August 20, 2020

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Charles Frank & Andrew Hutcheson

NFFTY has grown into a wonderful community of over 2,700 filmmakers from around the world. Alumni have experienced success in many areas of the media industry. To celebrate these achievements, we are highlighting NFFTY alumni here!

Charles Frank (NFFTY ‘13, ‘15, ‘16, ‘17) is a director and editor known for his intimate documentaries. His work has reached over 12 million people online, been featured in The Atlantic, Huffington Post, and Short of the Week, and received numerous Vimeo Staff Picks. His debut feature documentary, Somewhere With No Bridges, premiered in July at the Salem Film Festival.

Andrew Hutcheson (NFFTY ‘13, ‘15, ‘16, ‘17) is a producer with over 10 years of experience. Most recently, he was an associate producer on Shithouse, starring Dylan Gelula (2020 SXSW Grand Jury Winner), the EP of Soft (2020 SXSW Official Selection), post-producer of HBO’s Traffic Stop (2018 Oscar nominee - Best Documentary Short), and EP of Dean Goes Surfing (2018 Vimeo Best of the Year). He’s also produced award-winning campaigns for clients like Champion, Spotify, Facebook, Taco Bell and Mercedes-Benz. 

Together, Charles and Andrew founded the production company Voyager, where they have produced dozens of independent and commissioned films with a focus on developing and supporting emerging directors.

OUR INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES AND ANDREW:

The two of you have been working together for years -- how did you meet, and what’s it been like having a partner to weather the storm with you as you navigate your professional careers in the film industry?

Andrew: I met Charles when I was in film school at Emerson in Boston. I was doing my senior thesis project and he responded to an ad I placed online looking for additional crew support for the film, eventually coming onboard to film behind the scenes. I was incredibly impressed by his work ethic and natural ability, and when my project wrapped up I went and produced a short film that he directed. That would have been 2012, I believe. We did our freelance thing for a while, and after having some success making branded work and the occasional short together in Boston, decided to really plant our flag in the ground and open up Voyager down in Brooklyn in 2015. We established a working relationship built upon both supporting and challenging each other quite early on, and that unique mixture of the two is what I think makes it work. Having a partner to bounce ideas off of and strategize with has made a world of difference. So much of the magic of filmmaking is born out of collaboration, and we’re able to play to our own strengths while pushing things forward in a way we just wouldn’t independently. The support element can’t be overstated, either; this can be a brutal industry at times, and just knowing you have someone who’s got your back through thick and thin counts for quite a lot. On a very practical level, aligning your career goals with a creative partner allows you to share the workload and gives you essentially two engines to get there faster than you would alone. 

Charles: Someone recently told me that they struggle to finish projects that they start and asked me how I “get to the finish line.” I couldn’t underscore enough the importance of surrounding yourself with people that can push you, hold you accountable, and support you (and for whom you can do the same). As Andrew said, this industry is brutal and it’s crazy to try and do it alone - which is why I feel so fortunate to have met Andrew. There have been so many projects (our first feature documentary included) where we wouldn’t have been able to get to the finish line without each other. 

Can you both speak a little about your experience starting a production company together? What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in your early days, and what do you consider some of your biggest successes?

Andrew: When we were starting out we had plenty of enthusiasm and drive, and that sustained us for a good while. Eventually we started to come up against more and more unknowns, and the “fake it until you make it” mantra just wasn’t holding water. Instead of trying to present ourselves as experts, we actively leaned into our lack of experience with an eager beginner’s mentality and sought out people who knew more than we did to help us navigate potential pitfalls. We’ve had a business consultant more or less from day one who’s been crucial to our success in transitioning from a creative collective into a real production company, and it’s been immensely helpful to just have a trusted outside perspective to workshop strategy with. We’ve also benefited from some truly amazing sales reps who’ve helped show us the ropes in terms of how to position our work and showcase our strengths as we’ve grown. 

Having the right partner in any venture is just as critical to your success as having a good idea worth pursuing in the first place. Going into business with anyone is hard work, even if you start out on the best of terms. In the beginning, passion and a good work ethic are really all you need, so it can be easy to overlook the foundational work of really delving into your working relationship with your partners. The effort you need to put in, in order to truly learn each other’s communication style, and the time it takes to really flesh out your company culture and values, are perhaps the most crucial yet often overlooked steps in making your ship seaworthy. We’ve often joked that it’s almost as much emotional labor as being in another romantic relationship, but it’s always been worth doing the hard foundational work because we both really believe in what this could be. We’ve faced numerous challenges over the years, such as adapting our business model from a creative collective to a more traditional rostered production company, or having to pivot our goals around evolving priorities and industry market changes, but having put in the work to create a bedrock of trust and support allowed us to do so successfully. We now get to share that culture with the people who join the team, and it’s integral to our mission statement as a company. Voyager exists to support filmmakers, and we mean that very holistically. It’s something bigger than us that we can rely on. 

Charles: For a long time, especially early on, I had this misguided belief that every single project we took on had to be the project that would suddenly catapult us onto the map. I was eager to “breakout” as a director and help position the company for success. Often, I would fail to see the bigger picture and how each project could fit into a meaningful strategy, which is no doubt Andrew’s strength. I think for a long time it was difficult to reconcile these two forces - I was stuck in the trees while Andrew could see the whole forest. Over time, we learned better ways to communicate, agree on shared goals and to use each other’s natural strengths in harmony. Building a company is methodical, slow work. There’s no quick path to “making it.” Real sustainability comes from hearing and understanding one another. Voyager continues to do that work with every person we add to the team and I feel so proud of what we’re building.

Do you have any tips on building working relationships in the industry for filmmakers starting to dive into commercial work?

Andrew: My advice here is a bit twofold: you need to work on your reel, and you need to find ways to get your work in front of the right people. By reel, I mean a portfolio of work that shows what you can do, not a compilation sizzle video (which I don’t think anyone really watches). The adage goes “you get the work you have,” meaning no one’s going to hire you to do something they haven’t seen you do before. It can seem to be a bit of a Catch-22: if you want to be considered for car commercials, you need to have shot a car commercial. When we were getting started, we would regularly trawl the internet for online video contests and would try to make as many of those happen as possible. Whether or not we won, we had something we’d made ‘for a client’ with a logo on the end of it that we could put up on our website to show what we could do. The same goes for spec work: if you have a killer idea for a commercial (and you can do it with favors/not a huge financial investment), go out and make it! Even getting three pieces on your reel that show what you’re capable of in commercial filmmaking will be enough to open doors for you into that side of the industry. 

As for getting your work in front of the right people, it’s definitely an active sport. A lot of times when we were starting out we would look at branded/commercial work that we really admired, research who made it, and try and find who was the producer at the Ad Agency or the marketing team from the client behind it. Then we’d reach out and try to start a conversation. If you’re a freelance director, look at who the EP of the production company was and say hi. It’s a numbers game, but it’s as good of a place as any to start getting your work out there. There are also loads of great new director showcases out there to highlight emerging talent in the commercial world - SHOOT’s New Directors Showcase and the AICP Commercial Director Diversity Program, to name two - which goes a long way to getting you on the radar of the decision makers. 

Charles, so much of your documentary work is so close to you, especially in your newest film Somewhere With No Bridges. What’s it like to work on such a personal project for a wider audience? Do you find yourself needing to maintain emotional boundaries during production, or do you prefer to completely immerse yourself?

Charles: I think I’ve always been drawn to making very personal films because they help me work through whatever I’m struggling with at the moment. With Somewhere With No Bridges, I had been feeling distant from some members of my family and making the film helped me get closer to them in a very direct way. I’ve found that if the filmmaking is very truthful to what I’m feeling, there will be others out there that can relate. Andrew has reassured me of this many times throughout my career and I think he’s right. There are definitely times where it’s practical and even important to establish emotional boundaries, but for this project - and many past projects - I think it’s safe to say that I completely immersed myself.

What has your experience been like adapting to this virtual landscape when premiering your first feature? Any highlights or surprises you’d like to share?

Charles: I’ve spent a lot of my career sharing my short-form work online, so in a way I’ve become pretty familiar with the virtual landscape. I wasn’t exactly sure how it would go with a feature-length film, but I imagined some of the great things about showcasing work online would remain true: the ability to connect with a wider audience, fewer barriers of entry, the comfort of watching at home, etc... That said, there’s no denying my disappointment about missing the chance to share the film with a live audience. It was my first experience at NFFTY - almost a decade ago now - that opened my eyes to the immense power of sharing movies in person. I remember feeling this buzzing energy for a week straight and the profound sense that the work we all put into our movies is worth it. All of that said, our virtual premiere at Salem Film Fest could not have been better. They worked out the technical components so that the at-home viewing experience was similar to pulling up Netflix or Hulu. We ended up winning the audience award, which was a wonderful surprise. It was kind of surreal to imagine all of these people in their homes - without my knowledge - privately connecting to the film. It’s a different kind of “buzzing energy”, but it’s still there. 

Running Voyager, how do you select which directors to work with or films to take on? And Andrew, more specifically as a producer, how do you decide which projects to attach yourself to? What kind of stories are you most interested in or inspired by to bring to fruition?

Andrew: The work really selects the director, so to speak. If it’s in the branded space, when a project comes in I’ll look at what the client is asking for and see whose body of work or interests it best aligns with. It’s always important for me to keep a finger on the pulse of the type of work our directors are trying to do more of or trying to break into. When it comes to what films we support, it all starts with the central idea - if we connect with that, then there’s a whole calculus involved as to what their goals are for the project, the team they want to put together, how it could align with Voyager’s priorities, and what they need to go and make it happen. I’m very wary of over-extending ourselves and saying yes to things we’re excited about but can’t really throw our weight behind. 

As for me personally and what project I come on to produce, I think it has more to do with the director than the specific project, to be honest. A director/producer relationship is ideally something that spans multiple projects and potentially years of your life, so you have to really connect with the person you’d be producing for. What are your values, how do you see the world, what are you curious about, what’s your collaboration style - all of those are just as important to me as the specific script/idea for the film. If those are all green lights, then the deciding question I ask myself before coming on board is “can I personally add unique value here?” I never want to just be a name on something; I need to believe that I can specifically help this film come to life in a way others might not.

Any advice for young filmmakers that are ready to make the leap to feature filmmaking?

Charles: My advice would be to look for a story that’s close to you, both geographically and emotionally. This is practical from an economic standpoint - fewer travel costs - and I think it also can also help with your relationship to the process. I found that the hardest part about making a feature is believing in it long enough for it to survive, especially if you’re trying to juggle other work alongside it. Sometimes the best thing to do is drop it for a while, but what’s equally important is pushing yourself to get out there and stay with it. It’s easier to do that when the story is waiting for you just around the corner. And as I said before, don’t do it alone!

How has NFFTY impacted your lives or careers as filmmakers?

Charles: My first time at NFFTY kind of felt like sailing across the lake toward Hogwarts as a first year… I truly didn’t know there were so many other people my age making films. I was so inspired by their work and felt an immediate sense of belonging, not just at NFFTY during that week, but as a filmmaker for the rest of my life. 

Andrew: I distinctly remember waiting at the airport having left NFFTY for the first time and feeling this wave of melancholy just wash over me. I swear it wasn’t just the gloomy Seattle weather outside. I’d been working as a freelancer in Boston and didn’t really have a day-to-day filmmaking community. While this wasn’t something I was actively seeking out before, after having the experience I did at NFFTY of being surrounded by so many passionate young filmmakers I realized just how important that type of atmosphere was to me. It wasn’t long after I returned that Charles and I caught up and decided to make a go of it together, and the whole thing kind of snowballed from there.

What’s next for you both?

Andrew: Commercials and branded content are our bread and butter, but the next chapter for Voyager is in original features and series. Somewhere With No Bridges is our first foray into that world and we’re actively developing a slate of projects to go into production next year. We’re also growing our roster of directors and looking to diversify the types of talent we offer outside of the documentary and visual storytelling realms we’ve been known for. That also applies to the makeup of our team, too, and we’re working towards having a more equitable representation of our community across our staff, roster, and crews on set.

Charles: I’m currently developing a documentary about a volunteer-based community radio station that’s been in operation since 1968. We’ll take a look at their storied history, as well as a handful of their unique, present day programs and the people behind them. I also want to make a film about the Oregon Zoo during the pandemic :)