Los Angeles Film School

A lot goes into making a movie that an audience will never see, and today's, uh, guest knows that world firsthand.

Um, Leslie Bates is a producer, screenwriter, educator, whose credits include "Broken Angel," "Acts of Desperation," and the documentary, "A Brother's Broken: The Story That Stopped the Music." She's a graduate of the American Film Institute and teaches at the Los Angeles Film School, bringing her production experience into the classroom.

So today we're gonna talk about her journey into filmmaking, the story she chooses to tell, and what it actually takes to, uh, get a film made, uh, from that first idea all the way through the actual final product.

So Leslie, welcome to, uh, Before I Forget.

going."Go ahead, go ahead

And that's what I teach.

I teach, uh, at Los Angeles Film School, I teach business plans, and that is because every single endeavor that we do needs a, needs a business plan.

Uh, if you go into business without a plan, you wind up kind of, I don't know, go- running in circles 'cause you don't, you, you miss your goals.

The cooler weather is expected to continue until at least Tuesday.

Neighborhood Concerts, the free concert series presented by the LA Film, is coming back this fall.

The concerts will take place in Bellflower, Roland Heights, Lancaster, and Compton starting October 10th through December 11th.

Tickets for the Bellflower Neighborhood Concert will be available starting Tuesday, and the rest will drop one month before each performance.

You can find details at the LA Film website.

Thanks for listening to the LA Report Evening Edition.

I'm Julia Paskin.

Mm.

And so I went to the LA Film School just to study, to basically study directing, and as I was there, I realized that I wasn't much of a director.

Um, but that there was a, there was a draw to cinematography that I really, really enjoyed.

I didn't come out of film school wanting or expecting to be a DP.

And it's weird how like when you, when you start having kids, like the things that you start thinking about like daycare and diapers and bottles and all that stuff.

But [clears throat] anyway, yeah, man, two, two kids, um, in the last two years, which s- for those who are familiar with the show and you wondered why we dropped off, uh, for, for me, you know, having kids and, um, and trying to raise them and be present in their lives o- on top of working and on top of going to school, uh, uh, for, for me that was, uh, d- you know, there was too much going on, so something had to, uh, take a backseat and, you know, after discussion with Tyree, like I think it was, it came down to, 'cause he was doing the LA Film School, um, and you know, busy with all the things that he's doing and, um, so like the show had to take a backseat so-

Yeah

... yeah.

There's, there's that.

Well, Kevin was, was making babies, creating them out of, uh, thin air.

Uh, I was [chuckles] I started with the LA Film School.

Um, I am, uh, about a year away from graduation.

completely dropped all the addiction studies classes and then I now I'm committing to like just taking like film classes and like classes and I never thought I would ever go to school again like I graduated high school somehow like I'm done but it's like this weird willingness is Is

it AFI or L.A. Film or which one?

I debated the L.A. Film.

I actually got in, but then I had my court cases in another state, so I couldn't go in at the time that I applied.

But right now I'm at Pierce.

Instead, they come from areas of your market that get virtually no human attention simply because there aren't enough hours in the day.

For example, Conversica created a compelling case study with the LA Film School, in which their assistant was directed to leads that human reps had already deemed unresponsive and had almost abandoned.

This effort brought back an extra one percent of those previously written off leads.

While one percent might seem small, it translates into a significant impact between four point two million dollars and seven million dollars in recovered revenue.

How did you start, uh, in the cinematography game? Or did you start there?

I went to film school, eh, for a year at the LA Film School, got out.

That was a great experience.

Got out in '07, uh, fall of '07.