Driving Without Directions
Julie Zhao: producer and all-around filmmaker extraordinaire. Zhao recently moved to LA after graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, with a degree in Film and Television and a minor in Business, Entertainment, Media and Technology. She produced a variety of films during her tenure at NYU, including the short film “Dreamline” directed by Harshith Kotni, which is now leaving post-production for the festival circuit.
Zhao’s day job, though, is with the corporate finance and greenlight department at television studio and production company Media Res, where she assists the CFO in everything from meetings to deal analyses. Although this job description is more corporate than the life of a film producer might suggest, Zhao loves her work, saying she’s learned a lot: “coming from a primarily creative background, getting exposed to all the numbers, all the number-crunching and seeing how you budget around shows is very different from the independent film world, and how you put together a finance plan for that.” There’s a direct correlation between her work at Media Res and her numerous producing projects — aside from “Dreamline,” she’s currently working on a docuseries pilot. Something she’s noticed in her time thus far working under established companies, directors, and producers, is that “everything you do as a student producer is really very similar to what they do on a larger, professional level, it’s just scaled down.” A student’s budget might have less individual components, but ultimately all budgets come down to making the most of the resources available.
Born in Paris and having lived in Shanghai, New York, and now, Los Angeles, Zhao brings a unique perspective to her life and work. For “Dreamline” specifically, she found herself drawn to and relating to the story, coming “from kind of a third-culture kid background.” The story follows an Indian-American teenage rapper who uses his art to connect with the world and his father, “explor[ing] the miscommunication between first generation immigrants and their children, especially in the United States.” But even besides the personal connection she felt with the story, Zhao finds her background to be a real asset to her work as a producer. Moving around a lot made her “very adaptable to different situations, and as a producer that’s something that always happens on set.” From needing to coordinate between departments to anticipating needs and problems before they arise, a producer’s job is multifaceted, complicated, and forever changing; adaptability is an undoubtedly important skill to have as a producer. She’s also used to finding community in new and unexpected places, and has gotten comfortable with working outside of her comfort zone — an important skill to have in a job that requires so much coordination and flexibility. Zhao says:
[producing] is like driving, but you don’t know where the turns are coming, so you’ve just gotta respond and do it right away. And it’s kind of that thrill that I really love. And again, the mission of helping directors bring their vision to life. That process is really inherently beautiful and something I want to keep doing.
Despite the lack of clear directions when driving down the path of a film producer, Zhao has been quite successful thus far, coordinating numerous productions all the way from set to various film festivals, such as the Rhode Island Flickers International Film Festival.
Moving forwards, Zhao has hopes for the future of “Dreamline.” The short “has actually a feature version that we [Zhao and Kotni, the director] want to do in the near future,” Zhao tells me, “and being able to take that finished script to a Sundance, or a Tribeca lab, and get them to fund it, and then we can hopefully make the film and hopefully it gets screened somewhere and distributed.” It's worth noting that at this point in our talk, Zhao smiles widely, visibly excited at the prospect of getting to create this project that she's so passionate about on a larger scale, and for a wider audience. Despite the hard work that goes into this profession and into making a film, it’s clear that the love that Zhao has for storytelling and amplifying underrepresented voices fuels her to keep creating.
The “Dreamline” feature is a in-the-next-five-years plan, though, Zhao says. Beyond that, she hopes to do work in an international market, something that she says she’s enjoyed learning about in her time at Media Res so far; the company has ties to numerous international companies and productions, recently collaborating with markets and artists in Korea for the production of Pachinko for Apple TV+. She’s also got her finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the film industry, naming the Sean Wang x Carlos López Estrada producing team as role models for her (the team’s recent success with their feature Dìdi at Sundance is a point of inspiration for Zhao, who’s been tracking the project since she read the script a few years ago).
These goals are lofty, but speaking to Zhao and seeing her trajectory thus far, it’s clear that they’re achievable. It’s “difficult when you’re working a full time job and you’re still trying to stay creative on the side,” she acknowledges, but at the end of the day, “you’ve really just gotta make time for it because it’s something that you enjoy.”