The FilmUp Podcast

Bryan is a Grammy Nominated and award winning Brooklyn based director. He is a director, editor and writer working with artists like The Black Keys, James Bay, and James Arthur.

Please welcome the fitness legend himself, Don Saladino to The FilmUp Podcast! Don has coached actors, athletes, & musicians for over 20 years. He has developed a reputation for training some of the biggest names in Hollywood for the big screen. Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Jake Gyllenhaal, John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Anne Hathaway, Sebastian Stan, Liev Schreiber, Hugh Jackman, & David Harbour are among his roster of clients.

Get ready for a fun episode to kick off the new year!! Please welcome Wendy Kurtzman to The FilmUp Podcast!
Wendy is an Emmy-nominated casting director who has helped launch the careers of many well known actors including such notables as Sandra Bullock, Reese Witherspoon, Patrick Dempsey and Evan Rachel Wood. She has more than 30 years of experience in feature films, movies for television, mini-series and theater and has worked with many distinguished directors such as Paul Schrader, Diane Keaton, Sally Field and Roland Emmerich, for whom she cast the blockbuster “Independence Day,” starring Will Smith.
Prior to starting her own casting business, she was a casting executive at Lifetime and NBC. She began her career as an actress in musical theater and graduated with a degree in theater from UCLA. In 2013 Wendy launched College to Career Acting, to help emerging BFA/MFA artists navigate the transition from Academia into the Entertainment Industry. Her experience as both a performer and a casting director afford her a unique perspective into what it takes to succeed as a performer. Recently, Wendy joined PhilmCo Media as Head of Casting while also serving as Faculty at UCLA and Pace University where she teaches personal narrative, audition technique and transition to the Industry.

Today we are thrilled to be joined by Keaton Heinrichs, Chris Williams, & Gary Marshall.

With a community of over 2M followers and 25M+ likes, The People’s Paparazzi aka Johnny Cirillio, takes some time off from snapping fashion shots on the streets of NYC and joins on, The FilmUp Podcast.

Please welcome the one and only, Tonya Lewis Lee to The FilmUp Podcast! Tonyis a director, producer, author and entrepreneur whose work often explores the personal impact of social justice issues.
Most recently, the film she co-directed and co- produced, exploring the US maternal mortality crisis, AFTERSHOCK (HULU) has received numerous awards including a 2023 Peabody Award , a 2022 Sundance Special Jury Impact for Change Award, an NIHMC Award and a 2023 Emmy Award nomination. As a television producer, Tonya served as Executive Producer on the episodic series She’s Gotta Have It (NETFLIX) and wrote and produced The Watson’s Go To Birmingham (AMAZON). As a film producer, Lee produced Monster (NETFLIX) which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Tonya is currently serving as an Executive Producer on a documentary film about seven time Olympic gold medalist Allyson Felix. As an author, Tonya’s children’s books, co-written with her husband Spike Lee, Please Baby Please, Please Puppy Please and Giant Steps to Change the World have sold over one million copies.

Get ready for a hilarious and fun interview with the incredible Dangerbean aka Ben Christensen.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to get a film financed? What are financiers looking for before investing in a film? Or once you have the funds, what it takes to make a film? Well our next guests guests answer all of those questions and more. Please welcome Dave Liu and Elisa Gambino to The FilmUp Podcast!

Our next guest is such a fan of cinema that he uses his skills to re-creating it. Please welcome William Baker to The FilmUp Podcast.

Stop motion is oftentimes an overlooked art form. It is something that takes considerable time, patience, and perseverance. Our next guest exudes all of those qualities and more! Please welcome Ben Treat to The FilmUp Podcast! 

Ben is the visual artist behind the TikTok channel Franticframes with over 1.6M and 47M likes. Beyond that, he is a stop motion animator, working on projects for brands such as Toyota, Irish Spring, Adobe, Netflix and Samsung. While stop-motion has existed on the internet since its inception, Treat creates animations that are purposefully intricate, involving things like fluid and complicated movement. Almost all animations are followed by a behind-the-scenes TikTok and since each project takes so long to produce, his behind-the-scenes looks are shared as time-lapses.

Ben is also a big supporter of Doctors Without Borders, So he is dedicating this episode to their organization. You can learn more by going to doctorswithoutborders.org.