![]() MM: I twice had the honor of spending time with Doug Trumbull. Did he teach you any lessons you’ve carried forward into your career (and/or life)? IU: You got to spend some time with the late and legendary Douglas Trumbull. The New England Emmy Award nomination we got for 5 Runners didn’t hurt in building that confidence either. The experience helped cement that I had indeed picked the right career, and I could graduate from BU confident that I could do this thing called filmmaking. I helped edit, I helped form the story, I’d even help gaff when we went out to film.īut from this stressful first foray into film, I learned that I could tell stories just like seasoned professionals could. I was one in a team of three, so I wore many more hats than just Associate Producer. The Globe wanted to dip their toes into long-form video reporting, and their first piece would be a documentary on a devastating event that happened the year before: the Boston Marathon Bombing. It was 2014, in my senior year at Boston University, and I applied to join the burgeoning video department at The Boston Globe. Sure, I’d made shorts in film school, but this was my first real gig. MM: 5 Runners was the first real project of my career. IU: What did you learn from being associate producer on The Boston Globe's documentary 5 Runners? I haven’t left shorts behind as I start to pursue long form… and neither should you! I think it’s important to create both types of work in parallel. But long-form pieces, like feature films, give you a larger canvas, more robust colors to paint with, and the opportunity to have an extensive relationship with your audience. Shorts allow you to work in metaphor, and because of that, sometimes tell more meaningful stories. What does that mean? It means the difference between long-form and short-form isn’t just duration they’re two different forms of storytelling altogether. MM: I heard an adage in film school that has always stuck with me - a feature is like a novel, a short is like a poem. What are the pros and cons of each medium, and why’d you make the switch? IU: Wow, congratulations! Over the course of your career, you’ve shifted focus from short-form comedy to longform content like HBO Max’s talkback series MaxPop Reacts. After it was the Script-of-The-Month on The Black List, I was invited to do a live-table read of the script at the WGA in Los Angeles, which then led to me finding literary representation. I think because these themes continue to ring true, readers have really resonated with Bury The Lede. I wrote it when we were in the height of the Trumpian age of misinformation, which, unfortunately, didn't go away when Trump did. ![]() MM: Bury The Lede is an hour-long dramedy about Nellie, her newspaper club at Lawrence High, and their investigation into the recent murder of their principal.īut Bury The Lede doesn’t play out like your classic teenage whodunit, it examines how gaslighting and fake news can wreak havoc on anyone who’s fighting to find the truth. IU: What can you tell us about Bury The Lede, which was a recent Script-of-the-Month on The Black List? The hardest thing about Heirloom was letting go, and letting the narrative take me where it may. Documentary isn’t just unscripted – it’s unpredictable – and so I had to soften my time-hardened instinct to control the narrative. As someone who founded her career on funny wigs and witty one-liners, I needed to take one of the biggest shifts in my career thus far to tackle Heirloom. ![]() MM: Honestly, the most difficult obstacle was the most expected, and it was staring me right in the face: documentary. Michela at Heirloom Premiere at TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
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