 Welcome to Suncoast Spotlight. This is a local television program brought to you in partnership with the Sarasota County Film and Entertainment Office, also known as the Film Commission, and the Suncoast Technical College, and the Education Channel, and the Digital Video Production Program with this college. Thank you for watching. We have some great guests today. We come to you to bring you more information and more personal acquaintanceship with people and places and things that are unique to Sarasota County in the world of television and film. And today we have with us two amazing producers that do many other tasks besides produce because they are very actively involved in independent film. We have Elaine Schneiderman Schmidt and we have Dory Raff. And I don't know where to start with you two ladies because your resumes are huge. I know that you've just recently wrapped a film called Albion that showed in the Sunscreen Film Festival, right? So why don't we start there and kind of work our way backwards? Tell me about Albion, how it came to be. I know you shot it in Europe. And it was an interesting cast, John Cleese. So please tell me about that. Well, Elaine and I had worked together for some years and many, many projects. And my inaugural project was with Elaine. Albion was written and directed by Castile Landon, who also happens to be my daughter, and a Sarasota native. And a beautiful, talented redhead. Thank you, yes. And the film stars John Cleese, Deborah Messing from Well and Grace, who else do we have? Jennifer Morrison, who's the lead-up, Once Upon a Time, and Stephen Dorf. So we have an amazing cast, Daniel Sharman, incredible actor, and Liam McIntyre, who's Spartacus and Hercules. And Ryan O'Nan, who's fantastic as well. And we also co-wrote the film, as did Saras Google. And we shot in, we shot for about a week in Michigan. It was minus 15 degrees. Oh, no. Yes. That's a terrible thing to tell a Floridian. It just chills us to the bone. And we filmed in underwater, under a frozen lake, which was really interesting. Then we moved to Florida and where it, we promptly moved into 90 degree weather. And we shot here in the Sarasota, Bradenton area. And up in Ocala for a bit, we did some water shoots there. And there's beautiful horse farms up there too. There's amazing horse farms. We were shooting in the Springs. We shot at Blue Springs, which was, and we filmed the horses in the water from underneath the water. It was incredible. And then we went to Bulgaria for two months and filmed over there. The film was bought by Netflix for worldwide and was released. It's actually being released as we speak. So it's on paper view now and should be in Walmart this month and then Netflix in July. And is this a family friendly G rated or PG rated or PG 13? It's PG rated and it's very family friendly. There's, and I think the only reason it got a PG rating maybe just because the subject matters a little more mature. It's about a little girl that is very disconnected in this world. And she ends up finding a magical stallion that takes her to this other world where she discovers that she is the key to saving an entire race of people. Oh, wonderful. And it's kind of Game of Thrones for kids. It sounds very much YA, young adult fantasy, Game of Thrones. Yes, very much so. Well, the full title is Albion the Enchanted Stallion. And it was a beautiful, beautiful black stallion. I mean, they took two of them over to Bulgaria. From the U.S.? Yes, we FedExed them. You FedExed them? Yes. You're not kidding. To Scandinavia. She's not kidding. No, and then Ashley, the trainer who was only 26 years old at the time. Her name is Ashley Klein. She's an amazing animal trainer. She actually flew over with them and then she drove through nine countries, including three eastern countries. Wow. With a driver who spoke absolutely no English. And in fact- And signals we were. We had to have a driver who spoke the Baltic languages because you basically bribe your way across the borders. And everything is very close together. Yes. We have states, they have countries. You drive across. Exactly. But each country, you have to find a way to get in. And it's not when you're hauling, you know, 1600 pound stallions, you just, it's not like the U.S. where you just apply ahead of time, get your permits and be on your way. And drive on through. Right. You have to discuss things at each border and find your way across in an orderly manner. So- Bribe your way across. I've actually heard that before with major feature films where they have ended up having to meet with government officials with little paper bags full of money. And then they have a discussion where the money crosses the table and disappears under the other side. And it's amazing how much of that goes on in other countries. Yeah. The best thing is that they have, you know, their currency and the exchange rate is so favorable that, you know, what seems like a huge bribe to them is like, really, $200? That's what you're looking? We're good. We're good with that. We're good. We're going to have to take a short break. The segments go so fast. And when we come back, we're going to talk about so many other projects as quickly as we can because there's so much about you. I'd like the viewers to know. Stay with us. Don't go away. We'll be right back. Tech Tots Preschool is located on the campus of Suncoast Technical College and is open to the public for preschool and voluntary pre-K classes. Tech Tots has been serving the Sarasota community since 1977, offering a safe and nurturing environment for children three years of age and up. The students in Suncoast Technical College's early childhood education program work side-by-side with the professional licensed childcare providers learning the skills of quality childcare services and offering a low child-to-adult ratio. Tech Tots childcare services are offered at no charge to students of Suncoast Technical College and are available to the public at a reasonable rate on a first come, first served basis. For more information, call Tech Tots at 941-924-1365, extension 62383. Tech Tots, a great start for your tot. Welcome back. You're watching Suncoast Spotlight. And our guests today are power women producers, women that I admire who've made all sorts of indie films on all sorts of budgets. And they've worked with stars and they've worked with the unknown that have the potential to one day be stars. We're talking to Dori Rack and Elaine Schneiderman Schmidt. And we talked before about Albion where you were getting horses across international borders by FedEx, which is fascinating to me. I want to learn more about that. And let's talk a little bit about a recent film that you did called Apple of My Eye. And it was originally called And Then There Was Light. Bert Reynolds was one of the celebrities that appeared. Tell me a little bit about that. That was shot fairly locally, wasn't it? Yes, it was. It was filmed quite a bit at the southeastern dog. Guide dogs? Was just such a great organization. What a beautiful, beautiful place to film. And between the puppies and then we had a miniature horse. And Apple was so well trained. Ashley, the horse trainer who did Albion, Dori had bought Apple and lived with Ashley for six months while she trained Apple to be as good. Oh, wow. Apple was with Ashley, not me. You didn't live with Ashley. Apple lived with Ashley. Apple lived with Ashley. I'm sorry to train it. And when we first brought it back to the house, at Dori's house, it was living in the house. And she was trained to be a seeing eye dog. Wow. The horse does anything a dog can do. Lays at your feet. Has to wear little sneakers in the house. I didn't scratch the paws, but it was house broken. So she was just wonderful to work with. And Ashley again just pulled it off. She's so talented. And Burt was wonderful to work with. Burt Reynolds. It's so great to see him doing roles. I've seen him in a couple of indie films the last few years and it just always warms my heart. You know, he's a Florida boy through and through. Yeah, and he's very open to training. He's very open and approachable and he wants to train people. Yes, he actually has an acting school. Right. In Jupiter. In Jupiter. So highly recommend that. I worked with him in the 90s on another film called The Crook, which was an interesting project. So to not see him in all this time and then to see him again, he's still just as charming and as bright and as friendly as ever. He is. He really is. He's a pleasure to work with and absolutely professional. I saw him get an award at the governor's conference on tourism a year or two ago. And he came out. He had not been real well and he came out with a walker and he got his way to the podium and he handed the walker off to an assistant. The lights came on. The applause came up. They showed a sizzle reel and he stood up straight and the charisma just poured out of him. All of a sudden he was funny. He was charming. He was handsome. He was so alive and it was just a wonderful thing to see. That's the way he was every day on our shoot. He really was. And he was always, not only helping the young actors, he was patient with, because it was an independent film and it was a low-budget film that he is used to. And yet he made every department feel supported and appreciated. He couldn't thank us enough. He had a really good rapport with Castile, our director. And it was a pleasure. It was one of my favorite films to make, which is really a lot simpler than most of the films I make. Between the people and how well it went and watching Castile work with the actors and the horses and the puppies. Beautiful weather. And it was sold the first day. We started shooting that day. It had been sold. Now, Dory has a great business model about making indie films. We've talked about this before. When you make an indie film, you want a great story. You want a great subject matter. You want good actors. You want the audience to be really involved and love it. But you also have a really great business mind for this. And you know that there are elements that will make it sell or leave it get dusty on a shelf. Tell me a little bit about that. Because I think that indie filmmakers, sometimes they fall in love with the project and they don't think about the business of show business. Well, I think, you know, to me, one of the most important things is if you want to, is to make sure that the bottom line you're looking for is aligned with the bottom line that your investors are interested in. Some investors, they invest because they want their kid to be in a movie. Other investors invest because they want to get to a festival. Others invest because they want to get their money back. And very often, I will hear producers say, oh, my investor doesn't care if he gets his money back. He just wanted to support a Christian film, for example. Well, maybe he did want to support a Christian film and he wanted to get his money back. If that's the case, make sure your film is highly marketable, that it's commercial. Because if your investors are interested in getting their money back and you made a film that is entirely dependent on getting into Sundance, you know, if it's a deep drama with no cast, then if you don't get into Sundance, your film's probably not worth anything. And your chances of getting into Sundance are one in 13,000 now. So I think that's the most important thing for me, especially with Castile's career getting started. She ultimately wants to do YA, more drama or psychological thrillers, especially. But getting started, we knew that family films were easier to sell. So that's why we focused there. That's ironic, as many R-rated films as there are out there, and yet the family films are the ones that seem to get the consistent box office. We're going to take another break just for a moment, but when we come back, we're going to talk about how I first met you, way back when, eight or ten years ago, and Elaine, some of the things you've been involved in, and you've been working with Jake Gyllenhaal, and I mean, you two have been all over the map. Again, I'm really impressed with you both, and I want the audience at home to get to know you better. We'll be right back. The Automotive Service Technology Program at Suncoast Technical College prepares students for careers in high-demand areas of automotive specialization, such as brakes, suspension and steering, electrical systems, engine repair, transmission and transaxles, heating and air conditioning, and much more. For more information, log on to suncoast.edu or call 941-924-1365. Suncoast Technical College, career in a year. Welcome back to Suncoast Spotlight. Thank you for staying with us and watching the rest of the show. This is our second half, and I want to get into a little more about the background and kind of the foundational history of how you both got into filmmaking. Elaine, let me start with you. You go back to Miami Vice and many, many really well-known projects. Have you always worked in the Miami Quarter, or have you traveled the world? Tell me a little bit about that. Well, I did start out. My first big show was Miami Vice first season, and my first day was the first day of filming. Wow. Of course, we didn't have any idea at the beginning if the show was going to make it. We only had six episodes, but... And it was kind of being in the right place at the right time. I started working with the producers of that show, Michael Mann and John Niccolella, and they took a liking to me, and I was young enough to not know that I can say no sometimes. So you work 12-hour, 14-hour days? Seven days a week, 18 hours a day for the whole first year. And after that, I left the show, but we stayed very good friends, and I did all the Michael Mann series that came in afterwards, or John's, you know, and I traveled with Michael Mann. I did a show on Spain, and many series in Spain for him, and did Alley when he came back, so we had worked again together. But through that, it just started networking, and I had the opportunity to work with some of the finest people in the film business. So it really does prove that so much of our business is about relationships. You form relationships, you bond with people, you have a positive working experience. They keep your name, you keep their name. They remember you positively with your work ethic and your talent and your skill and your dedication, and they share your name, and suddenly your web and your network gets bigger and bigger, and for filmmakers everywhere, especially young ones, I'm always telling them relationships are the foundation of everything we do. Keep every call sheet you've ever had. Keep every contact number and every email you've ever had, because people, generally speaking, don't change their cell phones, and frequently don't change their emails. And then Dory, you and I met when you were doing a TV pilot, and it was for Workers' Comp, and it was a comedy, Robert Caradine, and Morgan Fairchild. She looked fabulous. He was hysterically funny. I still see him with the tie around his forehead. It was a very funny pilot. Yeah, and that's actually how I met Elaine as well. At the time, it was the first time I had produced something, and I had no idea the importance of a line producer, that they not only develop your budget, they hire all of your crew, and they manage all of your crew on set and bring you in on budget. So it's probably one of the, certainly one of the most critical positions on set, and Elaine took a liking to Castile, who'd written the script, and she called me and said, you know, I'll line produce it for you for free. And I was like, whatever. I had no idea. I had just moved to the area. I was living in Miami, so I didn't really know anybody yet. As a matter of fact, I hadn't even met you yet. And somebody had given Dory my name, so she hired me to do a budget. And I did the budget, but fell in love with the script. And knowing that a 19-year-old at the time wrote it, it just blew my mind. And then when I met with Dory and Castile and moved forward, I gave them this budget, but I was like, where do they go from there? So I called her back and I said, would you allow me to line produce for free? That's so great. And now that I know Elaine, I know she doesn't line produce for free, and I wouldn't either when I saw how much work it was. It was incredible. I thought the project was a great concept. I still believe in it, and it was a lot of fun. It was a funny pilot. It was a lot of laugh-out-loud humor at the screening. I remember when we had it and we screened it at one of our events. And I'm always amazed that you as a mom, not only are you an amazing businesswoman and you're an amazing producer and you really get it about the business side of the business, but you're an incredible mom to help your daughter advance her career as much as she has. In the end, it stands on her talent. Castile either has the talent or she doesn't. Absolutely. And she's proven that she has, but you've opened doors that... Well, my mom did the same thing for me. My mom and I started a company called the Nelco companies, which my mom founded it and then I joined her and we co-owned it for 30 years until we sold it. It grew up to be one of the largest female-owned businesses in Florida. And then one day my mom, my daughter said, after we had sold the business, she had already been out in LA writing and acting and she said, you spent the last 30 years working with your mom. How about you spend the next 30 working with me? Because I'd like to work with my mom. What a great multi-generational heritage and tradition. That's what brought me to the business. And then she started moving behind the camera, but it was still... I had done many, many projects, Elaine and I together, before we ever did one of her projects. And she needed to learn. Just as I did... My mom didn't make me the president for 20 years and I had to earn my way up from receptionist all the way up the chain. I think that's known in our business as paying your dues. Exactly. And Castile needed to learn that too. And for me it would have been irresponsible to put my investors in something that was just my kid's project. But it's been very successful since we switched to doing... I now exclusively produce her material. And it does well. That's amazing. We're going to take another break. We'll be right back. It 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 941-924-1365 extension 62343. The Cutting Edge Salon, located on the campus of Suncoast Technical College, is a cut above. And we're back. Thanks for still being with us. This is Suncoast Spotlight brought to you by the Sarasota County Film and Entertainment Office, the digital video production program of Suncoast Technical College and the Education Channel. Well, that's a lot of partners, and we're all here to make it happen just to entertain you. So getting back to our guests, Elaine Schneiderman-Schmidt and Dori Raff, and we're talking about some of the recent projects they've done, I want to just touch quickly on this year's Academy Award-winning best film, Moonlight. And Elaine, you kind of got pulled into that late in the production to help someone who had to drop out. They had wanted a local line producer, and I'm not local in Miami anymore, they heard a lovely lady named Veronica and a good friend of mine, Jennifer Razikowski, who is getting her first shot at UPMH. Oh, wow. And Jennifer had called me that Veronica had a death in her family and had to leave right before they started shooting for a week or two. So I basically went in just as a favor for a couple of weeks till Veronica could come back, and that's how I got involved with the project. I loved the project. And you have a credit on it? You were given a credit? Yes, they were very kind of me with credit as additional line producing. And Jennifer went on from there because she did a phenomenal job and she UPMed a movie we did last summer called The Florida Project. That's on its way to Cannes right now. That's great. And I love the fact that you are Sarasota Bradenton people and you have moved into so many higher atmospheres of filming and people and projects. But tell me about The Florida Project because I'm very intrigued by the fact that it's going to Cannes. That's quite a feather in your cap. Yeah, it was shot entirely in Orlando and it's... Sean Baker wrote the project. The concept of the film is just brilliant. It's actually... It's very heart-wrenching. It's very heart-wrenching. It's such a lot of work to make that movie. It's about homeless families that are living outside of Disney World and in the hotels and the motels right around there. And some people have said, oh, Disney may not like it, but Disney's not doing anything wrong. Disney's creating an economy there. And it's probably because of that economy that these people even have any opportunities. And they come there for job opportunities. Yes. And when they can't afford homes and they can't afford rent of long-term in apartments and houses and so forth, those hotels and motels serve a function. Right. Otherwise they would be living in station wagons. Absolutely. That's not a good thing. So... The last step to being out on the street really is unfortunately for many families. And we work with families that have three kids and five kids and they all live together. And even though both parents might be working, they still can't afford to get out of the motel. And the film is real. There are a couple really talented actors in the film, Willem Dafoe. Oh, wow. He's awesome. Wonderful, super sense of humor. And the... But the rest of the cast, they're real. They're the people that live there and the kids. And it's really pretty powerful. So that film is going to Cannes. And Elaine brought me on to that film to oversee the accounting and finance. And then I ended up hiring on with the production company. And I'm now their chief financial officer doing a lot of projects around the country. Right. In fact, I think there are some other intersections of connectivity that you've made that I was reading about or following up on on some other projects. And I went, oh, that's the project Donny's working on. The production company, well, actually Sweet Tomato Films, our company, was the production company that produced it. But the financier company is June Pictures. They've made seven really amazing movies in one year. Wow. We submitted five to festival. Three got into Sundance. Three out of the four submitted to Sundance. When your chance is one in 13,000. Which is probably a record. One won the documentary competition. All three sold very well at Sundance. And then the last film that we submitted, we submitted to one festival and Cannes. And it got in. That's fantastic. They just seem to have the luck. Well, they have an amazing producer there. And they have the right ingredients put together in that magical way where everything gels and the talent works with the cinematography. The producer is a 28 year old girl that is picking these. Her name's Alex Sacks. She's picking these projects. She won, she was one of the top 10 producers to watch on Variety's list this year. Yeah, it's pretty brilliant. And where's she from? She's in LA. And I actually leave Sunday. We're doing a film out there with Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candace Bergen. A really fun film called Book Club. I just saw something about that in Variety. Yes, it just got announced this week. Well, he's not signed yet. I know. It's top secret. You heard it here first. And we're running out of time again. This is just amazing. Well, you come back again and visit us and let us know how Cannes turns out and let us know how June Pictures turns out and what it's like to work with Jane Fonda and wonderful vintage, gorgeous women that are still so vibrant. We also have three movies in our lineup that will all be shot, at least partially. That are being developed for Florida. Developed for Florida. No, we love to hear that. Yes. That's just, that's just... Hopefully it's all. Nurturing to my heart. I love to hear that. And we want to help you in Sarasota County and Manatee County any way we can. You always do, Jeannie. Yes. Only do Sarasota County is one of the best counties to film in. Oh, thank you. Well, it's a joy to be here. And we appreciate all of you being with us. So tune in again. We'll see you soon.