gieava Stinchcomb Sean Stuart John Swartz Susan Thomson Douglas Urbanski 2 Thomas Vitale Eric Wallace Andrew Weil Jake Weiner

Catherine Whyte Pharrell Williams 3 Timothy Zajaros

NEW MEDIA COUNCIL Lawrence Anthony Christine Cavalieri Edward Deleon Noam Dromi Samir El Agili Iliana Guevara Denis Jensen Mark Jocson Matt King Catherine LeFebvre Ricky Lloyd George Tripp Reed George Sells Kerri Sheehan 4 Bradford Simpson Lendi Slover Matt Stokes Ai Takami Alejandro Trevino

AP COUNCIL ASSOCIATE PRODUCER/ PRODUCTION MANAGER/ PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR Stefan Ashe Monica Bahamonde Luci Bradley Ryan Ditty Gino Falsetto Samantha Finkler Brainerd

Alex Feidin (aka Noe) Greg Garthe Adam Londy Michael McDermott Jessica Parks Megan Peason Crystal Rivera Jill Sacco Ami Werges

SEGMENT/FIELD/ STORY PRODUCER

1

2

Markus Burns Elisa Cervone Soo Kim Raegan Klein Michael Soll

POST PRODUCTION Diana Dekajlo Michael Dillon Kelsey Dyer Mike Ganzman Olga Hamlet Jordan Murcia Huey Park Adria Shneider Adam Sonnenfeld

3

4

VISUAL EFFECTS Sarah Char Jeanmarie King Michelle Machado Mark Miller Brad Powell Stephen Pugh

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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 April and May 2017.

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

3 GENERATIONS Marc Turtletaub, p.g.a. & Peter Saraf, p.g.a.

Dorothy Berwin, p.g.a.

Gaby Dellal, p.g.a.

ALIEN: COVENANT Ridley Scott, p.g.a.

Michael Schaefer, p.g.a.

Mark Huffam, p.g.a.

Tory Tunnell, p.g.a.

Lionel Wigram, p.g.a.

Guy Ritchie, p.g.a.

THE LOST CITY OF Z Dede Gardner, p.g.a. & Jeremy Kleiner, p.g.a.

Anthony Katagas, p.g.a.

James Gray, p.g.a.

LOWRIDERS BAYWATCH Beau Flynn, p.g.a.

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: THE LONG HAUL Nina Jacobson, p.g.a.

Brad Simpson, p.g.a.

EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING Leslie Morgenstein, p.g.a.

Elysa Dutton, p.g.a.

THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS Neal H. Moritz, p.g.a.

GENERATION IRON 2 Edwin Mejia Jr, p.g.a.

Vlad Yudin, p.g.a.

GIFTED Karen Lunder, p.g.a. & Andy Cohen, p.g.a.

GOING IN STYLE

THE PROMISE Eric Esrailian, p.g.a.

Mike Medavoy, p.g.a.

William Horberg, p.g.a.

SMURFS: THE LOST VILLAGE Jordan Kerner, p.g.a. & Mary Ellen Bauder Andrews, p.g.a.

SNATCHED Peter Chernin, p.g.a. & Jenno Topping, p.g.a.

Paul Feig, p.g.a. & Jessie Henderson, p.g.a.

THE TRANSFIGURATION

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2

UNFORGETTABLE

Benjamin Odell, p.g.a.

Eugenio Derbez, p.g.a.

KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD Joby Harold, p.g.a.

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Jerry Bruckheimer, p.g.a.

Susan Leber, p.g.a.

HOW TO BE A LATIN LOVER

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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES

Donald De Line, p.g.a.

Kevin Feige, p.g.a.

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

Brian Grazer, p.g.a.

Jason Blum, p.g.a.

Denise Di Novi, p.g.a. & Alison Greenspan, p.g.a.

Ravi Mehta, p.g.a.

WAKEFIELD Julie Lynn, p.g.a. & Bonnie Curtis, p.g.a.

THE WALL David Bartis, p.g.a.

Producedby.qxp_ArtDrectr1 04 10/4/16 1:21 PM Page 1

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THE BEST ON-SET PHOTO OF ALL TIME

IN A LONELY PLACE

W

hen we talk to producers about what they like about their jobs, there’s an answer that comes up again and again.

One of the great joys of being a producer is the opportunity to immerse yourself in unfamiliar worlds. Sometimes those worlds are imaginary, the product of a writer’s inspiration until they’re digitally composed and dropped in during post-production. More often, they’re real places, the sites of real communities and enduring cultures. And they’re just as extraordinary as anything created with a greenscreen.

Case in point: the highlands of Mongolia. The nomadic tribes that roam these wide open spaces have done so for centuries, and for a week, PGA member Graham Ehlers Sheldon was roaming right along with them. “I shot a digital series created by Disney/Portal A called Song Voyage that filmed in Mongolia, Vietnam, Australia and several other countries,” Graham tells us.

“Unfortunately I had not packed appropriately for the very windy Mongolian highlands and a local shepherd let me borrow his yak pelt to stay warm. The stylish pelt kept me warm during a full week of shooting in the field.”

So in this photo we have A) a yak pelt, and B) absolutely no one else around as far as the eye can see. We’re not sure it gets much more Mongolian than that. (To satisfy the curiosity of our gear-head readers who only have eyes for the camera that Graham is holding, it’s a Canon C500.) Much thanks to Graham for sharing the photo with us, and to his wife Rin Ehlers Sheldon, who snapped the pic. Here’s hoping they continue to send us amazing photos from whatever far-flung lands their producing work takes them. ■

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.

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THE BEST SHOW

OF THE YEAR Winner Golden Globe Best Drama Series 2016 ®

BEST ACTRESS IN A BEST TELEVISION TELEVISION SERIES (DRAMA) CLAIRE FOY SERIES - DRAMA

2

WINNER

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®

MALE ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES JOHN LITHGOW

FEMALE ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES CLAIRE FOY

“IMPECCABLY CAST AND GORGEOUSLY PRODUCED.” F O R Y O U R C O N S I D E R AT I O N

©1995 SAG-AFTRA

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WINNER