Celebrating the Reel Works Fellows!
On Wednesday, March 16th, 2022, the Fellows 2020 & 2021 screening highlighted the importance of youth filmmakers in NYC. The audience witnessed some of our Fellows' works of expression through various forms of filmmaking within this program. The works displayed the two cohorts’ skills in cinematography, lighting, foley, acting, directing, and more.
Although most of these stories were shot in person on location, many were shot from the comfort of the teams’ homes, ultimately making it challenging for some of the actors and crew, but most of all their producers and directors.
After the screening of each film, some of the Fellows involved in the production were given the chance to speak to their work and process following a quick interactive session of Gimkit with the audience. When asked about Quarantine Stories, our 2020 Screenwriter, Marcus Cochran, had this to say: “We all know the quote ‘everybody gets their 15 minutes of fame’. That's always been an interesting quote to me because why is it only 15 minutes?... When I created this story, I wanted to create this movie [surrounding] that quote.”
We asked our Fellows some harboring questions about production about shooting over zoom. “Right off the bat, I would be creating shot lists for the films. We had to individually get screenshots from the actors’ rooms so we could get a layout of where they live and where we could place the cameras. …” shared Marvin Hernandez, producer of one of our anthology films. Despite these foreign challenges, he addresses the importance of preparation: "No matter how much preparation we do, something on set will go wrong, and you need to have the adaptiveness on set. Every time we’ve made a film, there’s always like something that’s just going to go wrong and you need to be able to be quick on your feet."
With all that being said, throughout production of all the films there were complications that naturally arose when working on larger projects. These challenges are something that Reel Works takes pride in guiding their students through as it will prepare them for their careers as filmmakers. Our 2021 Producer, Emily Freire, spoke to her experience with reshoots of The Bet and how our Director of Education, Charles Reynoso, came to play the Landlord in her film. “We had initially filmed everything in the Airbnb and everything was going well, and then when we came back to edit we realized we were missing more than half of the Airbnb scenes footage. We were already a month out from filming and we needed to rebook that Airbnb… [but] our original landlord actor was not able to fit our [reshoot] schedule”
The ultimate goal of this program is to prepare NYC Youth to go into the filmmaking workforce with knowledge and experience that will help them be successful, so we asked our students what they took away from their time within it:
“One thing that I take away from this and I will take with me for the rest of my life is Murphy’s Law exists. No matter how much preparation we do, something on set will go wrong, and you need to have the adaptiveness on set. Every time we’ve made a film, there’s always like something that’s just going to go wrong and you need to be able to be quick on your feet. So, I thank Reel Works for giving me that experience and I will always take it with me.” - Marvin Hernandez, Producer/Editor, 2020 Fellows Cohort
“Well something I took away, it was because it was my first time directing something this big, definitely I got like some experience of like directing actors and directing crew… I also learned that stuff happens. I didn't know we would have to shoot again in another couple of months but that just made me be prepared for the next films I do.” - Kimberly Lim, Director, 2021 Fellows Cohort
