A Retired Sailors Documentary Helped Change Young Filmmakers’ Lives

By Vanessa Infanzon, Next Avenue

In 2001, a YMCA in Brooklyn hired a husband-and-wife team of television producers, Stephanie Walter and John Williams, to help 15 high school students pull together a film about retired seamen living at the YMCA’s residential facility.

The class’s final project, a one-hour documentary called “Sea Story,” was so well done that WNET, the PBS
Invesco Dynamic Media ETF
station in New York, broadcast it.

“The sailors were very interesting,” Williams says, “but Stephanie and I found the students to be more interesting.”

Walter and Williams asked the YMCA if they could recruit students for another filmmaking class. This time, they changed the focus: Let the students tell their stories. Eight students participated in 2002; they were challenged to make a film about their life.

“We found it very exciting,” Williams says. “It was something we hadn’t done, but we were really good at it. It felt like a calling.”

The couple in 2002 founded Reel Works, a nonprofit organization to create filmmaking opportunities for young people in New York City. Its mission: “Reel Works mentors, inspires and empowers underserved NYC youth to share their stories through filmmaking, creating a springboard to successful careers in media and beyond.”

That first year, students produced several films, two of which were broadcast on the HBO program “30 by 30 Kid Flicks.” “We didn’t know we were doing anything innovative,” says Williams, cofounder and CEO of Reel Works. “We had some models by people we admired, but we had no real grounding in media or education.”

Opening Credits

Reel Works almost shut down in 2002 because the 9/11 terror attacks and the start of the recession prevented the YMCA from funding the next class. HBO stepped in and offered $20,000 in seed money for an HBO Young Filmmakers Lab. “It was more money than we could imagine,” Williams says. “They were interested in funding a youth media program based on the work we had done.”

In the new class, Walter and Williams developed core elements of Reel Works: Each student makes their own movie, students choose the story they want to tell in a documentary format and is provided with one-on-one adult mentoring from industry professionals.

“These core essential ideas never changed,” Williams says, “which is about respecting young voices . . . and then letting them make these amazing movies.”

In the beginning, the class served 50 students a year. Walter and Williams, not having a background in education or youth development, learned how to teach through trial and error and by listening to the students.

“As more schools wanted to send kids to our program and kids wanted more classes, little by little, we were able to expand the program,” he says. “Today we serve 1,500 young people across New York City every year.”

Screen Direction

Interested students apply and interview to be admitted to in-school and after-school Reel Works classes in elementary, middle and high schools across New York. Reel Works also offers Film School Fridays, where students are tutored in filmmaking and screenwriting without having to formally apply.

Class topics range from documentary making and stop-motion animation to broadcasting and video podcasting. Professional filmmakers teach project-driven workshops. Students are expected to produce an original film related to the workshop’s medium.

Rising ninth- and 10th-grade high school students typically join the after-school program to learn how to produce a documentary story. “It’s usually something very personal and highlights the life they live,” says Walter, who is the chief program officer as well as a cofounder of Reel Works. “They end up learning how to tell stories through different methodologies. They learn to shoot, interview and edit.”

Students may continue through Documentary Lab, Narrative Lab and then Narrative Fellows, the most advanced track. Students choose from among cinematography, directing, editing, producing and screenwriting. They dig deeply into one specific track for about eight months, working with mentors from the industry, Walter says.

Each year, some films produced by students are submitted to film festivals. Many have received awards from festivals around the world. Funding from companies such as NBC Universal, Netflix, Paramount Global and Warner Brothers Discovery keep these programs free for the students.

Close-Up

From the start, Reel Works wanted to serve students from all backgrounds. It became central to the organization’s vision: Change the storytellers, change the world. “That’s a big conversation at Reel Works,” Walter says. “What is equity and inclusion? We know that we want to create a very safe creative space for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) and queer kids.”

When Walter met a student with a developmental disorder, she wondered who else they could be serving.

“There’s a place for everyone to be creative,” she says. “I know that, as a kid with ADHD, if someone had identified me earlier, I would have gotten started earlier in my career. There’s a place for all of us who want it.”

Reel Works located funding and launched Supported Lab, a class for students with disabilities such as autism. “They are so creative,” Walter says. “The way they see the world; the way they investigate the world. The way they are part of the world is so compelling and beautiful. I am always blown away.”

Focus

Student voices are central to Reel Works; profound and rich stories are being told about various issues, including family struggles, mental health, racism and relationships.

Nigerian-born Femi Aguaze, a recent Reel Works Narrative Fellow, learned of the nonprofit from a friend. He heard other students’ stories — many of which resonated with him. “These unseen battles that a lot of people go through are what come through Reel Works,” says 25-year-old Aguaze. “There are more layers (to people), and you learn about the struggles they had growing up.”

The mentoring and training through Reel Works are leading to systemic change — more people who are Black, brown, disabled, queer or speak English as a second language are joining the film industry. Since 2019, 535 Reel Works students found employment in media, according to MediaMKRS, a video production company connected to Reel Works.

With 441,000 people working in the film industry, change may take time. According to the latest University of California, Los Angeles Hollywood Diversity Report, Black, Indigenous and people of color directed 23% of the top theatrical films in 2023. That is up from 17% in 2022. Black, Indigenous and people of color made up 22% of writers in 2023, compared with 12% in 2022.

“Reel Works is providing a supportive community space for all students who are interested in filmmaking,” says Jennifer Loo, who participated in the cinematography track in Narrative Fellows from 2021 to 2022 and is now an in-house video producer for The Studio at Reel Works, a separate production company with internal and external clients.

“They’re creating a pipeline that really needs to be strengthened between the communities in New York City and the film industry at large,” adds Loo, who is 25. “It exists here, but not for young urban talent who would not have connections to the film industry otherwise.”

Walter and Williams “make a great team,” she adds. “They provide a really strong vision for the future of the organization.”