360 Profile: When They See Us

Welcome to Produced by. In this episode, director Ava Duvernay and producer Cindy Holland, Jane Rosenthal, Jonathan King, and Barry Welch discussed the creation of Ava Duvernay's mini-series, When They See Us. This panel, produced by PBLA Conference, was recorded in front of a live audience in 2019. Please enjoy insights on creating a modern social impact series and shooting in New York, moderated by Franklin Leonard.

Before we get started with the question, I'd like to first introduce the panelists here today. So starting from the far left is Jonathan King. Jonathan oversees all aspects of Tribeca Enterprises. Just a minute.

Just a minute. Obviously all aspects of participating film and television projects. Recent Slate also includes Roma and Work on Green Book as well. Next, we have Jane Rosenthal, who is co-founder and CEO of Tribeca Enterprises, the global media company that encompasses the Tribeca Film Festival, along with Robert De Niro, she established the Tribeca Productions and the film, Tribeca Film Center in 1889.

Next is Mr. Barry Welsh, one of the producers on the project. He's a senior VP of, sorry, CEO Vice President at the production of Robert De Niro's and Jane Rosenthal's Tribeca Productions. His projects also include Irishman as well as Quincy, the document on Quincy Jones, the biorexity Jones, and Alex.

And then we have Cindy Holland. She is the Vice President of Original Content and Netflix. Been in Netflix for 16 years and responsible for acquiring and launching original series for Netflix is over 130 million global members. And then of course, finally, Avrita Renee, the writer, director, producer, and director.

Sorry, director twice. A little nervous to be sitting next to you with this amazing creator here. You should check it off a little bit. Obviously, she has created this phenomenal project.

You should also know if you didn't, that this is part of a series of projects that I deal with criminal justice, one of them being the amazing documentary on the criminal justice system. And so I can stop nervously rambling. I think we'll now get into the questions. This is such a phenomenal series and heartbreaking and painful, but also beautifully rendered, absolutely one of the best of the year.

And so I'd like to just first start the panel by discussing exactly how this came to be. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Good morning.

Good to see you out there. So this started at a cocktail party while back up. It started on Twitter. I received a tweet from Raymond Santana, who's one of the Central Park Live.

He asked me what I was going to make after Selma. What it could be CP5. Hashtag fingers crossed. This is in 2015, so we started this project four years ago.

I slid into his DMs. And I said, does no one have your story? And he said, no one has it. Said, I'll be in New York in a couple of months.

Maybe we get together. I thought it would be fascinating to say I'm at one of the Central Park Live. I really didn't think that I'd be here four years later. When I sat in front of him and listened to his story and looked into his eyes, and he introduced me to each of the other men over a series of days, I left that meeting saying I had to tell their story.

So cut to a cocktail party a couple months later when I'm there with my friend, Jonathan King. And I said, Jonathan, I really want the rights to these men's story. I want to tell their story. And so I tell him a little about the story.

He knows about the Central Park Live. And he says, let's do it. So over drinks, he says, let's do it. It's our second project working together.

So we went out. We secured the rights of the men. And we all worked together to start telling the story. From there, we thought, who are the best producers who could create something with us in New York City?

And then there was one answer that was Tribeca. So we approached Jane and Barry, who I'd worked with before in a pilot. And so that became the family. But none of that would have been possible if someone didn't say, we believe in you and will pay for it.

And that was Netflix. That was Cindy Holland. I think bought it in the room. I think.

That's the story I'm telling. The story I'm telling is you thought, you said, Ava, this is brilliant and vocal. I'm going to buy it right now. Is that what happened?

Yes. That's how we started. So that's how we all came together. I don't know why you'd say no to Ava.

But just to dig into that a little bit more, Ken, for the producers and for Cindy, could you talk about exactly why you were so quick to jump on this project? And if there were any sort of perhaps reservations or concerns you had about bringing this to life, and how do you address them to move forward? Well, from a Netflix point of view, and from me personally, I just thought, we'd had such a great experience working with Ava on 13th. She worked closely with Lisa and Lisa and the Docs team.

And she always approaches everything with truth, integrity, and empathy. And I just thought there'd be nobody better to tell this story. And it was very clear in the conversation that we all think we know this story from Headline's 30 years ago, or what you heard in the news. And the truth is something much different, and it needed to be told.

So that's what motivated us. Thank goodness. And I think the cocktail party I was referencing was so it came out of time when we were finishing a movie that I've been also working on for a while called Spotlight that was at the time sort of felt like almost once in a career story, like a story that's so important, affects so many people challenges. All our ideas about who we are and who we should be as a society.

And then when Ava said, she had been approached by Ray, and could we do this one? I thought, I can't believe it. Like a story that I think is equally as important and so relevant today. And like we said, hey, don't say no to Ava.

Like I was like. And it was an opportunity to pursue something that is not just a great story and not just making a great show. But to make something that is, you feel like you're on a mission, really, to tell the story for these guys that have not been told. It was also important when Ava and Jonathan had come to us to hear the story about the man who had always heard it from the media's point of view, from the media's point of view, from the prosecution's point of view.

But what happened to the families? What happened to those individual boys as they became men? And what happens when you grow up in a system? And it's always something we've been passionate about at Tribeca, even with a lot of our not-for-profit work that we do within the prison systems in New York.

So it was a real opportunity that we're grateful we had the privilege to work on. I think just adding to that, the other thing that really stood out when Ava talked about her vision for this, is that so often stories like this get lumped into a category of true crime. And it's just about a case. And this was not never intended to be about that.

It's about bringing somebody into an experience and what these people went through. I think that really, from the moment we first started talking about it, stuck with us. And that's what I think the series kind of takes you on the journey of. But the kid's start is a movie.

I was actually on that question. I was going to say, as you were sort of already at the point where you decided, OK, we're definitely looking forward, what influenced the decisions to say, well, this isn't a film, it's so many series. And then for those of you who have seen it, you know that each of the four episodes are broken up and in a way have their own many themes. And they all addressed different factors as you were discussing media, impact on their lives.

So just like there, you talk about how you decided to structure it and how you approach that. Yeah, I mean, the first thought was that it would be a feature film. But once I got into the start to research, the story was just so outsized. So huge.

That I felt really lucky to be a filmmaker in this time with the ability to tell a story in a long-dated format that can reach this many people. I sound like an Netflix fan, but it's a new era of filmmaking. I don't consider it a series, and there's nothing wrong with being a series. This was made as a film.

I mean, the final episodes an hour and a half, that's the same with the Selma. These were films. These were four films. And to be able to go to a partner and say, I want to make four films about the subject.

And I want them to progress through the case, but to also examine more than the human drama that we'll be uncovering. But also each film will unpack a different part of the criminal justice system. And this is my idea, Cindy. This was a meeting.

The first episode will be about this portion of the case, but it's also showing everyone how it feels to be arrested as a young black boy, how it feels to be in a precinct behavior, the kinds of behavior that we're hearing or happening in precincts around the country as it relates to black and brown people, and the way that folks are treated. In the second episode, we're going to talk about bail, the fact that we have a debtor's prison in this country, the fact that there are people in prison who are poor and innocent and people who are not in prison who are rich and guilty. We'll talk about judges and juries and district attorneys and prosecutors. In the third episode, we'll talk about juvenile detention, how we're locking up children in this country and putting them with adults and walking away and turning away.

We'll talk about post-incarcerated, how we treat formerly incarcerated citizens in this country. You've done a crime or not. You've done your time. You get out.

You still can't vote. Can't get a job. Can't get a student loan. Can't move.

Can't live as a full citizen in this country. And then we'll talk about the horrors of incarceration. And folks won't even know we're talking about all this because they're watching this very famous case. And they're also hearing about the mothers and the heartache and the memories and all those things.

So the design was to be able to have these films working on two levels. It was a big idea. And it was really only one place muscular enough to support it. And even five, six years ago, it didn't exist as it does now to be able to support it.

And so to think that I want to make these films and that there's a place to do them, I mean that there's a way to do them is extraordinary. I'm just so grateful because it was the right place at the right time. And it was the right story to tell right now. Thanks so much.

There was also a continuation of the conversation that came out of 13th. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it was a great consideration of those issues using that case to bring them to life. Yeah, absolutely.

And something like 13th was a documentary about mass incarceration criminalization. I really, really thought, no, truly. Please, really believe me. Because there's no precedent for it.

It's to have anything but this. I thought it would be on the back pages and Netflix. When you're really late and you're just scrolling. And you're just like, there's a thousand choices.

But I don't know. Or the teacher who wants to show it in class, I really thought it would be a good resource to be on the service. But I didn't think it would become what it was. The idea that that kind of film is distributed to 190 countries.

In fact, this story is 190 countries. I was getting tweeted this morning from the Netherlands, talking about this story that it can reach that far. That's unprecedented. We're in new times.

So the filmmakers were exciting. Many folks may not know. There was a name change initially. This was a Goanings, what I believe you were going to call the Central Park Library.

That was entitled? Yeah, I think that was. We never really. Yeah, it was more of a working title.

OK. A shorthand. Yes. But I think we had some conversations about what should it be called.

And obviously, there's a name recognition that the Central Park by, but Eva correctly pointed out that that doesn't do justice to the men's stories and that she wanted to reclaim a name for them. Yeah, this is the point where you talk to the head of the network. That's networks, old word. That looks something different.

But you talk to Cindy and I say, you know, CP5, Central Park 5, it's time let's talk about the name. And most places would say Central Park 5. Everyone knows this. The name and market recognition of that.

We need to go with that. We need to do something around it. But they were so nimble. All the producers were so supportive of this idea.

Let's find something that encapsulates the fact that this is not just true crime. Like Barry said, this is a family drama as well. And this is also kind of a larger statement in proclamation. It's a societal proclamation.

And so it was all hands on deck, brainstorm. We came up with some doozy names. You better be glad. We didn't unleash some justice for all.

Truth will be served. We went through it. But we came into something that just felt very intimate and felt at the core of what we wanted to do with this is to really see these men and reclaim their humanity. They're not the Central Park 5.

They're not a faceless group of thugs. They're Corey, Antron, Raymond, Youssef, and Kevin. And they had memories. And they have families.

And they have beating hearts. And they have communities. And we wanted to recognize that. I can't remember who it was at Netflix.

It came up with this title. But I remember first hearing it. And what I really immediately responded to is it's an invitation to anybody to say, when I get seen, what am I being seen, and sort of challenge yourself to say, how is that different from how other people are seen? So it invites you to sort of challenge your idea of what are people seeing when they see you and what are you seeing when you see other people?

I'd love to hear about the research and pre-production process. Obviously a lot of people know, well, they think they know a lot about this. As it happens, the Sarah Burns documentary, when I went to journalism school, my professor, we learned this case in class. I'm one of my professors in the Sarah Burns documentary, as well as my pastor, Calvin Butts.

So even either watching this was astounding by how much I didn't know. So I would just like to hear you speak a little bit about, the research process and pre-production. Yeah, a four-year process. The writers who wrote with me on this project, Robin Zweichert, Attica Lock, and Michael Starberry.

We had a writer's room. And we dug deep into the transcripts, the police records, the prison records. Some of that stuff we were able to get legally. Don't listen, Cindy Holland.

Some things, god, illegally. No, but not illegally. People would slip us things. People wanted us to know things.

This case touched a lot of people over a long amount of time. So there were documents that were made available to us that we might not have necessarily what we're supposed to have. There was things that came anonymously in envelopes. This slipped to us.

They're throughout the process. Talk to a lot of people, certainly the men. And not just conversations with the men, building relationships with them. I think that when you're doing this kind of work and you're taking someone's life, you need to get to know them.

You can only do the kinds of scenes that we were able to portray here. If I know their little idiosyncrasies and what they believe and what they're afraid of. And so over that four year period, these men really became like brothers to me. I really loved them dearly.

And I know them pretty well. And then talking to their families. So it was about 89 interviews in all with different people, certainly building relationships with the men. And then all of the documents.

Attica Locke in particular, who co-wrote with me, episode two, which is the one that deals with all the court cases and documents. There was a point where I was just like, I'm not a lawyer, so I'm like, yo, what did that paragraph mean? The legal ease is made for a reason. It's really hard to penetrate for everyday people.

But Attica's father was a lawyer. Her husband was a lawyer. She would take documents home. And we would kind of decipher them.

So she was incredible. And then Robin Swicord was an incredible screenwriter. It really helped me kind of fill out and think about the whole piece. Very kind of a strategist with me of the piece.

And then Michael Starberry, he has these great pops of imagination. I told him in episode four, I really want to, we need to get inside of Corey's mind if you see in episode four, the finale. We need, he lived a life of the mind. That's how he survived in prison for 14 years.

He went in at 16 to Rikers Island as a kid. And he was immediately in adult prison. And he only survived the horrible torture and assaults that happened to him by being able to retreat into his mind. So that episode needed to be much different than, let's say, episode two, which was all a legal procedural.

So to have the writers helping me with that research and moving it around, I'm certainly the producers and their muscles being able to help us get information was really a team effort. By the same token, how'd you sort of go through the process of deciding what to leave and what may not be so pertinent, what to focus on and to decide? Yes, part of the writing process. Just getting in there with the writers.

And we're pricing it out. There's some things that were written that weren't shot. There's some things that were shot that aren't in the film. There's some things that I wish I wrote in shot.

So it's all a process of producing a piece. Wonderful. OK, Cassie. So many great performances in this.

Wow. So well, Jerome's fantastic. Nissi, Nash, was incredible. Yeah, I want to say one question for later.

But for now, more performances. I'd like to just talk about selecting folks and how that process works. Anyone? Talk a little bit about it.

We cast it right back to office. Why don't you take that, Dain? We're Barry. Just I think in terms of the earliest part of the casting process was doing a global search really for the five-month voice.

And that was something that Aishikoli, who was our casting director, really kind of spearheaded. And we had a New York office that we opened in the Tribeca Film Center space. And I think one thing in particular that I would say about the five boys from the process of the big search and you kind of selecting and selecting and zoning and on who you liked is the five. And it was kind of like putting a puzzle together that you were kind of fitting them all.

But from that point, and seeing your tapes, and when you'd share stuff like that with us to look at in the process and then actually getting to the first table read and seeing those five boys sitting around the table, you don't really realize what a 14 or 15-year-old looks like. And so you're sitting around that table, and it was just kind of shocking. And that was one of those distinct things that I remember part of the casting process that they really snuck out for sitting on that day. Also, I think Jarrell, who's I think his performance throughout, but in four is so.

Yes, Jarrell, Jerome, please, Corey Wise. Corey, finding the challenge of finding an actor who could go 16 to 30 and deliver all that as an actor, but in his transformation, he went through as well. That was a big challenge of finding that. Because not every young actor can do that.

And it was really hard. Well, it wasn't until you found him that you made the decision that he could play both younger and older. And that was a day I felt like you were ringing the bell. Oh my god, he can play both.

And that's a huge challenge for an actor, but really you can see the depth of his extraordinary talent and really how Abel worked with him and taking time off in between to go from the 16-year-old kid to the more bulk-doubt guy who's been in prison for so long. Yeah, for me it was just the scale of the cast. And the logistics of putting that together, this was 179 people in this cast, 117 of them had speaking parts. And my film, Before We Go On Time, had six people in it.

So this was big. It was the biggest film that I've ever done. Even Selma, only on 42 speaking parts. So this was a huge, huge film in terms of those logistics.

And I really say that this film, I could only make it because every film I made before prepared me for it. And that's just one thing I'll share with you right now. If you're making smaller films, it's for a reason. I mean, these are stepping stones.

I would love to make small films forever. I love them. But everything you learn from one film you take to the next film. And I can see very clearly my early film that I worked on Jonathan the way I met Jonathan, a film I made.

And I took to Sundance called Middle of Nowhere. It was about a woman. Two people saw it. There's one.

You were the one. I knew there were two. And it was my mom and you. But it was about a woman.

You only stayed with the woman. And she was the wife of a man who had been incarcerated. So you would only go into the prison as far as she could go. And then you'd come back into her life as she was dealing with having a husband who had been in her life but wasn't present in her life.

So that film prepared me for all the family dynamics that are in when they see us. 13th gave me the breadth of education about the system overall. So it was the way that I was able to figure out how to piece together the four parts. Wrinkle In Time gave me experience with scale.

I could have never directed a hundred and seven nine people. If I hadn't been used to a film of a larger scale, even though it was a small cast, it was a huge, huge production. And so each and everything that I've done and everything that you're doing is a stepping stone. You take it with you into the next piece.

And so I can see so clearly how this piece could only exist in the way it does because of the very specific experience I had leading up to it. And that revelation to me is just something I want to share with you because I wish in the harder times someone had said to me, this is going to mean something to you later. I was sitting with a couple of more veteran producers the other day. He said, this is a step to the next thing.

And we just have to all keep reminding each other. That's an ongoing learning process. But for me, the cast really is the key to me realizing that. It was the scale of them that showed me how much I'd learned.

And hopefully you'll keep learning. Bob De Niro always likes to say that casting is 80% of it. And if you get the cast right, the rest can fall into place. He looks at that from an actor's point of view, of course.

But it does make it when you have such amazing talent and you spend the time to cast right, it does make the job a little bit tiny bit easier. How were those casting choices? If it was the fact that they're playing real people that complicate things or make it any more challenging? Yeah, many more challenges you want to get lightness right.

But other than that, the process for the actor, they're able to, our cast was very accepting and wanting to be in touch with the real-life counterpart. So it was a plus, I'd say. So you're talking about scale and just made me wonder whether, ever times, you know, you were overwhelmed by this project or by the same token, what sort of got you out of bed on the days where this was like you were in the thick of it, was it maybe you wanted to get the story right or just anger or compassion, like what drove you to keep pushing when it might have been a little bit challenging to push through the. Just the man, I promised him my teller story.

So every morning I woke up saying I'm going to tell the story. I made a promise and I intended to keep it. And they all did. And so it was an honor.

It was a thrill to be able to right or wrong. Or wrong was done here. You know, we're at Fancy Panels and we're at Where in Pretty Dresses. One of us is wearing a pretty dress.

And I have to give it back tomorrow. But it's good. And but this is a tragedy. You know, this should not have happened.

You know, these boys were innocent. Everything said they were innocent. No DNA. No, nothing physical on them was on her and nothing from her was on them.

You can't have a bloody rape where someone is near death and nothing is transferred. No weapon. No weapon. No witnesses.

No, no, no, no, no primary confessions that were even accurate. The only thing that hung these boys were confessions that were massaged and polished and coerced. And that's what you see on the tapes. But those boys had been in that precinct for 36 hours before those tapes were ever made.

Some of them without their parents. Without legal representation. And to think that this happened then and to know that it's still happening, right, is what got me up every morning and you get up and you say we're going to tell the story. And that's just it.

We're going to offer it to people. We're going to hope that they can see and be moved and decide how do I see these people? How do I see black and brown people? How do I see young black men?

What are my biases? And what am I going to do to change it within myself and in the culture at large? And that's our goal with this. That's our hope with this.

What we care about. And that's the reason why we're here to remind you to hopefully watch it and then consider your place within it. Mm. Mm.

The work is so beautifully rendered and it has a very distinct tone and look. And I was just wondering how you developed that. It was a collaboration with all the artists from cinematography to production design, from costume to casting. I believe that actor is the most important thing in the frame because the terrain of their face is really what matters.

So you can put an actor that's not doing their job in the most beautiful set in the most fantastic clothes and be like, well, well, didn't hit it. And we know from independent films that cost nothing, that you can take extraordinary actors and put them in a room with nothing, rather than standing outside and the whole thing comes to life. So the collaboration of all the departments, and that's one of them that I love about making movies. I'm the oldest of five kids.

So I'm not used to being by myself. And film is a family. As you all know, it's a collaborative art. And everyone puts their hands on it.

The job of the director and the producer is to keep the terrain running while everyone's putting their hands on it so that it doesn't get off the track. But that's the fun part. The thing I love is being able to show what we do in a day. And I always like to have the person that sits outside of it who can look at it.

If you have a good studio and a good network to be able to look at it and say, yeah, that's looking good. Or sometimes day five, you're like, no, I think you all think that's brilliant. But maybe you just look at this a little bit. And so I really love my executives at Netflix.

I don't say that about every place that I've worked. But they were really with us in a trench is Allison and Nina. They're out here. I think they're in the audience.

I think that sometimes as producers, we forget, if you have good executives, they are producing with you. So shout out to Allison and Nina. Thank you for being with us. Keeping our train on the track.

What was it like on set? And this is obviously difficult material. How did you all handle the emotional portion of film and this and dealing with the tough things that you've spoken about as you went through this process? Well, just we wanted to make sure that our cast was taken care of just as you want to make sure you have a medic on set all the time to take care of anybody's physical aches and pains.

We wanted to make sure that there was we were taking care of their mental health. And we worked with the Actors Fund to make sure that there was a 800 number available to our cast any time of the day or night. And clearly, Eva, too, had to shoulder the most with that and dealing with the intimacies of these scenes and the difficulties with what we're putting our young actors through. So we did work closely with the Actors Fund and the Child Mind Institute and made that available for our cast on a 24-hour basis, anonymously.

I know it's also the crew because it's the actors are portraying the people. But our sets were starting from the top were very inclusive, supportive environment. But then you step off set and you're back in New York. And New York today is different than New York 30 years ago, but it's still facing a lot of the same stuff.

So when you're going through it, just as anyone, seeing the emotions and the feelings that this living through every day on set would bring up our intent. And we just were mindful, I think, from the beginning that we had to manage it and take care of people. And I think everybody from the department heads to the PA is going back to the question I was asked earlier in terms of the commitment that everybody made to this project. That was what everybody thought, getting up every day to go work on this, is that we're telling a story that we know we want to be telling and we have to tell.

I think everybody came to work with that kind of an attitude and commitment all the way through it. And we had a lot of stuff that was thrown at us from day one, it was like record heat in New York. It was like 100. And we had, we were in Harlem and building that we had one of our hero locations, the Cornist Stone came falling off right before we were about to go.

So we just took a lot of obstacles that you just were navigating on the street that this kind of was a pattern that kept popping up and everybody kind of rolled with it and made the best of every situation. You reminded me of that day. It was the morning. Trucks are loaded.

We're heading to the location. You have to remind me of this day. Like my body just got heading to the location. We're at the location.

Actors in the trailers, getting ready. And this was a big scene. It was all the boys. All the boys were there.

It was when they're going to run into the park. And it was just a huge, huge day. And I get a call because I don't wear anything in my ears because then I just be, I have somebody stand next to me that wears it. And there's a problem.

Something that's a problem with the location. So I'm running over and seeing what the problem is. We were going to shoot the chicken place where Dorelle Jerome and Storm Reed go in to get lunch before he's called into the park. It's a big scene.

It comes back in two episodes. A piece of the facade has fallen down on someone, narrowly missed someone who was walking. Thank God I didn't hurt any crew member or any pedestrian. The city is there.

They've shut down the location. They're trying to sit down location. Wait, can we shoot first? And then you'll be really careful.

We promise. Let's just get this shot. Literally. What?

The crane is there. You know, to move a crane, the crane is there. The kids are there. Everything's there.

And that day is just that's the day you need great producers because we're rearranging scenes, great AD, H Cooper. Rearranging scenes trying to get this thing done. And that's, you know what? It's New York City.

It's shooting in New York. I mean, it was every other day or so some unexpected thing. I remember coming from Compton. I'm from here.

It's a beautiful place, LA, if you don't know. Compton in particular. But literally, it's a place that just is like, OK, good morning. I'm going to punch you in the face and see if you can get up and keep going.

And if you can, good for you. And if not, then you shouldn't be here. And literally, it was like that. It was a tough place.

You've been shooting there for years. And yeah, so we're here. We made it. We got up.

Actually, part of that first day is that it was record heat. And we had no shade. We had no shade. And we didn't even have enough ice water.

And it was a really good way to get water in shape for people to be unexpected heat wave. Anyway, those are our war stories. No problem. But it was also to shoot 1989 New York City does not exist in New York City.

It was the central park that we were shooting in. In 1989, that side of the park had a lot of garbage. It looked fairly down-tried. And now you go in and it looks like Hans Christian in the Anderson Garden.

So when you talk about the difficulties, anywhere we point the camera, everything had changed. So that was also a challenge to us, to be able to shoot in the actual locations, even though they had changed. I remember we, I'm looking at these pictures of the park, 1989 New York City, Central Park, syringes, trash. I mean, it was a tough place.

So I walk into the park with the park guy, and I'm like, great. So I'm going to take down because these lights are new now. So we're going to take these down. We're going to put up this.

I'm talking about the progression designer. It's like we need the trash here. Make sure the syringes get the new thing. The park guy's like, no, whoa, whoa, whoa.

No, no, no, no. We're not going backwards. I'm like, nest up this grass. Make this stick back.

And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Literally, they did not want us to touch the park. They're parked. They worked hard to fix the park.

They're like, lady, you're not going to mess up. Like, take down those bushes. Make this thing. He's looking at me like, literally, they weren't going to let us shoot there.

And I said, you got to call in the pickdogs. Call Jane Rosenthaw. She owns New York City. Call her in.

Call her in. That is literally, I said, get Jane Rosenthaw. I was one of those things. I was like, you know I know Jane Rosenthaw.

Let's have another meeting. So then Jane did her thing. And all of a sudden, she's like, you can shoot in this small area. You can mess this up, and we'll fix it tomorrow.

So yeah, it was everywhere you shoot, because New York, it's 30 years ago. And it feels like it hasn't changed that much when you're there. But truly, when you look at it, it's beyond signs. You know what I mean?

That city has come from kind of. No phone booths. I mean, start to think about what's changed in our world. Even trying to shoot 2004, you can't do it.

Everything has changed. There's no phone booths. The signs have changed. Building fronts have changed.

Just the way we interact. Everyone's, again, walking with their cell phones. There's no place you could shoot down Fifth Avenue that looked the same as it did. So one last story before we got the next one.

So these, one of the boys are there. I said, OK, so you're going to go over there. You're going to make the call. And then you're going to come out.

And then you'll run from here. This is one of the background actors. And he said, make the call. And I said, yeah, just go over there.

And I called. And he said, he's looking over. And we're looking at the same thing. I'm looking at a phone booth.

I'm like, kid, you're going to go over. You're going to pick it up. And you're going to just go over there. It's OK.

And he said, I just can you just tell me one more time? And I said, honey, you walk over. Here, let's go together. So I walk over.

And he literally picked up the phone like an artifact. Like a 15 years old. Had never seen a phone booth. Had never even seen a phone with like a cord.

He said, what do I do? I said, you'll dial it like this. And he said, what's that? OK, you put the coin in.

You're going to get a dot, didn't know how to make a phone call on the phone. I mean, this is how far it was going back 30 years. It showed me how far we come. Anyway, that has nothing to do with movie or producer.

It strips me out. It freaks me out. We are going to open up to Q&A. But I want to ask one final question around episode four, which is truly like the most phenomenal things I've ever seen.

It's incredible. I just would like to talk about episode four in particular, shooting that. And then not to spoil anything for everybody, but there's a particular story about Corey Wise's trans sister, who was unheard of in any other thing I've ever read about this case. And I thought that was an amazing decision to include.

I want to apply to you on that. And also ask why you chose to include it. Yeah, so in the final episode, without giving away too much, you'll see Corey Wise's sibling named Norman. And they are presented in the first scene as his brother Norman.

And as the series goes on, you learn that that sibling is trans. And they affect that, the love of that sibling had on this boy. And the family dynamic between Dolores Wise plays beautifully by Nissi Nash, Jarell Jerome, and the actress who plays Norman slash Marcy, Isis King. Really just speaks to the idea that we were not content to just regurgitate the headline.

We sat with these men. We loved these men. We listened to these men. We came close to these men to do what is never done in the American press, very rarely.

Which is the other side of the story. The story that's not the clickbait, the story that's not the sensational part, the story that's not the part that's given to you by police and prosecutors. Right now in Cleveland, the Cleveland Police Department is trying to reinstate the police officer who shot Tamir Rice, a boy who had nothing in his hand who was shot on site because he looked like a threat. Without having a gun, without taking the time to assess the situation, they rolled up and they shot this kid when he had a toy in his hand.

That officer is now in the process of being actively reinstated by the Cleveland Police Department. When they see us, they see criminal. But until you can tell it's on the other side of that, that when they see us and they is their mother, their sister, their father, their community member, their pastor, we see people who we love. And so it's important to tell that story, to tell the people who love these boys, that they're not wilding, that they're not a wolf pack, that they're not bugs, that they're not whatever people call our boys, that they are ours and we will protect them, and this story was built to do that.

Yeah. All right, so let's take some questions. I think we raise your answers. Hi.

Thank you guys for being here. I'm Alex. I'm a producing student at Fort State, and my question is for Jonathan. And all the people inside.

That's the relevance. That's the relevance. So when Ava came to the cocktail party and said this, obviously going through your head as the rights, the real thing, what was the hardest part, if there was one? We've seen the PR in the backlash and what's happened from the other side of people coming at you guys.

How was this person being portrayed? How was this working? What was the hardest part producing wise that you guys had to overcome from any of that? Because obviously the boys came to you guys.

But the other side, what was that like? I would say that the hardest, then the initial thought, the hardest thing is how are we going to get everything, all of Ava's ambition, into two hours? Because we're originally talking about a movie. And we talked a little bit about this earlier, which is so great about the time we're living in, is just being able to say, because it was really challenging.

There's a very reductionist, plotty, two-hour approach to telling this story, which was, Ava's ambition for it was much bigger than that. So that was hard. We're struggling with that. How do you do it?

And then being able to say, OK, because that was another phone, that was then a phone call. You called me from New Zealand. Oh, yeah. I know we were talking about two hours, but I think it's five hours.

Can we do that? And I was like, yeah, let's do that. That's kind of a producer you want us to do. It's all you producers out there.

Really, just following the vision and hope to make it happen. And then so there are things that we've all worked on stories and based on true stories. And when you're working, especially with making a story about litigious or combative institutions, corporations, organizations, or people, you have to be very buttoned down on that. That's why the research process was so important on this and the writing process.

So once we made the decision to go longer with it, it freed us up from that huge challenge, but then all the other challenges of telling a true story. Hello. This question is for Ava. First off, you're very inspiring to me.

I'm a DP, and I want to know every time you and Bremford work together, is just so inspiring on the images and the blacking. So can you talk about, in the pre-production phases, some of your inspiration on going for the images is like, are you watching movies, other films, or are you looking at books, or is it photography or art? Can you just talk about that in the pre-production phase? Sure, all of that.

All of that. You're looking at films that deal with New York and trying to see what you like and what you want to do differently. I'm looking at certainly images of photographers that we both love, and it might want to emulate or build upon that work. We're also looking at it.

I looked at a lot of interrogations in prison, and really tried to figure out a way to shoot those dynamically in ways that I hadn't seen before. We had a lot of that. A lot of people in rooms talking. How do you do the courtroom and make that move?

So that's just not kind of a back and forth thing. There were a lot of ideas about how to give that energy in the prison when they're in cells. How many prison movies have we seen? At some point, someone said to me, hey, it's a cell.

What's it going to do? I was like, come through the floor underneath it. It's like right through. And then finally, you kind of settle down and you think, OK, how do you innovate within the space?

And not even innovate, but keep it interesting. When you have an hour in a cell, episode four is pretty much core-wise in prison. And so what are the things that we can do to move that around? And so to do that, you have to analyze what's been done.

You have to know your history. And you have to know what's worked and what hasn't worked. And know that nothing that you're doing hasn't been done before. Everything's been done before.

That's why I think it's so important whether it's something whether it's 13th, whether it's this. We have to know our history. That's from a social justice place. You don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Know your history. Know what's been done. Know how to shoot in New York. Know who's shot in cells before.

Know how to deal with the cast of 10 kids. What has worked and what hasn't. So I'd say the research of preparation for the image is just as important as research for preparation of writing the script, especially with something like this that was so muscular in terms of our approach to the photography. I hope this is not an uncomfortable question.

But I am curious, because clearly all of the work that you've done to date is amazing. Social justice, felicity, often being in the film. When you started filming, did that not happen? When things did happen out in public, was that at all an issue for anybody?

No, we'd already shot by the time our case broke. And our focus was on the case we were focused on, which is these five ways. That's the story we want to talk about. Happy Pride.

Happy Pride. Happy Pride Sunday, Super Soul Sunday. Yes. Yes.

I'm a proud New Yorker. And my name is Ebeneet and I'm a composer and a producer. And I just want to tell you, besides everyone talks about the cast, but I want to talk about the unsung heroes besides the five gentlemen, is your post-production people. The way it was shot, the way it was colored, the way you guys rolled it out with Netflix, it was just wonderful.

And I just scored a project for Jill Soloway, directed by Chelsea Woods. And I loved how you talked about stepping stones. And I would love to know your process with score and music, because the opening scene of the first episode with the wilding and the old school music, it was fantastic. And I just loved how it dropped into these ambiguous, like, underscored urban tones.

So I wanted to know your process as a director when you work with a composer. And there's few women of color that compose. And I wanted to. Yeah.

If I could quickly answer that too. I'd love the music choice as well. And I did wonder if those artists had knew that you were going to listen to that music as well, just to back it up. Thank you for the question.

Congratulations on all that you're doing. You're a unicorn, not many of you. So happy to know you. Thank you for the question, because I get to talk about post-crew.

Nobody wants to talk about post-crew. But come on. We love post. We love post.

The editors, Spencer, Adric Teri, Shropshire, Michelle, Tasoro, and all of their assistants. One of the things that I like to do when I'm shooting is to be in constant communication with the editors. I ask my editor to tell me what they're seeing, to tell me what they're seeing as they're seeing daily. A lot of times the material is being ingested, and we'll connect with the editors afterward.

But this constant communication really helps. It's not so much. You didn't get this angle. You didn't get this piece.

All the producers and everyone around to make sure that continuity is there. It's more the emotional pieces. And so Teri, Shropshire, and Michelle, Tasoro, were incredible with that. And Spencer, Adric, who's been my longtime editor.

We've added everything I've ever made. Anything that I've made from the Jay-Z and Beyonce video to a Prada ad to Selma to Wrinkle in Time has been my guy. Spencer, Adric. He's the only man that I love being in a dark room with.

And I tell him until I can find another one, I'm staying single. So I love to sit in rooms with him forever, and we cut our material. And then it goes into color, my long time. Colorist Mitch Paulson at E-Film.

I love him, because he knows just how I like the skin. I work with brown skin tones and skin tones of people color. And so my whole thing is Mitch, brown it up. Brown it up.

Need more brown. Need it brown. He's like, you want it like round two? Like all of our browns, all of our skin tones.

So often there's a bias inherent in the color grade. There's a bias inherent in the cameras that are made. They favor light. They favor white skin.

They favor even in the way that we like to set. We are favoring what we've been taught to in cinematography courses and with colorists. And even in the equipment itself, in the programs, in self there, there's bias. You have to work a little harder to get that brown.

This right. You have to work a little harder to keep Vera for me in the same scene as Michael K. Williams. The camera's going to favor her tones unless you have a master of light like Bradford Young and all of his crew there.

His crew of all people of color, camera crew, three cameras, running at all times. But the Black woman, an Asian woman, a Latino man, always looking at the thing that sometimes the camera doesn't see. In the score, a young brother, composer Chris Bowers, who I really feel is a genius. He scored all four parts, which is over five and a half hours of music in a very short amount of time.

I was making a film, but I was on a TV schedule. This whole series was shot in 67 days. And with one main unit, we had a second unit, a distance four to three days. But the second unit that went out and got a few things.