Meet Cheri Harris

 

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Cheri Harris. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Cheri, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

I found my purpose by retiring from a career that I was no longer enjoying and embarking on a passion project with my husband. My life had become a series of musts and shoulds. I must go to work every day and perform routine tasks that are assigned to me. I had been an attorney for almost 35 years and had worked for all three branches of state government and a couple of non-profit organizations and professional associations. I had a lot of valuable experience and I tried to inject some creativity into continuing education that I provided for my clients, but I dreaded the daily grind.

For the past 30 years I’ve been married to Mike Yonts, a man who makes his living as a commercial cinematographer. Mike also tried to steer his career in creative directions by making music videos and working on other people’s independent films when he could. When he was ready to make his own independent film, I left my job to be available to work with him to accomplish this dream, In the world of independent filmmaking everyone wears a lot of hats. I became the executive producer and provided legal services as well as transportation services (getting vehicles used in the movie back and forth to the set) and craft services (making sure the cast and crew stay hydrated and fed by providing beverages, snacks, and meals). I invested money in the film and I also developed all of the forms, contracts, releases, and agreements required to make a movie of any size. I learned what I needed to know about the specialized field of Entertainment Law along the way. I discovered that I could impact the quality and content of cinematic art that is produced by offering my services to support independent filmmakers in telling stories that I care about. In the future I hope to set up a revolving fund to help support filmmakers working on projects that I consider worthwhile.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’ve been vice-president of Mike Yonts Films, Inc. since its inception in 2001. Over the years I’ve advised Mike on various financial, legal, and business matters and have occasionally helped in other ways. Our movie, Extraction, USA, was the first project that I was eager to work on full time.

I embraced executive producing Extraction, USA not just because it was written, directed, and filmed by my husband, but because I believed in the story. I’ve always considered myself a feminist and the story clearly passed the Bechdel test. (The Bechdel test is a way of measuring the depth of women’s roles in film while also calling attention to the lack of gender equality in mainstream film and other fiction.)

Mike wanted to write a movie about income inequality and he recognized that single moms are uniquely impacted. Rather than writing another story where a man rescues a woman in distress, he wrote a woman-led film where two women team up to rescue themselves. The movie touches on a number of significant issues (LGBTQ+ relationships, environmental injustice, sexual harassment and violence) without preaching about them or telling the audience what to think.

I grew up in a family where I am the youngest of seven siblings, two of whom identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community, so being a champion of LGBTQ+ rights and marriage equality has been an important part of who I am. I love the fact that our movie doesn’t make a big deal about whether the women are gay, but just normalizes the relationship.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The quality that served me best on this project was that I am empathetic by nature. The depth of my contacts and relationships in the community proved helpful in many ways. Our friends and families supported our project by making large and small contributions to our crowdfunding campaign, lending us their vehicles for weeks at a time, and letting us use their homes as locations for a day or two (and in one case for an entire week). When we needed extras, they showed up for that too. I felt every kindness I’d ever offered anyone was returned many times over. I met at least 100 people over the course of making the film and some of those connections have turned into lasting friendships. Our production team made it a priority to treat everyone we worked with well and people told us they appreciated the positive tone on the set.

Working for associations and nonprofit organizations I planned many conferences and other events. My event planning skills proved to be useful at every stage of filmmaking – preparing for our 21 day shoot required finding and securing locations, estimating how many people would be on set each day and making sure we had ample food and drink for cast and crew. As a member in our production team I also let people know where they were supposed to be, what was expected of them, and where to direct any questions they might have. During post-production I employed project management techniques to keep our team under budget and on time.

The most valuable skills I brought to the project, though, were my legal training and background. Most independent filmmakers don’t have the budget to hire an attorney, so they often skip that step, leaving them open to more liability than necessary. As an attorney, I can think through the interests that need to be protected and draft specific language to make that happen. I learned basic Entertainment Law and immediately had opportunities to apply that knowledge at every stage of our production. Now I’m in a position to help other independent filmmakers with similar issues and have already begun to do so.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

Now that the film is finished and has a distributor, our biggest challenge is to get lots of people to watch it! In order to do that, I’ve immersed myself in learning how independent films are marketed. The way a person first finds out about a movie and how they watch it have changed significantly in the past few years. Much of the focus is on social media marketing now.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Mike Yonts
Bram Wahl

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