An Old Love and a New Perspective
If you told 13 year old Maddie that one day she’d be working for a film production company, she’d probably say, “well, yeah, duh.” 20 year old Maddie may not have agreed with her, but my middle school self sunk enough hours into iMovie to know that film was always part of my path. My time at NYU gave me experience in front of the camera, but it wasn’t until my “Create Your Own Content” class at Stonestreet Studios that I re-discovered my love for scriptwriting, editing, and camera work. It took me a little longer to make it part of my career, but in 2023, I began working at Yale Productions, where I grew quickly as a producer and filmmaker. A small independent film company, Yale allowed me to try my hand at new skills, culminating in production of my partner’s first feature-length screenplay.
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A feature length documentary on how civil society promotes human security in Israel, produced for the Civic Media Lab at the American University of Paris.
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A lighthearted documentary short produced in my Multimedia Storytelling class with Hany Hawasly through the New York University School of Continuing Studies in Spring 2022.
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Video Production Samples
Sample One
A feature length documentary on how civil society promotes human security in Israel-Palestine, produced for the Civic Media Lab at the American University of Paris.
l'Autre Côté is a documentary examining how civil society helps promote human security in Israel-Palestine. In October 2019, I took a trip to Israel-Palestine through my graduate program in International Law and Diplomacy. There, we met with many civil society groups that are working on the ground to promote human rights, and we filmed a little over 50 hours of footage to use for the documentary using an iPhone 8 and a selfie stick (due to limited filming permissions granted at significant Israeli sites). I began researching human security and civil society in Israel for our class, Civil Society and the Law, with Professor Sharon Weill. I constructed a loose script and storyboard to help frame the issues in a narrative form. My colleagues, Bileh Dougsiyeh, Karl Baldacchino, and Natalie Wuertz, collaborated with me on the finalization of the script. Due to Covid-19, we had to finish our production remotely, and I directed our documentarian shots over Zoom. I edited the documentary using Final Cut Pro, condensing our footage and research down into an hour and ten minute long final product. The documentary served as our final project in the class.
This project was created in an educational capacity and not intended for distribution. Due to the sensitive nature of the material, I ask you do not share this work outside of this portfolio or for non-educational purposes.
Sample Two
A lighthearted documentary short produced in my Multimedia Storytelling class with Hany Hawasly through the New York University School of Continuing Studies in Spring 2022. Mom and Dad, stop scrolling.
And now for something completely different.
I created this piece throughout the course of a semester in my Multimedia Production class at NYU Continuing Studies. I pitched, storyboarded, researched, interviewed, and developed this piece around audio, video, and photography that I collected for the class. Due to the sensitive nature of the material (of a very different kind than the sensitive material above…), I ask you do not distribute or share this work outside of this portfolio.
SAMPLE THREE
Wearing the hat of a producer for the first time, I developed pitch materials, pitched, and fundraised for my partner’s horror movie entitled Kenneled in collaboration with Yale Entertainment and Joe Swanberg. Kenneled is currently in postproduction.
Included here are a slide from the deck I created as part of the pitch materials for Kenneled, a horror movie about a dog walker that finds himself in an unusual – and dangerous – position. Below, I’ve included a link to the press release with more information on the project and its development.
