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This is the third and final live dispatch from Getting Real ‘26. Day one is here and Day two is here.

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🚀 Thursday July 23, 2026 🚀

715a. Up. Emails. And catching up on the session I missed from yesterday’s conference about new economic models, only managed 20 mins so will finish up later.

10am. Keynote from Mandy Chang

A sweeping and considered summary of the documentary business over the last thirty or so years, from the late 1980s to now. Raw and honest, and worth you watching back on the replay.

The thing I’m taking away most is a question about language. We talk a lot in this field about gatekeepers, and that word carries a lot of weight, usually negative. What Mandy’s keynote reminds us is that the framing might be too constricting. The people we label gatekeepers are also providing a service. To films, to documentary as a craft, to audiences, to participants. Commissioners, programmers, broadcasters, curators...these are roles that involve judgment, taste, and advocacy as much as they involve power. Simply using the word gatekeeper flattens all of that. It doesn’t mean the power dynamics aren’t real. It just means the picture is more complicated than the word suggests.

1115am. What’s the Deal? Distribution Game Show

Had to duck out early for some work things but caught enough to appreciate what Chase Whiteside put together. A fun, lighthearted sidebar in an otherwise intense three days. People were laughing.

Around noon. Lunch around the corner at Marugame Monzo to hit some carbonara udon, it’s as tasty as it sounds.

Caught the tail end of a panel Boots on the ground on my way back in, will listen back to this in full later. Lots of doc star power continuing today, hellos to Kirby Dick, Diane Becker, Ina Fichman, Senain Kheshgi and a number of other filmmaker friends milling around between sessions.

1230p While waiting to go into the 130 session I knocked out a quick budget for a one-day filming trip that just came up for next month. Producer life doesn’t pause for conferences...apparently.

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2nd update

130p. State of the Business. Moderated by Ted Hope

The last one was the best one.

This was both the most interesting and the most enjoyable session of the three days. Sometimes things are genuinely interesting but not that dynamically delivered. This was both. moderating brings a particular kind of edge and caffeine-driven energy that raises the room. The panelists, Sam Denby (Nebula/Wendover Productions), Sohini Sengupta (Doverlane), and Sky Dylan-Robbins (Video Consortium), are each building something real in exhibition and community, in filmmaker resources, and in creator-owned streaming. Lots of great things you need to hear so hit the replay online...please.

I left with something I’m going to write about properly next week so I’ll just plant the seed here. There was a lot of talk about marketing, merchandise, promotion, audience building from day one of a project. All good things. All necessary things. But I kept thinking that all of those words, as useful as they are, don’t quite capture what’s actually happening when they work. What they’re really describing is connection making. Connection is one of the most fundamental human needs. It gives us meaning, purpose, and value. As filmmakers we already know how to create connection through our work. The invitation is to extend that into how we build audiences for that work, how we show it, how we sustain the relationship with the people who watch it. I think this post about experience creation I wrote earlier this year is the pre-amble to what I’ll think through next on connection. oh and actually as I dive quickly through the old posts, this one “from newslettering 2 connecting” is a pretty good one too!

Marketing is not a dirty word. It’s just not quite the right word. Connection Making is closer to what this actually is.

One moment from the session that’s going to stay with me...someone in the audience followed up on Sam’s mention of challenge-driven storytelling as a format for social issue documentary work. What is the challenge that drives the story and invites the audience in? The example that got thrown out is people challenging themselves to out as many ICE agents as possible as a form of immigration social justice advocacy. Bold. Galvanizing. And honestly someone’s going to go make it.

Great panel. Great way to end Getting Real ‘26. More next week on the connection making thread. If you have any top learnings from the conference I’d love to hear about them.

310p stopped off at Cafe Dulce in little tokyo on way to the car for some treats.

315p hitting the 110 traffic back homewards via Pasadena. Dropping in on the market to pick up some goodies for a Bowl concert I’m off to tonight. Miyazaki x Joe Hisaishi.

430p I’m back home after a camp pick up writing this update I’m just about to post.

630p headed out to the Bowl to catch composer Joe Hisaishi play his music from soundtracks from many of his Miyazaki collabs. 50,000 people came across 3 evenings to celebrate his iconic scores. I’d somehow missed that he also scored many Takeshi Kitano films and the piece from Sonatine this evening was especially awesome!

The producer diary series is collected here.

Welcome to the new subscribers. If you want to know what this substack is all about, start here and work through some older posts. Participate with your comments and suggestions. Share things you like and get your friends to stop by.

This is a quick primer of what this series is about.

I get the question “what do you do as a producer?” often.

One of my favorite quotes about this is from Larry Turman who was a mentor. He said “a producer is a person who causes a film to be made, and a good producer is a person who causes a film to be made well.”

I could (and will) write a more holistic answer to that basic question, but here I’m trying out a diary-like entry that lists what I did on a specific day. Maybe something as simple as a daily log will shed a light on what a producer does.

The previous posts in this series are collected here in the “producer diary” section of the stack.

Share Atelier Format

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This is the second of three live dispatches from Getting Real ‘26. Day one is here.

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🚀 Wednesday July 22, 2026 🚀

715a. Up. Emails. I have two edits happening right now, one in Europe, one in the UK. Checking in on both, handling overnight incoming, getting on top of things before the day starts.

830a. drop off at camp, then walked the dog, got myself together to head down to the conference.

On my walk I finished listening to the Set Hernandez and Leonard Cortana conversation from yesterday that I hadn’t been able to finish last night. Really great. Great thinking happening around impact, distribution, and accessibility among other things. Leonard has another panel today but it clashes with something else I want to be at, which is a shame because I didn’t know his work before yesterday and he’s great. Going to be following his work for sure. Two years ago the voice that grabbed me at Getting Real was Jemma Desai. This year I have a feeling it’s going to be Leonard. Though I’m open to being surprised.

What’s great is being at a conference and being budged to think holistically about our business, field and community. Not just the project in front of you.

932a. Left the house, driving to Little Tokyo. Should be about twenty minutes. I brought my flask tea pot with some jasmine tea for the day which I’m very pleased about.

Today I’m visiting a venue I haven’t been to yet, the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center. Most of my sessions today are at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, with one back at the Japanese American National Museum for the keynote. I don’t know much about the keynote speaker yet. Excited to find out.

1015a. Blueprinting for Filmmaker Co-ops

This is where I’m heading first. I wanted to go to the New Economics panel that’s on at the same time but it’s being recorded so I’ll catch it later. Which is a good compromise, though I’d push back gently on scheduling two sessions that are clearly for the same audience at the same time. If you’re interested in filmmaker co-ops you’re almost certainly interested in new financing models too. They should be on the same conference track meaning the timing couldn’t clash. It’s like scheduling Radiohead and Four Tet in different tents at the same time at the same festival. The people who want to see both can’t, and those are exactly the people who should be seeing both.

ok so the first session was facilitated by filmmaker Yael Bridge (The Big Scary "S" Word, Saving Capitalism) alongside Jay Arthur Sterrenberg, who is a founder of Meerkat Media, a cooperatively owned filmmaking collective that has been running since 2005. Having someone in the room who has actually been doing this for twenty years was useful.

1145a writing this post right now.

The workshop run was interesting and I left wanting to learn more about co-op structures, what types of people are good fits for it and what are the top reasons why a co-op vs other company structures. Are you part of a co-op, and if so, what are the top three reasons why you went that route? The main question we were left with to think through is for long(er) form (non-work for hire) documentary storytelling what is the co-op set up that you would want to work at?

2nd update

12p. Participant Compensation Workshop.

A session that surfaced something important, there is real vagueness in our field right now around what is acceptable, what can be done, and how to structure compensation for documentary participants. The conversation moved past the old default of “we don’t pay participants” pretty quickly, which felt like the right move. That position is becoming harder to defend. The more useful question, and the one the session started to dig into, is how do we do this well. In what circumstances, in what form, and in what way that supports great storytelling and maintains productive relationships between filmmakers and the people who share their lives with us. Revenue sharing with participants is on the table as a concept. How it gets structured in practice is where the field still has work to do.

I’ll drop a link here to the REIMAGINE framework from Emergence Media that seems like it is a useful resource relating to participants consent and relationships with film teams.

2pm. Recut, Reframe: Archival Documentaries with Alan Berliner

Alan Berliner presented a film he made in 2019 that used images cut entirely from the New York Times over four years. The film satisfied what multiple lawyers believed were strong fair use arguments. And then the New York Times shut it down. It never made it to its HBO premiere after premiering at TIFF and IDFA. He showed about 20 mins today, and it is clearly the work of a great filmmaker. Watching Alan carry the weight of a film that has never been able to reach its audience was genuinely sad. There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes with bringing something to life and then having it denied, not because of anything wrong with the work, but because someone else doesn’t want it seen. I have some personal experience with that on my own projects. It’s a difficult thing.

345pm. The Hot Seat

Always interesting. The format puts panelists on stage and opens things up to submitted questions. Some of the questions were framed quite negatively, which I found frustrating, because the root of what people were asking was often genuinely valuable. The panelists did their best to be open and authentic in their answers. This is a VERY well run panel from and hopefully it will continue at the next edition despite her departure from Getting Real after this conference.

I submitted a question that came up at the end asking each panelist, as individuals a part of significant organizations with opportunities to lead in our field, what did they feel was the most important issue they want to champion as leaders.

From Bazil at Sundance, discovering undiscovered talent in places around the world that haven’t been found yet.

From Mara at CPH:DOX, upholding democracy through storytelling around the world.

From Amanda at CAA, which was the one that stuck with me the most...supporting artists making great work, not making what streamers are believed to want. Amanda said clearly that being market creator rather than market followers is their goal. There are practical questions about how achievable that is in reality. But even hearing a sales agent say that chasing what streamers think they want is not why we’re all here felt like something worth noting.

3rd update

530p Finished the day with the keynote from Petna Katondolo. Lots of thoughtful messages from a filmmaker I’m not familiar with. One quote about how we relate to the world around us that struck me and will stay with me from Petna.

The comfort of one place cannot come from the hell of another.

This came from him addressing the minerals used in our technologies that are extracted from the Congo.

7p wrapping up my post right now and then headed to see folks at the IDA drinks to conclude today.

Back tomorrow. It’ll be a shorter day at the conference but I’m sure still quality.

The producer diary series is collected here.

Welcome to the new subscribers. If you want to know what this substack is all about, start here and work through some older posts. Participate with your comments and suggestions. Share things you like and get your friends to stop by.

Share Atelier Format

This is a quick primer of what this series is about.

I get the question “what do you do as a producer?” often.

One of my favorite quotes about this is from Larry Turman who was a mentor. He said “a producer is a person who causes a film to be made, and a good producer is a person who causes a film to be made well.”

I could (and will) write a more holistic answer to that basic question, but here I’m trying out a diary-like entry that lists what I did on a specific day. Maybe something as simple as a daily log will shed a light on what a producer does.

The previous posts in this series are collected here in the “producer diary” section of the stack.

Subscribe now

ok onto the post

🚀 Tuesday July 21, 2026 🚀

730a up and at it. Quick emails, whatsapps and dog walking.

Last night I through out this note on Substack and I have to follow through now 😅 😅 😅 so today’s producer’s diary is going to be a little different. Live.

I’m at a conference for three days, Getting Real ‘26, the IDA’s biennial gathering for documentary filmmakers here in Little Tokyo, LA. I wrote about what it is and why I think it matters here before the conference started. Now I’m in it.

I’m going to update this post throughout the day as things happen and land. Come back at the end of the day to see what got added. Or just check in when you can.

The conference is also available as a livestream so if you’re not in LA you can still be part of it. Register and get your pass here.

1015a for the first session of the day.

What do I want from three days here? Same thing I always want from Getting Real. New ideas, new voices, honest conversations about how documentary filmmaking can actually be sustainable. Not just creatively but economically. How films get made. How filmmakers get paid a real living wage doing this work. And how the films then reach people and have impact once they’re done. Financing, sustainability, distribution.

The first session was “The Possibility of More: A Conversation With Tikkun Olam Productions,” moderated by journalist and programmer , with four core members of the collective, Sam Eilertsen, Marielle Olentine, Pulkit Datta, and Nik Damants.

Tikkun Olam is a nonprofit cooperative that built the grassroots audience for their film Israelism before it hit number one on Apple TV’s documentary chart. They’ve since run impact campaigns for No Other Land, The Voice of Hind Rajab, Life After, The Encampments, and others. The session title says it well...the possibility of more. More than what the conventional distribution playbook offers. More than a festival premiere followed by an all-rights platform deal that may or may not materialise.

The thing that landed most clearly, for filmmakers who were never offered that conventional playbook, resourcefulness was already the strategy. Tikkun Olam just built a model around it. They talked about what a direct distribution and impact team actually looks like in practice, how release strategy shapes production from the very beginning rather than being bolted on at the end, and what it means to build a film for more than one outcome at a time. I’d love a full morning with them, listening to the numbers, the tactics and what they learned.

One of their messages is the hope for the field is in doing things outside the system. Not accepting what the system tells us can be done, how it should be done, that it’s the only way. Finding the other ways and building from there. Good to hear it from people doing it at scale.

Now heading into the budgeting workshop: Budgeting in Troubled Times, with filmmaker and producer Baba Bahar, who has previously put out a budgeting template that a lot of documentary filmmakers reference and use. Curious what he’s going to share.

2nd update

1145a. Budgeting in Troubled Times with Robert Bahar

Every filmmaker should do this workshop if they ever get the chance. Robert Bahar, a Peabody, duPont-Columbia and three-time Emmy-winning filmmaker (and good friend!), ran a practical and empowering session on getting a grip on your numbers. Budgeting, cost reporting, cash flow. The core message: put the power in your hands by knowing your numbers. You make better art, better decisions, and better films when you are not afraid of the financial reality of what you’re making. He has a budgeting template and resources available through the IDA that you can download and go to town with.

**great points from Robert!

1pm. Lunch

Skipped the IDA lunch because I had a quick call to take. Top tip for anyone at Getting Real: cross the street to the Nijiya Japanese market in the mall across of 1st. Onigiri, sushi, pork katsu sando (what I had), Japanese snacks, Pocari Sweat. Fuels you up for the afternoon at very reasonable prices. I guess this is my top tip...or maybe my top tip is go hit Somi Somi on 2nd street for some soft serve ice cream tastiness. Didn’t make it today but likely tomorrow!

2pm. Past the Panic: What Really Matters in AI and Documentary

Fascinating session. Moderated by Kat Cizek (MIT Co-Creation Studio) with Shirin anlen (WITNESS), Anna Giralt Gris (Artefacto), and A.X. Mina (Archival Producers Alliance). Worth catching the rerun if you missed it. The panel moved past the threat-or-opportunity framing that dominates most AI conversations and got into what’s actually happening, how AI is being integrated into documentary workflow right now, the ethical questions around that, and what filmmakers and advocates are doing in response. There’s a companion workshop from some of the same panelists which I had to miss because I needed to get my daughter from camp. Catching what I can via the livestream on the drive...though maybe I should say audio only, I’m not watching the video while driving...or am I?

Ran into a lot of great people already today. Rachel Elizabeth Seed, Judy Korin, Marty Syjuco, Robert Bahar, Marj Safinia, and many more.

3rd update

330p left to get kid picked up from camp.

Thanks to the magic of live streaming I was able to catch part of Set Hernandez and Leonard Cortana fireside chat (sans actual fireside, as noted by Set). Hit the replay on this. It is well worth it. My highlight of the day.

There was a quick froyo pitstop, so I paused the live stream and finished back home. That was my last interaction with the conference for the day.

630p another dog walk and then cycle.

730p fiancé making (very tasty) dinner and some final emails.

Tomorrow is going to be a packed day. I’m going to have to chose between the filmmaker co-op session or the new economic models session which clash. One gets recorded and the other doesn’t so clearly my choice is made for me but I’ll probably not do the right choice. I’m all for the expanded model this edition where there are multiple locations with dual tracks of panels as it shows growth but I am bummed to have clashing events.

If you’re there. Say hi. Signing off for the night. New Post in the morning.

Share Atelier Format

This is a quick primer of what this series is about.

I get the question “what do you do as a producer?” often.

One of my favorite quotes about this is from Larry Turman who was a mentor. He said “a producer is a person who causes a film to be made, and a good producer is a person who causes a film to be made well.”

I could (and will) write a more holistic answer to that basic question, but here I’m trying out a diary-like entry that lists what I did on a specific day. Maybe something as simple as a daily log will shed a light on what a producer does.

The previous posts in this series are collected here in the “producer diary” section of the stack.

Subscribe now

ok onto the post

It was a consuming weekend, the kind that leaves you grateful and slightly wrecked.

So today was designed to be intentionally low-key. Fewer moving parts.

...that lasted about an hour.

🚀 23rd Feburary, 2026 🚀

Up at 7. Tea & quick walk. Emails cleared.

When you’re working from LA with Europe, the UK, and the East Coast, mornings are prime time. If I miss the window, I miss the window.

By 7:45 I was on Zoom with a director I’m working with across a couple of projects. We hadn’t properly caught up in a few days, so it turned into a two-hour sweep on post schedules, production planning, and the always slightly impossible task of mapping the rest of the year.

Post is starting up. Production is looming. Timelines overlap. It’s a juggle, ultimately a fun one. Not complaining.

Looking ahead is hard because film schedules in the doc space are particularly elastic. But you still have to look ahead. You still have to decide what the year feels like before the year decides for you.

We also prepped for an important call happening tomorrow with other producers on one project. There are calls you just get on and there are calls you prep for. Not scripting it, but going in with intention. Setting tone. Deciding what we want to lead with instead of reacting in real time.

After that, I dove into a branded short we’re producing. A new treatment had come in from our director so myself and the other producer went line by line in a Google Doc, which is basically the modern writer’s room. Well our writer’s room at least. Comments, and, tone adjustments. Unglamorous work but essential. It’s a whiteboard of thought. When Google brought in tabs to google docs that was quite a game changer!

In between, a quick session troubleshooting with the assistant editor on one of the projects in the UK. Corrupt files. The kind of thing that makes your stomach drop for a second, but there are all the backups. Multiple backups. Got it fixed. I can’t encourage having multiple backups enough. I tend to post supervise most of the films I work on, which means I’m sometimes deep in the weeds on this stuff. I don’t mind it. Staying close to how things are going technically means fewer surprises later.

Then time to get up and move a bit via some garden time.

It’s getting hot in LA again. That narrow band of perfect outdoor-office weather where I am is late January through early April. And it can close fast if I don’t make the most of it. My office is a converted garage in the backyard, and this is the sweet spot season. Birds in the background on calls. Air that doesn’t need conditioning. By late April it’s sunrise-until-noon-only territory.

I watered everything, rescued a few plant cuttings my neighbor had thrown out (a bit of a hoarder for this), and reminded myself to stand more. I’ve drifted away from the standing desk. Trying to drift back.

The a midday airport run.

My fiancée is heading to Europe for meetings, including an in-person with Film Fund Luxembourg on a fiction feature we’re prepping for later this year. Important conversations. Location scouting. Pre-pre-prep for prep. Silverlake to LAX in 35 minutes. When that freeway works, it feels like a miracle.

From LAX I shot up to West Hollywood for Slamdance at the DGA.

This is the second year after Slamdance relocated from Park City to Los Angeles, and it was a much needed move as the city hasn’t had a proper indie film fest on this scale. Today was a full conference day centered around NonDē thinking, & Co’s framing of the “non-dependent” era of filmmaking. Non-dependent not as rebellion, but as a collective, collaborative and ceiling breaking birthing of a new ecosystem (well to Ted & co it probably is a rebellion).

I’d been hoping to get there in the morning, but the day had other plans and I arrived just in time after the lunch break. I also got in a call with the UK editor to set up the edit logistics and workflow on my drive over.

The format was sharp, tight “dangerous idea” presentations, one after another, then a Q&A after each block. No rambling panels. Just provocations. I thought that was a really intentional highlight. Not getting bogged down with panels that slow and wander. These were timed 10 minute presentations backed up with punk rock music that play you off in the final 30 seconds and as the (timer)reaper, in costume no less.

* dropping his Dangerous Idea (which I missed). Reaper on the left side.

What does it mean to build Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C simultaneously, not hierarchically, but as parallel distribution pathways? What does pre-distribution actually look like in practice? How do you build audience before you finish a film, instead of hoping audience arrives after?

Keith Ochwat talked about pre-distribution in a way that felt actionable rather than theoretical, the idea that finding and building your audience is something that happens alongside development and production, not just at the end when the film is done. Peter Broderick reframed audience strategy as something that starts in development, not at delivery. These aren’t new ideas exactly, but hearing them framed with urgency in a room full of people actively building outside the system gave them a different weight.

Some of the dangerous ideas I caught that are summed up on substack include

“You are the studio”

“The Radical Political Campaign of the NonDē Filmmaker”

Alex Rivera “Towards a national film board” no summary I’ve found yet.

Peter Broderick “Now Is The Time! Dynamic Distribution” same with Peter’s though much of what he touched on you can find in this talk he gave at TIFF.

also read this summary Thoughts On NonDē, Vol. 2 of 99

and from FilmStack were part of the Q&A blocks. Dan Mirvish chimed in. MC’ing the whole thing. A mix of people completely outside the traditional independent system and people who know it intimately but are actively redesigning it. That tension is healthy. That tension is the point.

(I’ve written about the NonDē movement a few times here — this post is a good place to start if you want the fuller picture.)

Ran into a DP I’d worked with on a very NonDē doc, so NonDē we didn’t even know it at the time. Caught up with a few LA folks. Stayed for drinks aka water for me so I didn’t need to stand in line.

Afterward I drove back east, attempted a new(ish) taco spot, Taqueria Fontera (closed though), pivoted to Hot Tongue Pizza, then met an old friend from the USC Peter Stark Producing Program for a drink at the Red Lion. We tried the Cha Cha Lounge first. Wrong vibe on Monday nights it seems. The Red Lion is never the wrong vibe, exactly — but it’s never quite the right one either. It just...is.

On the way home I stopped to charge the car and watched short films while it filled up. That still feels futuristic to me. Charging as screening room. Parking lot as mobile office. Also queued up tracks for this Sunday’s jazz night — I DJ once a month at a tea speakeasy downtown called Bu Tea Den. Pulled selections off the hard drive. It’s wild what you can do from a parked car now.

Back home. Watched more films.

My film year runs March to March, so I’m in the final stretch before I put together my year-end list and soundtrack mix. Still need to finish If I Had Legs I Would Kick You, the Rose Byrne film, and I’ve got a screening of The Voice of Hind Rajab coming up on Saturday. A few other titles to get through. Then it’s time to decide what actually stuck.

That’s always the question, isn’t it?

Not what was “big.” Not what won. What lingered.

And somewhere between post schedules, Luxembourg meetings, NonDē manifestos, plant cuttings, pizza pivots, and jazz playlists, that’s the day.

The previous posts in this series are collected here in the “producer diary” section of the stack.

Share Atelier Format

Welcome to the new subscribers. If you want to know what this substack is all about, start here and then work through some other older posts like this one and this one. Participate with your comments and suggestions. Share things you like and get your friends to stop by. Here’s another plug for the OG case study post which I’m constantly updating, so send me any case studies I’ve missed that you found useful! This past post about audience is a good companion to today’s reading.

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This is a quick primmer of what this series is about.

I get the question “what do you do as a producer?” often.

One of my favorite quotes about this is from Larry Turman who was a mentor. He said “a producer is a person who causes a film to be made, and a good producer is a person who causes a film to be made well”.

I could (and will) write a more holistic answer to that basic question — something I can forward to the people who ask me 😅 — but here, I’m trying out a diary-like entry that lists what I did on a specific day. Maybe something as simple as a daily log will shed a light on what a producer does. I’ll give this a few tries and let’s see if this feels interesting to you all.

I get the question “what do you do as a producer?” often.

One of my favorite quotes about this is from Larry Turman who was a mentor. He said “a producer is a person who causes a film to be made, and a good producer is a person who causes a film to be made well”.

I could (and will) write a more holistic answer to that basic question — something I can forward to the people who ask me 😅 — but here, I’m trying out a diary-like entry that lists what I did on a specific day. Maybe something as simple as a daily log will shed a light on what a producer does. I’ll give this a few tries and let’s see if this feels interesting to you all.

If you google what does a producer do, this is the most useful image that comes up on the image search. Ok off we go.

It’s a Friday, in the summer, so it should be like a half day...

Well it’s currently 2:11am on Saturday and before knocking off to bed I’m going to summarize the day for the post.

🚀 Friday August 1st, 2025 🚀

Woke up around 7:10 a.m. Overslept actually.

I offered a call to team that are in London and New York for 630a my time but as I hadn’t heard back that night I...well...didn’t actually get up at 6:30a. Call gets punted to the weekend.

I check in on a project that’s filming today in NYC. Call time is 10a ET and folks are on route from meeting point to the filming location, so good vibes and on track. The crazy heat wave out there seems to be about to break, which is great as I’m on a plane there tomorrow. More on that later.

Check in on my daughter and make sure she’s up. She is.

8a snuck in a conference call with team on a different project in development and caught up on progress on the treatment we’re writing and the sizzle that will be worked on in August.

830a head off to Pasadena to drop my daughter off at camp for the day. Listened to the end of The Town podcast on the way home, with Seth McFarland talking about the state of comedy. He has the new Naked Gun coming out this weekend. Hope it does well. The first one is a landmark for me, first American comedy I remember seeing in a theater as a teenager and laughing my head off. I say it’s a milestone for me because I grew up on dry British humor and hadn’t really gotten the American comedies before this.

Checked email from my phone...only at red traffic lights.

I needed to hit the car wash and then pick up my dry cleaning before the trip.

I’m ordering lunch for the small crew in NYC on doordash. Need to time the food arrival for the lunch break. I cheated and I’d put the order together the night before so all I needed to do is hit the check out button.

A 25-minute dog walk. Reading emails. Just before I get home I get a slightly cryptic text from the doordash person in NYC...did they leave the food order where they were supposed to? Make a call, confirm it’s there. Ok and seemingly perfect timing. It’s Thai food from Pranakhon if you want to know.

10a I have a zoom on a fiction feature I’m producing with a team in the UK plus director in the US. It’s a three country co-pro with UK / Denmark / Luxembourg. And please pardon my French when I say holy shit there is so much to consider on a budget with three countries, differing funding parameters to meet, thresholds to be considered for tax credits, limits to what funds can be spent in which country. Don’t get me wrong I know there’s no easy money out there but it is just a different headache that I’m slowly wrapping my head around. The Euro producers who do co-pros day in day out, hats off to you all. EP (Entertainment Partners) has a nice tool to look at what breaks are available in different parts of the world.

A quick primer. In Denmark there is the Danish Film Institute (DFI) who can provide funding. Then there are regional funds if you go and film or use post services in a specific region. Lastly they will have a 25% tax credit come into play in 2026. In Luxembourg you have the Film Fund Luxembourg (FFL), that’s the sole source of funding but can go up to 1.5m euros for selected films. You need to spend all that you are given in the country on qualifying spend line items. For UK there is the British Film Institute (BFI) who give out funding. There is some regional funds too but they are small. Then there is a very attractive 40% tax credit for “used and consumed” in uk spend, which means if you bring an American actor to the UK to film, the portion of their fee that is spent while they are working in the UK qualifies towards 40% back. Nice.

Back to my day. I get a little pissed on the call. People are nice about it. I chill and we work towards wrapping up.

However during the call I realize I have to review camera order for our NYC filming that’s continuing next week. The rental company rep (who is super nice) is leaving at 3p ET for the weekend. I review the estimate, finish a tiny haggle and get our coordinator to get funds moving.

I sign off the zoom with the uk team but they keep going to finish up.

It’s around 11:15a ish, I look at my barely started packing. Ok later.

We have some union things needing attention on the project in NYC. Solving the issues, hopefully.

I get a text from our 2nd camera operator for Monday in NYC who has a family issue and can’t be there. Yikes. Ok need to come up with a back up asap. I check my crew list google sheet. Who do we have that’s a good fit?

Meanwhile new things pop up that need solving regarding sound recording. Need to add a second sound person for Monday. A text and 15 minutes and that’s solved. Yay. I miss a monthly film distribution collective zoom that is very worth being a part of. We took July off and June I missed the call as well, bummer.

Somehow it’s already 1p. Two back to back scheduled calls later I take a tiny breather and look at my fridge for some food then remember I’m still trying to solve the cam op issue. I’m getting recommendations and spinning through websites, reels, and imdb. In the end it’s someone on our crew list that comes through. We haven’t worked together yet so we will see how it pans out on Monday. In the meantime I’ve found I cannot do this job without making lists. In this case it’s a list of crew positions I’ve worked with over the years, organized by location. New people who we meet at festivals, screenings and such get added. If they seem interesting then they get put on the list so I don’t need to go remembering someone’s name months or years later that I’m never going to find in my inbox mess. Make lists. They save lives.

A quick side bar about reels. For DPs I do like to see websites that have frame grabs or stills from their work along with clips. I generally prefer watching clips/scenes from their work vs a cut reel as I like the see the visual in context. I generally watch DP reels/scenes without sound first. Also frame grabs are nice because it lets me see what the DP likes from their work. Instagram etc is nice for getting a feel for who the DP is and what they like. For editors please no trailers of your projects unless you’re showing me your trailer work and you did in fact cut that trailer. It’s all about the scenes you’ve cut please. For editors reels are nice because it shows what they like and if they can’t cut a cool reel, well... Overall think about who you are, what you want to be doing and tell me story about who you are. Lastly, love it or loathe it I do look at imdb and see what work the person has done. So keep those up to date, make sure your work is listed.

Back to the day. I’m listening to a show on Mixcloud from the German DJ Michael Ruetten while I work through the day and I’m reminded by the early passing of New Zealand musician DJ Fitchie from the collective Fat Freddy’s Drop. A real loss. Check out Midnight Marauders, one of his early tracks.

Things are wrapping on the shoot in NYC, which culminates with a production call where we discuss filming plans for Monday. It’s a bigger production, we game out the day and it’s a wrap over there, just past 3p back here.

Got 30 mins before I pick up the kid. I managed some food. Head out to Pasadena. Emails in the car line.

Things are quiet as it’s 7p east coast and lights out in the uk. So kid and I make a stop at Salt and Straw for some scoops.

Do you remember in the last one of these posts I mentioned a branded short doc we were pitching on, well we got it and now today is day two of filming in Wyoming. That just wrapped as I’m heading home. Good stuff including sunrise in the Tetons. Looking forward to the full lowdown after the weekend.

Back to my east coast union issue. Have a call to settle on the letter we’re sending back.

Now it’s inbox triage. Check in on the media download from the day’s filming. We’re rolling with full frame 5.8k XOCN super 35mm look on a Burano and two Fx3s. The media just piles up. On this project I’m really putting some thought into how to do this process better. I’m famous for not using DITs, no disrespect, and I also don’t believe in ShotPut Pro (no good reason) I just rather do it myself but when I’m not present I need to outsource. DP is pitching in today 🙏. However this time I want to up our game. So I’ve been doing some more research rather than just go with what I’ve always done. Which SSDs are best etc and because we have a pretty controlled environment I’m going to have a 40TB raid on set to offload to. Trying out a Glyph drive, which I didn’t have good vibes 6 years ago, check back in a few weeks and let’s see if I’m sold.

I have not read the football (aka soccer) news yet today. Means it’s busy a day. Are we going to get a striker in this transfer window or what? 26 goals in two seasons by our no.9 is just not cutting it. He needs some help.

As of 7:15p I have done zero packing today (I did start two days ago so have a little done). I’m leaving town tomorrow so daughter and I head out to dinner. Rice & Nori for some onigiri. Spicy Lobster Shrimp. You’re welcome. It’s the only one you should get. Two of these plus some edamame. Solid dinner. During dinner I hear about the origin story of my kid’s obsession with Japan.

The Spotify algorithm has a hand as the catalyst. Who knew? Also discussed which side of my dad’s family did his Chinese heritage come from. I should know the answer but need to Whatsapp him to confirm. And don’t get confused. My dad’s side is the Anglo-Saxon side but 6 generations ago there was a mixed relationship. My dad did 23 and me plus some other genealogy work to figure that out. So I’m 51% ish Chinese as supposed to 50%.

We walk the dog after dinner.

Home and yes...the packing commences.

I give the indoor plants a solid pre trip water.

That’s a wrap.

Let me know in the comments...of interest...useful?

The previous post(s) in this series are here.

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I get the question “what do you do as a producer?” often.

One of my favorite quotes about this is from Larry Turman who was in ways a mentor. He said “a producer is a person who causes a film to be made, and a good producer is a person who causes a film to be made well”.

I could (and will) write a more holistic answer to that basic question — something I can forward to the people who ask me 😅 — but here, I’m trying out a diary-like entry that lists what I did on a specific day. Maybe something as simple as a daily log will shed a light on what a producer does. I’ll give this a few tries and let’s see if this feels interesting to you all.

🚀 Tuesday May 27th, 2025 🚀

It’s the day after Memorial Day, so maybe a little odd compared to a “regular” day — but what really is a regular day?

Woke up around 7 a.m.

Took my kid to school. Listened to The Town podcast on the way home, finishing an episode about the Seth Rogen series The Studio. I tend to do this 2–3 times a week. It’s a good sponge to soak up and stay current. Side note, it genuinely feels like The Studio is a fun show to be a part of.

Checked email from my phone — only at red traffic lights.

A 30-minute dog walk.

Answered some more emails. Finished uploading an interview (exported from dailies for a project that’s in development) to the online transcription site, Temi, which is our preferred platform fyi.

Drove out to Beverly Hills for a 9:30 breakfast meeting with a potential grant funder on a doc. It went well. After breakfast, sat in the person’s cyber trunk while he called the decision-maker and pitched us as good people. Left with a funding commitment. It’s small, but really — every dollar counts. Is this typical to how funding works, in a way yes. I’ve had funders where it’s taken 20+ conversations & meetings to get it done and others where in under a 10 minute phone call it’s done. There’s no standard and you have to go after every single one. I focus on listening to why someone is interested in our film and storytelling, what do they want to get out of this. With those learnings I can then share how our project connects to what they want to do. It’s ultimately a trade even when it’s a grant and there’s no financial recoupment. The person looking to put funding in your project is looking for something so understanding what that is is essential. If there isn’t alignment, don’t push, there’ll be another project in the future and a happy funder is the only funder you want.

On drive home I spoke to the editor on a project that’s nearly picture-locked — mostly working out June scheduling of the edit calendar.

Next call is to check in with our AE, who’s babysitting a branded doc project that’s nearly in the delivery phase. We’re waiting for the client to give a final yes on the GFX, sound, and color work we’ve completed. This one started in January, and it’s been a journey to the finish line! It’s great to have some well-paying branded work to balance everything else.

Back to the home office — catching up on emails, WhatsApps, texts, and the odd call. Too many communication platforms.

Knocked out a quick style guide for a doc in production, using notes from our lead DP and screen grabs from our first major filming block in March. We’re moving into a stage of sporadic filming using other guest DPs, so the style guide lays out the cinematic approach, reference images, best practices, gear list, and camera specs. I have a filming day coming up in a week — checked in with the crew and messaged the DP about lens rental. It’s a project we’re shooting on anamorphic lenses as much as possible — looks fantastic, btw.

Watered the indoor plants.

We’re pitching a branded short doc, so I spent time reviewing the final deck and budget that’s going out. Fingers crossed. Did a call to finalize it. With the same team, we’ve also got a doc series in development. We spent 15 minutes talking about the latest sizzle from the editor and what might be a good next step.

Lunch: a leftover taco from HomeState. Can’t say enough about how fab they are. I like the “Don’t Mess with Texas” taco — refried beans, bacon, and potato. Also, the relatively new “Ground Beef” taco always hits the spot. I had the latter. Flour tortilla.

Knocked out one load of laundry.

BTW — I listen to music constantly while working, as long as I’m not on a call or Zoom. Which reminds me — I’ve made it to 2:30 p.m. and haven’t been on a Zoom yet. Wow! Odd day in that respect.

OK — 2:30 means it’s time to pick up my kid from school. Short drive to Pasadena. Set a second load of laundry before I left (oh wait — just realized I didn’t actually start it 🤦‍♂️ — a tomorrow thing now). Listened to some Gilles Peterson on BBC Radio 6 Music.

Drove my kid to a doctor’s appointment in Pasadena.

Walked the dog again — 30 minutes. Picked up a boba from Urth Café in Pasadena. Did an “office hours” mentorship call for 30 minutes. I teach at USC’s Peter Stark Producing Program for two months and had a call with a just-graduated student about a project he’s working on. Gave some feedback and talked about the best next steps — or whether to shelve the project for now. Picking when to move or pause on a project is a really key thing to learn. I can’t say I get it right every time, but I do try.

Today is a good day. I haven’t felt tired or overwhelmed yet, and I’ve made it to 4 p.m.

Back at the home office. Oh — I drink English, Chinese, and Japanese tea pretty constantly throughout the day, so I start the kettle.

On Zoom — which we kind of use like a virtual/remote office, where we’re online discussing projects, working separately, answering questions. Did this for about 3 hours until 7 p.m. We’re working on a project in a funded development phase — reviewing footage and ideating on the best way to present the vision and treatment to financiers. This has been a regular rhythm to the last few weeks.

Ordered Din Tai Fung delivery while on Zoom. Just before dinner, I knocked out a quick sketch in my notebook, scanned it — it’s a graphic I want to include in a Substack post going out Thursday.

7:30 p.m. — break for dinner, about 45 minutes.

8:30 p.m. — jumped back in to finish up some emails, and now here I am typing out this Substack post. I’m going to sign off writing this now, but still on deck for tonight: I need to update a budget I’m finalizing for a feature doc. Interestingly, it’s a project that’s been on pause for about five years — and we’re looking to restart it after some recent story developments gave it a new lease on life. I guess this circles back to my call with my USC student about when to keep going on a project and when to take a pause and one to

Before I wrap for the night, I’ll also look at the schedule for tomorrow and check off a couple personal to-dos.

If there’s time, I’ll noodle on the NYT Connections or try to “solve in seconds” on the mini crossword. Or I might finish the episode of The Last of Us my girlfriend and I started last night. I like the show — not a die-hard fan. Oh, and I just remembered: my neighbor put out some plants for me to grab after he cut them back. Gotta go grab those! I plant a lot of other people’s trimmings in the garden.

That’s a wrap.

Let me know in the comments...of interest...useful?