CEO/Executive Producer
harvest films
3) My role as a receptionist, production supervisor, producer and A.D., to a company owner/CEO has significantly evolved over the years. What I like most about this evolution is the opportunity for growth and the fact our community allows and encourages the spirit of hard work and creative integrity to prevail over all else. I often ponder that throughout our tumultuous, evolving business it’s always been “hard” and it’s always been “competitive” and the same conversations seem to be had at every major shift and iteration of how we make the films we make. What I like least about this evolution is the lack of change in roles that women behind the scenes play on set. I am saddened that I haven’t been able to help move the conversation forward amongst younger women in our business and the conditions are pretty much the same today as they were when I started out. For the few women that have broken through the directorial/key grip/A.C., etc. barriers, I applaud you. Many women, both in production and the tech sector, reach out to me with questions about how to have a family and a career and they’re stressed out. While some changes are evident in the more active role men are playing today in helping to raise and manage families, not enough is being done on a societal level. Having said that, I am inspired by some of the new platforms the DGA is implementing with respect to women and directing.
6) Creatively speaking, my New Year’s resolutions include producing and creating more films that speak to the challenges our world faces in 2016. It’s imperative that I utilize the skill sets our business has imparted to me with respect to corporations and brands and use those skills to help move the important social discussions forward. That includes films that are conceived and created within harvest. Since 2001, we have always been proactive to take on difficult topics like gun control and carbon neutralization and this year that commitment is more important than ever. I am contemplating and generating ideas about co-opting like minded people, companies and platforms so as to bring these arenas together in one location. I believe there is an unchartered concept of production company that has yet to be realized and we’re very close to giving voice to that new exciting configuration. Like in sports, at the height of competition, teams bring it in close and they huddle and they train and they compete. The beginning of 2016, has us starting in the huddle and it’s an exciting, creative, exploratory time period in the harvest lab.
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More