**Karalee Sartin: Welcome to the Open Ed podcast. I'm thrilled to introduce our guests today, Chet and Fletch from Sneak on the Lot. Fletch, would you start by telling us about your background?** **Fletch:** I got my start in the business when I was about 16 as a layout artist for Saturday morning cartoons on television – back when you could only see cartoons on Saturday mornings. After that, I jumped into live action film as a storyboard artist for many years. My first studio picture was a little film called The Sandlot, and then I jumped from studio picture to studio picture after that. In 2000, Chet and I connected after the shooting at Columbine. We wanted to do something for students, not knowing how to do anything as far as education was concerned. We thought, "Well, we can teach them how to make movies, if that makes a difference." What it did was give students an opportunity to express themselves in a nonviolent, productive, creative way. It was far more effective than I originally would have thought. From that time forward – 25 years ago – we've hosted Sneak On a Lot while running our careers and making movies. Now we're producers and directors on multiple series at Angel Studios, with more coming next year. **Karalee: Fantastic. Chet, would you give us a brief bio, please?** **Chet:** My route was a little different than Fletch's, which makes our partnership great. I did start in production – Fletch got me my introduction to my first job many moons ago. I worked on a couple of what were called "movies of the week" to put myself through college. After finishing college, I saw an article in Times Magazine with Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen forming DreamWorks SKG. I didn't know much about Hollywood, but I decided that's where I wanted to go. I moved to LA without a job and eventually got into the story department at DreamWorks. While in the story department, I got to work on Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Mouse Hunt, and a couple of other films. Then I jumped to feature development, which was the core group trying to find the next feature film. My boss's office was the busiest at the studio – we had about 20 films in various stages of development at any given time. I worked on Meet the Parents, Small Soldiers, The Terminal, Road to Perdition, Blendstones, and others. I later wanted to watch Steven Spielberg work on set, so I moved to work on Minority Report. It was fascinating watching him work with Tom Cruise and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, who won Oscars for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. Most recently, we produced The Best Christmas Pageant Ever for Lionsgate, which was quite successful in theaters and is now streaming. **Karalee: You two have managed to create an atmosphere that, while making a movie and still focused on the bottom line, somehow rises above the stress and not only makes really great film, but lifts everybody up around you. How do you do that? And why have you decided to make a curriculum that lifts up kids instead of just focusing on the bottom line?** **Fletch:** That's a good question. You do get really close when working on a film because you're with the same people day in, day out for 12-18 hours a day for many months. Often you'll go on to the next project with those same people. But you're right – it is a stressful place and not ideal for bringing out the best in people. Chet and I saw early on what that looked like when we were working on "movies of the week," which are even more stressful because they have less money and tighter schedules. We both thought, "I don't like that environment and don't want to work in it for the rest of my life." Occasionally you'd find a crew that worked well together, and what a pleasure that was. Those sets brought out everyone's best talent because no one was afraid to speak up. Everyone felt they could bring their creative self to work every day. Those were some of the seeds planted early in my career. **Chet:** Like you said, it's a stressful environment, and some people don't handle stress well. Usually, you only work with those people once and don't bring them back on the next film. Over time, your crew gets better and more like family. Life is just too short to create more stress than necessary when it's already a high-stress environment. It's great to have fun while getting things done and lifting others. That's something we've tried to implement into Sneak on the Lot. We've put certain values and concepts into the curriculum that build rather than add stress or tear down. Nothing against horror movies, but we've decided to make films that impact positively. They don't always have to be uplifting – you might tell a story with a downer ending – but we try to have a positive impact with everything we do. All the filmmakers in Sneak on the Lot are young and usually don't have much life experience, but hopefully we can instill this great foundation that gets them started off right and helps them continue to rise, rather than having the wrong attitude. **Karalee: I love that. Will you tell me a little bit more about the backlot? How does that tie into the curriculum, and what's the heart behind creating it?** **Fletch:** The backlot is a long journey. When we first started 25 years ago, before the internet was really anything, we reached a point where we had to get back to work. I had spent all my savings opening a little office running kids through from local high schools, trying to figure out how to teach filmmaking. The kids would not go home – you had to turn out the lights to send them home! Eventually, we had to shut down the office, but we had built the curriculum we needed. Chet suggested putting it online, which was prophetic because that's where everything was going. I wanted to create an environment where just navigating the website would teach you how the film industry worked – so you'd understand how a movie studio backlot functions simply by using the site. It worked well, but then they killed ActionScript, which was a backward step for designers. We moved to standard curriculum, but we always wanted to revisit the idea of creating an environment that teaches as you navigate it. Twenty years later, it became apparent that a game was the best way to do this. The technology was now in place for what we'd dreamed of doing in those early days. We started building in Unity, and as we developed it, our vision started coming to life. You can walk around, meet people, have your own building, and talk to non-player characters who teach you about their jobs and roles – cinematographers, first assistant directors, PAs, and so on. You can upload your movie, watch others' movies, and hear about opportunities. We wanted to implement a way for students to interact with the backlot – posting their posters for marketing, having people click on the posters to watch their movies, and connecting with real-life opportunities like reading for roles or finding collaborators. We're still in a beta stage with "Sneak On" (the 3D version), but it's obvious that's our direction because kids love navigating and playing in the environment. Most of our development cycles will probably go into that now. **Karalee: And you have actually cast students out of Sneak On, haven't you?** **Chet:** It's our goal to cast everything we do from people in the lot. For Mystic Hollow last year, we cast from people in the lot. We did all the casting for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever on the backlot too. Our plan is to cast through the lot, hire editors, and hire all our crew through the backlot. For people in Hollywood, it's strange and hard to grasp – "What? It's a game? I have to upload my audition in this environment with avatars?" We say, "Trust us. We might be ahead of our time, but that's okay. We've always been ahead of our time." It will not just be a game where students rise in the ranks through their efforts – it will lead to jobs and breaking into the industry. We've already had some successes with students breaking into the industry through Sneak on the Lot, even before the current version existed. We've helped talented students we've identified get into the industry, and we plan to continue that with what we're doing now. **Karalee: I love that. You are literally helping students sneak onto the Hollywood lot, which is exactly what your name suggests.** **Fletch:** That's the idea. **Karalee: I want to go back a little bit. Fletch, you mentioned in the beginning the origins of Sneak on the Lot, especially relating to Columbine. Can you take me back to that? You obviously had busy lives and successful careers. Why would you take time to create a curriculum?** **Fletch:** Part of it is because we're stupid! We're always taking on more than we can handle, and a year later we're like, "Hey, we did it. I can't believe we pulled that off." When Sneak on the Lot started, it was born from a desire to make a difference. I was driving to set – I think I was working on Touched by an Angel – listening to the Columbine shooting live on the radio. All I could think was, "When was it okay to suddenly bring a gun to school?" That was totally foreign to me. And here we are 25 years later. I thought, "We have to do something." My brother was a high school teacher, so I went to talk to him. Three days after Columbine, I had his class write an essay about their feelings on what happened, or how close they might be to doing something similar. I still have those 60-70 papers, and three or four of them said, "I'm pretty close." That shocked me – these were my brother's students! I thought, "If there are three students of my brother's who are close, how many more are out there around the country, around the world?" That was the motivation that propelled us to want to make a difference somehow. All we knew how to do was make movies, which on the surface might seem pathetic – "You're just entertainers." But when you realize what it takes to make a movie, you can employ every single classroom of a high school or middle school in the process – marketing, business, advertising, acting, music, sciences, you name it. Once we realized that, we started thinking about how far we could take it. What would it take to make a film with students? We'd need to teach them because they don't know how, and teachers don't know either. That's why the workshop was born. Chet went to film school while I went straight into the industry, so we came at it from different perspectives. Together, it meshed well. Through a year of working with students, making 40-50 short films, we noted what kids understood and what they didn't. Our curriculum evolved from that, particularly emphasizing development and writing because students generally understood editing and technical aspects, but absolutely loathed writing – even though that's some of the most fun stuff in the business. We also noticed students often wanted to tell stories about suicide and dark topics. We'd say, "No, we're not going to let you make one of those. Make something nice, something funny – everybody loves to laugh." We encouraged a positive view: bring something to light that's good, that people want to see, that'll make their lives better. We wanted to guide students not just through making movies, but through life – how to make good decisions and bring light to the world. It's easy to bring darkness; there aren't many people bringing light. **Chet:** Over the years, the curriculum has grown. We focused initially on development because students' stories weren't that great. Once they started getting development, we noticed their films weren't looking that great – they weren't using practical lights or camera movement. So we created curriculum on practical lighting, off-screen lighting, contrast, and camera movements. Then we noticed sound problems, so we focused on that. Green screen was big, but students weren't pulling good keys, so we created curriculum on that. Kids were ripping off music, so we developed material on copyright. The curriculum has grown layer by layer over 25 years. **Karalee: I love how film can give everyone a place – no matter what your talents are, no matter your abilities, whether you fit a traditional mold or not, there's a place for you, and you are valued and needed.** **Chet:** Absolutely. Filmmaking takes all types. It takes the creative kind who maybe aren't accepted by others as much in high school, allowing them to really shine and show what they can do. It takes the analytical person who's great at math – we'll slide you right in as a line producer doing the budget, keeping those creative types who have no sense of budget in check. There's a place for that super social person – we'll put you on the marketing team building social media platforms and getting the word out. We need to build sets, so the construction department and welding teams are essential. One of the most important parts on set is food – we need culinary skills for lunch and craft services, with options for those who want to eat healthy and those who don't. Any class can be part of filmmaking. History is essential for any film not set in the present day. English and creative writing are obvious for screenplays. Even that typing class I took was the most valuable for my filmmaking career because now I can type! **Fletch:** There are athletes too – I know many stuntmen who were just jocks in high school who liked physical activity. You'd make a great stuntman! Literally every classroom you can possibly imagine can be integrated into the film industry. It reaches every type of person and allows people of every walk of life, color, and height to have an important part in the filmmaking process. **Karalee: Would you each share a success story of a student or school for whom your curriculum or film has really made a difference?** **Fletch:** One of those early students reached out to me recently. He was in the acting program at the same high school I attended and participated in those first years of Sneak on the Lot. Now he's been on Broadway for about 20 years. He messaged me saying, "You changed my life. That one year in that building changed my life. It made me realize I could do this for a living." Another kid was kind of a goth kid – wore trench coats, dyed his hair black, wore makeup. He was a dark soul but would come to the building almost every day, driving 45 minutes to get there. I knew right away he was a talented writer – way ahead of his age. I kept telling him, "If I were you with your skill, I'd start as a writer. Directing will come, but start with writing – that's what you're really good at." He wrote several films that year, and we entered them in a local festival where these kids cleaned up. It was fun watching him – this hunched-over, short kid – go down the aisle repeatedly to collect his awards. He won about five trophies that day, and with each one, he grew a little taller. By the end, that kid was ten feet tall – it changed his life. Now he sells his scripts for six figures in Hollywood and has been produced multiple times. The other kid who used to come with him owns a movie equipment rental company in Los Angeles, and the girl who came with them is now an anchor for Fox News in LA. **Chet:** We've had lots of kids with success stories. Steve, who you met at the workshop, was a former student, and he's worked on about ten Steven Spielberg movies – he's working on the biggest movies in Hollywood. **Fletch:** With Sneak On, we're already talking about how to create opportunities where we can hire directors, producers, and writers right off the lot. We've got our eye on a couple of students who've proven themselves. We have about six or seven television series going over the next year and a half, and we can't do them all ourselves. So we're considering bringing in students who've proven themselves to see how they'd respond under pressure with money and bigger names on the line. That's what Sneak On is built to do – filter out and find the best of the best. If we can do that, we'll pluck them out and put them in our own projects. **Karalee: I just want to say a sincere thank you, not only for your time today but for what you do. Thank you for being so inspirational and living out bigger values than just the bottom line. We have the utmost respect for you and are honored to work with you and use your curriculum.**