 Welcome to Suncoast Spotlight. You're watching a television program brought to you by the Sarasota County Film and Entertainment Office in partnership with the Suncoast Technical College. And I'm Jeannie Corcoran, your Sarasota County Film Commissioner. And today we're going to meet with some young women filmmakers who have a new initiative, a new collaborative with other filmmakers called Forward Indie Films. So with me today we have Millie King. Hello. Hello. And we have Zephanzo. I'm going to call you Zee from now on everyone calls you Millie. So welcome Millie, welcome Zee. And I'm really excited to hear that the two of you have taken the initiative to start your own film collaborative to help younger filmmakers find their way. And let me start with you Millie. How did this idea come to pass? Well actually my good friend Lisa Silvermore and I co-founded this at the very start. A few months ago we were just getting coffee together and talking about filmmaking. And we, you know, we're kind of pooling our resources and we were like, you know, we could really get some people together and make this more of a resource for the community. We can actually get some things done if we make this into more of a collective. And so that's what we did. We started, she invited Zee and I had worked with Zee before on some student sets. So that's just three of us are, you know, part of the half dozen that are now making up the group. So you're growing exponentially. You went from two to three to six. So it's 12 next. Is that how this works? Medically. Yeah, that's great. And tell me a little bit about your background and then we'll get on Zee and have her share the same exact thing. Well I actually attended the digital video production as it was called when I went there. That was digital video technology program. Yes. I attended when I was 16 to 18 and Mr. Gray was my instructor and he really helped me stay focused on being a part of the film community. And so when I graduated, I started working with the Rensis Films and some other local people in the area on some different projects. I've worked on three features now and some producing capacity. One of them I did produce was the producer on a year ago now, a year and a half ago when I was 19. I was just about to turn 20. And then now I'm trying to get back into being involved with the students more because it's what I like to do and I'm presented again with an opportunity in my life to do that. That's a great motivation and sharing the knowledge, sharing the wealth. And there's strength in numbers. Definitely. The more you grow, the better it is for all of you. That's something I've learned and that's what we're trying to extend of it. That's great. And Zee, tell me a little bit about your background, how you got started. Yeah. I know your situation is a little different. You're still in school. Yeah. I'm currently a junior film student at Ringling College of Art and Design and originally I'm from Delaware, a little state of Delaware. And I started kind of getting into the filmmaking world when I was in high school. I had a technical high school, so I learned the basics there and then eventually when I got to college, I decided to go to Ringling and from there on, just been part of the film program there. It definitely helped me out a lot and I got a chance to work on big professional sets such as the Kevin Smith project that was here over the summer and also worked with Justin Long on his little short film as well. Right. It's great that they bring the digital filmmaking lab initiative over at Ringling College, brings in a lot of the real deal. They bring in actors and performers who are also their own writers, their own producers and things like that. Yeah. And like Millie, I feel like I've come to a point where I have a lot of knowledge that I can pass it on to the younger generation of filmmakers and being a part of this group is a step towards what I want to do in that terms. And for those who don't know, because you can't know this behind the scenes, Z was doing a little impromptu documentary of filming footage around the green screen with her cell phone before we were on camera. It's just the way it is today. You can make footage anywhere, anytime with anything just about. And it looks great. It's amazing the tools and the technology now that democratizes the ability to shoot. Which is kind of like another point that we're hoping to get across to people that are even just a couple of years younger than us is, you know, needing to take advantage of the resources we have now and how young you can be to make films and how you don't have to necessarily wait until you're done with your education or you have an angel investor or anything like that, you know. Your net is hamstrung by all the technical needs that used to exist that don't exist anymore. You can shoot something on an iPhone. You could, you know, if you're 20 and you have an iPhone and you have a story, you can make a movie. They even have iPhone film festivals now. I see it online all the time where you can submit anything from 15 seconds, I think up to two minutes. It's pretty interesting. I think we're going to have to go to a quick break. I'm really interested in all the things you're talking about here, so I hope you, at home, are too. Stay with us. We'll be right back. The Cutting Edge Salon, located on the campus of Suncoast Technical College, is open to the public for styling services, coloring services, chemical texturing, nail coloring, manicures and pedicures, hair removal services, facials, and more. All of the beauty services are performed by the students of the Suncoast Technical Colleges Cosmetology Program under the supervision of its award-winning instructors. The Cutting Edge Salon is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. and on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursdays, evening appointments are also available from 4 until 9 p.m. For appointments, call 941-924-138 924-1365 Extension 62343 The Cutting Edge Salon, located on the campus of Suncoast Technical College, is a cut above. Welcome back to Suncoast Spotlight. We're talking to some young women filmmakers who are sharing the wealth. They're bringing in other young filmmakers. They're teaching them what they know. They're making new content with new technology. And it's a great thing. Now, what sort of content are you going to specialize in? Or are you just going to do a little bit of everything? Let's start with you, Millie. Well, obviously, film and local indie filmmaking is something we have the most experience in. But we try to keep an open mind with everything we're approaching. We're looking to give more technical skills and resources to other students and learn ourselves. It's something we kind of want to figure out, I think, as we go along, because it's still such a young and growing process for us. Right. And Zee, I know over at the Ringling College digital track, they basically have you work on short films. Yeah. And short films are sort of their piece de resistance to make that art form. Yeah, mostly narrative short films we focus on are from freshman up to senior year. And once we get to senior year, we kind of diverse out to branded stuff. So like commercials, music videos, PSAs, things like that. So it kind of gives us an opportunity to see how those types of films are different, but at the same time structured similarly to a narrative short film. Right. Yeah. And have you ever thought about, either one of you, have you ever thought about the documentary world? Because there's so many interesting subjects and topics, especially we've just recently had the Sarasota Film Festival wrap up its 20 year anniversary. And the documentaries were phenomenal, as were many of the short films and the narrative films and a lot of other content. But I was impressed by the diversity of the documentary films. Have you, either of you given any thought to that? I definitely have. It's one of those things that I've considered as a part of my thesis. I'm not thinking about doing a narrative in my part as a director, but I am interested in directing either a documentary or commercial. So getting that option of doing what a lot of people have done now with documentaries has definitely inspired me to at least try it out. It's a fascinating field. And what about web series? Let's talk a little bit about that, because that, talk about democratization of distribution. Everybody has access. Everybody can do this. It's funny that you say that because I think it's kind of in this current period of time maybe more efficient or effective to do a documentary web series because things change so quickly and things move so quickly and even just an event or a particular historical occurrence that you're trying to cover could be changing so rapidly. The story of what you're trying to cover could be changing so rapidly that maybe you can only do it in small sections right now or you wait until it's all over. But yeah, with the pace of things going the way they're going, that may be the best way to catch people's attention with hard hitting or heavy material. Sure. And I think about the days of uplinks when I was doing a lot of production out west. If you didn't have an uplink truck, you were hard-pressed to get what you were creating if there was something that was breaking news to get it up and on the air. And we would go all over with an uplink truck and we would be ready to hook up around the country just to go live. But now you can do it on the internet. With your cell phone. You can go live on Facebook or even things like Twitter, Instagram. Anyone can be a journalist. But not everyone applies the rules of journalism. Right, right. But we definitely embrace the technological world and definitely using it for our advantage. And at least for me, I believe that's at least and for this generation of filmmakers is a great thing, a great tool to do. I've heard stories where somebody would just upload their short films to YouTube and, you know, at one night during the day, a big name filmmaker just see it on YouTube and it's like, I want to like talk to this person and try to, you know, get in contact with them and see if we can develop something even more. So I think it's just a great connection to it. It is a great connection. I do a lot of trade shows and I do a lot of conferences with television producers and TV and new media as well as film. And one of the things that I've heard a lot at reality television conferences, which also includes partially scripted and documentary. It's not just, you know, baby boo-boo or some of the goofy shows. It's also a lot of real life, realism, semi-documentary based, partially scripted stuff. And one of the panels I heard said, the magic number on YouTube to get Hollywood to call you or to get a producer to call you is a million hits. You get a million hits and suddenly the networks or the cable outlets or the producers or the production companies you've got their attention and they go, we've got a built-in audience of a million fans. Let's talk. So do you have a hope for any of that? I hope that with us being generous in sharing what we're doing and how we're doing it with people who follow us on social media, whether it's YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, whatever, that they will, you know, if they're filmmakers will respond in kind, you know, will support us, continue to follow us, will continue to share us, will continue to get us views, will, you know... Spread the word. ...help us stay doing what we're doing because we'd like to do that. Right. All right, let's wrap up with how do they get a hold of you? What's the easiest way for people who want to get involved with Forward Indie Films? Currently, we have an email that people can get a hold of us at it's forwardindiefilms at gmail.com. Is that indie? Yes. Forward Indie Films at gmail.com. Mm-hmm. And what about Facebook, Twitter, Instagram? Yeah. We are in the process of getting all of those things up and by the time this airs, I'm sure it will be. So it will be Forward Indie Films. That's something you can Google and you'll be able to find our Facebook page. But the email is how you get direct contact with us. Excellent. Millie, Z, thank you both very much. I really appreciate you being here and I think what you're doing is great. Keep up the great work and to everyone watching, this is the end of our first segment, stay with us, there'll be more, and film makers support this collaborative that they're trying to create and help others. They're paying it forward. So give them the support by you paying it forward to them. Thanks for watching. We'll be right back. A new housing boom is predicted in our area. That means new jobs for qualified plumbers. Our plumbing program can prepare you to take advantage of those opportunities. You'll learn commercial, residential plumbing, installation, maintenance, and servicing. Become familiar with the latest solar technologies and in as little as a year, you can be working as a plumber's assistant, preparing yourself to become a certified licensed plumber. Welcome back to Suncoast Spotlight. We continue to bring you exciting people in the world of film and entertainment and things going on around Sarasota from indie film to film festivals. And with us right now we have three awesome people from the Sarasota Film Festival from the 2018 20th anniversary version of the film festival and it's just exciting to have you. We have Aaron Murphy from the Sarasota Film Festival director. Yes, we're very excited to be here. And we have Paul Ratner and you are the director of education. Yes. And we have your beautiful wife Petra Ratner and you are the manager of marketing and promotions and press and publicity. Right? Well anyway, it's wonderful to have you here and I know we don't have a lot of time because this is such a busy week for you but I'd like to talk to all three of you about the educational component because people know you're doing great films, they know you're showing great documentaries, there's great parties, a lot of wonderful stuff here and especially this year. But let's talk about the educational side of it, the 20-hour film festival, the youth fest. Let's start with, let's start with Paul. We'll start with the man in the middle. Paul, tell me how your program was put together this year and what makes you happiest about it? Well thank you for having us here first of all. You're welcome. Yeah, we have a lot of great educational events going on this year. One of them we just had this morning in fact I'm just here from that event. It's a big kid trip so we have about 1,500 local students coming to see films at the Sarasota film festivals. 1,500? 1,500, that's right. How many schools does that represent, do you know? It's over a dozen I think. There's a number of schools from different ages, elementary and middle and high and we have a great program for them. We're showing short films as well as a great documentary called Tuba to Cuba which everyone should check out. That's for high schoolers. We have other events that are very nice. We just dropped up on the streets which is a young filmmaker showcase. What a great opportunity for them to really walk a red carpet and be respected as filmmakers. Right. A lot of it was local films so we really tried to reward the local filmmaking community. Kids of all ages made very good films and then they had an opportunity to walk a red carpet and have their films screened and we even gave out some awards. It was a very nice experience for everyone and it was judged actually by high schoolers watched some of the films and kind of offered their opinions and learned about film criticism and things like that. Superb. That's a wonderful experience and you never know when that moment on the red carpet and being treated like young filmmakers as opposed to kids or just students or something like that young filmmakers it could change a life it could change a course of a vocational future. That's right especially by being affiliated with such a great festival and the community for these local young filmmakers to have a film screen here and then they have it on their resume it helps them get into our festival so it's really a boost already. Another thing that we're doing that's a great boost local community this year is a 20 hour film contest It's a kind of a new event where filmmakers get 20 hours to film and 20 hours to edit a short 5 minute film and we give them they pick a theme but we give them a chosen element in this case it was a prop of competing we have 12 films to show this coming Sunday on the 10 am on the 22nd and we have an award ceremony following that it's a lot of excitement for the filmmakers to make these films and for 12 teams out of 18 to make it to the finish line and give you something finished that's a pretty high percentage that's pretty great that's about 3 quarters of it all and there's always there's a lot of challenges to make a film in such a short period of time so something always goes wrong the films that get finished and you know we have other programs as well throughout the year that we're planning to do you know one thing is coming up is film camps actually we're going to have film camps this year for the first time whereas local students will have an opportunity to learn how to make a short film over the summer so we're hoping this will be a great addition to the community as well so if anyone's interested now Petra do you see a challenge having to go out and market all of this get the word out have to not really I'm experienced in this we're running such type of competition in Prague for years and this is just such a nice thing to do for young people to give them such opportunity that people just open welcome it with open arms really it's a good idea people like it people like to be involved in this opening night I saw them all come out on stage and two of them were children young young people I would say under 13 probably they looked to be and then some of them were adults and some of them were veterans and women and men it was pretty exciting was whose brain child Aaron who thought this up that was originally a sort of like as you said a brain child experience in putting events like similar veins like this together we really wanted to celebrate the 20th anniversary by sort of marking this as the 20 hour film contest and so we knew that overall 20 hours was a far too few hours to be able to pull this off so we decided to at least be able to parcel it out by you get 20 hours to film and 20 hours to edit so at least you know we're gonna have to take a quick break but I'm loving to hear all this it's great and it's very inventive and taking a lot of innovative steps for you so stay with us stay with us we'll be right back Welcome back to Suncoh Spotlight. We are talking to three amazing people from the 20th anniversary of the Sarasota Film Festival in 2018 here and Aaron Murphy and Paul and Petra Radner husband and wife teamed up to do new and exciting things with education and marketing and Aaron of course as the assistant festival director the 20 hour film festival we were talking about before we went to break it's actually 20 in and 20 out 20 to make it 20 to post it and 12 teams out of 18 made it to the finish line what's next where do you go from here? Well as far as other things that we were planning definitely we have a lot of classroom content that we're hoping to bring in you know it's already kind of the end of the year of course but in the summer we have a film camps but we have something called classroom critic where we're going to be bringing in new programming to children you know in their classrooms so specifically I'm tailoring a new course that is designed around teaching kids film language and film terminology and kind of you know things like montage and you know giving them basic skills you know around film and understanding film so this is something that we will have in partnership with a number of schools throughout the year and other thing that they're planning is actually we've been discussing creating a cinema tech like a program of classic films that we can show throughout the year so this idea so far has received some excitement so we're hoping to institute that and talking to partners to make that happen Well there's a whole generation always there's always a new generation that doesn't even know some of the old classic films that are quite old some of them are just 10 or 15 years ago but if kids are 10 to 15 years old it was before their time so Erin how does the festival see their year long involvement with the community? Yes I think the biggest incorporation of the festival into the community really is essentially through the educational programs because right now I think the city is changing a lot in its demographics which is wonderful traditionally I mean we're known around the world as a wonderful tourist destination which of course has a sort of a season of the year where that is really more prevalent than others but I think through this program as well as supplementing our Moonlight movie series that we do year round outside at all of our beaches and parks around Sarasota County Which is free? Yes it is free to the public and that is one thing that we're very proud of and it's so nice supplementing it with the program that Paul is developing right now with the classic films will be another way that we can increase that and our other goal is to be integrating more local original music when it comes to pairing those with some of these screenings as we start to roll them out in the fall That's a great addition we have a lot of really gifted musical individuals and groups in the city and then it's going to fall to Petra to get the word out to get it marketed and do you have any special plans is there a number or an email where people can reach out to you as the marketing arm and say have I got an idea for you or I'd like to pitch myself or how do we help Yes please reach out to me on Petra at Sarasota Film Festival dot com That's pretty easy That's the best email yes that's the best email and I'm happy to hear any suggestions I'm happy to get people connected get businesses connected and just in general bring this out there Right and I can vouch for that picture and I spoke back some months ago when I got back to sharing information about the films that I'd seen there and we talked about local films and local producers that were involved in different indie projects and so forth and you're always looking for input and information from the community Yes of course and I'm sure Paul and Aaron both are as well Absolutely So would it be Petra at Sarasota Film Festival dot com Paul Well education at Sarasota Film Festival Yes and you can also send an email to info at if you're unsure of who the the right recipient might be and then we can route it for you And what are the dates of the film camps because that was something that may really strike a chord with people in the summer when the kids are out of school and they're looking for something creative and valuable to do Do you have dates yet or is that still forming? Right now we're planning it for June and a part of July so probably we're already by writing to film camps and we will send them the program and what we're planning to do so film camps at sarasota film festival dot com Excellent Excellent And the moonlight movies is there a schedule that goes up year round about that and do they just go to sarasota film festival dot com and yes we have a special tab it's I believe it's a program after the film festival settles down after the 22nd and you can see clips and things online as well of some of the highlights of the film festival some of the things that went on there'll be some video put up and people that maybe couldn't see everything they wanted to see they can have a little glimpse of the speakers and the special interviews and things like that Yes I would really most as the most up to date the most comprehensive source and you know we as soon as John Hedder hit the red carpet for his world premiere of when Jeff tried to save the world we had photos up just momentarily after that was done so it's a really nice way to stay current kind of moment to moment as to what's happening this year that's fabulous well I'm sorry we don't have more time what you have to say is so enjoyable and so informative and so good for our community so thank you three for being here