Film & TV, The Creative Process: Acting, Directing, Writing, Cinematography, Producers, Composers, Costume Design, Talk Art & Creativity

What is the role of music in cinema and why it is such an important part of the storytelling process? How does music increase our capacity for empathy and wonder?

Fabrizio Mancinelli is an Italian-American composer, songwriter, and conductor, best known for his musical contributions to the world of cinema. As a songwriter, he has created original scores for The Land of Dreams,The Snow Queen 3, The Boat, and the upcoming animated drama Mushka, among others. In 2017, he led the orchestral recording for the Academy Award-winning Green Book, and he recently scored the documentary Food 2050, which premiered at the UN Climate Change Conference in 2022.

"So Mushka, I wrote it that day my grandmother died. And it's a montage of a grandmother passing. And I feel like if our goal is to transmit what we are feeling in that moment, we can do it sometimes in a more subtle way. I don't need to take the head of my audience and say - Look, cry, cry. No, I need to hold the hand of my audience and through the vibration of music...

Everything is a painting and I always talk about colors in music as opposed to colors in vision. And I feel like it's a fitting comparison. But then, of course, the thing is as human beings, we'll always have our influences. Even if we find our artistic voice, we are like a complete sum of everything we've studied, we've appreciated in art, and we've lived.

Everything is a painting there, and when something communicates those colors, I always talk about colors in music as opposed to colors in vision.

We need to talk about storytelling and colors with directors. We don't need to talk about musical instruments with a director who's not a musician because 90% of the time we're going to end up in a direction that's not the one the director really wants. If we talk about emotional storytelling, we're going to find common ground. So the decision comes from the image. The film is calling for something, then I discuss it with the directors."

https://fabriziomancinelli.us
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"We look at books in terms of all of the manifestations that a book can take. It could be an audiobook. It could be a film or a TV show or in some cases for some of our authors made into merchandise like T-shirts or calendars or toys. Oftentimes our books find their way into other mediums and so we work across a very wide space between fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and graphic novels. There are a lot of people who work at the agency because we happen to be book publishing's leading agency by number of deals and amount of money for deals going as far back as the year 2000.

We also work with very literary authors like Michael Ondaatje who wrote The English Patient and that movie that got tons and tons of Academy Awards and nominations. We have a very big-name children's book authors, representing Wonder by RJ Palacio, which is a #1 New York Times Bestseller. It's still in that spot on the list years after publication, published in over 50 countries. And the movie with Julia Roberts is set to be a Broadway play with the producer of Hamilton. And it's won every major award and is required reading in schools."

Mark Gottlieb is a Vice President and top-selling literary agent at Trident Media Group. He represents a wide range of authors across genres, many of whom have been awarded prestigious prizes and have secured places on the New York Times bestseller list. Among other achievements, Mark has successfully optioned and sold books to film production companies where they were adapted into blockbuster hits, beloved by audiences and critics.

In addition to his work as an agent, Mark lectures on his experiences and craft at such noted venues as the Yale Writers’ Workshop, Cambridge University’s MSt in Creative Writing program, Columbia Publishing Course, and Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute. He founded Emerson College's Wilde Press, and the  Stamford Literature, Arts & Culture Salon (SLACS), where he currently serves as president.

www.tridentmediagroup.com/agents/mark-gottlieb
www.tridentmediagroup.com

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www.oneplanetpodcast.org
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As we're entering a world of advanced AI, what is the future of books? What makes stories enduring? And what role do literary agents play in nurturing authors and bringing great stories to the world?

Mark Gottlieb is a Vice President and top-selling literary agent at Trident Media Group. He represents a wide range of authors across genres, many of whom have been awarded prestigious prizes and have secured places on the New York Times bestseller list. Among other achievements, Mark has successfully optioned and sold books to film production companies where they were adapted into blockbuster hits, beloved by audiences and critics.

In addition to his work as an agent, Mark lectures on his experiences and craft at such noted venues as the Yale Writers’ Workshop, Cambridge University’s MSt in Creative Writing program, Columbia Publishing Course, and Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute. He founded Emerson College's Wilde Press, and the  Stamford Literature, Arts & Culture Salon (SLACS), where he currently serves as president.

"We look at books in terms of all of the manifestations that a book can take. It could be an audiobook. It could be a film or a TV show or in some cases for some of our authors made into merchandise like T-shirts or calendars or toys. Oftentimes our books find their way into other mediums and so we work across a very wide space between fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and graphic novels. There are a lot of people who work at the agency because we happen to be book publishing's leading agency by number of deals and amount of money for deals going as far back as the year 2000.

We also work with very literary authors like Michael Ondaatje who wrote The English Patient and that movie that got tons and tons of Academy Awards and nominations. We have a very big-name children's book authors, representing Wonder by RJ Palacio, which is a #1 New York Times Bestseller. It's still in that spot on the list years after publication, published in over 50 countries. And the movie with Julia Roberts is set to be a Broadway play with the producer of Hamilton. And it's won every major award and is required reading in schools."

www.tridentmediagroup.com/agents/mark-gottlieb
www.tridentmediagroup.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Jane Alexander is an actress, writer, and conservationist. She chaired the National Endowment for the Art from 1993-1997. A Tony Award winner and member of the  Theatre Hall of Fame, Alexander has performed in more than a hundred plays. Her long film career includes four Academy Award nominations, for The Great White Hope, All The President’s Men, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Testament. She has been honored with two Emmys, for Playing for Time and Warm Springs.  Alexander was a Trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society, a board member of the American Bird Conservancy, the American Birding Association, and a Commissioner of New York State Parks. She sits on the board of the National Audubon Society, the Global Advisory Group of Bird Life International, and the Conservation Council of Panthera. In 2012 the Indianapolis Prize inaugurated the Jane Alexander Global Wildlife Ambassador Award, with Alexander as its first recipient.

· www.creativeprocess.info

Jane Alexander is an actress, writer, and conservationist. She chaired the National Endowment for the Art from 1993-1997. A Tony Award winner and member of the  Theatre Hall of Fame, Alexander has performed in more than a hundred plays. Her long film career includes four Academy Award nominations, for The Great White Hope, All The President’s Men, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Testament. She has been honored with two Emmys, for Playing for Time and Warm Springs.  Alexander was a Trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society, a board member of the American Bird Conservancy, the American Birding Association, and a Commissioner of New York State Parks. She sits on the board of the National Audubon Society, the Global Advisory Group of Bird Life International, and the Conservation Council of Panthera. In 2012 the Indianapolis Prize inaugurated the Jane Alexander Global Wildlife Ambassador Award, with Alexander as its first recipient.

· www.creativeprocess.info

“A mentalist is a kind of magician, an illusionist. And a mentalist uses whatever techniques are at that person's disposal to create the illusion of being able to read minds or being able to contact a supernatural presence…The only rule is that that part is fake, but then you can use techniques for magic or from stagecraft or from psychology. A mentalist is really someone who creates this illusion of having an almost supernatural ability. Having said that, today a mentalist sort of has come to mean something else, mainly due to popular culture TV series like The Mentalist and so on. And now there's this understanding of a mentalist as someone being able to read body language and influence behavior. It sort of ties into it all. And I've had a lifelong passion for magic, and it started when I was seven. Because I was always interested in the question: what if there's a color in the sky that we can't see? What if a handkerchief actually can vanish? What does that mean in terms of how the world works?

So that was one part of it. I always longed for there to be something else. And I think one of the reasons for that was because I was quite the socially awkward child. I didn't have the skill set to interact in a frictionless way with my classmates, which meant that I was a weird guy. I was the one who got beaten up every single day at school, but I was also quite extroverted. So I didn't confine myself to my place in the corner. I was still there every Friday because on Fridays there was an open hour in class where you can perform or just show something. And I was always there to do magic because I had a skill. I could do something that the other guys couldn't. And then they beat me up again for it. But I do think that that realization that there's something going on here, that sort of set off something in my mind that this is something I needed to solve. I wanted to understand my bullies. This wasn't a conscious reflection on my part, but it was there. It basically felt like everyone else had been handed a handbook on social intelligence.”

Henrik Fexeus is an internationally bestselling author, lecturer, performer, and star of the TV show Mind Melt. An expert in psychology and communications, he travels the world "reading minds" and teaching others how to understand and manipulate human behavior through body language and persuasion. Henrik has studied mental skills like NLP, hypnosis, acting, and magic.

https://henrikfexeus.se/en/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Henrik Fexeus is an internationally bestselling author, lecturer, performer, and star of the TV show Mind Melt. An expert in psychology and communications, he travels the world "reading minds" and teaching others how to understand and manipulate human behavior through body language and persuasion. Henrik has studied mental skills like NLP, hypnosis, acting, and magic.

“A mentalist is a kind of magician, an illusionist. And a mentalist uses whatever techniques are at that person's disposal to create the illusion of being able to read minds or being able to contact a supernatural presence…The only rule is that that part is fake, but then you can use techniques for magic or from stagecraft or from psychology. A mentalist is really someone who creates this illusion of having an almost supernatural ability. Having said that, today a mentalist sort of has come to mean something else, mainly due to popular culture TV series like The Mentalist and so on. And now there's this understanding of a mentalist as someone being able to read body language and influence behavior. It sort of ties into it all. And I've had a lifelong passion for magic, and it started when I was seven. Because I was always interested in the question: what if there's a color in the sky that we can't see? What if a handkerchief actually can vanish? What does that mean in terms of how the world works?

So that was one part of it. I always longed for there to be something else. And I think one of the reasons for that was because I was quite the socially awkward child. I didn't have the skill set to interact in a frictionless way with my classmates, which meant that I was a weird guy. I was the one who got beaten up every single day at school, but I was also quite extroverted. So I didn't confine myself to my place in the corner. I was still there every Friday because on Fridays there was an open hour in class where you can perform or just show something. And I was always there to do magic because I had a skill. I could do something that the other guys couldn't. And then they beat me up again for it. But I do think that that realization that there's something going on here, that sort of set off something in my mind that this is something I needed to solve. I wanted to understand my bullies. This wasn't a conscious reflection on my part, but it was there. It basically felt like everyone else had been handed a handbook on social intelligence.”

https://henrikfexeus.se/en/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"So I have written plays, short stories, science fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and directed documentary films, including Not Ok. So professors from Rice University Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe are anthropologists doing research on climate change. And they noticed that Iceland had lost its first glacier to climate change. And just like we have monuments to major events like war monuments and anti-slavery monuments, humans have all sorts of monuments in history.

And they were thinking, the first glacier to be gone, doesn't that deserve a monument? So they planned this event where we would place a monument in memory of the first glacier Iceland lost to climate change and asked me to write the text for that plaque. And it was a strange request because for the person to be a writer, to be living during a time when a glacier has gone during a lifetime, what kind of an obituary or what kind of message do we write? Because I was thinking, Okay, I'm writing this in copper, so I'm writing to the people around me here and now, but just like in a graveyard, somebody might come after 200, 300, 500, 600 years and read these words.

So simultaneously addressing my peers, my fellow earthlings here and now, and then talking to people that might stumble upon that glacier in the near or distant future. So I wrote: 

A letter to the future

Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.

In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.

This monument is to acknowledge that we know

what is happening and what needs to be done.

Only you know if we did it."

Andri Snær Magnason is an award winning author of On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Story of the Blue Planet. His work has been published in more than 35 languages. He has a written in most genres, novels, poetry, plays, short stories, non fiction as well as being a documentary film maker. His novel, LoveStar got a Philip K. Dick Special Citation, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in France and “Novel of the year” in Iceland. The Story of the Blue Planet, was the first children’s book to receive the Icelandic Literary Award and has been published or performed in 35 countries. The Blue Planet received the Janusz Korczak Honorary Award in Poland 2000, the UKLA Award in the UK and Children's book of the Year in China. His book – Dreamland – a Self Help Manual for a Frightened Nation takes on these issues and has sold more than 20.000 copies in Iceland. He co directed Dreamland - a feature length documentary film based on the book. Footage from Dreamland and an interview with Andri can be seen in the Oscar Award-winning documentary Inside Job by Charles Ferguson. His most recent book, Tímakistan, the Time Casket has now been published in more than 10 languages, was nominated as the best fantasy book in Finland 2016 with authors like Ursula K. le Guin and David Mitchell. In English six books are currently available: Bónus Poetry, The Story of The Blue Planet, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Casket of Time, (Tímakistan) and On Time and Water.

www.andrimagnason.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Andri Snær Magnason is an award winning author of On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Story of the Blue Planet. His work has been published in more than 35 languages. He has a written in most genres, novels, poetry, plays, short stories, non fiction as well as being a documentary film maker. His novel, LoveStar got a Philip K. Dick Special Citation, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in France and “Novel of the year” in Iceland. The Story of the Blue Planet, was the first children’s book to receive the Icelandic Literary Award and has been published or performed in 35 countries. The Blue Planet received the Janusz Korczak Honorary Award in Poland 2000, the UKLA Award in the UK and Children's book of the Year in China. His book – Dreamland – a Self Help Manual for a Frightened Nation takes on these issues and has sold more than 20.000 copies in Iceland. He co directed Dreamland - a feature length documentary film based on the book. Footage from Dreamland and an interview with Andri can be seen in the Oscar Award-winning documentary Inside Job by Charles Ferguson. His most recent book, Tímakistan, the Time Casket has now been published in more than 10 languages, was nominated as the best fantasy book in Finland 2016 with authors like Ursula K. le Guin and David Mitchell. In English six books are currently available: Bónus Poetry, The Story of The Blue Planet, LoveStar, Dreamland and The Casket of Time, (Tímakistan) and On Time and Water.

"So I have written plays, short stories, science fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and directed documentary films, including Not Ok. So professors from Rice University Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe are anthropologists doing research on climate change. And they noticed that Iceland had lost its first glacier to climate change. And just like we have monuments to major events like war monuments and anti-slavery monuments, humans have all sorts of monuments in history.

And they were thinking, the first glacier to be gone, doesn't that deserve a monument? So they planned this event where we would place a monument in memory of the first glacier Iceland lost to climate change and asked me to write the text for that plaque. And it was a strange request because for the person to be a writer, to be living during a time when a glacier has gone during a lifetime, what kind of an obituary or what kind of message do we write? Because I was thinking, Okay, I'm writing this in copper, so I'm writing to the people around me here and now, but just like in a graveyard, somebody might come after 200, 300, 500, 600 years and read these words.

So simultaneously addressing my peers, my fellow earthlings here and now, and then talking to people that might stumble upon that glacier in the near or distant future. So I wrote: 

A letter to the future

Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.

In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.

This monument is to acknowledge that we know

what is happening and what needs to be done.

Only you know if we did it."

www.andrimagnason.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"I knew Philip Seymour Hoffman for several years. We went on vacation together. He produced a play of mine. Before we did Doubt, we worked in the same theater company together, and he was, you know, very committed to excellence. And so he could become impatient with anybody who was not committed to excellence, and that could make him a volatile person to deal with. Phil cared. He cared a great deal. And he worked really hard.

They're very committed. Like with Viola Davis. Viola had done a decent amount of big work before Doubt, but she was not recognized yet. And she was careful. You know, she certainly wasn't throwing weight around. She was, I'm the new kid on the block, and I'm just here to work and be serious and do my job, keep my head down, and get out. And pretty much that's what I was doing too, you know, because I've got Meryl Streep, I've got Philip Hoffman, who I was friends with, but Phil's not an easy guy to be friends with or was not easy to be friends with. He's a very prickly person prone to getting pissed off about things that you might not expect. And then Amy Adams was somebody who, you know, tried to get along with everybody and Phil would say like, 'You just want everybody to like you.' So, you know, you're in the middle of that group, and you just, you don't want to put yourself in a position where you're trying to prove something. You have to let them...they're very, very smart people, and they're going to figure out whatever it is that you're doing. They're going to figure out whether you are in any way trying to handle that. And that's not going to go well. And so I didn't do that.

Meryl is very, very smart and very focused and, in a sense, very private. Her work, you know, she isn't going to talk a great deal about her secrets, the secrets of her character. She's going to carry them with her." 

John Patrick Shanley is from The Bronx. His plays include Prodigal Son, Outside Mullingar (Tony nomination), Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Savage in Limbo, Italian-American Reconciliation, Welcome to the Moon, Four Dogs and a Bone, Dirty Story, Defiance, and Beggars in the House of Plenty. His theatrical work is performed extensively across the United States and around the world. For his play, Doubt, he received both the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In the arena of screenwriting, he has ten films to his credit, most recently Wild Mountain Thyme, with Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan, and Christopher Walken. His film of Doubt, with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis, which he also directed, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay. Other films include Five Corners (Special Jury Prize, Barcelona Film Festival), Alive, Joe Versus the Volcano (which he also directed), and Live From Baghdad for HBO (Emmy nomination). For his script of Moonstruck he received both the Writers Guild of America Award and an Academy Award for best original screenplay. In 2009, The Writers Guild of America awarded Mr. Shanley the Lifetime Achievement In Writing.

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www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast