Making Media Now

Joining host Michael Azevedo on this episode by Anne Zeiser. Anne is a critically acclaimed social impact producer and media strategist. Her background as a broadcast journalist, marketing executive, and social advocate uniquely positions her as the architect of successful media-driven productions and social impact campaigns. She has stewarded iconic documentary, drama, lifestyle and children’s series and specials for PBS. She’s also produced news for CBS, managed consumer brands for national marketing firms, and has served in government and on political campaigns. Integrating all of these perspectives, Anne founded Azure Media, which develops high profile projects for broadcast and digital platforms that fuel social impact in communities, schools, and capitols.   Most recently, Anne served as EP for "Muraling Austin," a 3-part documentary series that explores the art and artists behind the vibrant public murals found in Austin TX.    Making Media Now is sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting media makers from across the creative spectrum. From providing fiscal sponsorship to presenting an array of informative and educational programs, Filmmakers Collaborative supports creatives at every step in their journey.   About the host: www.writevoicecreative.com and https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-azevedo/ Sound Engineer: A.J. Kierstead 

Joining Michael Azevedo on this episode is writer and journalist Tom Roston, whose latest article for IndieWire examines the unspoken traumas of the filmmaking community. In the article, Tom provides a comprehensive look at how documentary filmmakers are speaking out about the toll the filmmaking process—especially when covering particularly traumatic subjects-can take on their mental.   Tom Roston has been writing about film, culture, and ideas for more than 2 decades. In addition to IndieWire, his byline has appeared in The Nation, Vanity Fair, Salon, Fast Company, and the NYT.   Tom is also the author of several non-fiction books including his most recent, 2021’s The Writer’s Crusade: Kurt Vonnegut & The Many Lives of Slaughterhouse Five.   Making Media Now is sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting media makers from across the creative spectrum. From providing fiscal sponsorship to presenting an array of informative and educational programs, Filmmakers Collaborative supports creatives at every step in their journey.   About the host: www.writevoicecreative.com and https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-azevedo/ Sound Engineer: A.J. Kierstead 

On this episode we explore the world of ghostwriting!   If you were to scan the top 50 or so best-sellers on the non-fiction list, you’d likely find that memoirs & autobiographies make up a fair portion of that list. And here’s one of publishings inside secrets—many, if not most, of those books were actually written by someone whose name appears no where on the cover.   Welcome to the life of a ghostwriter!   Joining Michael Azevedo on this episode of Making Media Now is Sherry Granader, a successful and sought-after ghostwriter with more than twenty years experience in ghostwriting and publishing. Sherry has ghostwritten and edited over 150 books including 5 that made Amazons best seller list.   Making Media Now is sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting media makers from across the creative spectrum. From providing fiscal sponsorship to presenting an array of informative and educational programs, Filmmakers Collaborative supports creatives at every step in their journey.   About the host: www.writevoicecreative.com and https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-azevedo/ Sound Engineer: A.J. Kierstead   

Michael Azevedo's guests on this episode—Eamon Little, Joan Pratt, and Christopher Lydon—are part of the team behind a documentary-in-progress call "Born That Way," for which Filmmakers Collaborative is the fiscal sponsor.  "Born That Way" documents the final year in the life of Patrick Lydon, in which he looks back on a fascinating life, lays the ground for posthumous, ‘green-shoot’ projects and prepares for death. Director Eamon Little promises that the film will be an unflinching journey to the end of an exemplary life, probing ‘otherness’ in our society and asking searching questions about the future we want to create. Joining Eamon to talk about the life and work of Patrick Lydon are, Joan Pratt, his friend from his days at Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and Patrick’s brother, Christopher Lydon, who covered politics for The New York Times from its Washington bureau in the 1970s, hosted The Ten O’Clock News on WGBH TV in Boston through the 1980s, and co-founded and hosted The Connection on WBUR in the ’90s, and is currently the host of Open Source, the world’s longest running podcast, having been established in 2003.  For more information about the "Born That Way" film project, please check out its page in the projects section of the Filmmakers Collaborative website at www.filmmakerscoll.org. Making Media Now is sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting media makers from across the creative spectrum. From providing fiscal sponsorship to presenting an array of informative and educational programs, Filmmakers Collaborative supports creatives at every step in their journey.

On this episode of Making Media Now, host Michael Azevedo is joined by writer, filmmaker and professor Michele Meek.  Michele recently published the book, Consent Culture and Teen Films , and she has published several other books including Independent Female Filmmakers (2019) and The Mastermind Failure Club(2020). She presented a TEDx talk “Why we’re confused about consent—rewriting our stories of seduction” and has written for Ms. Magazine, Script Magazine, Entrepreneur, The Good Men Project, Salon.com, among others. Michele has also directed numerous award-winning short films, including Imagine Kolle 37 (2017) and Red Sneakers (2008), and she worked as associate producer on the documentary feature Salvage (2019), which premiered at SXSW Film Festival. She has several creative projects in the works—including a short film Bay Creek Tennis Camp, a feature screenplay Cruisin‘ and a documentary The Impermanence of Everything. She is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Communication Studies department at Bridgewater State University, where she teaches filmmaking, screenwriting, film studies, digital media, gender studies, and life design.

This episode is the second of two conversations where host Michael Azevedo speaks with the visionaries behind the venerable science documentary series NOVA.   Michael's first conversation was with NOVA series creator Michael Ambrosino and on this episode Michael speaks with Paula Apsell, who served as NOVA executive producer for 33 years, retiring in 2019 when she was named Senior Executive Producer Emerita.   Paula Apsell began her broadcasting career right out of college at Boston's WGBH public television station when she was hired to type and distribute the stations daily program logs. Within a year she was hired at WGBH radio where she developed the award-winning children's series "The Spiders Web.”   In 1975, Apsell switched over to WGBH-TV as a production assistant for NOVA's second season. One of Apsell's first productions was NOVA "Death of a Disease" which was the first long-form documentary on the eradication of smallpox. In the late 1970s Apsell was producing documentaries on artificial intelligence and genetic engineering; topics that rarely existed in the mainstream prior to the 21st century.   Apsell was asked to take over the top post at NOVA in 1985 where she remained for the three-and-a-half decades.    Among her most notable NOVA films are "The Miracle of Life" sequel "Life's Greatest Miracle," "The Fabric of the Cosmos" with Brian Greene, and "Making North America" with Dr. Kirk Johnson. Other of Apsell's acclaimed productions are the large-screen IMAX films "Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure" and "Special Effects" which was nominated for an Academy Award®.   In addition to overseeing the NOVA franchise, Apsell taught science communication at the University of California Santa Barbara.   In October 2018, Paula Apsell received the Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award from the National Association of Television Arts and Sciences. She was the first science journalist to receive this award.   Following her departure from NOVA, Apsell became CEO of Leading Edge Productions and started producing The Resistance Project, a documentary about Jewish resistance to the Holocaust.   Making Media Now is sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting media makers from across the creative spectrum. From providing fiscal sponsorship to presenting an array of informative and educational programs, Filmmakers Collaborative supports creatives at every step in their journey.   About the host: www.writevoicecreative.com and https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-azevedo/ Sound Engineer: A.J. Kierstead 

This episode is the first of two conversations paying tribute to the legendary science series NOVA, the longest running documentary series on television.    As NOVA approaches its 50th season on PBS, host Michael Azevedo spoke with Michael Ambrosino, the series creator, and with Paula Apsell, who served as the series’ Executive Producer for more than 3 decades.   First up is the conversation with Michael Ambrosino.    In 1971 television producer Michael Ambrosino was in London taking part in a year-long fellowship program with the BBC and happened to see some episodes of a science-based British TV show. Ambrosino worked at Boston’s legendary public television station WGBH, and he’d been there since 1956 -just a year after it went on the air.   In 1970 the station had become part of the brand-new, government-backed Public Broadcasting Service aka PBS, with new funding that allowed WGBH to begin thinking bigger.    That’s why Ambrosino was in London: While there he observed the making of several episodes of Horizon, an educational science-based series that, to the surprise of BBC officials, was actually pretty popular with viewers.   Ambrosino felt there was a disappointing lack of educational science programming in the U.S., and seeing the success of Horizon spurred him to do something about it.    In May 1971, shortly before returning home to Boston, Ambrosino wrote a five-page letter to Michael Rice, then vice president of WGBH, outlining in detail a science show for PBS. His idea: to air a series of shows on a wide variety of science-based subjects.    That letter has essentially remained the blueprint for NOVA ever since.   On March 4, 1974, NOVA made its debut with the tagline “Science adventures for curious grownups.”    Michael Ambrosino, now 92 years old, spoke to Making Media Now from his home in Florida.   Making Media Now is sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting media makers from across the creative spectrum. From providing fiscal sponsorship to presenting an array of informative and educational programs, Filmmakers Collaborative supports creatives at every step in their journey.

On this episode, we delve into the oldest forms of so-called media known to man: storytelling and writing as host Michael Azevedo welcomes first-time guest and award-winning actor and audiobook narrator Eduardo Ballerini and welcomes back best-selling author Jane Healey. Edoardo Ballerini is a two-time winner (and five time nominee) of the Best Male Narrator "Audie" Award from the Audio Publishers Association, the industry's highest prize. In a 2020 profile, The New York Times called Edoardo “a master in his field… at the forefront of a new kind of celebrity.”  In 2019, Edoardo was named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile Magazine, an honorific bestowed to only 40 narrators in the magazine’s 22 year history. Jane Healey is the author of The Beantown Girls, a Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestseller, The Secret Stealers, which was an Amazon First Reads Editor’s Pick and a Historical Novel Society’s Editors’ Choice, and her debut, The Saturday Evening Girls Club.  Jane joined us to talk about Goodnight from Paris, her newly released novel from Lake Union Publishing. Jane is also the host of Historical Happy Hour, a monthly webinar and podcast featuring interviews with premier historical fiction authors and their latest novels. Making Media Now is sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting media makers from across the creative spectrum. From providing fiscal sponsorship to presenting an array of informative and educational programs, Filmmakers Collaborative supports creatives at every step in their journey.   About the host: www.writevoicecreative.com and https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-azevedo/ Sound Engineer: A.J. Kierstead 

Joining host Michael Azevedo on this episode of Making Media Now is Donna Loughlin. Donna is  the Founder of the public relations firm, LMGPR, and is known for her work with futurists and innovators. She has launched more than 500 companies taking them from stealth to market leaders since forming her agency in 2002.   She is also the host of "Before It Happened," a leading narrative podcast featuring visionaries and the moments, events, and realizations that inspired them to change our lives for the better. Donna and I talk about her roots in journalism and how knowing how to research thoroughly and ask questions intelligently played a huge role in creating a successful PR firm, we also discussed the difference between PR and advertising and what draws her to tell the stories of what she calls "acorns." Making Media Now is sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting media makers from across the creative spectrum. From providing fiscal sponsorship to presenting an array of informative and educational programs, Filmmakers Collaborative supports creatives at every step in their journey.   About the host: www.writevoicecreative.com and https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-azevedo/ Sound Engineer: A.J. Kierstead 

Joining host Michael Azevedo on this episode is Sara Terry, director of a documentary called "A Decent Home," which addresses urgent issues of class and economic inequity through the lives of mobile home park residents who can’t afford housing anywhere else.   The film asks, "Who are we becoming as Americans?" — as private equity firms and wealthy investors buy up parks, making sky-high returns on their investments while squeezing every last penny out of the mobile home owners who lack rights and protections under local and state laws, and must pay rent for the land they live on.   "A Decent Home" will be broadcast starting 3/16/23 on PBS as part of the "America Reframed" series.   Making Media Now is sponsored by Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting media makers from across the creative spectrum. From providing fiscal sponsorship to presenting an array of informative and educational programs, Filmmakers Collaborative supports creatives at every step in their journey.   About the host: www.writevoicecreative.com and https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-azevedo/ Sound Engineer: A.J. Kierstead