From Moscow to Detroit to... Alton, Illinois? End-of-Summer Updates

It has been a particularly hot and muggy summer in central Texas. Luckily, when you work in post production, you spend a lot of your time indoors. While working for Flow Nonfiction, an Austin-based production company that specializes in documentary storytelling, I shared a space with three other editors. The only down side was whenever we had to take a phone call, we stepped outside. The shade from a cedar tree can keep you cool only so long.

Small Business Revolution - Main Street

Flow Nonfiction produces the reality series Small Business Revolution - Main Street, which streams on Hulu. I worked with Flow last summer on a series of videos for the Minneapolis Museum of Art. That was my first time working with director Matt Naylor and it was a great experience, so I was excited for the opportunity to join the Flow team for the third season of SBR, working (for the first time) as a Story Producer.

Small Business Revolution - Main Street was created by host Amanda Brinkman and is sponsored by Deluxe. Before each season, small towns across America compete for a revitalization grant and to be selected as the feature town on the show. Once the winning town is determined, six businesses are featured on the show as they receive a small business make over by Amanda and her marketing team at Deluxe. The town featured this season will be Alton, Illinois.

Myself and Senior Story Producer Daniel Tarr reviewed dailies and make selects for the editors. We identified the story beats we wanted to focus on and worked as sounding boards for the editors while they assembled and shaped the cuts. We also reviewed cuts and provided feedback at each stage of an episode's development.

It was a collaborative process start to finish. And while every episode has specific conceptual beats in common, the show is shot in a documentary style that invites the unexpected. This season, SBR explores some topical and challenging themes that might take fans by surprise. I'm looking forward to seeing people's reactions once it premieres in October.

Being a Story Producer combined several different roles into one: post-producer, writer, editor, even a dash of directing here and there. It's a position I could see myself taking on again in the future. It was a nice change of pace from strictly editing. On SBR, I was able to look at the story from a bit further out, which awarded me new challenges and new opportunities for growth as a filmmaker. Most important, I was lucky enough to work with one of the best crews in Austin.

Season three of Small Business Revolution Main Street launches this October on Hulu. I'll be sharing links and promo material on Twitter as we get closer to the premiere.

The Russian Five

The Russian Five continued its festival run this summer, including the Seattle International Film Festival (where it was a finalist for Best Documentary) and the Traverse City Film Festival, where it received the Audience Award for Best Documentary. We set out to make a crowd pleaser of a film, so an audience award is a testament to that vision, as well as to director Josh Riehl's tremendous and pain-staking work bringing this story to the screen. I'm really pleased it's getting seen and receiving some recognition!

The Russian Five has a few more festival dates this fall, including the upcoming Montreal Film Festival. Keep up with Russian Five news here.

Poster by Yen Tan