Mission & History

History

In 2010, Terry Lamb and David Usner formed an organization, Encounters on Earth, to make short films. Centered around the writers and actors, it provided to writers the vehicle for getting their scripts realized on film and to actors a platform for building experience and reel material. Thirteen short films were made. Some went on to festivals and one, Name, got into over ten festivals.

During that time David, along with a team of producers (Roxie Summit Productions) produced a feature film, Roxie, that was an official selection at the Sonoma Film Festival and winner of Best Narrative Film at the Bushwick Film Festival. It played on Amazon for over 5 years and continues to play on a number of streaming platforms in the US, Japan, UK and Germany.

In 2015, after Terry’s death, David took his experience with Encounters on Earth and Roxie Summit Productions and continued to make a number of short films. While making those films, he reformulated the process of bringing together a wide range of filmmaking talent.

In September of 2018, Dave produced Mi Vaquita del Mar, a short film whose purpose was to provide a project to train and hone skills with collaborators and develop a family of motivated filmmakers. This team included every aspect of filmmaking; pre-production, directing, art direction, script supervision, cinematography, production sound, DIT, make up, wardrobe, acting, location scouting, editing, sound mixing, color work, VFX, and much more. A second short, There is a Crack in Everything, was shot and went into post-production in 2019, using many of the same crew that created Vaquita.

On August 4th, 2019, during the post-production of Crack, official plans were discussed to form a new collective.  The first meeting was held on August 31, and a Steering Committee was created including Emma Cranston, Michael Locke, Stuart Locklear, Bill Shupp and David Usner to put into place the structure for the organization that is now Encounters Films Collective (EFC). We began meeting twice a month.

Two projects were shot by March of 2020 when the Covid-19 virus hit. EFC moved from two meetings a month to weekly Zoom meetings with stellar guest speakers, such as Susan Vaill, Ben Burtt, Michael Hausman, Larry Karaszewski, Sidney J. Furie, Lloyd Kaufman, Jeannine Oppewall, Ken Kwapis, Jill Bogdanowicz, and many others. That series continues as an educational resource for our members with guests from industry, addressing such diverse topics as directing, producing, sound, lighting, composing, acting and editing. Recordings of past Zoom meetings are available to members and reside on our website. EFC continues to charge ahead, with several completed shorts and others in post-production and pre-production, all intended for festival engagements.