A Lecture I Prepared, And the Conversation I Should Have Had Instead

The first time a film festival asked me to speak, I made a mistake that took me a year to undo. The festival had asked for a craft talk on documentary direction. I prepared a lecture. The lecture was thorough, technically accurate, and well-structured. It was also wrong for the room.

The audience didn’t want a lecture. They wanted a conversation about what the work actually feels like from the inside, with someone who was making it that week. They wanted specifics, not principles. They wanted to ask questions and have the answers connect to projects they’d seen, problems they were trying to solve, and futures they were trying to build for themselves. I gave them the academic version. They were polite about it. I drove home knowing I had wasted everyone’s time.

I’ve done a lot of festival panels, university appearances, and industry events since then. I serve on the Communication Arts Advisory Board at Georgia Southern University, where I was selected for the inaugural 40 Under 40 Alumni list. I’ve taught shot listing and documentary filmmaking through Stage32. The talks I give now are conversations grounded in a working filmmaker’s practice, not lectures, and they work because they answer the questions audiences are actually asking.

Here’s what I’d want any festival programmer or university film coordinator to know before they reach out, in case it saves you a year of figuring it out the hard way like I did.

What audiences actually want from a working filmmaker

Audiences at film festivals and university film programs share a common condition. They’re surrounded by content about filmmaking. Books, podcasts, online courses, YouTube channels, MasterClass. They are not short on theoretical input. What they’re short on is access to working professionals who can answer specific questions in context, about the work being made right now.

The questions that get the best responses from these audiences aren’t “how do I become a director.” That question has a thousand stock answers, none of which are useful. The questions that connect are the specific ones. How did you get the access for that documentary. What did you do when the subject changed their mind in the middle of production. How do you talk to an agency producer who’s pushing back on your treatment. What does the contract look like when a streaming platform options a project. What did you say to the editor when they suggested cutting the scene you fought for.

A working filmmaker can answer those questions. A book on filmmaking cannot. The reason to book a working filmmaker is to bridge the gap between the abstraction in textbooks and the lived practice of making something. Bookings that succeed lean into that bridge. Bookings that fail try to make the working filmmaker into a textbook author for sixty minutes.

Three formats I offer

When a festival programmer or university coordinator asks me for a topic, I usually offer three options and ask them to pick the one their audience needs.

The first is a craft talk. We pick a single craft topic and go deep. Documentary ethics. The editorial relationship between director and editor. Working with subjects who are unfamiliar with film. Each of these can sustain a sixty-to-ninety-minute conversation if the audience is engaged and the questions are real.

The second is a project autopsy. We pick one project from my body of work, walk through what it took to make, and answer questions about decisions at every stage. The Sound of Identity is a good one for a documentary audience. The American Question is good for a craft-and-distribution combined audience. A commercial or music video project is good for an advertising or branded content audience.

The third is career construction. We talk about how a filmmaker actually builds a career now, in 2026, with the platforms and economics that exist now, not the ones that existed when most of the books on film careers were written. This option works best for student audiences and for early-career professionals.

The thing I won’t do is the generic “evening with a filmmaker.” Generic talks fail because they try to serve every audience and end up serving none. Picking the format the audience actually needs is the festival or university’s job, and it’s the most useful thing they can do for the booking.

What works for which audience

Festival audiences tend to be a mix. There are working professionals attending the festival, students studying film, and general audiences interested in the medium. The sweet spot for festival panels is usually a mix of project autopsy and craft talk. Pick a single film, walk through one or two craft decisions in depth, leave half the time for audience questions. This format respects the time of professionals and stays accessible to students.

University audiences are different. They’re mostly students, with a smaller cohort of faculty. Students want the practical career information that universities are sometimes uncomfortable giving them, because the answer is messy and individual. Career construction talks work especially well at universities. Students leave with specific things they can do, not principles they can quote.

Industry conferences and brand summits are different again. These audiences are professionals from adjacent fields, often advertising or marketing, who want to understand how documentary methodology can apply to their work. Talks here should be comparative. What does documentary methodology offer that other approaches don’t. How does the filmmaker’s craft translate to brand storytelling. What’s the line that separates a good brand documentary from a glorified commercial.

Advisory boards and jury work

Festivals occasionally ask me about jury participation. Universities sometimes invite me to advisory board roles. Both are work I’m open to and treat seriously. Advisory board work in particular is undervalued by both filmmakers and institutions. The institutions get a working professional’s perspective on how their curriculum prepares students for actual industry conditions. The filmmaker gets a structured connection to the next generation of practitioners. The student programs that take advisory board input seriously are the programs whose graduates are best prepared for real careers.

If you’re coordinating an advisory board or selecting jurors for a festival, the honest thing to know is that working filmmakers will commit to the role if it’s structured well. A meeting once a quarter is workable. A vague open-ended commitment is not. Specific deliverables make the relationship sustainable.

How to book

The /filmmaker-speaker/ page has the topic list, recent venues, and answers to the questions programmers most often ask before the first call. The /documentary-filmmaker/ page covers the documentary work that most of my talks draw from. The /director-los-angeles/ page is the broader directing practice if you’re looking for talks that span formats.

Speaking and consulting bookings are handled by Rain Management. Festival, university, and industry-event bookings can also come through the /inquiries/ form on this site. Both routes work.

The most useful thing a festival programmer or university coordinator can do before reaching out is decide what the audience needs. If you can answer “what do we want our audience to walk away with,” I can match a topic and format to that goal. If you can’t answer it, the booking will be a generic talk that nobody remembers, and we’ll both have wasted each other’s time.

The festivals and universities that have booked me successfully shared a habit. They knew what they wanted before they asked. The first call was about how to deliver it, not what it should be. That’s the booking that works for both sides.

I’m based in Los Angeles, with travel routinely available across the United States and internationally for the right engagements. The first response to a booking inquiry is usually within 72 business hours.